Military buildup

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The mere thought of Argentinas SSKs gave the British fleet kittens, heck if a dozy Argie engineer hadn't have put the umbilical cable to the San Luis's torpedoes in backwards then we could have lost at least two warships to her.
The Santa Fe also acted as a deterrent to our fleet until she was crippled by a DC attack and forced to surrender, and she was an old Balao class.

Found this from Wikipedia:

San Luis was free to patrol and this caused the British task force to be on the defensive at all times. The British expended most of their ordnance on suspected contacts, most of which were false contacts caused by the ocean's many anomalies. The British ships present to counter the Argentine submarine threat were: one carrier, eleven destroyers, five nuclear-powered submarines, one diesel submarine, and over 25 helicopters. Even though no ships were sunk by the San Luis, this is an impressive amount of ships to be tied up by one diesel powered submarine. This is more impressive considering that she was not even hit by the British force. —Lt Cdr Steven R Harper USN

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The mere thought of Argentinas SSKs gave the British fleet kittens, heck if a dozy Argie engineer hadn't have put the umbilical cable to the San Luis's torpedoes in backwards then we could have lost at least two warships to her.

She made a torpedo attack on a sub contact as well with a Mk37.

The Santa Fe also acted as a deterrent to our fleet until she was crippled by a DC attack and forced to surrender, and she was an old Balao class.

The Brits tried to send a SSN after her but Conquer failed to get the message.

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

Belgrano's escorts didn't have any demi-decent sonar. Though I agree with the point that surface vessels are more vulnerable to subs than they like to admit.

INS Kukuri was equipped with a decent sonar and was taken out by a Down the Throat shot with a homing torpedo. INS Kirpan almost suffered the same fate put put the torpedo in to a stern chase and ran it to exhaustion.

The ROKS Cheonan didn't have a bad sonar but it wasn't good either. Its was a middle of the road type derived from the FFG-7's sonar and had a max range of 8 nmi.

[Oberon]

Indeed, and she fired a SST-4 torpedo at HMS Brilliant or Yarmouth, and missed. Then later she fired another two at HMS Arrow and Alacrity, one of which didn't leave the tube and the other went wide. That's four ships that if one Argentinian sailor hadn't wired the umbilical up wrong might well have been sunk.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

She made a torpedo attack on a sub contact as well with a Mk37.

The Brits tried to send a SSN after her but Conquer failed to get the message.

I didn't know she had Mk37s, I thought most of her gear was German. I wonder what the contact was...could have been Onyx with her duff bow tube.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Any good books on the naval side of the Falklands conflict? Just so I can add them to the ever-growing list of other titles I don't have time to read.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I didn't know she had Mk37s, I thought most of her gear was German. I wonder what the contact was...could have been Onyx with her duff bow tube.

Probably from the kit we sold them for the GUPPIES. Most likely it was a whale, but who knows. Both sides are still very 'hush hush' about the sub ops down there.

[TLAM Strike]

H.M.S. Spartan and H.M.S. Splendid Operations.
6
The Spartan and the Splendid sailed for the
South Atlantic on 1 April and arrived ten days later. To enforce the Maritime Exclusion Zone the
11 Spartan patrolled near Port Stanley to watch for reinforcements. In the period from 12 April to 30 April
on four consecutive days, she observed the Argentine Landing Ship, Tank AR.A Cabo San Antonio
conducting mine laying operations. The Splendid was assigned to patrol between the coast of
Argentina and the Falkland Islands.
When the naval task force arrived, the Spartan and Splendid moved to new patrol areas; to the
northeast and northwest of the Falkland Islands, respectively. On 29 April the Spartan gained visual
contact with three Argentine Type 42 destroyers* and reported this to Northwood.

From a US Navy War College Paper. Looks like if the RN wanted the war to be bloodier they could have easily succeeded.

*I assume the author means one or more Type 42 plus one or more warships for a total of three as the ARA only had 2 Type 42s.

From the ARA perspective:

AR.A San Luis Operations.
2
The San Luis departed for patrol during the second week of April
and conducted one continuous patrol during the war. She was to patrol north of the Falkland Islands
and attack British ships as her rules of engagement permitted. She claims a total of three attacks, two
of which used the German-made SST-4 anti-surface ship torpedo and the other used an American-
made Mark 37 antisubmarine torpedo. The first approach, on 1 May, was on medium sized warships
with helicopters as identified by sonar only. These warships were the H.M.S. Brilliant and the H.M.S.
Yarmouth. The attack was unsuccessful and the San Luis was counterattacked for 20 hours with
depth charges and at least one torpedo.
3
10The second approach, on 8 May, was against a submarine. Twelve minutes after firing the
Mark 37 torpedo an explosion was heard from the bearing of the target The British report no losses of
submarines and thus the torpedo may have impacted against the bottom.
The final approach, on 10 May, also done without the periscope, was on a pair of destroyers:
the H.M.S. Arrow and H.M.S. Alacrty. One torpedo was fired at the ships. This attack was
unsuccessful, but a small explosion was heard on the correct bearing 6 minutes after firing the torpedo.
Later, when the Arrow was retrieving her towed countermeasure *it was damaged - conclusive proof
that British electronic countermeasures had outwitted the SST-4's homing device.'
4
An attack on the
second ship was not conducted since the distance had opened too quickly and the ship was now out of
range.
Problems with the torpedoes and shipboard torpedo systems contributed to the three misses.
The fire control computer on San Luis was out of service and the fire control solution had to be
calculated manually. Additionally, the wires broke on all the weapons shortly after firing which took
away the ability to steer the weapon after the time of fire. These problems and the opinion that the
torpedoes were fired with the submarine too deep, had direct influence on the outcome of each shot.
5
There is also evidence that the SST-4 torpedoes were not properly prepared in the torpedo room
before loading the weapons in the torpedo tubes. This error did not allow the torpedoes to arm
themselves after time of fire. If this is the case then all shots with these weapons would only be able to
damage a target with the kinetic force of the torpedo ramming the target There would be no explosion,
just a strike like that of a battering ram. The reports of a torpedo bouncing off the hull of a British ship
and the damage, but not total destruction, to Arrow's countermeasure sled are consistent with this
thesis. In both cases, if the torpedo had exploded the damage would have been much more severe;
the sled would have been totally destroyed and the ships sunk. The small explosions heard by the
Argentines may have just been the noise of the collision between the torpedoes and their targets.

Link

Got to disagree with you on your point about resource wars being fictional. Japan's expansion in the 1930's and into the 40's was ALL about resources and access to them. It was no fiction that they needed access to oil, rubber etc. to continue their imperialist desires and that desire itself was due to the fact that Japan was largely shut out of resource trading by the Western Powers whose own imperial desires had led them to dominate most of Asia in order to gain the resources they needed to feed that desire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_...es_and_markets

Japan's aim was autarky, a totally self contained and prosperous economic system where there would be no requirement for foreign involvement. Resources were only part of the picture as was elimination of European colonial holdings in east Asia and a military/cultural requirement to dominate. You missed the latter part of my statement, that other factors are always included in so-called resource wars and frequently the resources are not the root cause but rather an incidental benefit. Had oil and rubber alone been Japan's goal, Pearl Harbor made no sense since Roosevelt would never have gone to war to save the Netherlands East Indies.

Germany's economic wealth in the later part of the 1930's was also deficit based, which meant that it was funded by loans which, in a number of historian's opinions, Hitler never intended to repay. Going to way was one way of doing that. In the four years before 1939, wages, and prices were fixed by the government and violators were interred in concentration camps. Their massive unemployment problems in the early 30's were solved in part by removing Jewish workers from the economy and replacing them with unemployed non-Jews.

The existence of deficit spending had more to do with the unhealthy taxation policy of Germany inherited from the federal Second Reich and the Republic. Until hostilities broke out Germany could easily service its debts and no unforeseen financial crisis was pending so the level of government spending remained significant. As for Hitler intending to default, we don't know since he never got the chance. That Germany defaulted on reparations payments, considered unfair and imposed at gun point, does not automatically indicate non-payment of legitimate debts.

The use of slave labour was an net economic drain and a bad idea for reasons that had nothing to do with the human cost. Slavery doesn't work in free market industrial economies and the Nazi pogrom against the Jews was entirely self-defeating from an economic standpoint alone. Also, Germany's labour shortage was exacerbated by a bloated Party apparatus and Civil Service that absorbed huge numbers of potential workers and the total failure to utilize German women in industry in any systemic way. Standing polices and inefficiencies, some endemic to the regime, others inherited from Wiemar created the conditions where slavery seemed to provide a quick fix.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by magicstix

It's no secret what China is up to. They're building a blue water navy specifically for challenging the USA in their obsession with Taiwan.. They're already starting to throw their weight around with their neighbors to enforce other policy goals like ownership of the South China Sea. This leads to all the regional powers wanting to build up their militaries to counter the Chinese threat.

Why china needs us:
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2...a.needs.us.cnn

[Marcantilan]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Probably from the kit we sold them for the GUPPIES. Most likely it was a whale, but who knows. Both sides are still very 'hush hush' about the sub ops down there.

Along with Fatty, we wrote an essay about ARA San Luis war patrol, which Neal published in 2008 Submarine Almanac.

We pointed there that problems with SST-4s are not related with backward wiring or such (in fact, Telefunken repaired ALL Argentine torpedoes FOR FREE after the war). Also, that a Mk.37 were fired to an unknown contact, on May 8 1982, that was most probably a school of fish.

To stay in the case, I agree with the view that a submarine is not a power projection weapon. Is just a sea-denial assest, and thus, its use is limited to it: planes could fly above a submarine, armies could move inland near a shore where the submarine is hiding, submarines could not conduct visits to other ships and so on. Even that, the redeployment speed of a SSK is not great, this its strategic value is limited.

Yep, submarines are probably the most cost-effective assest for any navy, but have in mind that you could not have a navy only with subs.

Why china needs us:

I think this is bull, the problem is that professional USA and Europe pay themselves far to much and prop this up with borrowing.

[magicstix]

Originally Posted by sidslotm

I think this is bull, the problem is that professional USA and Europe pay themselves far to much and prop this up with borrowing.

Agreed. China only needs us until they can get rid of us, which they're actively trying to do by attempting to make the dollar lose its reserve currency status.

They're also being very sneaky about buying US debt, they aren't holding it, they're using it to buy physical assets as fast as they can so they can slowly remove their vulnerability to the dollar, at which point, they won't care if the price collapses.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Marcantilan

To stay in the case, I agree with the view that a submarine is not a power projection weapon. Is just a sea-denial assest, and thus, its use is limited to it: planes could fly above a submarine, armies could move inland near a shore where the submarine is hiding, submarines could not conduct visits to other ships and so on. Even that, the redeployment speed of a SSK is not great, this its strategic value is limited.

Yep, submarines are probably the most cost-effective assest for any navy, but have in mind that you could not have a navy only with subs.

I think that is a very common mistake. With the Ohio SSGNs we will start to see a major shift in how submarines operate. For example they can transport over sixty SEALs or Force Recon Marines. They have 154 UGM-109 missiles (about 1/2 of the number that was fired in the 1991 Gulf War) and can carry surveillance UAVs (same as the Jimmy Carter deployed over Yeonpyeong island). This is on a submarine converted from another role, not one purposely designed for it.

There really are not any major technical issues with building a submarine to carry troops or fighter aircraft. Such things were explored just after WWII, the carrying of troops was not seen as useful beyond SOF missions since any war was assumed to be a massive WWIII type scenario with tens of thousands of troops and VTOL aircraft were still mostly on the drawing board.

[mapuc]

Later on this night, the danish tv, is gonna show a interview, with the former ambassador to USA. He say that before 2020 USA have gone bankrupt and to prevent that, USA have to borrow from China.

He even say that USA have to give political confession to China.

Wonder how far USA a willing to go?

Markus

[magicstix]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

I think that is a very common mistake. With the Ohio SSGNs we will start to see a major shift in how submarines operate. For example they can transport over sixty SEALs or Force Recon Marines. They have 154 UGM-109 missiles (about 1/2 of the number that was fired in the 1991 Gulf War) and can carry surveillance UAVs (same as the Jimmy Carter deployed over Yeonpyeong island). This is on a submarine converted from another role, not one purposely designed for it.

There really are not any major technical issues with building a submarine to carry troops or fighter aircraft. Such things were explored just after WWII, the carrying of troops was not seen as useful beyond SOF missions since any war was assumed to be a massive WWIII type scenario with tens of thousands of troops and VTOL aircraft were still mostly on the drawing board.

A submarine on the surface is a dead submarine. There will never be a submarine that carries aircraft.