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. 

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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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Optimal AAA calibres in WW2 and today

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Here's a shipload of hindsight: The optimal anti-air artillery calibres of World War Two.

7.62...7.92 mm machineguns were rather ineffective. There were some aircraft with thin armour plating during WW1 already. Such armour plating provided good protection at as little as 300 m altitude, for the bullets quickly lost energy by climbing against gravity and drag. The use of twin or quad mountings didn't help much. 

12.7...13.2 mm machineguns were little better. Their effective range was around 500 m, but they had the target in range for so little time that they depended rather on lucky hits to achieve much. The use of quad mountings didn't help much. It's irritating that the Soviets nevertheless introduced 14.5 mm anti-air machineguns based on their anti-tank rifle calibre after WW2, including multiple barrel mounts. Their usefulness was mostly limited to anti-helicopter work and the slightly bigger 23 mm twin gun (a Cold War design) was vastly better.

A single Czechoslovakian 15 mm gun design was of marginal relevance. It was too much gun and mounting for the modest effectiveness of the calibre.

The first really effective AAA calibre was 20 mm. It's widely recognised as the smallest calibre for a useful high explosive round with a proper fuse. 20 mm weapons weighed about double what 12.7 mm weapons weighed during WW2, but their weight was still bearable. 20 mm quad mounts were very heavy, but it was possible to devise a 20 mm light AAA pack gun. The calibre was also very effective in ground support and against merely bulletproofed AFVs (most early WW2 tanks and late in WW2 still the scout vehicles and halftracks). This was the best calibre to equip infantry regiments or even infantry battalions, but this was hardly ever done. The result was that the infantry was largely without proper air defences, but at least the infantry was fairly good at using camouflage, concealment and cover. This happens to have been the reason why 20 mm would have been sufficient for an infantry AAA capability: Its up to 2 km effective range covered approx. the distance at which aviators could still spot infantry targets save for road marches and field fortifications on open fields.

There were some 25 and 28 mm AA guns in France, Japan, Soviet Union and the U.S., but they did not earn good reputations. Japanese 25 mm suffered from sluggish mountings and a ceiling that permitted very accurate level bombing against anchored or moored ships from a mere 7,000 ft altitude.

The next really convincing calibre was 30 mm. The German 30 mm HEIT (high explosive incendiary tracer) Minengeschosse were designed for a giant explosive charge with added incendiary side effect. One hit usually sufficed to shoot down a single engine aircraft. Even the rugged 4-engine B-17 was said to usually be doomed after four 30 mm HEIT hits. This was in part because of the huge blast effect an in part because the fuse was designed to explode just after penetrating the skin, so it would explode inside a wing or stabiliser. 30 mm wasn't only a sweet spot for its destructive power leap over 20 mm. It was also a sweet spot because the late WW2 Mk 103 showed that a huge rate of fire (for a light AAA at the time) and a high muzzle velocity was doable with this calibre without excessive weight of the whole system. The effective range was greater than 2 km in the AAA role with its muzzle velocity without needing a muzzle velocity at 900+ m/s, which would have worn out the barrel too quickly. So IMO a 3 cm AAA of about the Mk 103's weapon design (with a suitable mount) would have been the perfect light AAA for divisional air defence and SPAAGs. It would have reached higher than 2 cm guns, pushing the threats farther up to altitudes (8,000 ft and more) from where the rear elements of a division (esp. artillery positions) would be much less recognisable. Hardly any 3 cm AAA was used during WW2.

Next, there's the 37...40 mm group. These guns had vastly inferior rate of fire to 3 cm Mk 103, but the destructive power of late war HE-rich grenades left almost no chance to single engine aircraft with even only one hit and approached one-shot kill power against medium bombers. Moreover, they had increased reach than smaller calibres. The altitude of 10,000 ft was considered to be safe from them during WW2. Some of their fuse designs self-destructing at about that distance anyway, so greater theoretical ballistic ceilings didn't matter. This calibre was the best fit for naval guns. It pushed level bombers so high that they became too inaccurate even against anchored or moored individual ships. They made twin-engine skip and torpedo bombing inefficient or (if they got close) suicidal. It was a powerful-enough calibre for motor torpedo boats to fend off motor gun boats. The effective firepower against ground attack aircraft at short distances was certainly vastly inferior to the much higher practical rate of fire of 3 cm Mk 103, though. I'd like to add that the British 2 pounder went back to WW1 and this explains its poor muzzle velocity, which rendered it rather unimpressive against aircraft passing by. The 4 cm Bofors of the late 1920's was the best and earliest really good gun in this calibre and would still (even with 1980's munitions) be a very good AAA in face of the cheap cruise missiles used in the Russo-Ukrainian War.*

The 45...47 mm calibre group was a bust. The Soviets used it on ships, the Czechs had some developed, but these guns had a terrible rate of fire and marginal advantages over 4 cm.

The 50...57 mm group began with a German 50 mm gun meant to close a gap between 10,000 and 15,000 ft altitude at which 37 mm was ineffective and heavy AAA (88 mm) not yet effective-enough because of high angular speeds and rapid change of necessary time fuse settings. This was a sweet spot for level bombing during WW2 and also relevant over the Reich because of the poor service ceiling of the Short Stirling night bomber. Eventually, the 50 mm calibre proved to be too weak and Germany advanced to develop a 55 mm gun, but only completed prototypes. Its combination of calibre and muzzle velocity indicates that it would likely not have covered the 10,000 to 15,000 ft gap. 55 mm was considered to be capable of reliably one-hit kill even a 4engined bomber such as a B-17 or Lancaster.** A properly-developed 55 to 57 mm gun would have proved very useful for protecting railheads, railway stations, bridges and (against night bombers) cities during WW2. Basically, it would have been the perfect defence against light and medium bombers and heavy bombers used in typical medium bomber mission profiles (= level bombing mostly between 10,000 and 15,000 ft).

75...76.2 mm guns were often leftovers from the First World War, especially in France and the UK. Even the best guns in this calibre group lacked the ceiling to defend against American-style B-17/B-24 attacks due to the bombers' turbochargers permitting attack altitudes of about 27,000 ft. The calibre had such a low lethality with a time fused fragmentation shell that all the optical tracking, searchlight, radar rangefinding, computing and automated fuse-setting equipment of a heavy AAA battery would have been wasted on it. That is, unless one uses point detonation fuses and hopes for direct hits (then you need no automated fuse setters). There would still have been the ceiling issue, but the guns would have been deadly against large aircraft (medium bomber and bigger) within their reach at much lower expense than the next group. Everything changed for Western Allies' 76.2 mm AAA at about the end of WW2 when VT (proximity) fusing suddenly turned a 76.2 mm twin into a more effective counter-kamikaze defence than a quad-40 mm mount. 

85...90 mm guns were in another sweet spot that gave just enough ceiling (great ceiling if very high barrel wear was accepted) against almost every threat. The munition expenditure was terribly high per kill until late in war when Germany used impact fusing against large bombers*** and Americans created incomparably more expensive and sophisticated 90 mm proximity fuses that made the calibre effective against any target in range provided the fuse was not jammed and no ground features or waves triggered the fuses early. The calibre was used on some warships, but its usefulness against warships was limited to shooting illumination rounds at night. The shell was simply too weak against ships.

100...128 mm calibres were powerful with their fragmentation effect, but very expensive, bulky and heavy. The saving grace for this calibre group was the dual purpose potential; you could equip warships with these guns and plausibly use them both against aircraft and against any unarmoured ships at useful distances. Even 127 and 128 mm calibres were disappointing against unarmoured ships, but still accepted as barely good-enough for a naval DP gun. The Americans successfully used 127 mm guns as DP guns in the secondary artillery (against small ships and up to light cruisers) and tertiary artillery (heavy AAA) role, whereas Germany stuck with a 150 mm secondary and 105 mm tertiary/heavy AAA separation that yielded less guns for either role. The American 127 mm DP guns were unusually quick-loading and the first calibre to receive the new VT (radio proximity) fuses. Naval heavy AAA and DP guns were hardly worth their effort as AAA guns if not equipped with such VT fuses.

The Royal Navy used 133 mm (5.25 inch) guns as DP guns, but they were much less successful than the American 127 mm guns due to more sluggish mounts, smaller maximum elevation and lower rate of fire.

150 mm and bigger calibre heavy AAA and super-heavy AAA existed in marginal quantities with examples in Germany and in Japan. IMO such calibres should be limited to firing shrapnel rounds against incoming skip bombers and torpedo bombers from a super destroyer's or light cruiser's main guns (138...155 mm calibres, not real DP guns). These guns were so big, bulky and expensive that there was simply no realistic case for them being cost-efficient in a land-base AAA role. They were unsuitable for 85...90° maximum elevation naval turret mounting, so their AAA niche was a secondary capability of shooting at incoming aircraft within their elevation range (~30°) that was commonly provided for anti-ship fires. The USN introduced a class of light cruisers which had true 155 mm DP guns, but that proved to be inefficient and unsuccessful.

Surface-to-air missiles: Let's face it. The missile tech, guidance and fusing was simply not mature enough by WW2, but the experiments and the experience with the leap in aircraft speeds possible with turbojets showed that surface-to-air missiles would replace heavy AAA after WW2.

 

So all in all, I see for the WW2 period three different sweet spots for light AAA calibres (20, 30 and 37...40 mm), each dependent on tactical niches and two sweet spots for heavy AAA calibres (88...90 and mostly 127/128 mm with 100...105 mm being a very AAA-biased DP compromise), separated in land-based heavy AAA and naval heavy AAA/DP guns. Without hindsight, I'd likely have preferred 20 mm, 40 mm and 75 mm plus cruisers using their main batteries to shoot shrapnel at skip bombers and torpedo bombers at pre-set distances.

- - - - - 

Fast forward to today: 

Shahed 136-class cruise missiles can fly at 15,000 ft, above effective 40 mm gun ceiling. They are barely in reach of 57 mm guns. A modern 76.2 anti-aircraft gun based on the widely-employed naval gun and its munitions can easily reach Shahed 136 at 15,000 ft, but would struggle to reach and hit Shaheed 238 (more expensive, faster, higher, shorter-ranged) at their 30,000 ft service ceiling. Warships can self-defend against such cheap missiles even with small calibres (20...57 mm), but bigger calibres (76.2 up to 130 mm) are much more useful for protecting  escorted ships due to their greater effective range.

We need defences against flying munitions after land-based air defences obsessed about shooting at platforms (except in training) for generations. Something small calibre (up to 2 cm) makes sense for very short lines of sight (around treetop altitude), fairly compact autocannons can wipe clean the sky up to about 10000 ft. We need cheap guided missiles or the (unmanned) fighter approach to deal with higher-than-15,000 ft munitions without breaking the bank (which is what Germany did trying to defend against rugged bombers at 27,000 ft with 8.8, 10.5 and 12.8 cm guns).

A use of 155 mm (gun-)howitzers (which are equivalent to WW2 15 cm heavy anti-air artillery muzzle energy) for shooting down some munitions with special proximity-fused HE shells (normal PROX fuses won't work) should be possible, but this should be a mere secondary task for 155 mm guns.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*:  No better gun in the 37...40 mm calibre range was deployed after the Bofors other than its own evolution, the somewhat longer-barrelled 40 mm Bofors of the Cold War. 35 mm guns appeared around 1970 and excelled with much better rates of fire, but 40 mm remained the smallest calibre for proximity fusing until at least the 1970's. I don't know when 35 mm became viable for proximity fusing.

**: In the end, the Soviets brought a successful 57 mm gun into service soon after WW2. This gun has a much higher muzzle velocity than the German 55 mm prototypes. The Soviets quickly gave it radar and computer fire control and it's now again in wartime use in the Russo-Ukrainian War, presumably without the radar and computer fire control.  It's mostly used as artillery, but would no doubt prove highly effective against cruise missiles if equipped with functioning automatic fire control and proximity-fused munitions. The West uses a Swedish 57 mm gun in naval context.  

***:  Germany understood this very, very late in the war. All that fuse-setting equipment was wasted because 88 mm AAA was about triple as deadly against 4-engine bombers with impact fusing, 105 mm about double as deadly and the 128 mm calibre gained very little from it.

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Naval drones (USVs) in the news

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Naval "drones" and motherships appear to experience a political breakthrough in the UK, carrying the hope for an affordable navy. 

There are a couple problems with this, including an important one that I didn't mention back in 2009 and probably wasn't clear-enough about in 2018:

The fuel economy improves with size. It's almost impossible to build a boat-sized (shorter than about 60 m waterline) naval drone that could cruise across the Atlantic at 18 kts even without the drag of a towed sonar array.

So either the mothership is in large part a fuel replenishment ship (and then accordingly hardly looking like a destroyer any more) or a drone-enriched naval force would be rather short-legged, for European waters. The latter case raises the question why one wouldn't follow a land-based approach rather than a mothership-based one.

 

Another problem is the issue of fixed costs, and it doesn't go away by magically deleting the crew. Some surface boat drones would still need expensive equipment (expensive munitions, towed sonar or radar) to be of much use. This means it would be sensible to provide a modicum of survivability, regardless of crew size zero. This modicum of survivability includes soft kill defences, at least some autocannon, a tactical radar even for a sonar-centric USV and so on. In the end, this would be rather expensive. An analogy: Some mere flying drones such as Global Hawk ended up being obscenely expensive, close to manned combat aircraft or a FAC.

Truly cheap "drones" Could be little more than decoys, preferably drones that are being towed (by escorted transport ships) most of the time. They could launch infrared and radio frequency obscuration, feature cheap radio frequency jammers, trigger torpedoes and mines with their signatures. They could become freely-moving decoys during combat and be towed 99% of the time, solving the fuel issue. They would be an enrichment for a convoy, but not a replacement for a frigate or destroyer. Most importantly, they could be towed by a cargo ship rather than be tethered to some mother(war)ship.

 

I do insist on my two paths:  

1. A ship that deploys "USV" drones mostly as decoys and would rather resemble an LPD or helicopter cruiser than a FFG or DDG*
2. A self-defending convoy of armed merchantmen making use of modular naval equipment 

The alternative is to stay very traditional and have a GP frigate, BUT there's no way how NATO could compete with China in a naval arms race with such an approach. The Japanese might be able to pull that off, while the South Koreans better pay more attention to land power and air defence than a naval arms race.

 

(All this being said, a USV for picket duty (x-band radar and optronics) with the endurance (fuel) issue solved would be a valuable substitute for AEW in the quest to get early warning against sea-skimming threats.)

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: I just found where I mentioned the fuel issue of boats before:

"convoys at sea would want to cruise at 15...25 kts, and I doubt that many small drones could achieve the necessary endurance to accompany a convoy at such cruise speeds. They would need to be recovered and refuelled all the time" 

/2018/01/modern-warships-ii-asw.html

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SatNav warfare

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So a satellite was found to be jamming GPS even though that wasn't its apparent purpose. 

This is the most powerful counter to satellite navigation purposes that exists, as I already wrote in Twitter.

 

The problem isn't the very weak signal of such jammers; it's that they're overhead. The best method for filtering jamming signals out is to ignore the signals on satellite navigation frequencies that are coming from the ground. You can do this with multi-antenna setups if you can tolerate their size:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/03/27/ukrainian-lives-hang-on-a-deadly-electronic-warfare-arms-race/

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/new-chinese-crpa-antenna-found-on-russian-shahed/

It's similar to the HF direction finder HF/DF from WW2: A radio wave coming from the right takes longer to an antenna to the left than to the right. The time lag can be used to identify the direction with a passive receiver. That's how passive radio direction-finding works, including radar warning receivers.

A jammer that's overhead just like the real satellite navigation service satellite defeats this.

Moreover, you can bring hundreds or thousands of tiny and really cheap satellites into low earth orbit with one-time pad encrypted communication with base station and that communication can be limited to overflights of your territory only (and from below). This almost guarantees nobody is going to mess with your control over such a fleet of jamming satellites. The jamming could be limited to certain areas, albeit those would almost necessarily be hundreds of kilometres wide.

- - - - -

There are alternatives to GPS. eLORAN is viable, but given up on. New advanced inertial measurement tech approaches satellite navigation accuracy, but is still low in technological readiness level. Large fleets of low earth orbit satellites such as Starlink's fleet can substitute for satellite navigation and at least match the jammers in signal strength, but legacy fleets may depend on satellite navigation themselves and legacy fleets don't use the frequencies that legacy satellite navigation receivers depend on.

 - - - - -

So what can be done about the jamming by satellite if we cannot cheaply or quickly replace legacy satellite navigation?

We can shoot down satellites, but that causes much debris in orbit and it costs millions per shot while the jammer may be a cheap cubesat. 

We should technically be able to defeat at least low earth orbit jammer satellites with high-powered lasers. We need the satellite tracking and passive radio frequency direction finding to discern which space object is jamming, track it, wait for an opportunity where no other non-hostile satellite would be affected and destroy it. The required power would necessitate quite large lasers and it would only be possible with clear sky - which is rare over Central Europe in wintertime, but the orbit would also lead over Australia's outback, Djibouti, Greek mountains, Spain's inland and Alps mountains. The problem is the required power of many megawatts. We'd likely have to combine a cluster of multiple lasers on one target to at least gain the laser ablation effect. A space-based weapon would be very expensive, centralised and thus be targeted itself. A Spanish or Australian site would be fairly safe, especially if protected by decoys, chaff projection in case of IRBM/SLBM attack and satellite navigation jamming itself. The same ground-based lasers could be used to deal with hostile earth observation satellites and even deal warning shots to non-hostile earth observation satellites of companies or governments that relay the data to hostiles. Another problem remains; satellite and generally space object tracking radars are big, expensive, stationary (other than those on ships) and could be targets to conventional-tipped IRBM/SLBM attacks if no others.

https://x.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/2063629144626225220?s=20

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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