JonesyPart of my point is that there are probably millions of documents already existing that use the BC/AD references, and if this is gradually expunged through the educational system we will end up with no-one being able to decipher such references.
In other words, whoever thought this one up should be told to think again!
Then, by that token, Papa Lima why did we get forced into metrication?. It was a new system and certainly did nothing to help poor befuddled schoolchildren and has left a legacy of disquiet. That was pressed through regardless as it was deemed to be for the objective ‘greater good’.
Why is this case any different?. I agree that there is really no galactically important reason to make the change…and it certainly should NOT be to appease those parties that we have no interest in appeasing…on the other hand there is no legitimate reason to retain a system that, in this day and age, is so apparently out of step with our society.
Sealord
0 is not really 0, hence BC, its just a bunch of numbers. I can assure you that Chinese buisness uses the same dating system as us, the Olympics are not Beijing 2008 for nothing.
By that logic though Sealord isnt ‘2007’ just an arbitrary bunch of numbers based around what could, easily, be a fictitious event. Yes I accept that in business instant global communication has forced an objective ‘standard reference’ for time and date….but then isnt that standard divorced from the bc/ad debate?. When was the last email you recieved timestamped 2007AD?.
My point is that the bc/ad thing is scarcely relevent any more. AD actually meaning the ‘Year of our Lord’ sort of thing doesnt it?!!!. Why not let it pass into history and start conforming to the societal values we claim to have in today’s more enlightened era?!.
JonesyPart of my point is that there are probably millions of documents already existing that use the BC/AD references, and if this is gradually expunged through the educational system we will end up with no-one being able to decipher such references.
In other words, whoever thought this one up should be told to think again!
Then, by that token, Papa Lima why did we get forced into metrication?. It was a new system and certainly did nothing to help poor befuddled schoolchildren and has left a legacy of disquiet. That was pressed through regardless as it was deemed to be for the objective ‘greater good’.
Why is this case any different?. I agree that there is really no galactically important reason to make the change…and it certainly should NOT be to appease those parties that we have no interest in appeasing…on the other hand there is no legitimate reason to retain a system that, in this day and age, is so apparently out of step with our society.
Sealord
0 is not really 0, hence BC, its just a bunch of numbers. I can assure you that Chinese buisness uses the same dating system as us, the Olympics are not Beijing 2008 for nothing.
By that logic though Sealord isnt ‘2007’ just an arbitrary bunch of numbers based around what could, easily, be a fictitious event. Yes I accept that in business instant global communication has forced an objective ‘standard reference’ for time and date….but then isnt that standard divorced from the bc/ad debate?. When was the last email you recieved timestamped 2007AD?.
My point is that the bc/ad thing is scarcely relevent any more. AD actually meaning the ‘Year of our Lord’ sort of thing doesnt it?!!!. Why not let it pass into history and start conforming to the societal values we claim to have in today’s more enlightened era?!.
JonesyFair point Papa Lima. The question is though does this defacto standard dating change much if the terminology changes from ‘Before Christ’ and ‘Anno Domini’ to ‘Before Zero’ and ‘After Zero’.
We still use the same arbitrary value as 0 just we remove the religious connotation. As enlightened members of secular societies in the West should this really be a big challenge for us?.
JonesyFair point Papa Lima. The question is though does this defacto standard dating change much if the terminology changes from ‘Before Christ’ and ‘Anno Domini’ to ‘Before Zero’ and ‘After Zero’.
We still use the same arbitrary value as 0 just we remove the religious connotation. As enlightened members of secular societies in the West should this really be a big challenge for us?.
JonesySnake,
Could you possibly indicate a way for CVSG to avoid detection by SSN short of stopping engines and trying to submerge
The issue there though is the effective range and descriminative capability of the sonars fitted to Soviet-era and later subs. If we say that, outside of the deep channel environment, a good tactical towed array is going to get you three cz’s out – the detection zone of the SSN is, what, a 150km radius from the sub?. That, of course, being limited by the environmental accoustic conditions and the processing power embarked aboard the sub. Useful but not a theatre search asset and, afaik, a client component of Legenda only.
My suggestion, if you’ll note, was that they push forward with a SURTASS-type capability to push the passive accoustic detection envelope from tactical to strategic range.
It’s not that many decades that it’s inoperational – ten to 15 years at most.
Its news to me that it was inoperational. The satellite component was in place for the continuation of the system (if the satellite was working – suggestions are it broke on orbital insertion!) are you suggesting that it wasnt active or employed?.
Not surprising that Russians are trying to get one of their most valuable assets back into action.
Absolutely agree, as I said below, its about time they stopped using the horse to push the cart!.
Aren’t HALE UAVs much more vulnerable than satellites because of that
Certainly they are, but, RORSATs were not exactly invulnerable and its a much easier proposition to replace a lost UAV than a lost RORSAT!. In many ways the UAV’s would have a flexibility edge over the satellite system as well.
JonesyIts been that way for a while. And yes it is absurd, if you are offended by a marking of time you need to ask yourself serious questions about your life. Especially in a world where the Christian calender has become the internationally accepted one. But hey we must avoid, at all costs, upsetting the people who despise every sing one of our values and thus feel the need to randomly blow us up.:mad:
HAS the Christian calender been universally accepted Sealord?. Isnt it slightly absurd of us to tell the Chinese that, for all intents and purposes, history started from zero 2007 years ago?. They were as far on as blowing each other up with gunpowder and using lodestones as compasses for navigation by that time and had several millenia of history before that, same for other eastern populations who predate the young chappie in the stable by a great many centuries.
To suggest that one could draw a line at an arbitrary date and reset the calender to zero in order to provide focus on some new force majeure on the scene I would find bloody offensive to be honest. The example is if perhaps the Finns where to become the dominant global force and decided to zero the calender at the date when Nokia was created. All the achievements of Great Britain in the Industrial Revolution etc would then be de-emphasized as being part of ancient history – Before Nokia perhaps!!!. That would not impress me much!.
I will declare that I am not religious in the slightest, but, it does seem a non-sequitor that we stress that we live in a secular society and show it off with pride…yet our standard for setting dates is based in religion. Perhaps we shouldnt be overly upset if Year 0 was referred to as such and we had times measured ‘before zero’ or ‘after zero’….would accepting that really push people off the edge???.
JonesyIts been that way for a while. And yes it is absurd, if you are offended by a marking of time you need to ask yourself serious questions about your life. Especially in a world where the Christian calender has become the internationally accepted one. But hey we must avoid, at all costs, upsetting the people who despise every sing one of our values and thus feel the need to randomly blow us up.:mad:
HAS the Christian calender been universally accepted Sealord?. Isnt it slightly absurd of us to tell the Chinese that, for all intents and purposes, history started from zero 2007 years ago?. They were as far on as blowing each other up with gunpowder and using lodestones as compasses for navigation by that time and had several millenia of history before that, same for other eastern populations who predate the young chappie in the stable by a great many centuries.
To suggest that one could draw a line at an arbitrary date and reset the calender to zero in order to provide focus on some new force majeure on the scene I would find bloody offensive to be honest. The example is if perhaps the Finns where to become the dominant global force and decided to zero the calender at the date when Nokia was created. All the achievements of Great Britain in the Industrial Revolution etc would then be de-emphasized as being part of ancient history – Before Nokia perhaps!!!. That would not impress me much!.
I will declare that I am not religious in the slightest, but, it does seem a non-sequitor that we stress that we live in a secular society and show it off with pride…yet our standard for setting dates is based in religion. Perhaps we shouldnt be overly upset if Year 0 was referred to as such and we had times measured ‘before zero’ or ‘after zero’….would accepting that really push people off the edge???.
JonesyRSM,
GLONASS is a priority, a new RORSAT/SIGINT/ELINT ocean-looking programme is not (for the moment), be it Liana or a Legend redux. If the priority is not an all-out war with a major blue water navy like the USN, then you don’t need sat-based assets right here, right now. A combination of sea/land/space-based assets is currently the best option
You cant say that!. GarryB will NEVER accept that the priority for the Russian Navy is NOT to sink those evil USN aircraft carriers!. Without that he has utterly no justifcation for the continued expenditure on at least three heavy supersonic missile types that serve no other realistic function than anticarrier.
Accepting that would also force him to stare down the barrel of the cold, hard, fact that there is currently no nation on earth capable of reliably localising, identifying, tracking and attacking a CVSG that is trying to avoid detection.:eek:
You’re absolutely right, and they came at the same conclusion – they currently are developing and installing a major surface and subsurface national surveillance system, with totally new assets and capabilities – it actually is one of the best funded programmes in Russia nowadays,
Doesnt suprise me a bit. Ties in with the GLONASS focus as well. Before you commence any warfighting the basics MUST be in place. The basics being a knowledge of precisely where your platforms are and a knowledge of where the opposing forces are – Navigation and Surveillence!. Nice that, after so many decades, they have finally got the cart tied up behind the horse!.
the only difference is that no one (wants) to (pay any) notice – it’s not so spectacular. But HALE? – they’re not soooo stupid
HALE UAV’s like GlobalHawk have a collosal contribution to make to the field of ocean reconnaisance/marpat. The bigger HALE platforms with more onboard power generation lifting Searchwater 2000MR class multirole radars could be supremely useful for theatre search and, with SAR-spot modes, classification with impressive endurance and, unlike satellites, the ability to circle to maintain a position-of-interest!. Dont see whay you class them as stoopid??.
JonesyOnce again then European.
There are ‘aircrafts’ and pilots.
There are 3 squadrons of ‘aircrafts’. One is deployed to Afghanistan, currently 800sqdn, leaving two squadrons back in the UK. Now 4sqdn has just come back from Afghanistan and is having a bit of a rest and 1sqdn will be undertaking training in preparation for replacing 800sqdn after Christmas.
If a dire national emergency was to crop up between now and the time, after Christmas, when 800sqdn rotate out of theatre 1 and 4sqdns would deploy to the duty CVS. IF a significant UK force was required the second CVS would be dispatched with an airgroup comprised of 20sqdn airframes from RAF Wittering and, perhaps, augmented by any FA2’s that could be scraped up.
The UK could still therefore, at full stretch, put out two CVS’s with an airgroup of approximately 30 fairly advanced Harriers backed with the best AEW capability found anywhere supported by rotary-wings!. Not too shabby even if it is a decline from what went before.
Do you understand this now?.
JonesyTurbinia,
The concept of pooling the support and training aspects of Harrier ops I can understand to an extent. The operations side should never, never have been touched though as the Fleet Air Arm FA2 tasking was, and remains, totally disparate to the RAF GR7’s.
Fleet operations to the RAF mean conducting their usual strike missions from a floating forward base until a proper, if austere, land base can be established to move the jets to. Fleet operations to the RN mean the integration of tactical airpower to extend the range of shipboard air-surface firepower ashore, and at sea, whilst providing an outer-air-battle zone outside the extent of the Fleet-AAW Missile Engagement Zone and the provision of SURCAP reconnaisance to augment the situational awareness of the group.
The RN’s world view as detailed above, has now, largely, fallen by the wayside and RN Carrier Strike is literally just that. One can only hope that the Fleet Air Defence tasking is taken seriously when F-35B joins the CVF’s though its hard to see, at present, where the STOVL-trained pilots will be found, at that time, with any serious air-air training under their belts?!.
Of course the other thing that JFH has done is the handover of the only true, at the time, swingrole fighter in UK service to the RAF who were embarrassed by its capability. That the RN officer nominally in charge of JFH was quickly replaced by an RAF officer, on who’s watch the FA2 was suddenly deemed unnecessarily luxurious, was a suprise to no-one!. JFH has been a good economy measure all around…but the economies are not those of greater operational efficiency….rather they are the savings made anywhere that vital capabilities are cut without replacement.
Still, the crabs are happy with the deal – which is nice, I suppose!
JonesyEuropean
Is there somenone that could answer to my curiosity?
Thanks a lot.
There are three front line Harrier squadrons currently – 1, 4 sqdns RAF and 800 sqdn, RN. One squadron is tasked to Op Herrick in Afghanistan and the other two are usually on stand-down/training cycles so, if it became a critical national emergency, there exists a ready pool of pilots and aircraft that could deploy. Rumour is that a dozen or so complete FA2 airframes are being held in airworthy storage somewhere too…though I have no definite information on that.
JonesySwerve,
Couldn’t operate the MiG-29Ks, but would be fine for the Harriers, & the MiGs could go on the first IAC when finished. And she’d make an excellent LHD when the Harriers retire.
Naturally on them having to wait for the IAC to get the MiG-29 up and running, but, they are going to wait a good while already, until Gorshkov is ready, to get those planes deployed to sea. In the timeframe up until IAC commissions who is there in the SEAsia theatre that can present a deployed IN group more air-threat than the SHAR’s can handle anyway!?. PRC perhaps? – but will a dozen MiG-29’s realistically mean more against that threat than twenty SHARs?. Nope!.
By this point in time you really wonder why the Russians are creating such a fuss about this project. If the Indians really look at this deal through objective eyes they are going to realise that Gorshkov doesnt offer them any really vital capabilities and its going to cost a hell of a lot to get what is offered!.
Even with the push back on the in-service date on the IAC spending billions in aquisition and life-cycle costs all to put a too-small airgroup of unproven naval fighters to sea, through a strategically unspectacular time period, cant be considered a good return on the investment!. They have to realise this sooner or later!
Jonesy‘Only game in town’ is something that is going to be heard a LOT in regard to this nascent little fiasco.
Dont believe a word of it.
Both DCN and Bazan had been engaged by the IN, years prior to the Gorshkov offer, under the auspices of the ADS programme. Bazan had offered the BSAC220 design as an optimal solution to the IN requirement – which is precisely what it was back in the mid 90’s.
Even now Gorshkov isnt the only game in town as the expenditure now being dumped into trying to make the sow’s ear into something more purse-like could easily be assigned to a more practical and useful vessel. The Russians could, surely, have little ground for complaint if India cancelled citing breach of contract!.
They could instead easily buy a simplified Navantia BPE or Hanjin Dokdo type design to continue the deployability of the current IN SHAR fleet and, upon SHAR retirement when IAC comes into service, become an extraordinarily useful rotary-wing only amphib/ASW asset. Both of those designs have production orders in place currently so adding an additional hull could be very, very reasonable and both will see India, in future, benefitting from a larger consumer base for spares etc. The lead Korean vessel was, seemingly, completed in about 24 months so the IN could even anticipate sea trials and commissioning in easily the same timeframe as the Gorshkov is expected to be ready in as of today.
If there is one thing that the Gorshkov ISN’T its that it isnt and never was the ‘only game in town’.
JonesyAs far as I know the Legend system is to be reinstated if it isn’t already, just as GLONASS is to be upgraded too. It makes rather more sense to put up a couple of LEGEND satellites than maintain dozens of Bears and Helixs for the same role of long range detection and tracking of naval surface targets… it is much less dangerous for the satellites to do the job.
Indeed it may make sense to get Legenda back to full operational status…it is one of those things easier said than done though!. It might be considered to be still ‘active’ as there is currently Cosmos 2421 up – if it that platform still has any life in it a year after launch – the coverage that a single US-PU SIGINT bird could offer compared to what Legenda was meant to be is a clear indicator of the capability currently offered by the system though.
The last flight of a 17F16 satellite, on a RORSAT tasking, was the Cosmos 1818 20 years ago last February. Compared with the complexity that the US envisages for its Space-Based Radar (low) project, it does appear that, to make Legenda the system it always needed to be, the Russians will have to develop it far beyond what it was even at the height of the systems capabilties way back then.
You ask me the Russians would be far, far better advised to invest in a SURTASS type capability and HALE MarPat UAV’s – if they want to get back into the bluewater game and are still wedded to the ‘big missile’ concept for antiship.
JonesyI certainly understand that sentiment Turbinia. Used to think the same of the Torygraph….sort of ‘why dont they just bloody give it up’.
Then you see and hear all of the bull and b0ll0cks in the rest of the media and I came to the conclusion that if someone is scaremongering over the alleged ‘shambolic state’ of the armed forces then at least it puts some balance in to the stories of defence spending excesses on inappropriate legacy systems etc and it does serve to remind most of the ‘if-its-not-on-reality-tv-it-doesnt-exist’ idiot electorate in this country that defence is a real issue and that we cant really just rely on Maverick/Goose and Grant Mitchells SAS team for national defence.
Its extremely annoying to see the sort of alarmist rubbish that the Torygraph propagandists push as ‘news’ but in my, somewhat jaded, opinion its probably better than nothing!.
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