PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Air Raid on Stanley - could we do it again?
Old 13th May 2007 | 10:54
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Pontius Navigator
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: Military (Retired)
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From: Lincolnshire
Captain Kirk puts it concisely. I am fairly certain that AD aircraft would be ineffective against SLCM.

As for SLCM against RW or C2 or aircraft, this depends on the aim.

Certainly in a counter-air battle hitting the runway is one option. The ultimate aim however would be to remove the enemy AOB. All the runway interdiction does is to deny that surface for a few hours causing airborne aircraft to divert (partial success) or crash (total success) and pin those aircraft on the ground ready for ground attack (high chance of success); that is what the Israelis did in '67 simply because they had insufficient assets and lacked the modern precision of smart weapons.

The other counter-air option is kill the C2 and aircrew.

So in '82 we had not option but to go for counter-air attrition whereas now SLCM could neutralise all the aircraft, C2 and pilot accommodation (assuming enough missiles).

A modern approach to procurement has been weapon-target matching. No point in buying thousands of torpedoes if the available targets can be killed with hundreds of torpedoes.

With the JP233 I believe the 'buy' was for sufficient ship-sets to neutralise the targets in eastern Europe on day 1. Assuming a re-attack on Day 2 only half the number of ship-sets (or less) were thought to be needed. It is not true that the unexpectedly high survival rate in GW 1 meant that we would have had insufficient cold-war ship-sets to continue beyond Day 2? But job done, enemy air pinned to the ground.

Is legacy weapon-target matching perhaps also a problem in Uraq and Afg now? Enough for the old scenario and inadequate buy for modern consumption or attrition?
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