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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
