lukosMBDA Concept Vision 2015
lukosNo it’s a 4,000lb blockbuster/cookie bomb containing >3,000lb of HE and clusters of incendiary bombs under a Lancaster.
lukos
lukosHit in front and above (cockpit aimed). Probably not a basic ManPad but one of the Last generation (software and sensor). Wing position suggest also a high Mach. Footage suggest a high altitude (enough time for the cameraman to hear about the shotdown, grab his video camera (not a cellphone) and run up the stairs).
Would be interesting to ear about the suspected weapon… And where it comes from 😡
Notice that the extensive damage might have been the result of aerodynamic forces and not a sign of the quantity of explosive*.
*this converges toward the wing position.
Got to be a full-scale SAM for that kind of damage surely. Possibly from seized territory or from Turkey? Doesn’t bode well for civilian air traffic assuming any are still dumb enough to be flying over Syria.
lukos1. Not according to what I’ve read.
2. Well the carrier needs to have a cat fitted to be usable with Reaper.
3. 12 is the same as the planned number of MRA4s pre-scrap.
4. Well you’re not supposed to send them into dogfights and Reaper attritions itself.
5. Are any fighter jets?
6. We could probably provide a domestic STOBAR system via FOAS.
lukosPresumably being part of the UK air defence environment. How many Sentries do we have again?. I claim no air operations expertise but we do need to sustain coverage of UK airspace even while we embark in combat operations elsewhere?. I’m not sure its so essential that we have a few SSNs in home waters at all times provided we maintain FRE etc.
7.
Neither ship stayed in the fight after their missile hits. Hanit was hit by a basic lightweight AShM.
A C-802 isn’t that light, same size warhead as Exocet. And if they were hit a few times, they never would have fought again.
I didnt say that an E-3 couldnt get to the Falklands. I said its unrealistic to think we’d send a detachment of enough aircraft to maintain round the clock coverage.
And if we put one on the Falklands? We could basically put the Reaper thingies on the island too, no need for them to be on a carrier.
Its also 100,000 flying hours using your numbers!!!!. By my rough mental calculation thats more than 10 UAVs flying 24hrs every day…consecutively for a whole year. Coverage that, to replicate with Sentry, would mean perhaps 2 airframes aloft permanently so a, rough, squadron strength deployment?. Doubling the E-3 force plus all of the routine operational costs would come with a significant price tag you’d expect….plus it’d not be such a useful platform for ISTAR would it….remember the UAV can do both. I’d imagine replacing 10 UAV’s per 100,000 flight hours would be the infinitely preferable option!.
ASAC7 can do both, then you have MPAs, Rivet joint and Sentinel.
Nope I want to have positive ID on the ship target before I fire a missile at it and need to be sure that my weapon isnt going to veer off and sink a ferry load of nuns, orphans and CNN reporters by accident. That is why we have RoE’s after all.
That’s what ASAC7 and MPAs are for. Heck you could still use a standard Reaper too.
lukosIs irrelevent. We dont have E-2 and arent going to deploy enough Sentries to Mount Pleasant to keep one on station permanently. Coverage for multiple UAV’s with Seaspray compared to a single APS-145 or APY-2 could be much greater. The issue is likely a greater dependancy on satellite bandwidth.
Where else would they rather be? And so could coverage with multiple ASACs.
I’m assuming that a 48Hwhatsit is some kind of uber-long-range-SAM that is bound to obliterate every aircraft in a 100 miles radius of the launcher?. I’d ask what the missile NEZ is before getting too excited about missile/plane exchange rates.
Range is 240km. For all anyone knows that could be NEZ depending on how they state ranges. The 40N6 has a range of 400km.
As would the main sensor mast being twisted wreckage and a nasty gaping hole and fire in the engineering spaces. Remember that Sheffield was lost because her DC was poorly designed not because the missile was especially destructive. Stark and Hanit ring any bells?. Did either take part in further combat action after their encounters with antiship missiles?.
Matter of opinion. Hanit was hit by one missile. Stark – only one missile exploded, both hit at same point.
If the fleet is fully engaged in a combat action where else do you think those submarines that are deployable are going to be?
Right so one E-3 flying at 600mph can’t cover the airspace even with several ASACs and MPAs flying combined ISTAR but 7 submarines travelling at 30kts can cover the subsurface?
You are dispairing about the costs of a a few dozen UAVs and think we should invest in a SOSUS net in the South Atlantic?. Then we should induct, train and deploy a new weapon like CAPTOR?. Then deploy OTH radar to the Falklands?. OK.
It’s not like UAVs don’t require support equipment and traning and the above items don’t crash as often as UAVs. How much does that cost, even if they don’t crash into the carrier itself? 10.2 losses per 100,000 flying hours. That’s $200+m even without the radar.
http://defensetech.org/2010/02/09/drone-losses-debate/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper
Then of course I could mention jamming of comms and hijack by enemy RF as per the RQ-170 in Iran.
OK so the threat hasnt evolved from what you have seen either then. Why do we urgently need to spend money here again?. Or are we starting to get to the ‘anywhere but not the carriers’ point in these type of discussion?
If tandem warheads were injuring crew in Iraq then surely that needs to be improved?
Nano…what?. How much will the development, maturity and support of this cost?. When will this technology feature on anything ready to be weaponised?. I did feel slightly nervous of advocating gyroplanes and tailsitter UAVs….thankyou for transcending that level optimism with one far in advance of it.
Probably about 2020 onwards.
http://kret.com/en/news/3545/
http://www.ruaviation.com/news/2014/11/19/2742/
http://www.kret.com/en/news/3520/
What makes you think anyone ‘forgot it’?. The target set pretty much disappeared overnight!. Its still not a huge target set now. More likely we will have to deal with missile boats, corvettes, light frigates in some other guys littoral….enter Sea Venom i.e we’re buying the system we actually have a need for. A long-range, RoE restricted, weapon may be down the line somewhere. Its very much not a necessity right now.
So you want to see ships from a long way off but not actually have the ability to hit them with anything useful?
lukosFlown 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.
Range compared to E-2 AN/APS-145 or E-3 AN/APY-2?
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?.
Or develop Fire Shadow into a ‘death-by-decoy’ weapon. What’s the cost exchange between a 48H6E2 and an aircraft?
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.
Oh, I don’t know, a nice few holes in the bow made by 2-4 200+kg warheads would give it and the crew something to think about. HMS Sheffield?
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.
We have only 7 SSNs, which are currently our only LACM platform and they’re expect to protect destroyers and carriers from submarine attack as well as sink destroyers? They do about 30 knots and are expected to be everywhere at once? You’re going to risk 1 of only 7 £1+bn submarines to sink every frigate and corvette? And the Falklands is the perfect place to deploy coastal missile batteries. The island is easier to defend than it is to liberate.
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.
Given the size of the threat theatre that’s simply a bad assumption. ASACs, an E-3 and MPAs are more than enough to patrol the local area between the islands and Argentina. We’re not interested in covering the whole of South America. Well I think the fact we’re purchasing MPAs proves you wrong. A Reaper would be useless at finding submarines and UUVs would be more appropriate or fixed underwater sonar could also be useful, potentially combined with a torpedo-mine like the Captor, which can be laid by MPAs. Surface vessels could be spotted with OTH radar even.
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?.
Tandem heat warheads have come about post cold war and have proliferated. Although no Challenger IIs have been destroyed by enemy fire, M1s have and several Challenger II tank crews have been injured by RPG-28/29s. even though they didn’t penetrate. They probably represent a bigger threat than KE rounds form other tanks. Some kind of active defence system wouldn’t go a miss either, nor would guided rounds, or an autoloader, and those ADAPTIV tiles would be nice too.
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!.
The thing is by waiting we allow the introduction of new technology like nanophotonics, where you could essentially design a UAV that is a radar, rather than having a legacy one with elephantiasis of the testicles. We also allow the incorporation of more up-to-date stealth designs.
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.
And you think surface ships can’t defend against torpedoes and submarines that have to get within 50km to fire:
http://news.usni.org/2013/06/20/navy-develops-torpedo-killing-torpedo
http://i.flamber.ru/files/st1/1211922554/1251841235_g.jpg
The only difference is that aircraft can run faster and fire from further away. Hell we’re pretty much the only nation on the Top 10 list with no jet-launched AShMs. Something wrong there. Sea Eagle was just scrapped and then everyone forgot about it.
http://www.globalfirepower.com/
lukosYep, thats what u end up with, when u start of with a B@ztard design that consist of Navy, Marines and USAF requirements. Poor F-35 indeed.
You mean like the F-4 was too?
lukosLightsaber sheath?
lukosThe radar on that Reaper looks rather small, one would wonder about range.
Speed/range of SPEAR relative to full-on ARM thinking S-400? Do we have decoys yet?
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. Thinking Falklands, do we have coastal AShMs? Any AShMs for the planes deployed there? Can they actually even take out ships from suitable ranges? 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.
The ones we used in Iraq, twice!
So why don’t we develop it as part of FOAS rather than rushing into something now?
Well we should have a VL LACM too, before 2021. Relying on sub-launches defeats the nature of submarine, which you’re saying is supposed to be attacking ships. Does they have any AShMs either? Helicopters against destroyers equipped with S-300-like systems? What about enemy carriers? Helicopters against them too? Wouldn’t an ARM be useful to defeat the ship’s radar first?
lukosFirst SM-3 Blk IIA test successful.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-japan-first-test-raytheons-sm-3-missile-140126775–finance.html
lukosThe 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.
But you have ASAC as well as the land-based E-3s.
Was the Harm-E decoyed, it uses MMW like SPEAR for terminal homing? Is SPEAR fast enough, long enough range.
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?
Tanks need updating. Parts of FOAS could be adapted for ISTAR and that’s probably something that should take funding priority too.
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.
lukosWhen 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.
1000nm is beyond Navy air strike radius? What? Even a Tomahawk launched from a destroyer will go roughly that far. A JASSM-ER or LRASM launched from an F-18E/F or F-35C will go 550nm + the 600+nm range of the F-35C even without refuelling or drop tanks. Now hows that MPA going to get close enough to fire an AShM? Kh-22MAs have a range of about 600km and can only be carried by aircraft with the same RCS as the moon.
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