Illustrious heads to sea - with an airgroup
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T45
Hi Sunk.
Well perhaps the attacking plane doesn't need to pop up, but then he will need to have the position of the ships located - satelite, or a powerful long range recon aircraft sniffing for radars - because firing blind will be a very wild roll of the dice. If he doesn't pop up he also risks actually running into the T45 and being hopelessly exposed.
The T45 forces the attacker to make expensive choices.
1. Invest in expensive recon assets
2. Invest in lots of lots of missiles to fire off blindly in the hope of success.
3. To gamble on popping up, and escaping the mach 4.5 Aster heading for you.
Well perhaps the attacking plane doesn't need to pop up, but then he will need to have the position of the ships located - satelite, or a powerful long range recon aircraft sniffing for radars - because firing blind will be a very wild roll of the dice. If he doesn't pop up he also risks actually running into the T45 and being hopelessly exposed.
The T45 forces the attacker to make expensive choices.
1. Invest in expensive recon assets
2. Invest in lots of lots of missiles to fire off blindly in the hope of success.
3. To gamble on popping up, and escaping the mach 4.5 Aster heading for you.
Parapauk
Valid point but only if the a/c enter the MEZ. There are an awful lot of ways to get around that - not least the (cheapish) products of US, Russian and Chinese missile desisgn bureaux that are out there. And within an open forum there are of course a number of tactical ways to avoid entering MEZ while still giving the AAWC a major problem.
Hulahoop - also valid points, particularly the bit about making the oppo work much harder. But - if you don't have an outer air capability, there is very little to stop an LRMP from sitting at FL300 and either radioing (or linking if they're capable) your track details. In many cases, no need to pop up - particularly for the longer range stuff.
Valid point but only if the a/c enter the MEZ. There are an awful lot of ways to get around that - not least the (cheapish) products of US, Russian and Chinese missile desisgn bureaux that are out there. And within an open forum there are of course a number of tactical ways to avoid entering MEZ while still giving the AAWC a major problem.
Hulahoop - also valid points, particularly the bit about making the oppo work much harder. But - if you don't have an outer air capability, there is very little to stop an LRMP from sitting at FL300 and either radioing (or linking if they're capable) your track details. In many cases, no need to pop up - particularly for the longer range stuff.
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T45
Absolutely agree. I think its about getting into the attackers decision loop. While the T45 makes life more difficult and expensive, it still allows the baddy to pick when, where and how to attack.
Get a decent CAP and AEW up, and suddenly you can take back the initiative and apply your better training and technology to break up the attackers ability to respond.
Hopefully, they are then the ones sitting nervously in bunkers while you bowl a few nasties their way.
Get a decent CAP and AEW up, and suddenly you can take back the initiative and apply your better training and technology to break up the attackers ability to respond.
Hopefully, they are then the ones sitting nervously in bunkers while you bowl a few nasties their way.
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I totally agree with and accept all these points - and in an ideal world we'd be able to afford it all. However, my understanding is that the Carrier Strike project is about delivering precision attack, mainly against land targets, from a carrier OR a land-based FOB. Moreover, at the moment MOD policy is to take risk against air defence across ALL of defence, so it would just be surprising to me that "the fleet" would be likely to get a sophisticated, layered air defence system when we are so deficient in AD in all other areas.... surely as the only decent SAM systems we have in our inventory are afloat (please don't anyone try to sell rapier/starstreak as a realistic capability against a half-decent threat) then we ought to be more concerned about the risk to forward log bases, HQs, FOBs etc?
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Cover
That's an interesting argument, but I would like to make one point. Ask any RM what is the first thing he wants to do when he arrives on an amphib ship in a war zone. I suspect he'll say, get off the boat and on to land as quickly as possible.
That sentiment has been shaped by hard experience - ask the Welsh Guards. A ship (particularly amphibs, as they are required to place themselves at greater risk) are a very dangerous place to be. You can't start digging with your spoon, and hide in a fox hole when the bombs fall.
If a T45, and a CVF with CAP isn't there to protect an ARG, and it gets attacked there is a very real chance that you might loose hundreds and hundreds of men and all of their equipment. Lets not forget, that the huge majority of our logistics still gets delivered by ship. You might well loose the war in an afternoon. While I'll not deny the risks on land are very real, the consequences are perhaps more limited.
That sentiment has been shaped by hard experience - ask the Welsh Guards. A ship (particularly amphibs, as they are required to place themselves at greater risk) are a very dangerous place to be. You can't start digging with your spoon, and hide in a fox hole when the bombs fall.
If a T45, and a CVF with CAP isn't there to protect an ARG, and it gets attacked there is a very real chance that you might loose hundreds and hundreds of men and all of their equipment. Lets not forget, that the huge majority of our logistics still gets delivered by ship. You might well loose the war in an afternoon. While I'll not deny the risks on land are very real, the consequences are perhaps more limited.
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That's all fair - although whether we have enough surface combatants to effectively defend our SLOCs etc is another story...
Oh, and it's 'lose', not 'loose'!
However, don't forget that the primary purpose of CVF is to support Carrier Strike, not defend the fleet.
Oh, and it's 'lose', not 'loose'!
However, don't forget that the primary purpose of CVF is to support Carrier Strike, not defend the fleet.
True - if thats for all the TAG. I think the concern is that if the aircraft are incapable of any sort of AD then much of the flexibility of the TAG is lost. Plus as stated elsewhere on this or similar threads - maritime AD is not all about defending the carrier, there are large number of other HVU that require defence against air attack.
The key is being able to carry aircraft that are multirole.
Organic air defence is not a self licking lollipop if it allows your amphibious forces to get ashore, your seaborne logistics to survive (cf MV Atlantic Conveyor), your MCM forces to clear mines, and your helicopters to operate freely. If it stops the enemy from defeating you then it was rather important.
Should be more concerned about the air threat ashore? Yes! Not just in terms of bases and airdields getting bombed, but also the threat even a few elderly MiGs would pose to helicopters and transport aircraft.
Back to Lusty's recent deployment, the following ASW related links may interest you.
This from Navy News
This from Janes
.....However, it was recognised that the submarine challenge of the future was more likely to emerge from regional navies acquiring modern diesel-electric submarines which, in the hands of proficient operators, might be used to close strategic choke points and/or threaten theatre entry.
So ASW in the RN did not die but it certainly withered. And at a time when UK forces are engaged in two enduring land-centric campaigns, it remains unfashionable and an area hard hit in resource terms.
It is a warfare area where the RN acknowledges it has taken a measure of risk in the short term. Furthermore, there is no doubting that the effective conduct of ASW depends on precious, but also highly perishable, skill sets that have been practised less and less in recent years.
For some the pendulum has swung perhaps too far. Which is why Exercise 'Phoenix', conducted by units of the RN's 'Orion 08' task group in April 2008 as they sailed east from the Arabian Sea towards India's western seaboard, was regarded as a welcome opportunity to test the pairing of its two latest ASW equipment assets: the Sonar 2087 low frequency active/passive sonar; and the Merlin HM.1 shipborne helicopter.
Conducted in the Indian Ocean from 16 to 20 April, Exercise 'Phoenix' looked to evaluate and test how the extended detection ranges expected of Sonar 2087 - a powerful area search sonar developed by Thales Underwater Systems - could be exploited by Merlin's own acoustics suite in order that potential submarine threats could be staved off at arm's length. What is more, it sought to do this in a particularly challenging sonar environment; the negative sound/speed profile encountered in the Indian Ocean means that sound propagates virtually straight down to the sea bed.
Organic air defence is not a self licking lollipop if it allows your amphibious forces to get ashore, your seaborne logistics to survive (cf MV Atlantic Conveyor), your MCM forces to clear mines, and your helicopters to operate freely. If it stops the enemy from defeating you then it was rather important.
Should be more concerned about the air threat ashore? Yes! Not just in terms of bases and airdields getting bombed, but also the threat even a few elderly MiGs would pose to helicopters and transport aircraft.
Back to Lusty's recent deployment, the following ASW related links may interest you.
This from Navy News
This from Janes
.....However, it was recognised that the submarine challenge of the future was more likely to emerge from regional navies acquiring modern diesel-electric submarines which, in the hands of proficient operators, might be used to close strategic choke points and/or threaten theatre entry.
So ASW in the RN did not die but it certainly withered. And at a time when UK forces are engaged in two enduring land-centric campaigns, it remains unfashionable and an area hard hit in resource terms.
It is a warfare area where the RN acknowledges it has taken a measure of risk in the short term. Furthermore, there is no doubting that the effective conduct of ASW depends on precious, but also highly perishable, skill sets that have been practised less and less in recent years.
For some the pendulum has swung perhaps too far. Which is why Exercise 'Phoenix', conducted by units of the RN's 'Orion 08' task group in April 2008 as they sailed east from the Arabian Sea towards India's western seaboard, was regarded as a welcome opportunity to test the pairing of its two latest ASW equipment assets: the Sonar 2087 low frequency active/passive sonar; and the Merlin HM.1 shipborne helicopter.
Conducted in the Indian Ocean from 16 to 20 April, Exercise 'Phoenix' looked to evaluate and test how the extended detection ranges expected of Sonar 2087 - a powerful area search sonar developed by Thales Underwater Systems - could be exploited by Merlin's own acoustics suite in order that potential submarine threats could be staved off at arm's length. What is more, it sought to do this in a particularly challenging sonar environment; the negative sound/speed profile encountered in the Indian Ocean means that sound propagates virtually straight down to the sea bed.
Last edited by WE Branch Fanatic; 12th Jun 2008 at 20:18.
