Originally Posted by
pr00ne
All very interesting WEBF, but as all of this concerns events of 40 (yes FORTY) years ago surely your post should be in "Aviation History and Nostalgia?"
Has the principle of defence in depth changed then? Do the aircraft not work with the warships in a task group any more? Is the principle of wearing down the enemy before your vulnerable assets are on the scene not make sense any more?
Originally Posted by Widger
He also needs to be careful of infringing copyright laws
I believe limited extracts come under the term 'fair use' (or is it 'fair dealing'?), and they might be considered advertisements for the works quoted. I have acknowledged the authors.
Originally Posted by Asturias56
General Sanders now promises “ruthless prioritisation”, on the assumption that the army would have to fight along nato’s eastern front, or on the alliance’s northern or southern flanks in the Arctic and Mediterranean.
Northern and Southern flanks eh? Sounds like the sort of thing discussed in that paper from the Human Security Centre: Fire and Ice - A New Maritime Strategy for NATO's Northern Flank
On page 39:
Despite delays, budget overruns and questions over their strategic purpose, Britain’s programme to procure a pair of 65,000 Queen Elizabeth
class aircraft carriers is now well advanced, with the first vessel now deep into sea trials and the second expected to be delivered to the Royal Navy in 2019.
During the closing decade of the Cold War, the Royal Navy would have deployed a task group of ASW vessels led by one or two Invincible
class light aircraft carriers to the GIUK-Gap to support efforts to halt Soviet submarines from transiting into the North Atlantic. Carrying Sea King ASW helicopters and Sea Harrier combat aircraft, these ships would have arrived ahead of the main US-led Carrier Striking Force to hold the line, and subsequently acted to defend the wider fleet as it advanced north.
In contrast to the Invincible
class, the Queen Elizabeth
class were designed with expeditionary operations in mind. As such, it was intended that they would focus on the delivery of fixed-wing offensive air power rather than ASW operations.
With the return of the Russian threat, some have questioned whether these are the correct ships for the current era. But for the Royal Navy, the Queen Elizabeth class
carriers are an avenue to make a major contribution to the NATO’s deterrence and defence force on its northern maritime flank, and present a number of significant advantages over their predecessors. Most notably, the air group they will carry – for wartime open-ocean operations expected to be around 24 F-35Bs and fourteen Merlin HM Mk2s helicopters for ASW and airborne early warning and control – will be far more potent than that previously available. Thus, the security of the North Atlantic SLOC could be quickly supported by a Royal Navy carrier group near the GIUK-Gap in a more robust and survivable manner during either a crisis or early in a conflict than was the case during the Cold War. Such an effort would also help mitigate the practical problem of the US now having fewer carriers and a focus on the Pacific and the Middle East, given that these issues extend the time it would take to bring US assets into theatre.
Possible Russian actions such as interdicting NATO's lines of communications, and NATO responses (such as deploying a UK led ASW (and AAW?) group centred around one of our carriers), are mentioned from page 54.