Nitin,

India is not merely undertaking documented research in netcentric warfare.

The only informtion I had was that the capability was developmental so thats all I felt confident in posting!. Contrary to some belief I only post definitives when I’m sure of myself!. I read the news article that you posted up for us on the ‘IN News thread’ with interest.

The critical sensor netting sounds very much like an NTDS equivalent which is a hell of a capability for a fleet to deploy. There are two levels involved here though which get blurred under the general ‘net-centric’ heading. First is the intra-fleet tactical datalinking capability that allows ships and aircraft to link their sensor pictures within local ‘tactical’ comms range. The second level is the enabler for theatre targetting capability though – this is the ability to disseminate a tactical picture to platforms in the wider battlespace. This means major realtime satcomms capacity and platforms that have the capability to tie-in to a wide area ISTAR system. I have no doubt that India posses the technology and skills to deploy the former capability. Its the second level that, from what I can see, still raises more questions than there are, open source, answers for.

The IAF and IA have already submitted a proposal for a common sat to handle joint data handling etc, its up for approval…So the sensor network is getting knocked into place. With Phalcons and Indian AWACs, 300km acquisition and targetting is not such a big deal. They are talking of 1500 km now!

That certainly addresses one question on the availability of dedicated satellite bandwidth!. Whats interservice rivalry like in the Indian forces? Will the IN get a look in at the IA/IAF’s new satellite when it happens or will the other two close ranks?. 300km full coverage ISTAR is a VERY big deal and is a capability very, very few nations posses – UK might barely be able to achieve it!. 1500km is dreamland for the anyone but the US at the moment and the US is only at the start of that kind of capability now with Global Hawk, OTH-B, TARS, 30-odd E-3’s, all manner of satellite recon and comms capability, SOSUS, SURTASS, a few E-2 carrying carrier task groups and various high-capacity, established, C3 centres. Anyone else is barely playing the same game let alone being in the same league!

Garry,

You are thinking in western terms. The west goes to war because it wants to… to ensure commercial or political goals. If used for self defence… Say by Iran to fend off a potential attack from any western force what would they care about collatoral damage.

In return you are thinking in Russian terms. The Iranians aren’t the Russians and aren’t daft. As the map below shows even a 500km missile will not challenge a US CVSG far out into the Arabian Sea. It also forces the deployment of the weapons into a very limited and predictable geographic area – as the map shows somewhere in he Chah Bahar region. Where do you think the US ISTAR, TLAM and Hornet squadrons would be focussed prior to entering that zone?. 40 or so TEL’s of sufficient size to launch a 30ft long weapon, in a geographically limited area, all held in a near-ready to fire condition to allow for salvo fire is a much less difficult target than the Iraqi Scuds popping up in threes or fours.

If your proposing that Iran wouldnt need to care about targetting I think you’ve missed a trick on the value of world and, more importantly, regional opinion. If the US decides to move on Iran after finishing with Iraq world condemnation will be stronger even than Iraq engendered. There was a large, if quiet, amount of support for the Iraq campaign globally as many believed Saddam had it coming. Iran though have not ‘got it coming’ and are engaging in meaningful dialogue (I for one would oppose military action against them and you’ll recall my views before the Iraq operation). If they started spraying heavy antishipping missiles into the Arabian Gulf they become not only loose cannons, but, loose cannons aiming at the worlds economic heart. That would cost them dearly in terms of support and could even open up bases in Oman, Pakistan and other local states to the Americans. Major own goal for what advantage – an attack that stands only a marginal chance of breaking through US defensive fire IF the missiles find the target in the first place!. They are not that daft. Look at the weapons systems they are actually acquiring. These are largely weapons to deal with FAC’s and Corvettes in the non-permissive environment found in the Gulf – those guys know what they are doing.

Sevvy,

Jonesy, warships are easy to find. When we entered the Gulf, I could pick them out from 50 radarcontacts.

What range are we talking about though?. 20 miles maybe 30?. Radar resolution is a function of range. What you could make out at that range cannot be duplicated from 3 or 4 times further off. Some of stories of miss-identifications of surface contacts from US and RN are legendary!. Remind me to tell you the story a E-2 radar op told me about their TASM trials sometime!.

Hallo,

Which unit leaks below 160ft depth?.

The incident on HMCS Chicoutami was discovered as being down to a cable run using insulation that was found to age poorly in the decking under the CO’s cabin. The Royal Navy had already found this insulation problem and advised the Canadian Forces that it needed changing out. The same insulation had already been replaced on the three earlier units.

No-one seems to have an answer why this wasnt replaced on Chicoutami, but, that wiring problem and the water ingress caused by the crew leaving the hatches open the day before the fire seem to have been the factors involved with the fire. Nothing to do with any design flaw.

All of the problems with these vessels have their root cause in the fact that the ships were left in storage for nearly a decade and not maintained. Get them sailing regularly and undergoing routine maintenance and these problems will all be found and resolved. All ships have problems that only show up after repeated use or, as with Chicoutami, under a certain set of operational conditions.

Like you said they were cheap boats…after the lease period is up, in 2006, the story goes that the Canadian Forces have the option of buying each boat for the staggering sum of £1.

Give them the time to get into full operational readiness and your forces get to rewrite the dictionary definition of ‘bargain’.

Burger,

The Victoria’s are listed as ‘fitted for but not with’ AIP. The Canadians are looking at AIP for under-ice ops with the boats and are on record as saying that the boats are compatible with the technology.

Because, Pak, there is a difference between ‘high submerged endurance’ and ‘high endurance’ as friend Burger is talking about.

High endurance, as discussed here is a function of patrol endurance and range. Again though differences exist between different geographical patrol areas. HDW list a patrol endurance of 12 weeks and a 12,000 mile surface transit range for U214 which is staggering considering its 1800 ton displacement. That is in the northern hemisphere though.

Head down to more temperate southerly waters though and air conditioning has to be used more heavily, for both human and systems happiness, putting a significantly increased drain on the battery and requiring larger fuel stowage, and correspondingly a larger hull, to accomplish the same performance.

Were I selecting an SSK for open ocean patrol tasking I’d be talking to the Japanese about their Oyashio design myself. This is mainly based on the price they’re paying for the units (over half a billion $US per unit) and the rumours of the sophistication of the sensor fit. If they are what the rumours have said then these hulls may be the closest thing to an SSN level of sensor capability to sail without a reactor!. Yes please!.

Similar things were said about the Upholder/Victoria class boats and, now the Chicoutami problem has been identified as a singular known fault and nothing design related, if the Oyashio price tag was deemed a bit excessive these look like a pretty decent package in terms of range/endurance and weapons/sensor capabilities.

Well the other terrorist in the room seemed to catch on to the idea that showing his hands and being very visibly non-threatening was a good way of avoiding being shot!. Paid off for him didnt it?.

Shame that the guy who got shot wasn’t quite so switched on. Even bigger shame, for him, that his fellow fighters perform suicide attacks and booby trap bodies. Otherwise that Marine may have given him the benefit of the doubt.

Hang on Sev YOU introduced the 3 carrier groups mate!. Me and Seahawk have been the ones that have been making the point that no-one, apart from China in the very long term perhaps, is looking at anticarrier weapons anymore.

You cannot introduce a new item to the dicussion then claim that it costs so much more than the Granit solution that it supports your claim that Granit is a worthwhile system!. Using your 3 CVSG’s costing though I wonder how many NSMs could be bought for the same money?.

NSM is not an anticarrier weapon that has to be agreed. A P-700 weapon, as has been stated repeatedly, will only ever be applicable to the strategic situation facing one or two navies. IF even those services would ever be interested (something I doubt). Most navies, as you know, are tasked with local sea control, SLOC defence and low-intensity force projection. This they have to achieve this within what is usually a modest budget at best. It is hard to see how, within those parameters, any professional would arrive weapon like Shipwreck or Yakhont as the optimal system to fit their tasking requirements.

This fact, on its own, automatically prevents P-700 being a superior weapons system TODAY. Simply put no-one wants or needs it!. NSM, by comparison, is obviously being bought by Norway and has already been linked with a Malaysian order – very sensible given their maritime environment. IMO these are just the first two to express an interest. I can imagine Turkey or Greece, a couple of the Gulf states, more SE Asian states than just Malaysia and another European state or two being attracted by the capabilities on offer in view of their maritime environments and the helicopter deployment option!.

Hypersonic attack on airfields? Are we going to make our battleground bigger? Basically, you are supposing Russia will not see anything coming… We are not playing Red Storm Rising here…

The US has been involved in research into time critical strike ashore since 1994. Money has been, apparently, put into the FY2005 appropriation for further technology demonstration under the RATTLR and Hypersonic Strike Missile projects. A weapons capability isnt going to be deployed resulting from this work tomorrow, but, its value as a transformational weapon system is well appreciated. The DARPA and ONR funded HyFly research project, from which RATTLR and HySM is leveraging, saw Aerojet successfully test a full-spec engine for a Mach6.5 air vehicle in Feb 2003. Science fiction this is not!.

Yet I do still stand a chance, considering I have the long-range missiles and still quite a good AD. While your J-7s in that same situation. Well, they wouldn’t even be capable of launching a single NSM.

Roel, without targetting you do not stand a chance of doing any meaningful damage to a US carrier group in blue water. As was proven by the Serbians in Allied Force though its very hard to totally nail down every tactical aircraft and every mobile missile system ashore. Sooner or later the US fleet would have to move inshore with their amphibs if the mean to effect a forced entry. This is the point that a volume strike with shore-based, helicopter-launched and, perhaps, even aircraft launched 140km ranged missiles could be effective. NSM being easier to employ in this situation owing to its lack of reliance on targetting assistance and greater countermeasure resistance than an ARH weapon.

The US Navy appreciated this threat in 1998 when its R&D report listed the development of passive IIR antiship weapons and lack of development of IIR countermeasures as a primary challenge to operations in littoral environments. As yet I’ve not seen any evidence that that report has generated any mature, deployable, countermeasure to the kind of threat NSM presents.

They developed Papa, built one unit, developed Alfa, built 5 units, designed Sierra, built two units, developped Sierra II, built two units. This isn’ t the right way, but it does give you some very good information. (and of course many many economical factors too) But that’s not the discussion here is it?

Interesting viewpoint Roel. They built a Papa then found out it was too expensive to develop into a class so they went with the cheaper, less capable, Charlie design. They built half a dozen Alfa’s then realised that the operational concept was flawed, that the reactor technology was less than reliable and then had to dispense with them. THEN they repeated the Papa mistake with the Sierra’s – they designed a highly capable SSN but, after a couple of units, realised that they couldnt afford a whole class and switched to the cheaper Akula hull.

You think this is a positive naval development strategy?. Its hugely wasteful in resources, ties up R&D funding and obstructs yards building dead-end designs. Who would wish to emulate that?.

You could take “Luxembourg” as an example, a terrorist attack in the Gulf against this VLCC. The thing got completely wrecked.

Luxembourg was holed at and, more importantly, below the waterline. The effect of that blast more closely resembles that of a shallow-running torpedo than a large antiship missile. I’ve already said that the best way to sink a large vessel like this is to put a spread of heavyweight torpedoes into the hull.

And yes I’ve heard the “It’s compartmentized to death” argument a lot. But how fast do you think you can close all your compartments?

Standard procedure, in every Navy I’ve got any knowledge of, is to close up the ship when setting defence watches or general quarters or action stations or whatever that particular service calls its maximum readiness condition. This is why operating in Defence Watches for any length of time is such a real pain in the stern end. It means that every time you want to go from your duty station to your bunk, or the galley, or the heads, or for a smoko etc you have to undog every hatch and redog it after you – an annoying and time consuming ritual!

Sure I do Sir! Because they were developed to destroy even more valuable targets.

Repeating my previous point those ‘valuable targets’ are not still targets are they?.

Being cheap doesn’t make your missile more superior.

Being cheap doesnt make an individual missile technologically superior. Being able to field more of them as a whole weapons system does. A limited inventory of inflexible weapons does not make for an effective weapons system however miraculous the individual missile may be. Again as I’ve said – just how superior can an unuseable missile system be?

It’s probably the same as saying a Sovremenny is more advanced than a Burke, since it costs several $100mllns less. Poor countries could also buy more Sovremennies than Burkes then. But I don’t think that makes a Sovremenny more advanced than a Burke… (as I’m sure you will agree).

False analogy Roel. How many nations have Soveremenny’s GP capability (antiship missiles, SAMs, medium calibre gun, chopper and decent sensor fit) on a frigate or low-end destroyer sized hull. Arleigh Burke is closer, in capability terms, to a Slava just without the big AShMs. There are more nations operating Burkes – or lightened versions than there are nations wanting Slava’s – as I’m sure you’ll agree!

Sevvy,

But then, your ship has to be capable of taking an ESM bearing at 160km, is that possible? Don’t have a clue about that, we don’t use that in Merchie. We use a different system, for positioning, also receiving signals from a shore-based sender, yet we’ve thrown it overboard in the Indian Ocean, we never came close enough to shore to receive any of that, so I doubt the ranges of such things…

There are several surface search sets that claim to be capable of utilising ‘atmospheric propagation’, presumably they mean ducting, to bend lower-frequency radar energy over-the-horizon at get detections at ranges on the order of 150km. If they can get a detection at 150km then a halfway capable ESM system will start to get twitches at detection threshold plus 20km!

Yes the plane could do such things, yet that plane will probably get detected.

Like I said earlier we detected the Argentine Neptune that directed their Etendards against the Sheffield, but, it was so far away it wasn’t considered a threat. Had that been a Bear-D with an emitting Big Bulge radar instead the threat would have been instantly detected and the SHAR CAP vectored in with all deliberate speed. See the difference?.

Not many navies can afford P-700, but the ones that do, will have to build ships with a depth of about 10m, meaning you’ll have a huge freeboard, or some draft, with such draft you’ll have to build a big ship… Big ship with lots of SAM possibilities.

So you accept that the costs of the weapons, the costs of the surveillance and targetting assets and the costs of the acquisition, operation and maintenance of some very significant hulls all come into the system cost-to-deploy equation.

Against this NSM could be deployed by any airforce operating a handful of F-5E’s, A-4’s, Mig-27’s or virtually any tactical fighter you care to name that can carry 700kgs of underwing ordnance or more and has a databus that can be modified to input target coordinates or bearing data to the missile.

It can be deployed with any Navy possessing a few Combattante sized vessels or more. It can give a coastal precision land attack capability to any Navy possessing a few frigates, especially ones with a helicopter capability and it is already being developed in a coastal defence version.

Basically the equation is simple – NSM is an enabling technology that allows a nations armed services to get more functionality out of the existing platforms it already has. P-700 or any of these other big supersonic weapons require new platforms and new capabilities to be developed, acquired and supported to deploy them. Which one is the most cost-effective and, therefore, the most employable?.

For me the most advanced SSM is the missile that can do the job, be it a frigate, corvette or carrier. A Harpoon or NSM can’t simply sink a carrier, P-700 might. Of course in my definition, the price and difficulty of the system isn’t taken in account.

Roel we’ve already covered the fact that P-700 cant sink a supercarrier for the same reason it cant sink a supertanker. Those big ships have too much mass for any conventional warhead weapon to put them on the bottom and doing enough damage to stop a carriers flying programme doesnt need a 1000kg supersonic warhead.

For me price and employability factors of a weapons system are critical to its value.

As an illustration, its a decade from now, you are the CinC DPRK Navy and have a recently acquired a pair of Oscars as insurance against the nasty Yankee carriers. Ones in refit and the others on patrol halfway across the Pacific. The US 7th fleet chooses this time to launch Fasthawk-derived hypersonic land-attack missiles at your nuclear facilities from the middle of the Sea of Japan. What good are P-700’s then?.

Nuke

let’s make it clear: If let’s say N.K. or Iran let’s say buy SSN 19 ( that you so much dislike forgetting that they were already 20 years ago while this s..t of NSM is only coming now and this for me IT’S a difference)

Do I have to say this again mate?. Myself and Seahawk have been saying all along that the problem with P-700 is that its a 20 year old missile designed to meet a threat that existed 20 years ago. Is it the missiles fault that its usefulness disappeared with the Cold War – no of course it isnt. The fact remains that without a US carrier strike group to engage the weapon is not worth the cost of the upkeep of the platforms required to fire it.

this NOT MEAN that they must buy a Kirov or Oscar. In this case you should be right 100%, but not forget how a single vessel in the history has made a strong deterrent ( the Yavuz, the Tirpiz).

Why, inshtead, they simply cannot buy a (ipothetical) version of the Shipwreck?

A shore based P-700 is exactly what you described though – hypothetical. It does not exist. You can’t claim superiority for a weapon that isnt even a design on a drawing board somewhere.

As I said above as well the threat reduction exercise against a large low unit number threat is very much easier to complete than that against a distributed threat that can engage you with little or no warning.

Have you present that the SSN 19 could be used as nuclear attack supersonic long range missile in a manner that NO norwegian s….y missiles can eventually do?

Who has a requirement for a 400km nuclear cruise missile today?. Who is there that could afford to pay the Russians to develop the Granit system into a land attack weapon and make it ground deployable?. Who would offer so much money as to make the Russians violate the non-proliferation treaty?.

Without any of these answers its just another paper tiger – a hypothetical capability with no grounding in reality. Not something that you can make a claim for superiority of Russian antishipping weapons with.

For many, if the soviet made cheap harware, they were in wrong because they made too cheap systems, if they made sophistied system they were wrong because they made too sophistied systems and the western types were simpler. Whetetver they done ,they were wrong.

I agree that is a terrible irony. For a ‘fan’ of Soviet hardware I can see how infuriating that would be. Doesnt alter the fact that it is the truth though!.