Conan wrote: Like I said, far too RAAF centric thinking...
Not at all, it is a fair and relative assessment of the effective and efficient strike capacity, and time taken to provide it, and then to repeat it. It has nothing to do with being air-warfare-centric. If the naval approach (sans dedicated carriers) had more on offer there would be more to consider, but there isn’t.
Conan wrote:1. 2 subs is the peace time deployment model. Not wartime. You have no problem accepting that RAAF assets will be surged, but RAN won’t? Please.
Surge? Please, have a close look at the geography and the distances involved with a spread sheet and the rate of submerged cruise distance per day and the time taken to get to patrol areas or to loiter in choke points, and the corresponding time to return again, and the time to repeat. Then calculate, as a ratio, how much of that total time the subs will be available to achieve their war aim and role? Disappointing to say the least.
Conan wrote:2. Operates from one base? And? So do the AWD’s. So do the LHD’s... So do the Wedgetails and SASR for that matter... That is their permanent base, not the only place they operate from, like all the other assets in military service...
Yes, but ~2500 nm away by sub, on the other side of the continent, from most of the rest of the fleet. There’s been talk about putting them on the east-coast as well, but nothing has come of it. So calculate the time it takes to transit from Perth to Sydney, to become a part of a useful integrated task force. You are left relying on intel to give timing cues (months ahead) for when to position them to be useful.
Conan wrote:3. They’re ‘slow’. Ah-huh. Compared to a tactical fighter of course they are. But they have what no aircraft in the world has, persistence. Time on station that no aviation capability can match.
Already covered, their presumed persistence is theoretical, not realistic or achievable with the numbers and geography they have to operate in. They’re not ineffective of course, it’s just that an OPFOR is unlikely to encounter one, at least to do so rarely, so they're much freer to operate.
Conan wrote:4. The wrong propulsion? For what role? The Collins class are amongst the most capable subs on the planet and that includes nuke boats.
For getting from point A to point B any time soon.
Yes, they’re extremely capable, but only in a performance limited context or in an area like the Baltic Sea, not in the two largest oceans on earth. OPFOR knows Collins has nowhere near the sustained performance needed to intercept them in open ocean, so Collins will be restricted to more predictable choke-points. RAN needs propulsion that changes that. Advocates or fans may think that’s still OK, I think it’s really piss-poor-performance.
Conan wrote:[
5. Crews. It ain’t 1999 - 2005 any more... RAN has addressed the crewing issue. There is no crewing issue for the Collins today and a clear path forward to expand to double the size of the operational fleet including crews.
That may be largely so, but a P-8A crew can go home to the family far more often. Which one would a young married person prefer to be on, in order to detect and kill subs or ships and gather copious regional data? Hence the crewing problem is far from over in the long-term. And nor was it over during the post-2009 mining and energy extraction building-out boom. There will be more waves of that sort of energy build-out boom to come.
Conan wrote:6. Anyone who looks at holistic military capability does, rather than being fixated on one capability element, yes. We operate a regionally superior submarine capability now, it’s far more than a tokenistic effort. Love the idea that 6 large ocean going subs is ‘tokenistic’ but 6 Wedgetails or 7 refuellers, isn’t... And the problem with the replacement entering service in 2030’s makes it irrelevant but not on the Hunters entering service in a similar timeframe? Okay...
No good dragging in other platforms to make your point, those are all performing to expectations, and slot into the
JOINT framework as required and they're
COTS too, if we want or else need more, fairly
quickly.
I'm only interested in
JOINT capabilities, there's no single-service fixation involved, I look at the implications of the current and building force. You may not like the assessment but you’ve said nothing to change it.
And no the timeframe is not similar as you claim, the first Hunter is expect in 2027-2028, the first Barracuda delivered (possibly) by 2035 (i.e.
16 years to get the first from an existing sub hull) and the last one delivered at around 2056 (
37 years) on the present expectations .............................. and they're not even joking.
Conan wrote: Frankly an extremely cheap fleet of just 6 Reapers with JSM anti-ship missiles would make a far better anti-ship force than 6 Collins Class subs ever will. And they can be out there 24/7, all weather, addressing an area 100 times the size a Collins could address in one day, getting there and back fast, and could work with JORN, P-8A and MQ-4 for patrol shadowing and ASW, along with LHD and Hunters, while we invest in a national hydrophone array, and some actual anti-sea-mine capability.
Quite frankly that is a ludicrous statement. The weight of a JSM exceeds the entire payload capacity of any hard point on a Reaper... Let alone the rest of this nonsense.
Which ignores the fact that these drones have not been built and the SkyGuard Reaper version has a stronger wing with 8 weapon stations as opposed to the prior 6 weapon stations, and its inside pylons can carry 1,500 lb. The anti-ship potential of a
persistent, cheap continuously available Reaper fleet with an anti-ship weapon makes the Collins Class anti-ship capability look anemic in comparison.
Your prior assertion that Collins constitutes ADF's primary anti-ship attack force is actually a single-platform-centric focus, and obviously misses the forest for the trees.
So, being all 'holistic' then, it would be fair to say that such a Reaper anti-ship capability with a VLO missile would (
JOINTLY) relieve Collins of the need to be going after almost all other surface ships within other locations and open waters, so they could actually lurk more often at one or two key choke-points. Or to mine them and then move on to other essential tasking. The HOLISTIC JOINT COMBINATION of the two thus raises the overall sub fleet's deterrence, and wartime potential and flexibility.
And mass-killing ships is what F-35A + tankers with JSOW, JSM or LRASM provides way more of (and the P-8A). So it's more than reasonable to conclude that RAN subs are not now and will not be in future, the ADF's primary anti-ship capability. Right?
Those subs will be focused on going after a limited subset of the OPFOR fleet. And its questionable they will be doing much of that, more like mining and going on to other tasks that the aircraft allow them to be freed up to do more convincingly.
You can clarify via PM if you wish to debate that.
Happy New Year to you any way Conan.
31 Dec 2018, 16:40
