Not a boffin. Thanks for the reply, which appears to be saying exactly what I did. The point of having an LO strike asset is that it is exactly what you need in the situation you describe, an enemy unwilling or not stupid enough to take the first hit. You go to a MarStrike war with offensive ROE, not without.
The only part of your statement that I wouldn't mind discussing further is 'that ships can be easy to sink when hit repeatedly'. Let's just say you do have a surpic asset (which the Uk now doesn't - as an aside), which finds the enemy, and you are able to target the enemy ships, and you are able to pick out the juicy one, and you do get past the long/medium range SAMs and then the short range ones and then your weapon gets past CIWS, I completely agree with you. If you do it repeatedly then the ship would sink. Not sure i consider this easy and believe me i have tried it plenty of times using a whole variety of weapon systems. Anywhere other than the extreme littoral there is nowhere to hide, above the ocean in a manned platform you aren't going to have a great day. Mass attacks by sea skimmers would hurt any fleet, but a modern one toting PAAMs or Standard, with sea wolf and goalkeeper behind it are going to extract quite a toll on inbound aircraft.
That's not to say a fleet is impervious, just that to really get in and do damage you probably want to co-ordinate a mass missile (let's say twenty plus weapons) arrival with sub-surface attack and leave aeroplanes out of it, nowadays.
So the threat to CVF would be anyone who could do that at the planned stand off range. Still doesn't quite fit into my idea of easy.
Last edited by orca; 1st Nov 2010 at 13:17.
Reason: Infantile grammar