Manticore
RETIRED MOD
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2009
- Messages
- 10,115
- Reaction score
- 114
- Country
- Location
05/26/2014
Grande Strategy
Pakistan Navy is facing a crisis of obsolescence and retiring ships; its mainstay the Type 21 class of frigates are due for retirement. The OHP class of ships that PN had hoped to pursue are not available, and no workable solution has been found with the Chinese. Meanwhile, a much larger and rapidly modernizing Indian Navy (IN) remains a looming threat. What is more worrying is that the PN does not have credible air defence while the air defence threat could not be greater with systems like the Brahmos in operation.
In theory a handful of Indian MKIs could sink most of PN's capital ships if they slipped past PAF, something not always possible for PAF to guarantee from happening.
So what now for the PN? With no budget and limited options, perhaps it may be best for PN to take a more innovative and visionary view than buying beatup secondhand fair from global players.
Perhaps what PN needs is to understand that big ticket capital ships are great for prestige but increasingly sitting targets in a world of supersonic long range AShMs and a wide range of detection, targeting and delivery systems.
Once these are recognized, a relevant solution can then be devised. One solution is to use the JF-17 / Al-Khalid method - to scale up the Azmat class to 1000 tons and locally manufacture 10-20 such boats, with the hope of selling a few. Such ships can provide enough size for either meaningful air defence or ASW. In a mixed squadron of ships, they can thus be very relevant, while having enough range to threaten vurtually all of the IN's Westerly bases.
But such a ship can go further, it could perhaps shift paradigms - Naval warfare is increasingly moving toward Alvin Toffler's ThirdWave, with information technology and remote piloting playing a game changing role. What if we stopped considering the main role of these ships to not be weapons delivery systems but C4I enablers?
One of the central problems that all forces including USN face is controlling remotely piloted systems usimg limited satellite bandwith. Direct control is not feasible and satellites are unaffordable for the PN. With these ships as C&C centres for matched unmanmed aerial and submersible assets, suddenly the power and capability increases manifold.
Since such remotely controlled assets can be based ashore and paired for missions on a need basis, they do not need large ships, just ships that can stay present in their areas of responsibility.
Read more: Grande Strategy
Grande Strategy
Pakistan Navy is facing a crisis of obsolescence and retiring ships; its mainstay the Type 21 class of frigates are due for retirement. The OHP class of ships that PN had hoped to pursue are not available, and no workable solution has been found with the Chinese. Meanwhile, a much larger and rapidly modernizing Indian Navy (IN) remains a looming threat. What is more worrying is that the PN does not have credible air defence while the air defence threat could not be greater with systems like the Brahmos in operation.
In theory a handful of Indian MKIs could sink most of PN's capital ships if they slipped past PAF, something not always possible for PAF to guarantee from happening.
So what now for the PN? With no budget and limited options, perhaps it may be best for PN to take a more innovative and visionary view than buying beatup secondhand fair from global players.
Perhaps what PN needs is to understand that big ticket capital ships are great for prestige but increasingly sitting targets in a world of supersonic long range AShMs and a wide range of detection, targeting and delivery systems.
Once these are recognized, a relevant solution can then be devised. One solution is to use the JF-17 / Al-Khalid method - to scale up the Azmat class to 1000 tons and locally manufacture 10-20 such boats, with the hope of selling a few. Such ships can provide enough size for either meaningful air defence or ASW. In a mixed squadron of ships, they can thus be very relevant, while having enough range to threaten vurtually all of the IN's Westerly bases.
But such a ship can go further, it could perhaps shift paradigms - Naval warfare is increasingly moving toward Alvin Toffler's ThirdWave, with information technology and remote piloting playing a game changing role. What if we stopped considering the main role of these ships to not be weapons delivery systems but C4I enablers?
One of the central problems that all forces including USN face is controlling remotely piloted systems usimg limited satellite bandwith. Direct control is not feasible and satellites are unaffordable for the PN. With these ships as C&C centres for matched unmanmed aerial and submersible assets, suddenly the power and capability increases manifold.
Since such remotely controlled assets can be based ashore and paired for missions on a need basis, they do not need large ships, just ships that can stay present in their areas of responsibility.
Read more: Grande Strategy
