The radar on that Reaper looks rather small, one would wonder about range.

Flown with Seaspray 7500E. Stats are on the web for the checking. Its a well exported unit…South Koreans use it for multimode wide area surveillance as an aerostat set.

Speed/range of SPEAR relative to full-on ARM thinking S-400? Do we have decoys yet?.

MALD-J was a possible that received UK attention. How many S-400 operators are there?. How many will get S-400 in the next 10-15yrs?. How many S-400’s will each new operator get?. What is the cost exchange rate between S-400’s and SPEAR?. At what point is it achieving the goal if the opfor are shooting out a modest inventory of high-value SAMs against cheap stand-off missiles?.

There are lots of intermediate size ships too small for Storm Shadow and too big for Brimstone and Sea Venom. Not sure it’s great to rely on helicopters to take out all corvettes and frigates either.

Sea Venom has an aimpoint selection facility. All any practical-sized missile will do is mission kill a ship target. Hit the bridge, sensor masts, weapons mounts, engineering spaces etc and you’ll take a modern medium escort out of the fight. The beauty of the chopper is that it takes the positive ID point on the ingress to target. Sea Venom is adequately scaled to exploit horizoning and outrange the kind of point defence missiles most often encountered on corvettes and frigates.

Thinking Falklands, do we have coastal AShMs? Any AShMs for the planes deployed there?. Can they actually even take out ships from suitable ranges?

They can take out ships with heavweight torpedoes from an SSN. Build up’s at ports and similar embarkation areas tend to be noticeable. SSN’s on a speed run can cover large distances surprisingly quickly….they also have the virtue of mystery. When the opposition has no competent ASW then your SSN’s can be anywhere and everywhere. It takes nerve to call the bluff….just in case its not a bluff. There are no coastal missile batteries in UK service…the last were the Excaliber truck mounted Exocets at Gibraltar if memory serves.

The Falklands is really the biggest perceivable threat where we may be acting alone, and therefore the most important for domestic capability. Also a lot easier if we actually stop them invading the island, that way we could use a large E-3s and ground radar on it no? And ISTAR can’t see submarines hence MPAs are more important.

In that scenario I’d imagine a detachment of radar-carrying 900nm-ranged ISTAR UAV’s would be far more useful, and far more likely, than a Sentry being based out of Mount Pleasant. Without undersea sensor cueing the chances of a handful of MPA’s based at Mount Pleasant finding the acoustic footprint of one of the few operational Argentine SSK’s are slim to ridiculously low. MPA’s are ASW prosecution assets not search assets…unless you have a convenient chokepoint to stake out. The greater percentage success operation would probably be something that an ISTAR UAV would be very well placed to undertake…a surface radar detection on a scope or snort. Endurance on patrol station would be more important than any other consideration in that circumstance.

The ones we used in Iraq, twice!.

Ok…the ones now sat in sheds then. How much has the anti-armour threat evolved over the last 10yrs?. I cant say I’ve noticed anything very significant….though I cant say I watch such developments closely?.

So why don’t we develop it as part of FOAS rather than rushing into something now?

Cool!. Provided we get it I dont care who’s budget pot it comes out of and who has operational control…the crabs have much more UAV nouse then we do at the moment anyway. There would presumably be some mid-blue jointness concept involved regardless of who has the ownership of the airframes. Like I said, as demonstrated with the SKAEW force, there is shore-based application for an austere-site-capable high endurance ISTAR platform. Personally I’d be happy to share!.

Helicopters against destroyers equipped with S-300-like systems? What about enemy carriers? Helicopters against them too?

How many, potentially hostile, fully comprehensive area AAW ship targets are out there do you think?. If facing such a threat would our SSN’s be fully tasked (hint: check how many were deployed against Argentina in 82). Why would you elect to attack an AAW ship with missiles when most are design to defend against just that threat.

But you have ASAC as well as the land-based E-3s.

…but, again, the ASAC choppers are no good for patrolling sea-space and the E-3’s far from guaranteed to participate. Remember that single large airborne radars aren’t a complete panacea in this environment. However powerful your radar the horizon will always defeat it. For a surveillance plane at 20,000ft its going to see about 200nm….beyond that an opposing carrier can have low level flypasts going on all day and the radar will see nothing!.

Was the Harm-E decoyed, it uses MMW like SPEAR for terminal homing? Is SPEAR fast enough, long enough range.

No it wasnt…not least as it didnt reach IOC til 2010. Do we need to purchase HARM-E urgently…no we dont. We have Storm Shadow for hardened targets and SPEAR to saturate SAM batteries if we have to push against a moderately comprehensive IADS.

Submarines are damn expensive and relatively slow assets to be used for every ship and we have 7 attack submarines and also vulnerable anti-submarine rockets and ASW helicopters, which nearly every frigate/destroyer has. They also have other submarines to worry about. Surely we’ll need some AShMs for that MPA?

How many heavy surface targets do you think there are on the threat board?. Do you think the Russians are going to rush the GIUK with 50 cruisers and 50 SSNs at any point in the next decade?. If we deploy the duty carrier to anything approaching a blue-water threat there WILL be at least one Astute in the area and likely it/they would be there some while before the fleet arrives!.

Tanks need updating. Parts of FOAS could be adapted for ISTAR and that’s probably something that should take funding priority too.

These are the tanks sat in the sheds inactive or the ones roaming the plains of Canada?.

FOAS has been a snipe hunt for the past 15yrs. Like MPA it needs a LOT more sorting out than will be realised by chopping out ISTAR for Carrier Strike. Ironically, if the only forward local basing that we can depend upon in theatre is going to be the carrier decks, FOAS needs to be carrier capable or at least have a carrier capable element. Organic ISTAR would become a key enabler for FOAS not a handicap to it!.

The Type 26s are a long way off, The Type 45s need the addition of 16 strike length VLS cells and 2 quadruple AShM launchers.

Why the VLS cells?. We dont have a VL LACM yet?. We arent going to buy any before the T26’s arrive anyway. If the order went in today to add strike length cells to T45 its unlikely the programme would be completed before T26 entered the fleet. T23’s dont always sail with a full Sea Wolf VLS….do you think we’d dispatch every T45 with a full complement of 16 TLAM everywhere they went…if they had the capability to do so?.

SSGW is, relatively, an easy fit and, with Harpoon-II, you get a modicum of land attack capability so its being done as we have mounts laying around spare. Its not a case of urgent operational need though. As said long range missiles arent the preferred way to do antiship in the RN. RoE’s on the use of fire and forget weapons like Harpoon are prohibitively strict for very good reason. Thats why torpedoes and light, helicopter deployed, weapons are seen as the better options.

When surface navy is forced to stay 1000 NM offshore to keep from being sunk by ASHMs fired by land-based MPAs, they are not a persistent threat. Especially since 1000 NM is beyond the reach of navy sensors and carrier air strike radius.

Seeing that is a fantasy scenario I am at a loss to try and counter!. Who’s service has the ability to target missiles on a ship target at 1000nm off their shore?. Even with BAMS I dont think the USN could claim to reliably accomplish that feat and they are the leading light in wide area surveillance at present!.

So, fantasy’s aside, and Dale Brown novels put down for a second. How is the USAF achieving permanent presence over the target in order to achieve power projection?.

The extended range radar equipped MQ-9 is already flying operationally as the Guardian…the US CBT claim operational endurance up to about 20hrs for it. In truth though little changes if it was ‘only’ a 14hr mission endurance….its still multiples of even what an E-2 stands on station and minimal impact on a daily flying programme. Again, as said though, thats only one approach to support platform deployment to a STOVL deck.

Can a land-based E-3 be used….no. There aren’t enough E-3’s and no guarantee of friendly, suitable, local base-in for putting an airframe in the vicinity of the carrier group….and thats just the basic logistic issues. Operationally you dont want your carrier restricted to operations within a certain radius of predictable land-basing do you?.

The MPA provision being discussed is about a dozen airframes and we lack the wide area undersea sensor capability to cue on a submarine threat outside of a specific area. Look at Japan for a practical sized MPA force backing a SURTASS capability and ask if you think that will happen irrespective of what happens with the carrier force?. T26 is slated to bring in surface LAM fire. ARM’s aren’t an issue….HARM was decoyed quite adequately in the FRY campaigns….DEAD works and SPEAR3 is in train. Missiles have always been viewed as a secondary antiship capability in the UK…heavyweight torpedoes sink ships…missiles chip bits off the top. Sea Venom is being inducted in the coming years to deal with corvettes and frigates in the littoral. Storm Shadow is being adapted for antiship for the bigger stuff.

Nothing you’ve listed there is of a significant concern to get in the way of ISTAR for carrier strike in the near term.

What ship is that?

Thats the new Admiral Gorshkov alongside after his sea trials.

Err do you consider aircraft carriers surface combatants as well?

By definition an aircraft carrier is a surface combatant as much as the lightest of patrol gunboat is. What I imagine the article is reaching for is the concept of ‘escort’ to define a vessel able to prosecute and engage targets itself from embarked, ship mounted, weapons and sensors.

Unfortunately for the article the writer clearly doesnt understand that the Japanese Hyuga’s come with advanced bow and flank sonar arrays coupled to an arsenal of VL ASROC missiles and, even without its air group, the ship represents a competent ASW unit. Maybe Sputnik chappy should have said ‘largest warship….that doesnt sort of look like an aircraft carrier’. Not such a snappy tagline though is it?.

Swerves facepalm detection is dead on though either way!

I don’t think that’s the case. An ASAC helicopter replacement for fleet defence is already being procured, but for actual missions Sentry AEWs can be used from various NATO and UK bases dotted around the globe. Carrier based AEW is a nice to have but just not essential. I can think of better things to spend that money on right now.

If rotary AEW was adequate to provide coverage in a future blue-water threat scenario you would be right. It isnt though and we are not going to have the luxury of limiting the ship to just the Carrier Strike mission indefinitely.

More services are going to gain the capability to deploy out into blue water effectively with cheap LPD/CVS throughdecks….take the new Algerian LHD as an example….put a detachment of radar-choppers aboard and that deck will not have to do very much in order to be able to watch a good chunk of the western Med….and it was bought for frigate money!. Anti-access threats will start farther offshore in the not very distant future…that much is certain.

ASAC Merlin will be enough to put local coverage on an assembly area and has the advantage, as shown by the SKAEW force, of being divorce-able from the carrier deck which, operationally, means the carrier can be more flexible in its deployment. Which is all well and good. Actively patrolling, pushing-out and controlling a bubble of controlled air- and sea-space for theatre access, however, needs a platform able to transit to and maintain extended patrol tracks. Thats not a conventional helicopter.

Something better will be needed, it will be something organic to the fleet and, by definition, it is going to have to be novel and different. That makes it expensive unless its technology already developed elsewhere. My favourite hobby horse, in that regard, always used to be the LV EM catapult technology tested for so long in the UK allied to the kind of carrier-capable Reaper-type UAV proposed by General Atomics and tested with Seaspray 7500E radar….all proven technology elements individually. Now though, with Cartercopters developing a gyroplane UAV for TERN that supposedly was good for 250kg payload at 900nm downrange and 250-300kts transit and Sikorsky promising the same from its Rotor Blown Wing tailsitter, I think we are starting to see real alternatives that bear serious scrutiny.

DARPA, I understand, didnt opt for the Cartercopters design for TERN but, if their vehicle is as capable as that called for in the requirement, I’d have to think it would be a massively interesting aircraft for a STOVL deck operator in itself. Leveraging off the DARPA investment, and with the potential for upscaling to a proper ESTOL support airframe in the offing, further proving the technology in the STOVL deck environment becomes something emminently sensible to my mind. Especially when we have a need for organic ISTAR in the Fleet to support the current Carrier Strike concept already!.