But, but, but ... Red Sea!

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I recently came across the pro-hard kill BMD (= trying to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles) argument that goes like this:

The Houthis shot ballistic missiles at ships in the Red Sea, so we need to shoot them down.

 

This is illogical behaviour in two ways:

1) It's insufficient evidence that a particular soluiton (hard kill BMD at sea) is needed. Other countermeasures may be better and the war might be considered a bad choice in the first place.

2)  Hard kill BMD at sea DID NOT WORK in the Red Sea. I won't even bother checking whether any anti-ship ballistic missiles were stopped by hard kill. Hard kill BMD and all other military activity DID NOT PROTECT that sea lane. Traffic was reduced by 2/3 compared to pre-October 2023 average and is fluctuating with evidence (temporary collapse to about zero) that traffic comes to de facto stop if the Houthis want so.

 

The U.S. Navy is a land attack navy with transoceanic invasion capability. It is not a navy to keep sea lanes open for trade and it is not a navy for sea battles. They gave up escorting in the 90's and sea battle in the late 40's. The nuclear land attack component (SLBMs in SSBNs) is unusable. The conventional land attack via cruise missiles and carrier aviation is mostly relevant against poor and weak countries. The U.S. is learning that Iran is not weak enough to be a suitable target for bullying.

Most European navies are NOT land attack navies. French and UK SSBNs provide an unusable nuclear land attack capability, the French surface ships and UK's submarines have a small land attack capability with cruise missiles and both these countries have weak carrier aviation suitable for bombing much less defence-capable countries than Iran only. They could bomb countries such as Morocco, Haitior Kenya a bit.

All other European naval power is about keeping sea lanes open, albeit it would only suffice if the hostile forces are limited to the Russian ones (and not in the Black Sea or Gulf of Finland). Moreover, Russia would be capable of sallying auxiliary cruiser commerce raiders in the Pacific.

What I'm getting at here is this: The Americans built their hard kill BMD because they want to overcome the so-called "area denial" to get close enough for land attack and because their escorts (general purpose destroyers) protect very high value targets (the supercarriers and the largest amphibious warfare ships in the world). Meanwhile, European navies either use warships for cordoning (GIUK gap), for hunting down stray submarines in the first days of conflict (main activity in the Mediterranean), for sealing bottlenecks (Dover-Calais, Kattegatt, Gibraltar) and possibly for escorts (particularly if the war at sea is outside of European waters). The threat by ballistic and hypersonic anti-ship missiles is rather limited in these scenarios (in large part because European air forces would largely neutralise the Tu-95 threat). I assumed a SSGN's anti-ship missile salvo for my frigate concepts as the main air defence challenge, for example.

Europeans are not going to force a convoy into area denial waters. The Americans are failing at this now in the Mid East and have such forced convoys in their "PRC blockade against Taiwan" war games/war plans, but Europeans should IMO NOT force maritime traffic for Taiwan. Taiwan can be supplied with enough food and medical supplies by air and Europe should not needlessly make the PRC its enemy, for PRC throwing its land and air power weight into Europe is really the only way how we could lose against Russia considering the dismal state of the Russian military and economy these days.

 

It's stupid drone behaviour to assume that the American way of war is the only one that makes sense (despite them failing in so many wars!) and to be emulated by Europeans. The Americans are doing some things the way they do for reasons that are irrelevant to Europeans.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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