Taygibay
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- Oct 27, 2010
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Agreed Penguin but don't forget the part about how if switched to ground attack which is the
main purpose of a Marines plane the new one will carry less ordinance unless you go to hanging
weapons from the Lighting II which will reduce its range faster than on a conventional fighter.
Your following sentence however points out to the simplest answer to the dilemma with the caveat
that this possibility should have been understood prior to the STVOL design or apart from it.
I'm saying that this started a cycle that I seriously doubt can be termed virtuous, if you prefer.
Take Oldman's post for instance.
I of course know that the LHDs and consort are not the ones landing. And that better planes and more
so missiles change the game. But think about what it means in an operational context to have such
big conglomerations as those depicted in strategic plans of the Air Sea Battle flavour. That's a lot of
ships together even if they'll be spread more IRL than on those images.
This is a risqué proposition even though I am confident the protection bubble around such a fleet would
be of the highest quality. The question is whether my confidence is close enough to 100% to risk lives.
It is not.
Old school D-Day is gone forever. Landings have been scarce and of lesser scope since that time.
Radar and missile ranges have expanded considerably as did the electronic combat environment.
So a massive Joint stand-off fleet ( with near civil ships ) near Grenada or Libya, fine;
As for the Falkands war man, you could not have picked a better example to make and prove my point!
The Harriers did the job because of the enemy planes' range only. Why were the 5 AC losses due to
ground fire and none ( the other 3 were accidents ) to air combat? Because the Argentinian fighters were
at end of their effective range so that they attacked the ships _with enough success to warrant remembering
that what happened to the Sheffield could repeat with an Arleigh-Burke if maybe not a Zumwalt_ and turned back.
Had the Mirages been able to fight over the zone, the Harriers would have been downed as in skeet shooting
and subsequently plucked for the evening stew. Just consider an AV8-B vs a Su-27 to 30, SH or Typhoon!
The Brits knew this and did not risk them which you can read on easily if you look for it.
Had a full scale CATOBAR carrier been available and positioned in-between Port Stanley and Buenos Aires,
it could have air interdicted and CASsed at the same time. That is the strength of maritime power : access denial!!
A land force could have grabbed the island by infiltration landings without even an anti-air round fired, BTW
as demonstrated by the excellent job of the Royal Marines lads and discreet SAS long raids.
In fact Oldman, this war is another great example of misunderstood or ignored lessons from real ops.
It is being discussed anew today ( well, 2 months ago, same thing
) too :
Is the U.S. Military Ready for a Falklands War Scenario? - War on the Rocks
So : amass large USMC ships off a hypothetical coast where men and F-35B are supposed to use a beach front
and surround these with a sizable pack of bigger not so martial replenishment base supply type vessels?
Do you see why the standard Navy CBG is necessary in that plan? And once it takes place in their midst,
how about a tactical nuke delivered from afar by strategic bomber exploding under missile form ( say ASMP_A
or bigger, not B-61 ) above this parade will huh, severely curtail its efficiency network-centric warfare-wise.
Finally, I'm not attacking the USMC, quite the contrary! I'm not even suggesting cuts! I only want it to remain
the particular special tool it used to be prior to fighting in Afghani mountains and Iraqi sands. Army, it ain't!
Infantry of the regular kind can waddle ashore for the last few hundred yards on any given coast as in D-Day.
Good day both and all, Tay.
P.S. Maybe we should open a thread on modern amphibious operations, I feel bad for the slight off-topic here.
main purpose of a Marines plane the new one will carry less ordinance unless you go to hanging
weapons from the Lighting II which will reduce its range faster than on a conventional fighter.
Your following sentence however points out to the simplest answer to the dilemma with the caveat
that this possibility should have been understood prior to the STVOL design or apart from it.
I'm saying that this started a cycle that I seriously doubt can be termed virtuous, if you prefer.
Take Oldman's post for instance.
I of course know that the LHDs and consort are not the ones landing. And that better planes and more
so missiles change the game. But think about what it means in an operational context to have such
big conglomerations as those depicted in strategic plans of the Air Sea Battle flavour. That's a lot of
ships together even if they'll be spread more IRL than on those images.
This is a risqué proposition even though I am confident the protection bubble around such a fleet would
be of the highest quality. The question is whether my confidence is close enough to 100% to risk lives.
It is not.
Old school D-Day is gone forever. Landings have been scarce and of lesser scope since that time.
Radar and missile ranges have expanded considerably as did the electronic combat environment.
So a massive Joint stand-off fleet ( with near civil ships ) near Grenada or Libya, fine;
near China . . . not so much . . .
As for the Falkands war man, you could not have picked a better example to make and prove my point!
The Harriers did the job because of the enemy planes' range only. Why were the 5 AC losses due to
ground fire and none ( the other 3 were accidents ) to air combat? Because the Argentinian fighters were
at end of their effective range so that they attacked the ships _with enough success to warrant remembering
that what happened to the Sheffield could repeat with an Arleigh-Burke if maybe not a Zumwalt_ and turned back.
Had the Mirages been able to fight over the zone, the Harriers would have been downed as in skeet shooting
and subsequently plucked for the evening stew. Just consider an AV8-B vs a Su-27 to 30, SH or Typhoon!
The Brits knew this and did not risk them which you can read on easily if you look for it.
Had a full scale CATOBAR carrier been available and positioned in-between Port Stanley and Buenos Aires,
it could have air interdicted and CASsed at the same time. That is the strength of maritime power : access denial!!
A land force could have grabbed the island by infiltration landings without even an anti-air round fired, BTW
as demonstrated by the excellent job of the Royal Marines lads and discreet SAS long raids.
In fact Oldman, this war is another great example of misunderstood or ignored lessons from real ops.
It is being discussed anew today ( well, 2 months ago, same thing
) too :Is the U.S. Military Ready for a Falklands War Scenario? - War on the Rocks
So : amass large USMC ships off a hypothetical coast where men and F-35B are supposed to use a beach front
and surround these with a sizable pack of bigger not so martial replenishment base supply type vessels?
Do you see why the standard Navy CBG is necessary in that plan? And once it takes place in their midst,
how about a tactical nuke delivered from afar by strategic bomber exploding under missile form ( say ASMP_A
or bigger, not B-61 ) above this parade will huh, severely curtail its efficiency network-centric warfare-wise.
Finally, I'm not attacking the USMC, quite the contrary! I'm not even suggesting cuts! I only want it to remain
the particular special tool it used to be prior to fighting in Afghani mountains and Iraqi sands. Army, it ain't!
Infantry of the regular kind can waddle ashore for the last few hundred yards on any given coast as in D-Day.
Good day both and all, Tay.
P.S. Maybe we should open a thread on modern amphibious operations, I feel bad for the slight off-topic here.
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