Argentina to buy or lease Su24's?

a reply to: Forensick

No worries, everyone has a life and terrible events that shape them.

Anti-ship missiles are one of the biggest threats the US has identified to it's Navy...for good reason. The reality is they are getting better and harder to stop. Sent in waves at supersonic speeds it only takes one to get through and you're sunk. There is not a lot of time to defend against them. I haven't reviewed any Type 45 test results re: anti ship weapons or even know if the results are open source currently. When facing a few missiles I'd expect a solid defense however if faced with 20 or more simultaneous missiles I just don't know if one gets through.

It's not random I raised the topic as they are better than SU 24's at denying sea access. Topic not raised to upset those that lost people in a short war some time ago.

But for a country with limited budget, are not multi role aircraft a better use that single purpose weapons?

I don't deny that more modern anti ship missiles are a huge game changer for amphibious warfare, the Exorecets in the 80's were a huge threat, if Argentina had a huge supply things could have been very different down there

a reply to: Forensick

The Belgrano carried Exocette and that is why we had to sink it (a True Tragedy as there were thousand's of young men aboard and believe it or not it affected the economy of the UK as the Belgrano a former WW2 US battleship used to get it's refit's in Liverpool), had it turned it posed a significant risk to the fleet.

The fault in that was the British Government spending cut's, Aluminium combusts if you get it hot enough and the exocette did just that so our fleet of warship's were hopelessly unprepared for it, they would also never have been any use in the purpose for which they had been designed the cold war.

We learned lesson's but when budget cut's come in Lesson's go out the window.

Had our fleet been attacked and more ship's sank we may very well have then taken the fight to the Argentinian mainland using Submarine launched missile's to devastate there military and port target's make no doubt even had they a hundred Exocette's we still outclassed them despite being forced to fight beyond our reach.

The Mirage were actually very good aircraft but the RAF and RNAF pilot's were far better even than there French counterpart's at the time whom had trained the Argentinian pilot's but nevertheless the French make some excellent equipment as the nasty surprise of the Exocette proved (They also make fantastic car's Citroen is one of my favourite make's).

The Falkland war proved the value of the VTOL aircraft and the Harrier despite being old even then proved it was still top league with in real term's maybe only the Swedish SAAB fighter which was STOL being comparable, each had compromise but the SAAB may have been a better weapon platform and the Harrier was and is a more manoeuvrable but slower aircraft.

Had the Argentinian's had F16's the game would have played different also but there are three component's at work, Pilot, Plane and Ordnance.

A weakness in any one of those three drag's the other two down.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Forensick

The Falkland war proved the value of the VTOL aircraft

Didn't it also prove that even in 1982, surface fleets---other than aircraft carriers far out of range---are targets, not assets?

Fair unrestricted fight: 5 attack subs, 50 surface ships. 25 skimmers disabled or sunk. 25 retreat until the planes come. 5 attack subs escape.

The Falkland war proved the value of the VTOL aircraft

Dont get me wrong, SHAR was an awesome platform for what it was and we could afford and is my all time favourite Aircraft (in all variants), but I think almost everyone agrees that if the UK had the budget and the sailors we would much rather have the extra speed, range and weapons that a non VTOL aircraft would have.

Its the same with the F-35B - its not the best performer of the family, if we had carriers with cats and traps we wouldnt look at the -B.

So I kind of dont agree that the war showed the value of VTOL aircraft, it showed the value of Carriers and Carrier Air Ops.

Maybe semantics?

a reply to: mbkennel

Absolutely correct, that was actually proven before the second world war when Air asset's were shown to be far more affective against ship's and ship's shown to be vulnerable to the far cheaper fighter bomber attack, submarine's were a work around of course and all side's drew up plans for submersible air craft carrier's with the air craft carrier being the intermediary but now outclassed by missile destroyer's which themselves are still eminantly vulnerable to both air and submersible threat's.

While air craft can do anything ship's can do, faster and cheaper in most cases they are not as good at projecting presence and also the naval branches of the various armed forces of different country's in the past were very politically powerful.

However I remember a story about a weapon that would be a game changer, back in the 1970's-1980's the soviet's were working on a mutli frequency Radar weapon, this overly large device could be viewed as the russian equivelant of the SDI project's.

A large Multi Frequency radar array would send out a broad wavelength of radio energy at an incoming target be that a plane or missile or even satellite and by the reflected signal they could analyze the object's absorbtion property's, the highest absorbtion wavelengths were then analyzed and the inverse complex conjugate of these wavelength's was then pumped up to immense amplitude using a nuclear reacor to increase the signal power (I believe chernobyl was one of the reactor's they used), this was then sent back at the target.

The effect was to cause high energy atomic oscillation of the object's materials causing inflight disintegration of the target.

Imagine these array's on a battle ship fleet.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: mbkennel

Absolutely correct, that was actually proven before the second world war when Air asset's were shown to be far more affective against ship's and ship's shown to be vulnerable to the far cheaper fighter bomber attack, submarine's were a work around of course and all side's drew up plans for submersible air craft carrier's

Today, that's called a SSGN, correct? Send missiles in the air, and missiles in the water.

However I remember a story about a weapon that would be a game changer, back in the 1970's-1980's the soviet's were working on a mutli frequency Radar weapon, this overly large device could be viewed as the russian equivelant of the SDI project's.

A large Multi Frequency radar array would send out a broad wavelength of radio energy at an incoming target be that a plane or missile or even satellite and by the reflected signal they could analyze the object's absorbtion property's, the highest absorbtion wavelengths were then analyzed and the inverse complex conjugate of these wavelength's was then pumped up to immense amplitude using a nuclear reacor to increase the signal power (I believe chernobyl was one of the reactor's they used), this was then sent back at the target.

The effect was to cause high energy atomic oscillation of the object's materials causing inflight disintegration of the target.

Imagine these array's on a battle ship fleet.

Salt water absorbs microwaves broadband. Sub sneaks up on the battle fleet and still sinks them.

a reply to: LABTECH767
Ok LABTECH, while I get the gist of what you are trying to say I need to correct a heap of things you have just said, sorry no offense intended.

The Belgrano carried Exocet and that is why we had to sink it

Nope it didn't, only missile it carried were British Sea Cat for self defence. It had a couple of escorts of US origin but I don't think they carried them either. In any case those earlier Exocet's range wasn't that great and use of the surface launched version would have put the launch vessel in danger itself. Several other Argentinian navy task forces did but not Belgrano's as far as I have been able to find. The Belgrano was sunk as it was seen as a threat after the Argentine naval commander ordered a massive attack to take place on the British task force which was intercepted by British intelligence. Also Belgrano was actually a light cruiser not a battleship.

The fault in that was the British Government spending cut's, Aluminium combust's if you get it hot enough and the Exocet did just that so our fleet of warship's were hopelessly unprepared for it....

Sorry but this myth just keeps coming back to life. The usual example is HMS Sheffield which sank not because "aluminium burns" but because budget cuts had seen both fire fighting drills and effective fire fighting equipment and suppression systems scaled back. In addition there is evidence from eyewitnesses and salvage teams who got on board that the ships main seawater firefighting main had been damaged by the missile impact rendering any firefighting efforts useless. THAT is why she burned and sank. Aluminium has been used in countless naval vessels and particularly superstructures because it is much lighter than steel (therefore reducing top weight and improving buoyancy and sea keeping), not because it is cheap. Generally it is actually more expensive than steel in both raw material cost and construction as it is more difficult to work with. Case in point is the new GD/Austal LCS which is entirely built of aluminium. In fact there is general agreement that the Exocet that hit Sheffield did not in fact explode and that the damage was done by the sustainer motor starting fires. Certainly agree though that hard learned lessons get forgotten in peacetime.

Had our fleet been attacked and more ship's sank we may very well have then taken the fight to the Argentinian mainland using Submarine launched missile's to devastate there military and port target's....

Doubtful, the reality is there were not enough subs with far too few rounds available to do much, although if the intel was good enough they may have been able to severely damage the Argentinians Command and Control centres. However I am not even sure if HMS Conqueror and her sister ships were even fitted with Sub Harpoon in 82. In actual fact far more RN ships SHOULD have been sunk as there were repeated fuse failures of the 500-1000lb bombs that were dropped by Argentinian Skyhawks, Daggers, MB-339's and even a C-130.

The Mirage were actually very good aircraft but the RAF and RNAF pilot's were far better even than there French counterpart's at the time whom had trained the Argentinian pilot's....

Agreed, the Mirage were an excellent aircraft, in some performance aspects better than some current aircraft, and yes the RAF and RN pilots were better than their counterparts though I wouldn't say they were better than Armée de l'Air pilots, probably on par.

They also make fantastic car's Citroen is one of my favourite make's

Now thats being silly. Do you know the price of Citroen replacement parts and their general reliability? Horrendous on both accounts! Nice concepts and styling in the past, not so original anymore.

The Falkland war proved the value of the VTOL aircraft and the Harrier despite being old even then proved it was still top league with in real term's maybe only the Swedish SAAB fighter which was STOL being comparable, each had compromise but the SAAB may have been a better weapon platform and the Harrier was and is a more manoeuvrable but slower aircraft.

This is another of those myths about the Falklands that I fear has been allowed to propagate by in particular the British Government. On one hand it helped the potential sale of more Harriers, on the other it helped hide the negligence of previous and even the then serving Government and senior MoD brass. The reality is that if the RN Phantoms had been kept in service they would have been far more formidable and offered the task force a much greater level of protection and projection, as well as freed up the Harrier force to concentrate on other targets onshore on the islands. What the RN and RAF Harriers achieved was exemplary but also very lucky, it could have been, even should have been so much worse.

Had the Argentinian's had F16's the game would have played different also but there are three component's at work, Pilot, Plane and Ordnance.

In short no, not a chance. Firstly the F-16's range was if anything worse than the Mirage/Daggers, its unlikely the Falcon could have done much more than fly to the closest parts of the islands and drop ordnance before immediately egressing. Even if the Argentinians had hypothetically ordered and taken delivery of Falcons in 1982 the absolute best model they could have got their hands on would have been Block 15, probably not even that . And they would have been lucky if the US had cleared them for AIM-7 Sparrow, so most likely it would have been Sidewinders and gun. At that stage they didn't even have Maverick missiles so it would have been dumb bombs (admittedly the Falcon has always been a very accurate dumb bomb platform in uncontested battle space) and maybe rockets.

You are right though it takes three things to make for a success, the Argentinians had some excellent equipment but their pilots in some cases were not overly motivated or well trained (or more correctly some sections of their military, the A4 pilots being the brave exception despite a less than suitable scenario and unreliable munitions) and their weapon stocks were lacking reliability and sufficient stockpiles of what they needed.

LEE.

a reply to: thebozeian

Good points Lee, agree in almost every aspect and just wanted to add that, as you suspected, the RN had no sub launched cruise missiles back in 82, so the ability to launch such an attack on Argentina wasnt there, hence the propaganda victory of the Vulcan raid being more valuable than its actual success. No, Vulcan raids on Argentina weren't feasible either, but enough doubt was sown.

Also, regarding the F-4's availability, only four years earlier we had not only the F-4, but also the Buccaneer. No Harriers bar the RAF's would have been there, and even RAF Buccaneers could, theoretically, be flown from Ark Royal as many of them were ex navy anyway (pilot capability notwithstanding, but some amazing feats are achieved when necessary).

BTW. My Citroen C5 was one the best cars I've ever had. Comfortable, quick, and never went wrong. I remember it fondly. I did Rotherham to Cardiff to watch a footy match in just over 2 hours in it once, an average speed of 90mph when I worked it out, in complete comfort and stress free. I couldn't do that in my current car, even without speed cameras. Motorway all the way of course.