To clarify Garry’s point the reason Phalanx is being replaced (supplanted?) by RAM is to cope with supersonic sea-skimmers. The heavyweight diving supersonics were to be dealt with by Standard and RIM-7.

As to the Moskit terminal ‘dance’ debate Janes Naval Weapons systems has this to say:

The missile is tracked through the ‘Light Bulb’ data link which apparently can handle only one missile at a time correcting its course where necessary. Towards the end of the cruising phase at a range of 2.7 to 3.75 n miles (5 to 7 km) the radar seeker is switched on and operates in three modes; active, passive (homing on the target’s own radar or jamming signals) or mixed active/passive.
Once the target is acquired the missile descends to 7 m for the terminal phase during which it can conduct evasive manoeuvres of 10 to 15 g but this will slow it down. The missile takes only 2 min to cover its full range and manufacturers state that 1 to 2 missiles could incapacitate a destroyer while 1 to 5 missiles could sink a 20,000 tonnes merchantman, although this might require a co-ordinated operation by at least two missile ships. The firing time for four missiles in a salvo is 15 seconds.

It also lists a single weapon speed of M2.3. IF its true that seeker activation is held off until, maximum, 7000yds from target its hard to see how a liquid fueled ramjet could punch it up to M4.5 from M2.0-2.3 within the short timeframe left in the terminal engagement phase. For the Klub to have this kind of performance a seperating rocket-boosted terminal stage was required – if 3M80 can do the same thing without that complexity it makes you wonder why they were d1cking around with Klub for all those years!. I’d have some doubts about the Mach daft terminal phase reports therefore.

ASW focus required!

Have to agree with Aurel here! These guys need big friends quick-smart!. With Russia as a hostile and China seeking a sniff of the oil it makes sense to get some ink on paper with the PRC as soon as!.

Running the same kind of threat reduction exercise on this one, as the last, conjures up a nightmare and not necessarily one that an airforce is so well placed to mitigate.

What you have is an island state with a large, advanced, submarine navy to the west and, arguably, the worlds finest SSK navy to the immediate south. The Japanese also having learned just what a capable submarine service can do to an island nation, the hard way, in WW2!.

$5 billion per annum over ten years is a good wedge of cash to look to build a defense force though. Even giving over 50% of that resource to O&M costs over the years still leaves a good $25 billion in the kitty for new gear for the services. Being an island nation, and a smallish one at that, if a hostile power secures a beachhead then there are major problems for that nation. Such a hostile force, therefore, has to be smashed before it can establish a foothold or, even better, be deterred from ever trying in the first place.

That being the situation I am awarding, in the first instance, $10 billion each to the Navy and the Airforce and leaving the Army to suck hind-tit with the remainder (in the fervent hope they dont launch a coup!). The Navy are getting assets optimised for sea denial in the form of 8 Type212 SSK’s and long-endurance, highly capable patrol frigates in the shape of 12 of the new Chinese 054 FFG’s modified with VL MICA, NSM, NH90 NFH and Thales CAPTAS sonar.

In regard the AF prime combattant despite the obvious advantages a heavy, advanced, fighter like Typhoon offers I would be concerned about the, relatively, small numbers of airframes that could be purchased within the budget. One attack option open to the opfor would be a sneak sub-launched cruise missile strike on your airbases and, if you happened to have your ‘silver bullet’ Typhoons concentrated in the wrong place, at the wrong time, then they become very expensive piles of scrap and not likely to use their capabilties quite to the fullest!. I’d favour a larger number of less expensive fighters that can be routinely held at dispersal. Gripen, with Meteor, fits the bill for me on this.

The secondary maritime strike capability of the airframe is also a significant bonus when you consider that anti-invasion defence is likely to rank up in the top few most important taskings placed on the defence forces!.

AEW&C is going to be of critical importance and the only, heavyweight, system practically available is going to be the IAI Phalcon.

Given such an intense, potential, submarine threat to the country’s SLOC’s Maritime Patrol is going to require a real sub-killer not some converted transport-type EEZ patroller!. For the, still critically important, basic EEZ patrol tasks I’m still a strong advocate of the high-endurance UAV – particularly in this case where you could see overwater patrols in ‘contested airspace’ being met by F-15J’s or MiG-31’s. Risking a UAV in those instances would be much simpler, and much more possible, than sending 8 men or so ‘in harms way’ in some converted trash-hauler!. IAI would be my first stop for such a UAV seeings that Global Hawk is likely to be a non-starter!.

Orbat is going to be something like:

Fighter/Strike
56/8 Gripen C/D

AEW&C
5 IAI Phalcon/A330/767

ASW/MarPat
12 Atlantique ATL3
24 IAI Heron/Hermes 1500 UAV

with training and transport types commensurate with the requirements of supporting the above combat units.

Eric, mate, 6th line – you misspelled the word ‘navel’. 🙂

(unrelated issue….ever notice how difficult it is to spell the word ‘misspelled’ correctly?) 😮

Yeah, I saw that too. I didn’t like it either but not for the same reason.

The portrayal of the crossbow-toting National Front type lead character I thought was too trite and oversimplified. You found out that his bigotry was ‘just’ a way of covering up his various personal inadequacies and I think that was a factor which immediately shattered the characters credibility. Sort of like saying ‘people are only racist because of seperate and unrelated personal agendas’.

I dont agree with that. Most of the racism I’ve seen (and believe it or not the worst I’ve personally witnessed has been from subcontinent-extraction Asians directed at W.Indians and whites!) has been more to do with closed-minded ignorance and family/culture imprinted hatred than anything else. ‘England Expects’ showed that to a degree, but, glossed over it in favour of the socially-dysfunctional-wacko branding stamped on the main character. IMO a big mistake and not something that will help shine the spotight on the real causes of these problems as it could, nay shoud, have done.

The acting wasnt half bad though!.

Bhairav,

Absolutely any information you want on the Type 45 can be found here http://frn.beedall.com/sectt45.htm. Written painstakingly by a retired RNR Officer by the name of Richard Beedall.

What I dont think he has on there is the latest stage of construction for the first-of-class which is, according to BAE, that 10 of the 17 main modules are now well under construction. The original estimates of the completed hull being launched in Oct 2004 has slipped, but, from a first-steel cut date at the end of March ’03 if it slips to the second half of 2005 that’s still not too shabby in my estimation.

Essentially the full up trials of the first production UKPAAM System isnt scheduled until 2005 anyway so the installation of the MFR and Slyver silo’s (being installed in the hull immediately after trials are completed) couldnt happen anyway ’til late 2005 early 2006.
Commissioning date for HMS Daring has officially slipped back to 2008 on the strength of this, but, seeings as the ship will be on first-of-class sea trials between 2006 – 2008 she will, very probably, be deployable, in emergency, towards the end of 2007 (her original commissioning date) anyway so there is really little fuss caused by the slippage.

As to there being no SSM capability, well, that is simply a case of prioritisation based on the current operational environment. Why waste time and effort getting Harpoons strapped aboard when there will be little urgent need to shoot them at anybody?. Initially Type 45 will embark Lynx HMA.8’s with Sea Skua’s and they’ve proved to be more than capable of dealing with FAC(M)’s and the suchlike which have been the only maritime surface targets anyones tackled over the past decade or more!. Space has been left in the design (behind the forward missile silo) for the fitment of two quad Mk141 modules and the combat system has been designed to support GWS.60 Harpoon so, if the ship needs SSM’s, they can be mounted. For now though its more important to get Aster to sea at the rush to bolster the fleet’s area AAW capability – so thats were the effort is going.

Victor,

The actual vessels that are going to be disposed of haven’t been officially finalised yet as far as I know. Talk was that the oldest three T42’s would be going – those being HMS Newcastle, Glasgow and Cardiff. Then there was a rumour that Chile was looking for a new class of frigate and that two Type 23’s, probably HMS Norfolk and Argyll, would be disposed of early and sold to them in order to help BAE win the contract for the new vessels. Since then Chile has, apparently abandoned its new frigate program and bought four used frigates from the Dutch for about $340 million.

How this changes the dimensions of projected RN disposals is unclear – save for the fact that those three T42’s, if they are all going, are pretty much beyond anyones further use as they’ve all been worked very hard. It may actually constitute an act-of-war if we actually asked anyone for money for them!.

Equally obvious is the fact that a fairly large queue could form if the Treasury….whoops….MoD did indeed decide to sell off the first two Type 23’s. Sneaky Norweigian SSK’s notwithstanding the ’23 is still about the best littoral ASW hunter out there, is stealthy in ways most still dont know about, is well armed and equally well outfitted with sensors and aren’t even 15 years old yet!. Pakistan made some advances, allegedly, for our T22 Batch 3’s if we were intending to dispose of them a few years back. I guess they might be interested in these as well!

Nothing much has been said about Invincibles disposal in terms of foreign interest apart, of course, from the obvious one!. There are persistent and ever more vocal calls over here for her to be retained as an LPH to back up Ocean or she should be donated to the Imperial War Museum or the Warships Trust in memory of her vital contribution in the Falklands War – either of those options appeals to my heart, but, unfortunately my head knows better!.

You would propose the idea that a HARM or ALARM slamming into an opposing radar does not actually suppress it would you Sean?.

Besides, you could argue the point that if the opposing operator manages to shut off his system and get the ARM to go wild the missile has, actually, merely suppressed the radars’ operation not destroyed it!?

😀

Other than that you are, of course, exactly correct! 🙂

WebPilot

Never mind the SHARs! If the Argentinians had gone all out to take out either one of the RN carriers early on in the war, that would have been it, game over. Why they didn’t we can really only guess at, but it was clearly a major strategic oversight.

As Harry alluded to this wasnt a ‘Strategic oversight’ as much as simply just a bloody hard thing to do for the Argentine forces as they stood on the day. Had they been in possesion of force levels capable of quickly localising the RN taskforce and directing comprehensive strike assets against it then the RN probably wouldn’t have sailed south!.

Sandy Woodward, by his own admission, let the safety of his carrier decks dominate his strategic planning right up to the San Carlos landings as well. By stationing them as far off to the East of the Islands as he did, he ran the risk of ridicule (memories of people trying to get him decorated with the South Africa Star after the action are notable!) and dramatically reduced the effects the Task Force could have on the Arg garrison ashore and its LoC’s up until the landings. He succeeded though in making the job of striking his decks very, very difficult indeed. The one significant attempt made to catch the carrier group – the pincer movement attempted by the Armada using the northerly 25deMayo carrier group and westerly General Belgrano surface action group obviously misfired with tragic results thanks to HMS Conqueror.

Harry

Credit should also go to the radar controllers aboard the Hermes.
Those SHARs were/are extremely dependant on them.

Quite right!. The Fighter Directors (known universally as “D’s”) on the carriers, T42’s and County’s were invaluable – when they got it right!. Its a difficult job though and they deserve(d) a LOT more recognition than they got!

Steve, was it standard procedure to switch on the Blue-Fox only on close approach to the target being intercepted?

I can only give anecdotal evidence on this, from talking to one of my training PO’s who was aboard Invincible, I’m afraid Harry!. As I understand it air-intercept procedure against the SHAR’s anticipated targets, Soviet AV-MF MarPat types, was to keep the radar switched off until about 15-20nm’s from intercept to avoid spooking them. This procedure was maintained in CORPORATE until it was realised that Argentine strike packages, upon detecting a Blue Fox on ESM, quite often turned back. After that it was a case of going active as soon as they were a sensible distance from the carrier and is when the now-infamous ‘La muerta negra is comeeng to get yoouuu!’ radio calls started up!. I did read a US statistic that went as far as suggesting that upwards of 60% of the raids launched by the Argentines ended up turning back no-joy and that a large proportion of those where caused by a Blue Fox detection!.

One Argentinian general said “Things would have been if we had an aircraft like the SHAR”

Too bloody right!. That said though if they’d simply extended the strip at Stanley so that their A-4’s could have staged there the effect would have been pretty much the same!.

Crusader,

Could it have been partly the promise that the US would ‘loan’ the UK a Carrier if they lost one/both of theirs? Perhaps they were afraid that that would broaden the war? Even a ‘loaned’ US vessel would change things a bit for the Argentinians, I would think. Just a thought.

That was never a ‘promise’ as such!. Caspar Weinberger, a man who justifies the concept of the Honourary Knighthood if ever there was one, mentioned that the USN might like help its closest ally if Hermes or Invincible were to be lost. Realistically, apart from the fact that support on that magnitude spoke volumes for the strength of the Anglo-US relationship, borrowing one of the big US amphibs was not considered as an option. This was simply due to the complexities of training an RN crew to operate one. Had we lost a carrier the plan under consideration was to try and set up a ‘defended enclave’ either on West Falkland or the southern extremeties of East Falkland and build up an austere F.O.B capable of handling RAF Phantoms etc.

Victor

Well the Argentine Navy lost its most potent weapons rather ridiculously. I am talking about the subs. Once the subs were dispatched the carriers had a much easier time.

The problem with that is that the Argentine subs were never dealt with!. One aged former USN Guppy class the ARA Santa Fe, IIRC, was caught on the surface at Grytviken, South Georgia and shot up by RN choppers until her captain was forced to beach her, but, other than that no Argentine sub was successfully prosecuted or engaged.

Of the two Type209 subs they had, again IIRC, the ARA Salta wasnt fully operational and had to return to port with a mechanical defect of some sort and the other, the ARA San Luis, apart from some fairly wild claims made by her captain about firing torpedoes (duds as they turned out) at various RN warships, didnt seem to actually achieve much. Certainly no-one I’ve ever spoken to, who was there, knows of a confirmed torpedo attack on any task force vessel?!.

Vaiar

How did the Argentinians use their subs then? I read that the British navy used about every asset available and wasted every munition available in search of the two U-209s which were never found.

Quite right. We expended A LOT of lightweight torpedoes, Mk11’s and ASW mortar rounds against suspected or probable sub contacts. None ever developed into anything solid though, again, AFAIK.

The Argentine Airforce where operating at an extended range from their airbases, inside British shipboard radar coverage without any real qualitative equipment advantage. According to Nigel ‘Sharkey’ Ward their air-air trained pilots were off the pace, training wise, by a good way and made fundamental errors in their ACM engagements that cost them.

Add to that the training and experience of the majority of the Fleet Air Arm lads and, as has been noted, the capability the -9L Sidewinder brought and the deck was stacked fairly heavily, in pure ACM terms, in the RN’s favour. Had we been in possesion of a couple of AEW SeaKings at the time things would have been an order of magnitude worse for the Argentine AF and Armada.

As to the A-4’s their job was to strike ships and land targets, not mix it up in ACM they may not have been trained or experienced in. As it was they proved theyre courage and skill, in those strike missions, time and again. A quote (I think it was from Sandy Woodward himself) about them went ‘…from a nation that has produced some excellent Grand Prix drivers we should’nt really have been suprised that they could produce some pretty fearless pilots too!’.