…are acquiring 50+ undergunned next to useless LCS…

Wasn’t that almost word-for-word the criticism of the Spruance’s back in the day….funny how history repeats itself!.

Falklands War admiral Sandy Woodward dies aged 81

Rest easy sundodger….job done.

How useful are these canons? I understand the cost and sustainable fire arguments but isn’t the range too limited to do anything useful other than coastal bombardment?

Also wouldn’t a sea based Advanced MRLS be better for these ships? With less of a kick? Wait weren’t they thinking of putting them on the ddg1000 in the early stages?

Story from the German Navy, who did quite a bit with Naval MLRS for F125, was that the rocket efflux from the MLRS rounds proved highly corrosive and, consequently, was not viable for ship deployment within justifiable cost limits. For the task of making unhardened targets like radar/comms nodes, AA sites, truck-mount AShM’s and the suchlike go away a quick 5-shot pattern from an OTO127 or similar should be up to the task. If the target is hardened and, therefore, strategic thats where you lay off a bit farther and hit with TLAM or MdCN from a nice safe spot!.

Indeed part of the reason Argentine air attack was such a threat was because the Royal navy EW / ESM systems did not identify exocet as hostile.

Not the case Lindemyer. The Exocet seeker was fully profiled and had the codeword ‘HANDBRAKE’ assigned. A ‘HANDBRAKE’ call would, and did, cause much activity to happen in the assembled fleet!. The Aeronavale training allowed us to profile the Agave radar….which, if memory serves, gained the codeword ‘CONDOR’. A call declaring ‘CONDOR racket’ on a given bearing was therefore a detect of an Etendards Agave emissions. Both were well trained out to the warfare teams.

An attack on a fully alert and reinforced island with UK subs all over is not viable.

Viable?. Of course it is….given significant resources and a bit of technical support its entirely possible to get the job done. The Falklands, after all, are an isolated group of islands short on every natural resource bar penguins. The reinforcement/resupply of those islands is absolutely contingent on the availability of runways able to support RAF C-17’s. Deny those to the British and isolate the islands long enough to get a foothold and you’re most of the way there…pretty much regardless of what is sat on the island.

Possible in the real world it isnt….but thats not the same thing….this is solely a tactical exercise!.

BATISMAR is an OPV, i.e. a coast guard vessel. Small and cheap, since ~15 hulls are needed. Most similar to the defunct C3 concept, sized to carry a helicopter but without a combat role.

This new FTI (“Mid-sized frigate”) on the other hand does have a combat role. It’s better defended and has a much larger payload than an OPV, so that it can come close inshore to project power and deal with assymetric threats. So sort of like a European take on LCS. It will incorporate mixed civil-military construction standards – not clear how far they will go in terms of cost cutting.

The obvious assumption is that other assets will take care of enemy aircraft & submarines… assuming these even exist and that they are operational (not all that likely – in recent conflicts, the enemy’s high-end conventional weapons have rarely been more than paper tigers – it’s the assymetric threats that have have everyone worried).

Yep I got that idea re BATISMAR but it seems to have gone very quiet recently…I was wondering if it had been re-evaluated as a concept?. Has a design been down selected yet?. As I understood it BATISMAR was the eventual replacement for the Floreal’s…looks to me that the Floreal is a better foundation for BATISMAR than, at least, the CNM concept!.

It was just an illustration to show how many of those quatruple launchers you could fit on a container carrier.

Say you fit 6 containers on 3 or 4 ships and you’re capable of launching 72 to 96 missiles + say about 48 from 4 improved Kilos for a total of up to 144 missiles. I doubt the Falkland’s defenses could counter such a number of missiles targeted at such a low number of targets.

The 4 Kilos then sail at full speed towards Argentina to get rearmed with their anti submarine loadout and take on the defense of Argentina, and say another 3-4 come with their anti shipping loadout to take on the defense of the Falklands and harrass the invasion force.

You add 24-36 Su27 type aircrafts to defend the mainland & 12 you station on the Falklands to escort your R/P99s. The range of the Su 27 allows to use mainland based fighters to reinforce the island based ones if need be.

Nic

Again Nic its not quite that easy. As Swerve says there aren’t all that many merchantmen around the Falklands generally. There arent many reasons for 3 or 4 Argentinian-flagged container ships to be converging on the Islands to within 3M14 range…other than to close to within 3M14 range….and any that do, in times of exaggerated threat, will have some form of overwatch especially if word gets out that Klub-K is in the mix. All it would take is a scope sighting of the container roof elevating and a pair of Spearfish would do the rest.

Your Improved Kilo’s would also be subject to routine attention from A-class SSN’s….which would be built in greater numbers than planned today. Four SSK’s storing for sea and sortieing in a short duration window would also be taken as a strategic indicator and again these will come up against a submarine service that is the match of any on the planet. The Kilo’s are solid boats, but, they are still SSK’s and have all the inherent limitations of the type when they arent tooling along a couple of knots over steerage on batteries….which they cant do on transit.

Lastly I think your proposition of JAS39, Mica & so on is unrealistic, because those material wouldn’t be sold to Argentina, and even if they were, they would be seriously compromised by their origin.

To be honest I thought the 60 odd high-end Chinese SRBM’s was a bit more unrealistic….largely as I dont think China would actually abrogate MTCR to supply them!. I did note that I was using artistic license at that point! :).

I do take your point of course. I mentioned second-hand Gripen as a way of getting around build lead times etc, cannibalisation can cover much ground in supportability terms and the first time round Argentina was shooting Roland, Tigercat, Blowpipe and plenty of 35mm Oerlikon not to mention AM39 and MM38 at us. All the Argentinians would need to do, as well, would be to hold the islands for long enough for it to become a fait accompli and for the UK to lose interest. How long would the RN keep SSN’s down there sinking ships with limited real hope of putting in a successful landing operation without a massive force buildup of its own….requiring years to complete. 18 months….24?. Blink of an eye compared to the historical timeframes involved. Once the new paradigm was established and Argentinian firms could exploit mineral wealth I’d imagine even BAE would have a crack at selling to them!.

Obviously you would have to be attacking the airbase & air defenses prior to/while landing your commandos and dropping your paratroops. That goes without saying. The hardest part of it is to keep the island, which is what my post focused on.

This is where the Kilo subs come in handy. Before doing the coastal defense agaisnt british SSNs and surface shipping, they can launch a saturation attack of the british airbase and air defenses with 3M-14E klub missiles. Then you quickly rearm them with 3M-54E1 and a few 91RE1 for mainland and falklands defense.

The RN would have to spend a leg and an arm to defend against an hypothetical argie invasion using klub equipped Kilos.

You could also purchase a number of klub-K missiles to fire from merchant vessels which could be on their way to land the bulk of the occupation forces.

Nic

Not really Nic. The Kilo’s loadout will be perhaps a dozen weapons to keep a minimum torpedo onload and the land attack Klub variant is a conventional cruise profile weapon. In event of escalated threat level and a submarine cruise threat it would be quite conceivable that, in this timeframe, FLAADS-G would deploy to Mount Pleasant and possibly even Phalanx C-RAM now we’ve had some experience with it. With a few Kilo’s the Armada is going to be no more capable of launching saturation cruise strikes than the RN SSN force would be able to with TLAM…and those weapons would be flying right into the teeth of AD systems well capable of engaging them.

Its not a high percentage of success attack and, to deliver that attack, they would have to induct the submarines, train the crews up on them, build up a pattern of operational experience and get past some of the best SSN’s deployed. Remember that the SSK threat is now taken a lot more seriously than it was in 1982 and training to counter it has been part of RN focus ever since.

The heavy SSM element, of that concept, is key as its an attack vector that UK forces have no fielded counter to and, even if the defending forces ramped up to match Argentine capability increases, it would be something that would be initially unaddressed. Chinese heavy missiles appearing on the Argentine mainland would naturally trigger a UK drive to gain land-based ATBM capability of course….but this would be something new that the deployed forces would have to work up….and the only options would be PAC-3 or Arrow UOR’d. Even then there would be the ready-round limit for the deployed interceptors so the advantage is decidedly with the Argentine heavy rocket forces.