JonesyJohn,
Once again….deterrence isnt something you can pick up and put down when you feel like it. If we need to have it in the future it has to be maintained NOW. That means starting work on designing successor submarines, while the V-boats are still in fully in service, that means keeping the crews trained and competent in what is a very difficult discipline.
There is no deterrent system in service, or publicly acknowledged as under design, that could be installed on an SSN at this time anywhere in service with anyone. None.
As I said initially on this it may be possible to fit, perhaps, 4 SLBM-style missile tubes into a future SSN for TLAM/UAV/SF when not used for SLBM carriage. We would need to independently develop our own ‘Small-SLBM’ design though so that we could pack enough weapons into the tubes to represent a deterrent effect. An SSN with 4 Tridents, for example, would not offer a great deal of flexibility in targetting nor, perhaps, quite enough warheads and pen-aids to be assured of getting through on a very well defended target.
In theory though I’ve no problem with them binning successor-SSBN if the Follow-on SSN
a) would be configured with at least 4 SLBM tubes for, perhaps, 12 Small-SLBM’s (think navalised Midgetman) each with single MARV and multi-penaid capability, or, tactical configuration when not in ‘bomber mode’.
and
b) wont lose any of its tactical stealth and maneuverability by the addition of the VL strategic missile bay.
It wont be cheaper than Successor SSBN and it wont do anything for Carrier Strike right now, but, we will have a more flexible deterrent. One last point to consider though, and one I’ve noted on this site before, is that there is an inherent safety in Trident.
It is, after all, a very big hammer and as with such big hammers they are only wielded when absolutely necessary. You give the politicians a tool which is more easily used, more ‘tailored’ to the strategic situation we face right now, then you have to recognise the risk that some brightspark will like the idea of using it. In my book here’s to big lumpen Trident and the fervent hope that a really ‘useful’ nuclear warhead never appears in our inventory!.
JonesyWhy Sea Gripen, not Rafale?
I wonder how much it would cost to get EMCAT working & fitted.
That last statement nails the answer Swerve. Gripen represents least pain option to get deployed and get the ships in service. The arresting gear is locally sourced and the aircraft is already, supposedly, under development here. SAAB, I believe, said that it would cost about $1bn to get the thing fully developed. Taking the NG offers to Canada and the Dutch as a guideline and dividing that development spend across 120 airframes you still end up with a cheap plane…that gets cheaper with, as Nick notes, foreign sales and BAE manufacturing offsets.
Cheap being good as it may allow us to keep a couple of squadrons naval-optimised and allow for the retention of deck-qual’d pilots without impinging on the RAF’s operations for the type…a closer fit to the way the French do things with Rafale.
Plus it gives the RAF back something its lost with the demise of Jag and Harrier i.e short-field/austere deployability. Rafale or Hornet just gives them Typhoon-again capabilities and bring nothing new to the game.
JonesyIf F-35 is cancelled in its entirety?
Easiest option. Get McTaggert Scott to work on two sets of arresting gear and pay Saab to step up their work on Sea Gripen.
We go STOBAR for the near-mid term. RN stands up 800 and 801sqdns as frontline established at 14-16 airframes each. With, hopefully, the cheaper airframe we get better numbers for 1 sqdn permanent deck deployed, 2nd training/stood down backed by joint OCU backfill for the surge with the acceptance of circa 5 days or so for max sortie rate availability worst case. RAF stand up 3 or 4 squadrons including OCU for rapid deployment, light strike and air defence as required. This freeing the Typhoon force for the heavier work.
JonesyWhy would a French decision to unilaterally disarm impact the UK in any way?. If anything French disarmament would place a greater burden on the UK to preserve minimum deterrence in Europe. The reason for separate national deterrents anyway was the doubt in French minds that the UK would sacrifice its people in retaliation for a strike on France and vice versa.
NATO or not a nuclear strike on the UK could be something a US president overlooks to keep his own cities safe. That would be understandable on a human level, but, wouldn’t help us much. France choosing to believe that we would cover them, suddenly, is neither here nor there!
There is still no linkage here between SSBN and Carrier Strike either. The amount spent on SSBN, before CVF completes, is shirt buttons. BAE have years of work left on Astute so its going to be a ong time in the design phase. Carrier Strike has been tailored to fit the operational pattern we want to use. CATOBAR would cost a lot more than the price of the catapults, for us, and we don’t need it for Carrier Strike. The idea that we give up a capability that has secured the country for generations and will do for generations to come…to gold plate a couple of aircraft carriers…not really the best concept is it?
Jonesyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System
Basically a transponder system that gives position, ident, speed, heading etc. I’ve seen warships with AIS active…watched Daring manoeuvre on a Thursday war a few months back, but, easy enough to spoof them or simply turn them off!.
There are a few sites that rebroadcast live AIS streams onto the net where they have coverage. One is ‘shipais.com’ another is marinetraffic.com’.
JonesyI gained the distinct impression Skjolds are hard to get for international customers.
As the Philippines I’d rather be interested in short-range (WVR) AShM with large warheads (does such a thing exist?) to be mounted on fishing trawlers.
I’ve not heard anything specific to say Skjold is restricted or sensitive in any way?. They certainly didn’t mind the US picking them apart?. I think that its only relatively recently that the whole capability package has been fully mature maybe that’s had a bearing?
The Phillipines was a reference to the kind of state who, potentially, could see the maximum return from the Skjold design. The costs I’m sure would be out of their reach but, I’m sure there is a PN officer or two who’s looked wistfully at the design and thought about how useful they could be!. As for the covert horizon range AShM I’d say Penguin is about the closest you’d get for low deck footprint deployability and ease of targetting. Warhead isn’t huge but you can send a few and they’ll mission kill a destroyer or LPD.
JonesyPlease outline what Irans strategic and tactical capabilities will be in 2045 John. Then, please, inform us as to how cancelling the Trident follow on will be guaranteed to lead to more funds going into the platforms you mention.
JonesyThe missile is the key difference. IIR with Target Recognition/Rejection means the Skjold CO can be ‘less sure’ of his surface plot than his Chinese opposite number and still launch his attack….thats a big deal when talking about 2 designs heavily reliant on offboard targetting sources.
The dual role sea/land strike capability could also be remarkably useful especially if you are an archipelago or island state. The ability to sneak a couple three of these in range of a neighbouring island/coastline volleying off 16-24 precision guided missiles and then pushing it up to 60kts to blast for home before any surface pursuit can be attempted could be a very handy way of delivering strike effect covertly. Plus, as mentioned, the OTO76SR means Strales and potentially Vulcano76 for the hull so meaningful self defence and secondary antisurface capabilities exist in the hull which the Chinese boat doesnt share.
If I was in the Phillipines Navy I think that a dozen of these plus a couple of MRV/Tender type hulls, to support deployed operations, would likely be very high up on my list for Santa Claus.
Jonesyhttp://defense.aol.com/2012/05/17/google-satellites-can-track-every-ship-at-sea-including-us-na/
I heard they were adding AIS feeds into Google Earth. Not quite the same thing as ‘Google can plot every naval ship afloat’ but I guess thats not quite such a saleable story!
AIS in Google Earth still a cool thing of course!
JonesyJohn,
Restating incorrect opinions is no justification for a position. What you are proposing is fundamentally flawed as the ‘cheap’ delivery method you propose cannot guarantee nuclear delivery. Yes TLAMs have been shot down not least by light AAA over Iraq. TLAMs have also malfunctioned and crashed. There are a number of cruise weapons in several nations service that owe some measure of design provenance to crashed and recovered TLAMs.
What you there propose is not deterrence. Its punitive vengeance!. We cannot deter an aggressor with a defeatable weapon so you propose a weapon that can punish the opposition if they hit us first. It, I’m afraid, shows how much you really don’t grasp the concept here. You keep saying that We would only ever fire a nuke against a rogue state. You don’t understand that if we ever HAD to fire a nuclear weapon the point of owning them would have already failed. We would only ever fire a weapon in retaliation. Firing one means that we have taken a nuclear strike and, as dj noted, the cost of that would far outweigh that of maintaining the deterrent.
The deterrent force is actually the only system we possess that is in action constantly 7x24x365 and the greatest mark of its effectiveness is that nothing ever happens!. You may try to contend that nothing would happen anyway if it wasn’t there. Today you’d be right, but, in 2025 you can guarantee the same?. How about 2040, 2050?. This isn’t a game you can pick up and put down when you lose interest. You propose we gamble the long term security of the country for, hoped for but no means certain, near term gain. To me that’s ridiculously naieve.
JonesyJohn,
Deterrence is that state when you are restricted in your actions by the fear of an opponents response to which you have no practical countermeasure. You holding a sword might deter me from stealing your car, but, if I have a sword too yours does not frighten me unduly. You have no ability to deter me from taking whatever action I please.
To bring it into context of the argument the year is now 2040 (remember the next deterrent is set to cover us into the 2060’s) in the 28 years preceding Iran has stayed the non-conformist path and, thumbing its nose to world opinion, has developed multistage space launch capability and they have the bomb. They also have a nicely integrated, layered, air defence system with AWACS and redundant, hardened, C3I. Do you think your single patrolling SSN south of Hormuz, with its dozen TLAM-N is providing any deterrent effect whatsoever?. Also, while this one is providing its sort-of deterrent ‘against’ Iran are its 1000nm ranged missiles deterring anyone else or will we need a second….and third…boat on deterrent patrol to make up for the relative lack of range (cap doffed to Frosty) of TLAM?. You’d hope 14 SSN’s would be forthcoming because you’ll be tying a fair few up doing nothing but trying to be in the right places to reach important strategic targets.
Its not a case that ‘I have decided’ TLAM doesnt accomplish deterrence….it just doesn’t!.
£15 billion over 30 years John!. Trident replacement is not impinging on Carrier Strike and cancelling it would not give you CATOBAR please understand that.
JonesyThe TLAM may in theory be interceptable, but a lot of them have been fired now, and how many have ever been shot down?
John the problem with this is that, with conventional TLAM, you build in overkill so that whatever missiles are intercepted or malfunction you have sufficient left in the strike package to achieve effect. You can’t do that with nukes as you will end up with cumulative detonation yields unless you get lucky and the first detonation fratricides the rest. Either way you are firing, suddenly, a lot of nuclear warheads which is plainly ludicrous.
As I said, there is very little chance of us having to use nukes, and I stand by that. If we ever do, it won’t be against the USSR, it will be against rogue states such as Iran. I would much prefer the seven boat Astute class become a fourteen boat class, equipped flexibly with nuclear tipped Tomahawks as needed.
What you’re saying there though is that we don’t need deterrence, as TLAM doesn’t give us it, but then go on to cite an example of a state we might conceivably have to use a nuclear weapon against. Presumably that example predicated on the fact that they are developing nuclear capability and have a well funded rocketry programme!. I’ll leave that one with you.
JonesySo you could argue that a hypersonic vehicle with 2-3000 mile range and the possibility of a nuclear warhead would be a more suitable deterrent in this brave new world rather than a sub full of MIRVs?
Thing is though that even a Hystrike-style aeroballistic weapon is something that, if the S-400’s etc of this world are anywhere near what they are touted as, isnt guaranteeing the rapidly expanding bit getting to target. Presently the only thing that has proven reliably impossible to intercept, at least in terminal phase, is a separating RV on a ballistic launcher. To effect real deterrence then the question we need to answer is how do we, cheaply, get an RV overtop of people we really need to shake up.
Geography dictates our deterrent is maritime based. The ONLY viable alternate solution to Trident I have ever been able to conceive of would be a new slant on the Midgetman/Small ICBM concept. At a touch over 1m in diameter its conceivable that you could load three in a single Trident tube. A universal VL module of, say, 4 Trident-like tubes amidships, in the Astute follow-on, able to accomodate a 6-shot TLAM pack, perhaps a VATOL UAV or multiround Fireshadow pack, or a three round SmSLBM pack could be a way to eliminate the need for the seperate SSBN design and ramp up a flexrole tactical/strategic submarine capability.
The problem with this is twofold of course. The main one is, of course, that the Yanks dont need sub-Midgetman!. They have no issues with building a Successor-SSBN as they have a different strategic outlook than we do. So why are they going to fund the development of such a weapon for us to use?. If the choice is paying the British lads in Barrow to design and build new submarines or giving our cousins huge piles of cash to build us a missile just to our needs I think the best value choice is clear there.
The second problem is the impact of the missile bay on our next gen sub design. Even a ‘small’ SLBM is a very big thing to house in a steel tube with all the other organic and inorganic bits that constitute a submarine. The submarine will need to be physically larger than it may otherwise have to be to embark the weapons and the kind of habitability needed for a strategic patrol as opposed to a tactical one. Ultimately you create the need for the follow on SSN class to be at least 10 or 11 boats strong so, instead of 4 expensive bombers, you have 10 Fleet subs that are proportionally more expensive than they had to be.
Between the cost of the missile then and the cost increase over the scope of the new sub fleet is that small ICBM a cheaper option?. Dont know. Wont be cheap though….and I doubt it would get John his beloved catapults if we committed to it tomorrow!.
JonesyAs amazingly effective (at what they are designed to do) as SSBNs are, the question still must be asked…….if they are so expensive that building them scraps the effectivness of the rest of your navy, are they truely worth it?
Its a faulty premise to start from though. The RN has lost none of its effectiveness on the strength of the Successor SSBN programme. This funding is seed money to start a very long term process and the capability generated could even outlast the carriers themselves. The current Vanguards will run on til near 2030 provided we can keep away from shabby French drivers!!!.
The only connection between Successor SSBN and the decision to revert back to F35B is in the heads of those who just can’t take STOVL and are looking for something, anything, to blame.
JonesyAwful lot quicker to see a government change for the worst than it is to build an SSBN force from scratch John.
Problem with the TLAM-N is that its interceptable. Not much point spending money on a deterrent which actually doesnt deter anyone eh?.
“There is very little chance of Britain ever using nuclear weapons, and if we do, it will not be against a superpower.”
Erm, John, you do know that we dont want to ever use a nuclear weapon against anyone?. The whole point in owning them is to never actually find ourselves in such a desperate position where we would have to do such a reprehensible and repugnant thing?. This is not a case of an unused weapon is a useless weapon you know???.
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