It may be a political necessity, but, really, Brendan Nelson was insulting the intelligence of his viewers in his interview on Lateline last night. He was claiming that Australia’s potential contribution to “missile defence” - the possible fitment of Australia’s to-be-built air warfare destroyers with the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles in their immediate neighbourhood - was about North Korea and terrorists with ICBMs.
Gimme a break.
As the blokes at Air Power Australia have explained, the anti-ballistic missile capability of the AWDs is about protecting a) the ship itself, and b) the immediate neighbourhood, against a ballistic missile attack. If North Korea ever gets to the point of launching ballistic missiles at anyone, it won’t be at a naval task force. It’ll be at Seoul, Tokyo, or some other large population centre. Terrorists are even less likely, in the unlikely event that they got their hands on an ICBM, to launch it at navy ships.
By contrast, if China were planning to attack Taiwan and Australia’s air warfare destroyers were there to assist Taiwan’s defence, it’s quite plausible that China would use (conventionally-armed) short-range “theatre” ballistic missiles in the process, as the US DoD explains in this report. Nobody else in the region (except if you count India and Pakistan) has ballistic missiles. Nor are they likely to get them any time soon.
Brendan Nelson may be trying to avoid offending the Chinese, but he’s also misleading the Australian people on what their navy is being purchased for. The Taiwanese deserve the right to self-determination as much as any other people, but should Australia really be designing its navy around defending Taiwan against the PRC?
On the broader issue of the peculiar Bushite obsession with missile defence and the conniptions it is causing in Russia and China, Ed Carroll’s column for the Boston Globe is interesting - he argues that it might actually be a worse decision than Iraq.
Yes, Australia SHOULD be designing the RAN around defending itself and allies.
That is the whole purpose of the RAN.
There’s no turning them back now, Tony.
Seriously, though, I don’t read anywhere that the AWDs are going to be fitted with the means to shoot down missiles, just that they’ll be part of an ABM system. I take that to mean that they’ll be doing tracking while some other technology destroys the missile—in effect that’d be making the RAN more of a target while not giving them the means to defend themselves.
That’s assuming, of course, that ABM can ever be made to work.
Sorry Steve, which treaty do I refer to to see taiwan’s allied status?
FDG,
pretty big assumption
Fiasco: here’s the details.
The Aegis combat system can provide targetting information for the ground-based interceptors, but it can also provide them for Standard missiles carried by the ship itself.
Well, yes, pterosaur, but I’m not going to be the one to rule it out entirely. It’d be very cool technology if it could work—my objection is the same as Carroll’s, from Robert’s link: that tit-for-tat missile arms races serve nobody’s best interests.
Australia’s Ass (Ownership Declaration) Act (US Federal Legislation), 2001.
Katz has answered the question for you Wilful.
Of course, one could be a Downerite & support China, are you one?
Thanks Robert. This has made my day—missiles, cheesecake, bad latin, and what looks a lot like a cover drive(?). Thank you USN.
Defending ships against conventionally-armed ballistic missiles is much more feasible because you don’t need 100% reliability to have a useful system. If it doesn’t work and a ship is lost, that’s a tragedy and a major military loss, but it’s not going to shake one’s nation to its foundations.
Defending against ICBM’s is thoroughly impractical, because you only need one warhead to hit a city and your day is thoroughly ruined.
However, the trouble with the idea of defending fixed ships against missiles (be they cruise missiles or ballistic missiles) is still that you’re protecting a $3 billion asset with hundreds of trained crew on it against attacks that cost, at most, ten million dollars each (and in the case of cruise missiles, a few hundred thousand dollars each at most), and are launched by men and women in control rooms safely out of range.
No that’s wrong. It’s the Canine Leg-Root (Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge) Treaty of ‘56
Leaving Taiwan out of it for the moment, Japan’s ability to provide military assistance to Australia if we were attacked is pretty minimal - while their military is formidible within close range of its home, it has very little ability to operate away from Japan.
In other words, they run their army around defending themselves, not fighting wars half way round the world.
If it came down to conflict between the Taiwan and the mainland, Australia would not be able to make any substantive difference to the result. Only the USA (and possibly Japan if they bought some air-to-air refuelling tankers) can do that, unless we completely beggared ourself. The only purpose of our participation in such a war would be symbolic. So why spend billions of dollars making a symbolic point?
Bugger me with a fish-fork. The ADF might buy equipment that can be used in more than one way, in a range of scenarios, that may or may not be in defence ofthe Continent or in Defence of broader national interests including fighting alongside allies against potential enemies.
Jesus H Christ- what next??? The Amphibous Ships might be able to be used to aggresively insert troops into the way of danger!!!
And the ADF will pay far too much for a capability that has not been properly articulated, instead using some smokescreen false rationale to lie to the public about billions of dollars of expenditure and a 30-40 eyar strategic choice. Heaven forfend we should question this.
Razor: you can have all the military you want, if you’re prepared to write the cheques.
Given that I’m helping to pay for your military, I’d like to know what I’m forking out for so I can make an informed judgement whether it’s worth the dough.
During 2002 the US ran a war game exercise called Operation Millenium Challenge that simulated an attack on Iran/Iraq (Red forces) in the Persian Gulf. It didn’t go very well. The Blue (US) forces lost 16 ships including an aircraft carrier and 20,000 troops to a combinantion of suicide attacks by planes and boats and a flood of anti-ship missiles. I believe the exercise did not even include the newer Russian Sunburn anti-ship missile. The defences that were supposed to protect the naval task forces like AWD’s and Aegis cruisers were simply overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
China’s capabilities in terms of anti-ship missiles are probably an order of magnitude greater than the Red forces in that exercise and they also have an effective air force.
The situation is reminiscent of just before WWII. Then nations measured their naval power in terms of battleships. They did not realise that technology had made battleships vulnerable and redundant. Aircraft carriers were the real source of naval power. Today it is missiles and the submarines that are immune to them. Surface ships are now just too vulnerable.
Mr Merkel and wilful would have us follow the NZ model - good at Hakas but F’all capability.
Curtin realised it in WWII, but you current lefties just don’t get your head around the concept that, despite any notions of independence and self-sufficiency in defence matters, when push comes to shove from whatever situatin it may be, we need the US alliance. (At least Kimbo, and aparently Kruddy understand this concept).
Now, you can trot off down the NZ path and make an arseclown of yourselves but don’t expect the US to provide two fifth of F’all when our backs are against the wall. Or, we can continue on the current succesfull path of being a willing and active particpant in international affairs in allied operations with the US that both directly and indirectly support the National interest. At the same time giving us access to US technology, logistics, comms, operational experience (I could go on . . .). A very simple analogy is that it is paying taxes to make sure the fire brigade rocks up when you are trying to put out a fire with a garden hose and making sure we have the best garden hose and water pressure available in the interim.
swio - may as well scuttle all the fleets in the world because they are completely useless - is that what you are trying to say??
What I am saying is that if a defended US aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Straight can’t last very long then pretty much any ship within 100 miles of an enemy shore is not safe. For this reason our AWD’s may turn out to be just like Britain’s battleships in WWII. Very expensive and too vulnerable to be put in harms way.
What exactly should be done about this is a very interesting question, but I don’t think anyone really has the answer. I wish we were working on one.
Brendan Nelson is a robot on autopilot. An alien is using his body as a host to assist us in reaching global nuclear warfare. His eyes are empty like a scientologist who has completed their reprogramming; a void. Media management has turned him into the epitome of the disingenuous pollie so utterly deluded that his propped up motionaless head and face, void of expression but for the occassional eyebrow movement and the beaming (though clearly strained) smile at the conclusion of the interview, could fool anybody into believing his (and the Governments) intentions are sincere and in the interests of this country. We are clearly entering the beginnings of nuclear brinkmanship like we’ve always imagined… but worse.
Sometimes I think we wont really enter the 21st Century until all the baby boomers are either locked up securely in detention, I mean, nursing homes or dead!
Excuse me D.B.Valentine, Nelson is not a baby boomer, he is a self serving twat. Bet he has his old Labor Party application form open right now, and he would apply, an unmoral trough sucker is the good Doctor.
Razor: and, clearly, New Zealand is covering in fear of an invasion.
D.B.Valentine is making a grave error of analysis.The baby boomer age group has nothing at all to with any of these crazy decisions by the Liberal Nelson who is younger than me.I was too young to march against Vietnam when protests started,mainly money lacking I suppose.But I did pass by a Save OUR Sons well known woman after she had spoken at a protest.I went to many protest and outside the Victorian Parliament held a banner land rights not uranium.I had a father who was bastardised in training for the 2cnd World War and a very frightened uncle Rat of Tobruk.You make me ashamed of myself in one way..and that is I have never been your teacher to ask you to think before you express yourself in any manner.The lasting shame of my life when I read a D.B.Valentine is a childhood neighbour invented what I suggested should be invented as a deadly tracking device.Be careful Valentine,my lifes progress so far is leading me to a complete intolerance of those who leap before they look.Who do you think has been in anti-nuke protests in the past….Howards fairies in the bottom of the garden!?
swio, the lesson from Millenium Challenge isn’t that surface fleets are always vulnerable, it’s that large surface fleets are vulnerable in constricted heavily-trafficked waters like the Persian Gulf. Well, Napoleon at the Nile could have told them that. The tactics that were used on the imaginary fleets are as old as ironclad navies, older, in fact: compare suicide Zodiac tactics with the fireships that did so well against wooden armadas. I’d be very interested to see how the latest Russian and Chinese anti-shipping missiles actually fare in real flight, I suspect they’re all hype, myself.
Razor, the fire brigade analogy is a valid one, and to extend it: ABM proliferation is a case of a very dangerous back-burning operation. If they’re going to do it, they’d better know exactly what they’re doing.
Razor, from what I gather these missile defence systems are really bad value for money. Can you point me to an article where they report any success with these systems on anything other than contrived situations?
I’m all for missile defence systems for our ships if they actually work. Missile defence for other things, like whole countries for instance, is another issue entirely. At the moment it seems to be practically impossible and politically studpid. As Robert is pointing out, Nelson seems to be intentionally confusing these two issues.
Well, value for money is a slippery concept, mick. If an anti-missile technology could work it’d be a world-changing event. I agree with you about anti-missile missiles, but the high-energy lasers do have potential, especially at the very short range. An anti-SAM laser that could be fitted to cargo/passenger planes? Yes please.
The Israelis were using experimental laser anti-ballistic technology against rockets and mortar rounds, apparently, in 2000. A workable, saleable, system like that would be worth a great deal of money.
Amen. Minister Nelson and the Pentagon are showing a total confusion of the tactical and the strategic.
Be careful Razor, I’m a lefty and I’ve been an Officer in the permanent ADF for 16 years. I support this decision, but not for the reasons that cockhead Nelson stated last night. I support anything which looks like it will help keep ADF members alive.
Mind you, the Howard government record on Defence has been abysmal - they seem to be lurching about all over the place and there is no coherence in their equipment purchases, and little competence in the execution of those decisions. Much of it looks designed to suck up to the Bush regime (F35 and Super Hornet anyone?)
And yes, I think labor can and will do better. Believe it or not, they always have. And thats from experience.
As opposed to Australia’s decisive contribution in every other war in which Australia has been involved.
Which raises the critical question: how much is the efficient sum to spend on making Australia’s customary symbolic gesture?
When American leaders proclaim that Australia has made a vital contribution to the COW in the GWOT do they really mean it?
And how much can we get away with not spending before American leaders stop saying nice things about us?
Pre-Dawn leftist I’ve got 10 years Full-time ADF Officer experience and 4 years reserve experience and I disagree with your general views - Dibb’s Defending Australia was an unmitigated strategic disaster and we are still playing catch-up. If East Timor and 9/11 hadn’t happened the ADF would be about as effective by now as the Democrats are.
Well actually, those Aegis destroyers are meant to shoot down ballistic missiles, even if they are not the target of those missiles. Personally, I don’t think Australia would get involved in a China-Taiwan conflict. Australia has an enormous amount of trade with China and it would risk losing that. Also, China has nukes and growing conventional capability.
Gosh, pre-dawn has started a seniority contest, blah blah blah.
Officers are only able to pass on somebody else’s orders.
It is NCO’s who are sought after once they step onto civvy street. Officers usually get much more than a window seat somewhere in the public service.
Anybody who actually wants anything done is after NCO’s, who have a MUCH higher price in the recruitment market.
But please carry on pre-dawn, give us your opinion.
Mr Merkel - Re NZ’s position - while I love them dearly and respect those within their Defence forces, their strategy is no different to the Europeans during the Cold War, except worse - let others do the heavy lifting and spent their own tax revenue on vote winning stuff.
Due to their isolation NZ has a big air-sea gap with a speed hump in the middle of it called Australia. They inately know that, due to our heritage and ANZUS, we are unlikely to sit by and watch a foriegn power threaten them. They live safe in the knowledge that because we are doing the heavy lifting in the US alliance, NZ can do what ever they want, including banning US Navy nuclear powered or armed ships, safe in the knowledge that there is an effective umbrella to their North. It is a morally corrupt position.
We cannot predict the future, but if push goes to shove and somebody comes looking for natural resources and liebensraum in Australia, you can bet your last dollar that NZ will be screaming to have the US 5th Fleet in the Tasman Sea. Nobody predicted Japan would threaten the Australian mainland in the 1940’s within the time frame that it currently takes to buy major equipment and train personell to maintain and operate them. If we wait for a written invitation it will be too late.
Do you prefer curry or fish heads?
Razor: we also have an air-sea gap. If you’d like to explain to me how equipping surface ships with BMD will help protect it, I’m all ears.
Robert Merkel, that sea-air gap of ours may look quite big from briz-melb-erra, however at it’s shortest it is 2km.
Yes, Razor, and the US 5th Fleet will come running if they perceive it to be in the US’ interests, and not otherwise.
The trouble with all these people who claim we need to fellate the Yanks now in order to have them protect us from (unspecified) rapists in the future is that there is no reason to believe that gratitude for past blow jobs would influence a future US decision. And in the meanwhile it’s making any potential rapist jealous.
Surely the real lesson to take from West Irian and East Timor is that the US very reasonably pursues what they see as their own interests, not ours.
Not only that, but the time is fast approaching when the US will not be strong enough to counter Chinese influence even if it wanted to. After all, economically China is already far more important to us than the US.
DD - West Irian WTF??????
As for East Timor, we would have been in all sorts of bother without the support provided by the US - their Comms support was mission critical, in particular. Just because they were a bit slow off the mark, because it isn’t exactly in their back yard and the Clinton Administration were a bunch of doofuses, doesn’t mean they didn’t end up providing a lot of support. Now, if NZ had gone to them and said, “Hey mate, can you give us hand here?”, they would have probably said GF’d and been fully justified. As it was it was, Australia had the relationship to get the support that was required.
Mr Merkel - you don’t seem to understand Quid Pro Quo, do you. We buy new Aegis equipped destroyers that can particpate in Theater level BMD as well as provide world best CCCI and Air Defence capabilty. We go and help them when they need it so that they come and help us when we need it. BMD may not be directly applicable to defending the air-sea gap, but it is just as important as such esoteric things as building esprit de corp in units and conducting humanitarian operations in PNG and the Solomons despite the sincere lack of political gratitude. they all contribute to the Defence of Australia by protecting our long term interests in the region.
Oh, big whoop.
Robert, the system we are going to get comes with the BMD software already, and we do have a policy of not paying more to remove capability. I think that sensible. If we get the Navantia LHD we will not be paying more to remove the ski-jump either.
AEGIS as SPY-1A had to be artificially limited when originally deployed as the system could track objects in low-earth orbit. So the thing violated the ABM treaty. Hell, even the system it was derived from - TYPHON - had that capability in the 60s. Nothing new about it, that data is 40 years old. The interception capability was not there then, of course, but it is coming along now. So the system will do it if you have the appropriate missile in the VLS.
As for ‘does it work’ - yes. Been tested at Kwajalein shooting down MIRV and off Barking Sands etc shooting down the stock of Vandal high-speed drone targets (reworked TALOS SAM) proved the high altitude capability: it also proved the cooperative engagement capability in the same series of tests. I understand that it also performs nicely against SUNBURN now, the USN having bought some for the purposes of testing it.
So the BMD capability is inherent in the system anyway, and if you buy the missiles to meet the very high altitude air breathing part of the threat envelope, you automatically acquire the BMD capability.
So what is the issue here? Surely nobody wants to pay additional money to remove capability because of their ideological convictions?
MarkL
Canberra
What MarkL said!!!
I am just a lowly Tankie so that pusser stuff is a bit beyond me, but that was beautiful.
I was meant to be coming toCanberra this week but fortunately that got canned at the last moment. Wouldn’t mind catching up for a drink if you were up for it in the future.
MarkL:
thanks for the explanation.
Why didn’t the defence minister just say pretty much what you’ve said then?
In any case, why would you fire a ballistic missile at a ship anyway? Wouldn’t a cruise missile be a more useful weapon - particularly as they’re a lot cheaper and thus you can fire a heap of them for the cost of one ballistic missile?
Swio said
This is 2007 ….. and absolutely NOTHING has changed - except the labels.
b.t.w. It was 9 or 10 years before HMS Repulse and HMS Prince Of Wales were sunk by Japanese Imperial airpower that the Dutch sorted out the mutineers on one of their warships with a bit of airpower.
Similarly, we have had a decade and more of warnings about the future nature of warfare and all we have done is get ready for the Viet-Nam War and for the First Gulf War.
“Colonel Blimp, please come back; all is forgiven” ….. we need people and weapons systems that can deal with THIS century’s threats - not last century’s.
Robert
Damned if I know. I wish he had.
Ok, this might ramble a bit.
AEGIS solved the problem of the zenith attack missile, things like AS-6 KINGFISH, which dove down on you at 60-80 degrees at mach 3-4. It also solved massed attacks (10 regiments of Backfires and Badgers coming atcha could now be dealt with thru AEGIS and the concept of the outer air battle) and a lot of the sea skimmer stuff too. Suddenly, the Soviets had lost their method of taking out USN carrier battlegroups. So they started to develop seriously kinky missiles like Novatar-A, supersonic sea skimmers etc.
But they knew these were only palliative measures. AFAIK they started work on something that took it to the next level - exoatmospheric attack, were a ballistic missile would deliver a kinetic or nuclear warhead at mach 12-17. Now, the homing problems were a bitch (at that speed it is near-impossible to direct anything, for a start you cannot get a signal thru the ionised plasma surrounding the re-entering warhead). The US found out and started to work on ways of using AEGIS to defeat THIS form of attack, too. SO this was a tactical issue, part of the whole THAAD thing, and then the USSR collapsed. So this switched in a lackadaisical manner to Theatre BMD just in case things (like ICBM and MRBM) with nukes on ‘em ‘leaked from the dormer USSR. They also started a massive campaign to find and safeguard Soviet nukes as every terrorist out wanted them - they were successful in this (thank God). They also pushed for huge arsenal reductions, which also worked, and resulted in most of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal and US arsenal being burned as fuel to make electricity in US, Japanese and European power stations.
Now we have proliferation among states run by nutters and they are working hard to get SRBM and MRBM with nukes on ‘em (The NorKS, Pakis and Iranians are leading the push, the Egyptians and Saudis are probably working quietly on the same stuff). For example, the japanese bought AEGIS in the 1990s not for air defence, but for defence against NorK MRBM.
Enter the Chinese.
They also have a problem with US CVBG, and simply lack the military moxie to deal with them. So they turned to the Russkies and bought up their expertise on ballistic missile attack on carriers. They may also have sold it to others, who knows? But they would appear to be working on it, and it is not something anyone can ignore.
So bottom line, the ’shoot lots of missiles at it’ issue has been solved for 10-20 years now, and the ballistic attack solution is now back in play.
Hope this explains it as asked
markL
canberra
Razor, 23 and 5, myself. happy to have a beer if you are in town.
MarkL: just to clarify, all that works only if you’re part of a carrier battle group, right?
If you’re the RAN, and you’re operating independently of the US (just make that assumption for the moment), don’t have carriers with fighters on them to deal with incoming strike aircraft carrying anti-shipping missiles, you don’t have an “outer air screen” without the RAAF.
Given that, if the air warfare destroyers were providing air defence with range of land-based maritime strike aircraft, they’d be able to keep on firing cruise missiles at the AWD with impunity. If nothing else, sooner or later, the AWD runs out of anti-missile missiles.
Ergo, the AWD can’t be risked anywhere where there a) might be hostile aircraft, and b) there isn’t any friendly air cover.
Originally, yes, that’s what it was designed for. As time went on and things like CEC developed, (and systems got cheaper), you could use AEGIS to replace the traditional medium-power AAW ship’s mechanically scanned 3D air search radar with a much more effective electronically scanned one, replaces its mechanical-load launcher with a more reliable one needing less manpower etc. This made the other guy’s job a lot harder, he now needed more and better acft with much more sophisticated missiles, and the very substantial logistics, training and maintenance demands they brought along. So we see the PLAAF going from 4000 acft to 1000, and them really, really struggling with keeping their new kit in action.
Correct
Well, that is possible, but it also means that regional airforces drop out of the game completely, ceding aerospace dominance for us, OR they look at the budget and say ‘air defence comes first, so we abandon long range strike’, or they are forced to buy a very small number of logistically fragile units (they have a hard time keeping up with the training and maintenance demands of their kit) and a small number of missiles. Make no mistake, WITHOUT AWD, every regional air force with a handful of FLANKERS and decent ASM can kill us stone motherless dead. WITH AWD, the Chinese can, and the Indians probably can, and Singapore probably can… and that’s about it, and ONLY within acft range of their territory.
People usually underestimate by a huge factor just how much it costs to maintain a SQN of modern strike acft and missiles. Call it 12 acft and 60 ASM, you are already into the billions (plural deliberate). Without AWD, you just bought aerospace dominance. With it, you can contest it, but to guarantee it you are going to need another 24-36 acft and perhaps 300 more missiles.
And if the RAN in the scenario above still has access to US information, well, I’d still call that even at best.
Answering this depends on the force ratio’s, how good they are, how much training they have done and a host of factors. Put it this way, assuming hostile CH and ID governments (certainly not the case, and hopefully never to be the case). Nope, I’d not want to get closer than 1000nm to China. But I’d be happy (with all 3 AWD present) to transit right thru the Indonesian archipelago within sight of land the whole way. Without the AWD, You’d not want to get anywhere near China and would stay 800nm clear of Indonesia too.
Now it gets interesting! If we then get the Navantia LHD, and get half a SQN of F-35 STOVL as part of the RAAF buy, we just made everybody else’s lives an order of magnitude harder.
MarkL
Canberra
Hmm. Let’s discount, for a moment, the scenario of naval conflict with China, near China, without American support.
But Indonesia is a different matter. If you’re really going within sight of land of Indonesia, what if they put anti-shipping missiles on the backs of trucks? No strike aircraft required.
Yes, this was intended as a thought aid only. I do not believe there are any realistic scenarios of this occurring. Even for us to be involved WITH the USA, something outlandish would have had to occur, like an unprovoked Communist attack on democratic Taiwan. I can’t see that happening any time soon!
They don’t have any, the comment was predicated on existing force levels. The existence of such shore batteries would change things, you’d want to deny them targeting information based on anything as simple as visual observation. Ships at sea out of sight of land are very hard to find. The ocean is an awfully big place.
The issue with ‘truck-mounted systems’ is that most of them are short range missiles like Penguin, and you still have a targeting problem. larger missiles can certainly be made mobile for coast defence purposes, but again, getting the targeting data for them is quite difficult unless you spend a lot of money.
It is the same issue faced by the Jeune Ecole in the 1890s. ‘Cheap weapons’ only work well when there is one whale of a lot of them. SO by the time you have enough of them you have spent as much as (or more than) the other guy with his ‘expensive’ weapons, and yours cost more to run, age faster, cannot be upgraded and cannot do most of the things his can do. This is why despite the sinking of the Eilat, the small missile boat has all but vanished from the world’s naval inventories and does not ‘rule the waves’.
MarkL
canberra
Does anyone honestly believe that techonologies that overwhelm or use random adjustments in the flight paths won’t be developed to overcome anti missile technology? I am as sure as hell, that the Russians busily dreaming up such technologies at this very moment.
Those evil Russians, how dare they try and make money out of military technology… only the mighty Americans have the right to do that!
This is a massive waste of taxpayers money, just to prop up the MIC.
As has been discussed, this is all part of a see-saw of technological advances that has been going on since someone picked up a rock to throw at someone else.
A random flight path adjustment would probably be effective at defeating an AEGIS-based system. However, it would also not actually BE a weapon, as it would guarantee missing the target (well, you actually could not have a target…), because random movement might hit it, or might hit the launcher, but is much more likely to hit some other random point.
Not much use to such a weapon unless you don’t like fish much.
SS-N-22 has something like this though, as it manoeuvres as it closes the target in a series of very shallow swerves. It cannot manoeuvre too much, at Mach 2-5 (IIRC) that is not possible. AEGIS can kill this beastie. The specialist AEGIS-killer is (IIRC) SS-N-26: used to be called Novatar-A. In it, the warhead jettisons the missile fuselage and changes the attack pattern from 300m altitude, mach 0.8 to a supersonic, manoeuvring, constantly-accelerating sea-skimmer. Nasty little rascal, those Russians have some bright ideas. IIRC this thing is in Indian and Chinese service.
MarkL
Canberra
MarkL,
How do the results of the 2002 Millenium Challenge square with this? If the Aegis is as effective as this how were the red forces able to get enough through the defensive to sink so many ships?
I cannot really answer that. I’d have to know a lot more about the nature of that simulation to make any realistic comment. Basic questions like which upgrade versions of which AEGIS systems and which missiles, what the scenarios were, all that sort of detail. Were other systems like cooperative engagement capacity (CEC) and other third-party data/targeting inflows in use, what the ROE was and so forth.
Remember also what AEGIS is and where it came from. It has its roots in the massed kamikaze attacks off Okinawa in 1945 (saturation cruise missile attacks in todays milspeak), then arose from the famous “Four T’s” project of the late 40s early 50s (Tartar, Terrier, Talos and Typhon), then when Typhon was made to work in 1967 they said ‘a 60,000 ton ship firing 12 ton missiles out to 250nm?’ Gulp, miniaturise it and make it a hell of a lot cheaper, sunshine. The system was designed to handle massive aerial attack densities in open water. It is not perfect, of course, and near a coast you can get a lot of radar nulls to hide in and launch attacks which give the ship very little warning time. Counter and reaction, it’s an interesting game: when you play it for real, the losers die.
Classic case is USS Cole. Top-flight air defence systems are useless when turned off in harbour and when the threat is a suicide boat.
AEGIS does many air defence things very, very well. But there’s a whole range of things it does not do at all, of course.
I’ve seen Barent’s Sea 1989 simulated by the USN, and that was quite terrifying. Literally half of NATO’s naval power was destroyed in 3 days (10 carriers in, 5 out). On the flip side, the entire Soviet Northern fleet, 90% of Soviet naval aviation and 80% of their submarine force was destroyed, and every military facility on the Kola was turned into rubble. Thank God we won the Cold War and that sort of thing never happened. THAT is what it was designed for. Now it’s being adapted to other things.
MarkL
Canberra
Thank you. I didn’t know about AEGIS’s roots in defending againts Kamikaze attacks. Very interesting.
Swio
The full story of Project Bumblebee (the ‘Four T’s’ project name) has not yet been written. I suspect a lot of it is still classified.
There is a partial outline in Norman Friedman’s books ‘The Postwar Naval Revolution’ and ‘US Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History’ . It is a very complex tale, and is highly confusing after McNamara took over as Defence Secretary and began ‘rearranging’ investments. The Typhon missile was cancelled but the systems side (electronically scanned radar and fire control system, the radar already called AEGIS) was kept alive, merged with TALOS as ’super-TALOS’, then with TERRIER… it gets confusing. At the end, they called the radar system AEGIS, made it solid state and much smaller, with lower power demands, and merged all the missiles into one, as STANDARD (which evolved from TARTAR), and moved into the concept of making the missile standard and altering the booster requirements. So TERRIER systems fired a STANDARD missile on a big booster and TARTAR systems fired the missile (originally) with no booster. TALOS got dropped as so few ships had it, but not before USS Chicago shot down 2 NVAF MiG-19 over land at 98nm range.
MarkL
Canberra
Swio: Millenium Challenge, as far as I’ve picked up on its history, involved a very large number of very short-range attacks on an imaginary massed fleet in the Persian Gulf. It was less a demonstration of the technology of missiles and missile defence as a demonstration of the geography.
It’s a smallish shallow sea, full of small islands, coastal trading ships, more oil platforms than anywhere else in the world, all sizes of inlets, and a bunch of crazy well-armed countries. A wargame fleet got destroyed in it? Duh.
NB Defence Dept: the same conditions apply fairly closely in the Taiwan Strait.
That’s a very good way of putting it, MarkL—and it’s exactly why I’m very wary of investing too heavily in ABM. We’ve got to inhabit the same see-saw as the Chinese and the Indians, who’re likely to be able to spend a lot more on see-sawing than us in the next decade or two.
Razor, I’d be interested to know why you thought Dibb’s denial strategy was so bad, especially in the context of post-Cold War demilitarisation, which everybody was doing—and your opinion on his latest article:
The Cabinet has gone with tried-and-true technology from the Iberian peninsula. Wise choice, says this Iberian.
Anyway, the interesting point for this discussion is that the F100 has space for 48 vertically-launched missiles rather than the 64 the Arleigh Burke would have provided. Cabinet’s gone with cheap and deliverable rather than ballistically useful. Hooray!
Yeah, interesting. I’m kinda busy today, but I’ll try and get a post out on it tomorrow. Bracks also chose yesterday to announce his plan for augmenting Melbourne’s water supply, so there’s lots to tackle right now…
Yes, they always are at pressos. Later it’s the most capable in the Southern Hemisphere.
Then further down:
Okay then. But then:
He, he, he.
And here is Brendan, blaming the ALP for the Collins:
As distinct from the problems that were anticipated with the purchase of the Kaman Seasprite LINK , the Super Hornets, the JSF, the Abrahams tank, combat clothing procurement, sidearms (Browning Hi Power 9mm), or, indeed, lack of any decision whatsoever regarding tactical short take off and land transport aircraft to replace the Caribou.
Why was Nelson chosen to head Defence anyway? Because he is a natural mushroom (kept in the dark and fed on bullshit) type, beloved by defence bureaucrats and brass? There is some evidence already that Nelson is incapable of acting without supervision; he has shown neither affinity for the subject matter nor ability to brief himself so he is at least on top of his portfolio - as various interviews on the telly have demonstrated: he’d been trashed by Oakes, O’Brien and Tony Jones. I would have thought Environment and Heritage, Health and or Ageing, or Education, Science and Training would be more appropriate.
Perhaps the Rodent thought Nelson could be kept under strict military control, with “barrack room discipline” as SAtP would say.
For my money, there is at least a good half dozen regulars here at LP that would make a far, far superior defence minister.
I am so going to buy some Sukhois.
No, no, Christine, you’re the Governor General. Fiasco is the Minister for Defence. S@theP Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women…
Any other suggestions?
Here’s a list…
I’ll take Customs.
Razor I am a “leftie” and I support the purchase of these vessels (more or less). I suspect a lot of the whinging about this purchase is actaully inter-service rivalry - but it’s also the source of the purchase in the first place. Navy wants toys, Navy got toys.
I simply am not convinced by a lot of the arguments about air power that are put around the web nowadays. Unlike an airplane, a vessel such as this gives you 24/7 sensor operations in your theatre of interest. (How you decide what particular theatre is of interest is where the politics starts naturally).
Cheers Ken. I hope I can live up to the un-selfconsciously venal incompetence of my forebears. I also think MarkL would make a brilliant head of DMO, and let’s give him a few other titles from other centuries: First Sea Lord, Master of the Queen’s Shipyards, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Grand Admiral of the Fleet? Or we could commission him plain old privateer, he might enjoy that.
Sukhois nothing, Keeler you delta-wing fetishist—Jenkins, get me Norinco Sales Department on the phone! Let’s celebrate with a gross of nasty little QBZ rifles and cheap Chinese ammo for all!
Rob Merkel for Minister for Science/Education.
Graham Bell for Minister for Vets Affairs.
Razor for Minister for Industrial Relations.
Back on topic: though it’s not as strongly armed, the Spanish F100 has a draft half that of the Arleigh Burke class. Makes sense for coastal patrolling, humanitarian assistance and inshore joint operations, as well as long-range adventurism off crowded shallow shorelines.
GG will do me just fine Ken. Lots of opportunities to have the brass over and set them straight about the benefits of Monaro launched cruise missiles, a tank next to every Hills hoist, and household minefields.
I know it’s probably been discussed before, but what do people make of those aircraft carrier whatnots?
Christine, I’ll put up a thread tomorrow. Promise!