How to fix the Belgian Armed Forces revisited

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8 1/2 years ago I wrote about a kind of proposal how to get lean yet purposeful Belgian armed forces.

Here's what I would do differently now if I could travel back to 2018 to improve the blog post:

 

about nothing

 

Reason:

The old reasoning holds. The F-35 purchase was wasteful. Belgium is too small (and indebted) to fund the development of equipment that solved pressing problems, such as a Patriot version with a mast-mounted 360° radar and a missile to intercept cruise missiles at 100 ft altitude (such as IRIS-T SLM). Or an affordable C-UAS RCWS for anything ranging from 4x4 car to MBT as I already called for in 2017.

The small army I devised (one 1st and one 2nd rate active mechanised brigade, territorial forces) would hold up well today. Oriented against Russia, not daesh or Taleban, it would be considered about right today, save for lack of drone focus. I should have mentioned a drone component in the brigades' description, that's it. In my defence; I was thinking more of a PGM/drone company added than an entire drone battalion.

 

 S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Area denial at sea

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/29/russia-cheap-fast-missiles-cut-ukraine-sea/

The Ukrainians scared the Russian Black Sea Fleet away from the open sea and slowly reduce it to scrap. 

The Houthis were able to render the Red Sea passage impractical for maritime trade.

The Iranians scared the USN so much that it doesn't dare enter the Persian Gulf or use naval gunfire against targets at the Strait of Hormuz.

 

It's almost as if - wait for it! - area denial works and ships are not survivable enough close (hundreds of nautical miles close) to major land mass held by a well-armed hostile power that's prepared to deny the sea (surface) with land-based assets.

That's difficult to accept of career officers of a Western navy. 

 

Now extend this and realise that - as I kept writing for many years - land-based air power can extend this area denial thousands of nautical miles onto oceans.

 It's almost as if - be seated firmly! - ships are in wartime practical only at VERY long distance to land-based threats or under cover of AEW & fighters. NATO could keep the English Channel safe, but the Baltic Sea and Black Sea would only become usable with extreme and deliberate effort. North Sea and Aegean Sea would be of questionable safety in wartime. All this without a single Russian ship or boat leaving port or even only existing! Satellites, covert agents with a view on a port, land-based missiles and air-launched missiles is all it takes for this.

 

What's left for navies to do?

Not terribly much. They can protect maritime traffic lanes close to friendly shores (without using a single ship) and they can escort oceanic convoys.

What can air forces do? 

Air forces can employ OTH radars, AEW, fighters and tanker aircraft (this could mostly be quickly refitted airliners) to make aerial incursions towards those lanes (such as Montreal-Brest) too risky.

 

The realm of warships is ever-shrinking. Back in the 18th century 3rd rate ships of the line (~battleships) could anchor in view of enemy ports to blockade them. That ended with coastal armoured ships and at the latest with the first torpedo-armed submarines. Warships have been on a retreat ever since. Now they only belong into distant waters where the threat level is low anyway, likely limited to submarines.

What about the realm of submarines in a war against a well-armed enemy? In theory, they can go where friendly air power cannot go. Now, where exactly can NATO air power not go? Lake Baikal in Siberia? I have a hunch we could go there with a refitted Airbus A340 at normal cruise altitude.

So submarines are not vulnerable to most of the threats that warships face, but there's very little they really bring to the table, in spite of all fanboi propaganda. IMO submarines have largely withdrawn to the role of sparring partner for oceanic convoys. Somehow you need to provide them with an enemy during training, after all. Everything else they can do can be done by more versatile land-based air power, satellite or is only serving themselves (collecting acoustic data to be used exclusively by submarines - self-licking ice cone). Well, there may be one exception - tracking and taking out hostile SSBNs in a bastion. The issues are that taking out such a second strike capability could provoke a nuclear first strike, there's little reason to believe they could really find such targets in wartime and finally, there's little reason to believe they could survive in a bastion given today's low frequency sonar technology.

So maybe long-time readers now understand why my navy-themed blog posts centre on oceanic convoy defence and why I'm rather non-friendly to navies and their top brass.

 

related:

/2016/08/summary-of-my-naval-ideas.html

/2018/06/bundeswehr-structure-what-i-would-do.html

/2018/01/modern-warships-i-introduction.html

/2019/07/how-to-fix-united-states-navy.html 

/2021/05/navies-obsession-with-peacetime-hull.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Auxiliary interceptors

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About 20 years ago people thought giving semi-active laser guidance to a 70 mm hydra missile would cut costs, for Hellfire misiles were expended on Afghna  and Iraqi cars. It took a while, but APKWS II has been in service both for helicopters and aircraft, with occasional experiments to use it as a surface-to-air missile. These missiles turned out to be the best cost:performance munitions in Western arsenals and even the EXTREMELY wasteful CENTCOM has adopted their use to down Houthi Shaheeds.

 

https://www.twz.com/air/f-16s-with-larger-laser-guided-rocket-loads-drone-kill-marking-emerge-over-middle-east

Their advantage isn't just the low costs (though using 1980's and 1990's era infrared guided missiles is kinda free, for they are already in inventory). You can carry 14 (2x7) or 19 such small missiles instead of two normal infrared guided missile or five LMMs under one pylon. I know of no LMM-certified fighter, but most Western fighters can carry a Hydra pod or NATO-origin equivalents. 

 

They have also been used over Ukriane to down Russian cruise missiles of sorts. 

 

 

Europe has smartened-up Hydra equivalents to APKWS II equivalents: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FZ275_LGR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNEB#Laser_guidance_development

(more details on German wikipedia)

I'm not sure whether FZ71 features proximity fusing, but ACULEUS 68 LG does.

 

So these are the European APKWS II alternatives that can serve as cheap air-to-air missiles against munitions. They require laser target designation.

 

Semi-active laser guidance basically uses a laser to illuminate the target at a specific wavelength typical of the kind of laser and a seeker that just pays attention to this wavelength (with a little tolerance to account for doppler shift). This means the starget could be stealthy to it by either scattering the light (avoid returning it 180° back) or absorbing it extremely well (most likely a combination of it). 

 

An imaging infrared seeker is under development for such rockets, but it might cost a lot more. There's the open question whether semi-active laser works against terrain following missiles. I don't know. Maybe the missile would chase the reflections on the (back)ground instead.

 

 

Such cheap A2A missiles might be the munition of choice for intercepting cruise missiles over land, both cheap and expensive ones. Fighters with built-in 30 mm gun might use a 30 mm proximity-fused HE cartridge instead, but these guns are AFAIK not prepared for single shots and AFAIK only Americans produce such fuses. 

 

The platform needs to match and at least briefly exceed their cruise speed, which rules turboprop aircraft out. 

The establishment may be able to assign jet trainer aircraft this mission, equip them with a FLIR with laser target designator plus whatever avionics it takes to coordinate a search line or hunt a particular missile. The problem here is that jet trainers fell a bit out of fashion (exception being the new high performance M-346) because of modern high end turboprop trainers and having jet trainers in the own air force somewhat fell out of fashion a swell because training in a joint establishment was more cost-efficient. 

 

Another aircraft category that might come to the resuce are the business jets. Some of them have the size and flight performance to catch up even with turbojet-powered normal (not Shaheed-style) cruise missiles such as Kalibr (Mach 0.8 at very low altitude). They could fly at medium altitude for superior speed and dive close to their never exceed speed, then maintain M 0.8 long enough for the kill. It's mostly the big and long-range business jets that are this fast, though. There are about 700 business aicraft registered in Germany, but the vast majority will be unsuitable to more than interception of jet Shaheeds.

 

Fun fact; there was a project for using a business jet airframe as interceptor before, and it featured afterburners to catch up with business jet smuggler aircraft.

 

 

 

We should prepare: Choose business aircraft (and jet trainers) that are available (could be commandeered), test and certify them with equipment for the auxiliary interceptor role (including IFF), develop their integration into the air defence scheme, prepare the conscription of ground crews and pilots. We could greatly complement the normal fighter fleet in face of saturation attack waves.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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An opportunity on a silver plate

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Turkey* used to behave a bit bloc-free despite being in NATO. There was the famous S-400 arms purchase from Russia, for example. They were locked out of EU because some EU governments absolutely do not want Turkey in the EU (including Germany and Greece). Their behaviour in regard to migration around 2015 was a bit extortionate and adversarial towards the EU.

The geostrategic position of Turkey makes it an important country for the Europeans, so its alignment is important.

The aggressions of Netanyahu and Putin appear to have served a solution on a silver plate in my opinion. All it takes now to solve this matter in European interests is European politicians not being completely useless and idiocracy-level in foreign policy strategy for once.

First, Russia showed the world that its military is crap, tis arms are largely crap, its economy is weak and vulnerable and it is an utterly unreliable ally. It didn't help Armenia when it was obliged to do so. Moreover, its long list of violations of promises given, treaties and agreements agreed to on top of making up obligations of others towards Russia reveals Russia to be an utterly worthless partner.

Second, the U.S. revealed itself as stupid and unreliable.

Third, Israel is on a rampage thinking itself unassailable and wants any country in its six degrees of Kevin Bacon neighbourhood that might oppose it destroyed (if not annexed). There are increasingly signals that it's eyeing to destroy Turkey as a regional power. The lying moron is Netanyahu's lap dog and signals indicate that the U.S. is trying to remove any alliance protection (via NATO) from Turkey to enable Israeli strikes on Turkey.

What Europe cannot do now is solve the Kurds issue or the North Cyprus problem, but it might solve the Stupid Little Cold War in the Aegean and align Turkey via a new alliance (NATO 2.0, without Slovakia and the U.S.), preventing the worst case (Turkey aligning with China). The problem pressure originating from Israel might be just what it takes.

On another note, European politicians are utterly useless and idiocracy-level in foreign policy strategy. On top of that, the British prime minister and the German chancellor can be trusted to suck Netanyahu's Polish dick out of their own initiative.

related:

/2008/08/geostrategy-most-interesting-country-in.html

/2009/03/turkey-and-eu.html 

/2012/10/turkey-and-geostrategy-again.html

/2014/08/if-western-great-power-gaming-wasnt-so.html 

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: I don't bother with learning the new spelling.

We need to shake off the undue foreign influences

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It's one thing that the interests of the rich get overrepresented in a democracy, but foreign influences have become too harmful as well.

 

Taking the case of Germany:

The Russian influences (including the still-not-closed 'Russian House' in Berlin) on certain political parties (BSW and AfD more and differently than SPD, but in regard to scaring also influence on the CDU) has become a topic of public debate, but there are only marginal visible political actions against it.

The American influence is difficult to see because it was so obvious. The grand strategy of West Germany was Western integration, with emphasis on being allied with th U.S. and reconciliation with France. The 'Atlantiker' network is powerful among politicians of the long-established parties and especially among decisionmakers of the political media. IMO the American influence is now reduced, but it's still giant in regard to use of American bases in Germany for their war of aggression, their support for wars of aggression and genocide of Israel and most of all, the limits of what ideas people may have have been cast by decades of 'Western integration'. Almost nobody in any position of power thinks about substantially opposing the U.S., regardless of what it does. 

The Israeli/Zionist influence was built on holocaust guilt and on the same propaganda that other Western countries were fed, including that Israel is always the side that got attacked or was about to be attacked - even if actual historians vehemently beg to differ. This influence is extremely powerful in the political media, where it exploits virtue signalling and desires to feel superior (ethically). It's not so much influence via money as in the U.S., but almost entirely narrative dominance and fake ethical superiority. There's substantial domestic support for Zionist causes from Jewish citizens, but I don't think it's an essential component any more. Thus I count it as a for all practical purposes foreign influence.

We appear to be subjected to terrorism. Germany experienced 'lone wolf' terrorists strikes in recent years, usually briefly before state-level or federal-level elections. This pattern has become statistically implausible and is very suspicious. Moreover, these terror attacks mostly have one effect; more political support for the AfD, for their bogeymen (Muslim migrants) hatemongering gets supported. Russia is under suspicion of orchestrating these terror attacks. This is something that you might even read in establishment political media, but there's another possible explanation (potentially acting in parallel) that's still in the realm of conspiracy theories: Israel is under suspicion of being behind ISIS, was revealed to be somewhat behind Hamas, many of the suspicious 'lone wolf' terror attacks in Germany were ISIS-linked, Israel is supportive of the AfD out of shared hatred for Muslims, was born by terrorists and is under suspicion of having terrorised Jewish people in other countries to motivate them to become Zionists and emigrate to Israel. So basically, Israeli 'intelligence' may have orchestrated terror attacks in Germany as well. The public wouldn't know even if German police figured it out; the influence is such that it would be covered up by our establishment.

At this point I am completely fine with

• minimising those countries' diplomats in Germany to single digit skeleton crews of known actual diplomatic personnel
• expelling their citizens (save for those who were granted political asylum, double citizenship holders and the few accredited diplomats)
• telling double citizenship holders to chose exclusive German citizenship, lose it or keep double citizenship but stay out of Germany

as simple measures with great (not 100%) effect. They would also set the narrative to more people understanding that these powers are not friendly to Germany.

 

These influences do in my opinion explain European foreign policy paralysis much better than the absence of a EU foreign minister and ministry. Foreign policy is policy to represent the own interests (including indirectly, so also in support of other parties' interests at times). To be paralysed in foreign policy means harm to us, so we need to shake these influences off.

 

related:

/2022/07/threat-country-ranking-for-germany-top.html 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: There's a by comparison marginal influence. Many Turkish-Germans with German citizenship are beholden to Erdogan. That's IMO of marginal relevance by comparison, but it might become a substantial issue sometime in the future.

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High and low end surface to surface missiles

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There are two land-to-land ballistic rocket design philosophies in the SRBM and MRBM brackets:

One is the kind we in the West have known well for decades. It's high-performing, compact, safe to store for many years, accurate, reliable, proprietary design and most importantly, it's built for manoeuvres and with countermeasures to make intercept super hard.

The other kind is by comparison crude, but can still be made to hit the factory you're aiming it at.

 

The high end rocket defeats defences by surviving them (only to crash into the target soon after). The low end rocket defeats defences by being still a difficult-enough and threatening-enough target to warrant the use of two interceptor missiles that each cost more. This way, defences can be overcome by attrition if you can afford volume production of the attack rocket. On top of this, the low end rocket does almost the same job against undefended or poorly defended targets. Its reliability and precision would be worse, but you'd get the job done at a smaller budget.

A case can be made that a hi-lo mix would make sense, but IMO the case of the high end rockets would be fairly niche. You don't need the ability to overcome defences without attrition or saturation if you have attrition and saturation potential in the arsenal anyway. The only need for the high end would be for naval use (most punch in small weight and volume budget) and for targets that require a very high precision.

Now look at this:

found here

 

Ballistic rockets are different. You do not get REALLY cheap with either them or defences against them. Furthermore, air defence that adapts and achieves a high kill rate would be expensive and thus self-defeating. It would also have a small footprint (small protected area) unless it's intercepting exoatmospheric, which makes the intercept missile really expensive. So it would need to be deployed in many places.

There's thus good reason to believe that an arsenal of low end (kinda affordable) MRBMs would not be defeated in a long time. On the other hand, using economics and thus taking into account interest effects, any big spending on military power long before a war or the need for powerful deterrence would have inflated cost due to accumulated interest. So there's no good reason for lots of countries to build up large low end MRBM arsenals for deterrence. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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New frigates for the German navy

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I did recently write about an optimal escort (GP frigate) and a minimum escort (GP frigate or corvette). I also wrote about modern (naval) escorts in general in 2018. Now I'll write about a realistic sensible option for a new German frigate. I refuse to be bothered by the overpriced official designs and that offer from a frigate-inexperienced arms supplier.

 

First thing first; FUCK BMD (ballistic missile defence) of the American way (hard kill). It's too expensive to build a ship for hard kill defence against quasiballistic/aeroballistic medium range missiles or hypersonic missiles. Those missiles likely have difficulty hitting ship targets (particularly the correct ones) without any defences in place anyway and the recent ballistic missile wars of attrition around Ukraine and Iran should have brought home the point that you can be forced to run out of hard kill munitions (two expensive interceptor missiles per incoming missile or warhead), so I stick to my opinion that we should exercise self-discipline and modesty and accept that in war you take some blows. This means we need early warning (mostly by satellites and offboard radars) and A LOT of soft kill countermeasures. Basically, the incoming missile should not "see" its correct target in any spectrum and it should see lots of obscurant also in a safe distance to the real target.

This kills the entire BMD-heavy approach. A two-ship convoy escort shouldn't aim for having any super AAW destroyer, either. The escorting would happen far away from Russian (or Chinese) air bases and a few AAW destroyers wouldn't help much if the Americans or Chinese attack Europe.

The threat scenarios remain the same as in the minimum frigate blog post: Multiple boats, one auxiliary cruiser, divers, explosive boats/semi-submersibles in port, submarine trying torpedo attack (incl. from ambush position resting on seabed and having anti-helicopter air defences), salvo of up to 32 stealthy or supersonic anti-ship missiles incoming, strike fighter trying to drop guided bombs from very high altitude.

Keep in mind spending domestic means about 40...60% of the spending returns to your own country's public finances as taxes, saved unemployment pay and so on. That's a rule of thumb, but in today's Germany we should relax about it because we have a skilled labour shortage - the additional spending doesn't lead to additional government revenues if it fully crowds out other spending.

Moreover, all equipment that's dependent on American, Chinese, Russian, Indian political goodwill is untrustworthy. All equipment from these countries that can receive and process radio signals is untrustworthy. The Englishmen are confused about whether they're Europeans  or Americans, have proven to almost exclusively elect terrible politicians (even a lying clown) and are a five eyes member, so they are a bit suspect as supplier as well.

As a base, I take the FDI, which by today would probably cost 600...750 million € apiece if ordered from French shipyards if they had the capacity left. Plus development expenses for modifications.

Such FDI frigates would not be battleships, they would be escorts. Look at the dedicated convoy escorts of WW2 (example). They weren't high end - they were the low end component (and mostly built in wartime or repurposed old ships). A clearly-defined mission set allows for an affordable design that's of some use outside the core mission set as well (see destroyer-escort action at Leyte Gulf '44). 

• CAPTAS -4 towed sonar: great
• bow sonar: good enough for the French = good enough for us, I guess 
• antenna mast including four AESA radars: not my preference, but changing this would incur delays and extra development costs. Add the (cheap) Sea Giraffe 1X as expected for the Swedish FDIs, the Swedes likely pay for integration.
• optronics: check whether replacement with Hensoldt equipment (Mirador with German optronics as on K130) makes sense

• 24 VLS for Aster 30: The newer Aster 30 NG is meant to be a capable hard kill defence against short range aeroballistic missiles. It should suffice against Oniks and possibly Zircon missiles.
• 24 VLS for CAMM-ER missiles (as likely to be integrated for the Swedish FDI order) or with additional systems integration costs the more trustworthy (at least to Germany) 24 IRIS-T SLM.
• 76 mm gun: It's acceptable for a ship this size, though you'd need a very close convoy formation to protect a convoy with two frigates against cheap drones. Luckily, masses of cheap drones and torpedoes are rarely a threat at the same time, so the detrimental effect of a close formation on sonar operation is not too bad.
• Exocet 3C: Replace these with 2x4 refurbished RBS 15 taken from K130 class, for the French likely integrate these for the Swedish FDI order anyway, at Swedish expense.
• Torpedo tubes: These lightweight torpedo tubes are marginal weapons, but they may double as storage containers for ASW torpedoes and might be useful for hard kill anti-torpedo defence sometime.
• 20 mm Narwhal: We should be able to refurbish, update and re-use 27 mm MLG27 from decommissioned F123s instead. 20 mm Narwhal would be acceptable if systems integrations of MLG 27 costs much or if MLG 27 is too big.
• Mistral: I have very low expectations for the effectiveness of Mistral, so I would use its positions (and others) for soft kill launchers. This would include RF fog (Pandarra fog/chaff), MASS and 3DDS. 

• Hangar, helipad, MH-90 helo: Regrettably, we already purchased these gold-plated and troubled helos, so we should not procure any other medium ASW helo for this.
• Flying drones: I strongly suggest using the Malloy T-650 for torpedo and sonoflash active+passive sonobuoy delivery. Its range should be improved by getting better batteries in the next years and by using the Italian A244S/Mod 4 torpedoes for their lower weight. I trust six such drones much more than a single medium helo.

• Stick with the Thales SETIS 3.0 combat management system! To replace the CMS would require much more systems integration budget than switching Narwhal to MLG27, adding soft kill systems and adding the T-650.

• The public knows little about soft kill defence against torpedoes. FDI has a acoustic decoy/jammer, but I have yet to see a published answer to wake-homing torpedoes. Maybe a hull vane, a towed counter-torpedo mine or just go slow?

Why no RIM-116 RAM? Because the ones in inventory are getting old, new ones are ridiculously expensive and they might receive a kill switch code signal from an American anti-ship missile via their RF receiver. Moreover, surplus RAM from decommissioning F123s would boost munition stocks for F125s that use RAM.

Have a honest tender for building these ships in Europe. Domestic offers get a 25% discount on domestic value added in the tender, but the domestic shipyards absolutely should lose the bids if they are much more expensive than foreign bids. The license fees would have to be paid by the shipyard.

Most of all; change the personnel system, so we can cut down operating expenses and make do with ONE crew.

- - - - - 

The F123 and F124 frigates should and hopefully will be decommissioned before the late 2030's. The K130s are very weak, but they could bolster a two-frigate convoy defence with a bit more firepower against sea skimmer missiles up close, drones, ships, add some UAVs and help with SAR. The new frigate order would create the German surface navy mainstay by the late 2030's.

 

In the meantime we should focus on the readiness of the only really capable (though Americans missiles-compromised) F124 frigates, sell off the K130 (including the new ones, which aren't worth the operating expenses to us) to allies. The F125 frigates should receive the planned upgrade with IRIS-T SLM and should also be upgraded with CAPTAS-4 Compact. Both needs proper CIC/CMS.

 

All of this only if one thinks that having a German frigate fleet makes sense, which is very debatable IMO.

 

 

There's no one size fits all. Different navies and different times lead to different appropriate solutions - and nobody is obliged to agree with me on which solution is appropriate. We know for sure that the German naval procurement has been total crap for a long time, though. K130 and F125 are underarmed subsidy programns for shipyards. The 3rd EGV was a brazen shipyard subsidy as well. F124 is now Americans-dependent and was IMO underwhelming until ESSM Blk II. The F123 ASW frigates are helicopter-dependent and their sonar equipment remained underwhelming despite upgrade opportunities. Meanwhile, we neglected readiness, spare parts stocks and munition stocks. So what are the odds that the German navy is getting it right now?

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

update: Add a trainable ASW rocket launcher.

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Minimum GP corvette or frigate

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Suppose a navy would want the cheapest viable general purpose warship design rather than an optimal one. Compromises have to be made, especially skipping on the capabilities that drive costs the most.

The warship would be a corvette (less than 2,000 tons) for use in coastal waters such as the Mediterranean or North Sea and a frigate (about 4,000 tons) with exact same military capabilities except for better seakeeping and more endurance (fuel, crew food and accommodations) for a longer cruise (examples Portugal-Azores-Canada, Portugal-Azores-Brazil, Japan-Philippines-Australia) with deployed towed sonar (extra drag) at 15 kts (not on straight course, for all-round detection performance).

 

French FDI frigate (a relatively small FFG) from its most flattering angle
symbol photo / photo: Naval Group

Here's my concept for this:

Sensors:

• multi-purpose 3D radar for detection of flying objects at weapon range + margin that allows the crew to make full use of that range (Sea Giraffe AMB with relatively very cheap Sea Giraffe 1X for support and as backup on a different mast). IFF interrogation.
• additional multispectral sensors for air & sea search, tracking, identification and ranging (two gimballed optronics heads including visual, UV, thermal, laser rangefinder)
• Towed sonar for sensing, direction-finding and identifying submarine noises, ship noises well beyond horizon, torpedoes. Much better capability against deep submarines than bow sonar.
• Bow sonar direction-finding and ranging submarines and torpedoes especially in shallow waters, mine avoidance. Secondary diver detection & repelling and ship detection & direction finding beyond the horizon capabilities. This is indispensable for shallow waters where the towed sonar doesn't work.
• Naval mine-confirming capability (the cheapest option would be a diver, but it's slow and depth-limited - the latter matters against rising mines)
• VTOL UAV with zoomable visual spectrum and thermal cameras, secure datalink for remote identification of ships and boats as well as SAR support. It might have some use for early warning against sea skimmer missiles.

If this sounds a bit much for a minimum GP warship, keep in mind I omitted a long-range air search radar and BMD radar capability.

Effectors/weapons:

• Very much chaff, multispectral smoke, pandarra fog and DRFM quadcopter decoy rapid launch capacity 
• Ability to deploy a towed and sometimes free-moving boat with active radar jammer to act as semispherical home-on-jam decoy
• Plenty capability to deploy anti-torpedo decoys, possibly including mine-decoys that damage the torpedo if it comes too close.
• A few (4 ~Aster 30/IRIS-T SLM minimum) medium range air defence missiles capable of minimum 15 km effective ceiling at distances that deter laser-guided bomb attacks, also capable of taking on subsonic and supersonic sea skimmers. This is more about repelling effect and reduction of enemy freedom of action rather than about actual destruction.
• Much more (28 ~ IRIS-T SL/Sea Ceptor minimum*) short range air defence missiles capable of taking on sea skimmers of subsonic and supersonic speed out to horizon distance. A Russian SSGN may launch 32 submarine-to-ship missiles. This requires a total 32 air defence missiles per frigate as outer defence layer assuming all RUS AShMs function properly, two escorts for a convoy and two interceptor missiles per incoming missile. Secondary capability against speedboats.
• A main gun capable of damaging ships, destroying boats and flying objects (minimum 76 mm)
• One or two secondary autocannon(s) with good depression and very wide arc of fire, mostly for defence against explosive boats in port, but also to be used to support the main gun (20...30 mm)
• Light anti-ship missiles (16 Sea Venom, for example**). Basically, the frigate should not be powerless even against an armed merchantman from WWI and it would be very weak against it if limited to a 76 mm gun and SAMs. Frigates are no major ASuW assets in naval warfare, but a GP frigate should have a modicum of ASuW capability as a hedge.
• Multicopter-delivered lightweight torpedoes, possibly also to be recovered by (another) multicopter). I don't fully trust this, but I chose this with the "minimum" mindset in mind. The quantity of lightweight torpedoes carried onboard depends on whether they are reusable (ideally rechargeable battery, this also helps a lot with affordable training). Call for reinforcement or support firepower in case of defeat of the multicopters by a hostile submarine
• Naval mine-removal capability (the cheapest option would be a diver, but it's again slow and depth-limited) 

I did not bring up kamikaze drones for defence against boats because that approach may be relatively slow (less than 50 m/s) and more importantly, boats could more easily shoot down propeller-driven drones with a typical 30...76 mm gun FAC gun than actual rocket-propelled missiles such as Sea Venom (about 290 m/s in a dive). Hypersonic missiles have advantages and disadvantages - I limit the defence aginst them to generous application of decoys and concealment (RF, visual and IR) and timely warning by sensors because hard kill defence is too improbable and expensive.

Other

• Prepared for getting replenished (fuel and food) at sea
• Helipad with beartrap, hangar for drones & one light SAR&liaison helicopter (H135***) with twin engines (FLIR, EFS inflatable winch, rappelling ropes and removable exterior benches in MH-6 style, possibly towed MAD, possibly two Sea Venom missiles or low frequency passive sonobuoys)
• One 7 meter RHIB
• SatCom and secure datalinks
• An ops room with hardware and software for ASuW/AAW/ASW, the peak performance requirement is the coordinated defence of a small convoy against 32 supersonic anti-ship missiles by two frigates including remote activation of chaff dispensers on the escorted ships. It also needs to be capable of initiating timely soft kill countermeasures when a BMD or hypersonic missile warning pops up.

This is different from my rather optimum-minded concept for a frigate in some ways, notably

• no long-range SAM (SM-6) to be used in cooperative engagement based on external sensors only
• much-reduced area air defence ambition in general
• much-weaker gun armament
• much less capable anti-ship missile armament against warships
• minimum size viable low frequency active (towed) sonar capability
• could possibly fit into a corvette-sized ship
• LWT**** to be deployed exclusively by cheap multicopters, no priority for the more expensive ASW missile approach.

Similarities that are different from mainstream:

• Not opting for expensive medium ASW helicopter that's not going to fly for more than 4-6 hrs/day (=not helping much with submarine detection 24/7 unless you have 4-6 helos in the convoy) and have questionable survivability in case the submarine deploys some air defences.
• Choosing early warning + soft kill as the only countermeasure to hypersonic missiles.
• two-tiered air defence missile layout for cost reasons (Aster 15/30 is at times two-tiered because Aster 15 has a shorter minimum interception distance than Aster 30, not for cost reasons)
• total rejection of a main gun calibre smaller than 76 mm

 

I am no proponent of European countries buying frigates, but I do see potential for well-rounded and viable frigates that might end up costing well less than 750M € including munitions, aviation component and other peripheral costs. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: RIM-116 RAM is ridiculously expensive and has inferior range. VL MICA is too expensive as well. Sea Ceptor still appears to cost more than IRIS-T SL and the latter proved itself against Kalibr missiles over Ukraine, so it's my first choice. Maybe the Korean K-SAAM is fine, but I don't know much about it.

**: Sea Venom has such a small warhead that it's rather a subsystem-damaging missile than a ship killer, but NSM is on the light end compared to most AShMs and a ship killer at most against corvette-sized targets itself. I'd prefer 16 Sea Venom over 4 NSM due to much lower total cost and much greater capability against a large quantity of small boats. As a downside, the Sea Venoms would merely target main gun, 3D radars, helicopter hangar (or helicopter on helipad), VLS and other missile launchers on a frigate or destroyer target rather than trying a bigger killing blow to ops centre, engine rooms or a horizontal impact towards VLS.

***: Regrettably, the H-6 family (8.03 m main rotor diameter) has only one engine, which is a bit risky over sea. The 10.2 m main rotor diameter of a H135 is small enough to store the single helicopter in a corvette's (typical corvette beam = 10...13 m) hangar without folding. The UAVs would be stored around the helicopter under its main rotor circle (helicopter fuselage width 2 m, Malloy T-600 LWT-carrying multicopter width 3.72 m, sensor UAV helicopter width less than 1.5 m). 

****: This may require the use of one of the lowest weight lightweight torpedoes. This would be for the normal 324 mm LWT diameter the Italian A244S Mod 4 (~254 kg) or the seemingly superior Indian TAL Shyena (220 kg). Most LWTs weigh more than 300 kg.

update: Add a trainable ASW rocket launcher.

update 2: I forgot to mention that a helo (or multicopter) may serve as a radio repeater so the Sea Venom can be used beyond with man-in-the-loop mode at distances greater than the radio horizon. They would also serve as repeaters for the radio signals of the sonobuoys (and even a light  helo has much better endurance for this than a multicopter).

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End the stupid little cold war!

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This stupid little cold war between Greece and Turkey has to end. It's not affordable to Greece to waste so much money on it year after year when super-cheap diplomacy is the alternative.

Greece is member of Lisbon Treaty, its article 42 is an alliance provision. An attack by Turkey means all EU members are obliged to defend Greece. Yes, even the Austrians Their opinion on this matter is irrelevant, for they ratified the treaty and are bound by it.

To end this stupid little cold war requires one major EU country to have not completely useless politicians in charge. The Greeks should propose the plan to elevate Article 42 Lisbon treaty to general knowledge, then the Turks commit a single provocation of any kind (such as airspace violation), then said not completely useless politicians react to it as they would react to an incursion by Iran into turkey: Send a couple fighters and a SAM battery. Dare the Turks to repeat the provocation and if they do, shoot down that aircraft or bomb that territorial waters-invading ship.

Gloves off, skipped gloves on - just as Turkey did with the Russians, shooting down a Russian jet that invaded Turkish airspace for a few seconds only.

They will understand and Europe will have its alliance lifted from paper tiger to living alliance. Greece can henceforth reduce its military spending to 1% GDP while being safer than on its status quo trajectory.

And now for something completely different:

Did I ever mention  that our politicians are completely useless pussies? 

 

related:

/2009/12/greek-fiscal-troubles-and-military.html

/2014/08/if-western-great-power-gaming-wasnt-so.html 

/2015/02/the-miracle-of-greeces-defence-spending.html

/2017/12/that-stupid-little-cold-war.html 

 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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The real problem with defence against drones

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A blog post about the real drone problem is overdue because I do not see ANY indication that the real problem is part of the public discourse. As a consequence, there's severe misallocation of resources.

 

Imagine you're driving a vehicle through a typical European landscape. This is a VERY different landscape than military training grounds, by the way. There are trees, bushes, ditches close to roads, buildings, fields with tall (more than 30 cm high) crops, enough garages to hide a SUV-mobile company per village, there's scrap lying around.

You pass by one of the gazillion trees, it's still 50 m away. Your vehicle is equipped with all kinds of drone detection sensors imaginable such as visual spectrum optornics, NIR, MWIR, LWIR, mmW radar, acoustic, broadband frequency analysers. A quadcopter is accompanying your vehicle at 100 m altitude, it pattern recognises threats and a buddy of yours in the vehicle checks the reports. Suddenly, you're dead.

What happened? A drone that attached itself to the backside of a tree heard your vehicle approaching, swung its sensor and EFP around the tree stem and fired an EFP warhead at you. No hard kill APS stands a chance of stopping that. The overhead drone saw nothing. 

source https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382231382_Crash-perching_on_vertical_poles_with_a_hugging-wing_robot

What "C-UAS" defences could have protected you? Some 70 mm rocket with semi active laser seeker? Some 30 or 35 mm autocannon with radar and thermal imager fire control? Some laser? Some microwave beam weapon? No, not even the kind of defence that I argued for since 2017 -a CUAS RCWS with machinegun or at most a 20 mm autocannon- could have saved you.

A lot of passive and reactive protection would easily have stopped that EFP attack, of course.

EFP attack; a shaped charge with 110° or more opening angle

 

Now suppose it wasn't one tree, wasn't one drone and it wasn't using an EFP. It was a patch of woodland or some bushes or a plowed field with drones hiding under soil. There were 30 drones with Faraday cage protection against microwave attack. They rise suddenly, overwhelm the APS with a series of attacks and hit the top of your vehicle with 70+ mm (500+ mm RHAeq) tandem shaped charge warheads.

Again, you're dead. There were more than 20 penetrations because no vehicle can be protected against this with enough passive and reactive armour.

- - - - -

I believe I thought this through enough since 2017.

There's no line of sight defence against this.

We need to emphasise the thousands of years-old* concept of security effort

instead of staring at line of sight defences.

The traditional security effort would require to send men out, expose them to great risks to reduce the overall risk to the total force. That seems nonsensical now. We should send out drones as security effort, to search for, warn about and if possible neutralise hostile drones at a safe-enough distance.

Even a single car moving through hostile terrain would require a security ring around it, possibly at 200 to 2,000 m distance. Experiments will tell what the required radius is. Different terrain will require different security efforts and likely different sensors carried by the security force drones. So there would be a constant change of the security ring while that manned car is moving. The ring would become densified where needed, thinned out where that's acceptable, change of terrain from woodland to ploughed field would lead to a major change of what drones are scouting. The security force drones may even open and inspect buildings, weld shut manhole covers with thermite. The control software that controls the drones would report possible contacts, but it would also indicate the acceptable speed. It would need to be able to adapt to a change of route quickly. These security drones can look behind, under, into things. They can scan the ground - hostile drones may hide in loose soil such as mud and ploughed fields.

That's a LOT of effort for a single car. So mastering this AND having the ability to fend off a saturation attack of thousands of drones coming in one pulse (reminiscent of American carrier defence concepts of the late Cold War) is a huge effort. This leads to two conclusions:

1. A frontline with such a defence is much cheaper (and MUCH more reliably and more easily secured while static) than defending many individual areas all-round.
2. Any offensive movement in pincer-style or in form of a raid would have to be substantial. I estimate a brigade-sized effort may be debatable.

Conclusion #1 in particular would lead to a sizeable no man's land between human troops** and indeed between opposing high value hardware as well. The defender's advantage is slight when security drones fight security drones. Quality differences need to be substantial to matter much and even then they'd be unlikely to compensate for a factor three difference in production output. The party with the greater drone mass production capacity (and ability to supply the front with said drones) would win in a prolonged conflict. The peacetime inventories would matter for the first days, maybe weeks. The superior side could ruthlessly intensify the clash to quickly deplete the opposing drone forces. 

To be honest, I did not think all such consequences through yet. 

It's probably not necessary anyway, for it's rather unlikely that war happens when neither side has a qualitative edge or either side has a known qualitative or quantitative superiority that cannot be overcome. Defences could be shifted towards becoming impossible to occupy for long in such a case, preserving freedom only rather than freedom and civilian hardware.

Conclusion #2 is probably mostly relevant for the first days when a frontline is not fully established or if the inferior side wants to win by invading quickly. Another possible period of relevance is after the opposing party's drone forces were largely depleted, offering the opportunity to strike with a manoeuvre force without becoming overwhelmed.

 

The legacy arms industry wants to make the big buck with the kind fo hardware it understands: Big, expensive sensors and weapons; lasers, microwave weapons, autocannons, radars, big thermal imagers. This approach can sweep the sky between 100f t and 15,000 ft altitude just fine. It's not going to be enough. It's not even enough to protect against the fibreoptic FPV drones that laid in ambush next to roads in Ukraine months ago already. The focus on attention on above treetop line of sight C-UAS is badly misguided in regard to the battlefield. It's at most suitable to reduce the effect of strategic attacks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: See Xenophon

**: Compare the movie "Screamers" https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/01/screamers.html  

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