Originally Posted by Heathrow Harry
what they are DOING is anti-piracy - hence the discussion about using RFA's...
Here are some of the things that the deployed Type 23 or Type 45 (and other forces) have been practising:
Working with shore and carrier based aircraft and providing fighter control
Protecting a force of MCMVs
Exercising with Kuwaiti forces
International Mine Countermeasures Exercise
As well as minehunting and keeping sea lines open, a key strand of the two-week-long exercise is the general protection of infrastructure such as ports and the many oil rigs and platforms which pepper the waters of the Gulf, plus the safe passage of a convoy.
For the latter, naval vessels – including new destroyer, HMS Dragon, the UK’s sixth and final IMCMEX participant – and a large natural gas tanker are travelling in convoy through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the oceans’ great choke points, led by mine countermeasures ships.
Thirty per cent of the world’s sea-borne oil – 17 million barrels of oil a day – are shipped through Hormuz, while 90 per cent of the UK’s natural gas comes from the Gulf.
“Understanding how to escort merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz is a complicated evolution,”
Originally Posted by Frostchamber
He has a point. If you're fortunate enough not to be engaged in a hot war but are doing peacetime constabulory stuff, do you equip yourself for that peacetime task or to be prepared for whatever major challenge may emerge next from left of field? A high end unit can always reach down but a low end unit can't reach up.
Sme of us remember the comments from the media over the last decade stating that in future conflicts would only take place on land, and therefore only cheap ships and aircraft designed to support ground forces, would be needed.
Remember the lobby that proposed that instead of using Harrier/Tornado/etc for CAS in Afghanistan, we should replace them with armed Tucanos? Surely it is obvious that a slower aircraft is moe vulnerable to ground fire, has a longer transit time, and just how many Hellfires can a Tucano carry?
So you would have a less survivable aircraft, that takes longer to perform the task, has a smaller weapon load, and had to be developed specifically for that role. In anything other than a low threat environment, they would be dead meat.
The pundits always mention the use of the Skyraider in Vietnam, yet they seem to ignore that its lack of speed made it very vulnerable to gunfire, so the Americans stpped using it over North Vietnam. An invonvenient lesson from history?
Continuing on the aviation theme, there are naturally PPRuNe threads about the retirement of the VC10 and the upcoming retirement of the C130K. Are the replacement aircraft ready yet? Last time I looked Voyager was not ready to perform the tanker role, and A400M is where exactly?