Are blue water conflicts a thing of the past?

[Gorshkov]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

yes 550 was taken in the 1960's however the one area that became renown for its strategic importance was on the doorstep of the USSR the arctic, yes you may have wide open ports on both oceans but the USSR had shields so while we could fire missiles plainly into your harbours you couldnt really do the same because you would have to come around an island or past a radar station at some time making your ships seen....
In all the soivets could afford to loose a few, and in the 1980's typhoon stepped up the soviets game, here was a submarine capible of launching its payload without leaving dock, murmansk in summer is a hard port to get into, but in winter its even harder.

I think you can't differentiate between "global nuclear conflict" and "conventional open ocean battles". I write here about the letter all the time. In such battles submarines are not normally involved as a first line combatants.
Of course, nuclear boomers are the best deterrence platforms but note that US Navy also had similar capabilities. Simply Soviet SSBN's free access to quite safe arctic waters was compensated by US boomers very secure station areas on the open oceans.

Originally Posted by Kapitan

the pacific area has a fair amount of naval bases while yes there are more littoral ships you got to take into consideration that even a burke class aegis system can be over whelmed, your 1 DDG in the sea of okhotsk with a dozen soviet patrol craft carrying missiles your ship will swat down 2/3 of the incoming missiles but you couldnt take them all and you have no where to hide simply because your now trapped in the soviets ring.

Only if Burke's AEW helo can't spot your littoral corvettes earlier and enable DDG to sink them with TLAMs or Harpoons first!

Originally Posted by Kapitan

Take the oscar class they were designed to go out in packs and sink enamy carriers one is capible of killing a carrier the reason 3 or 4 go out at a time simple over whelm enemy systems even with 0 (?) or more missiles flying about you aint gunna get all of them.

Yes, Oscars posed sole real threat to American CBGs screened by AEGIS ships. Unfortunately there were only several Oscars available in 1980s. Remaining Soviet SSGNs were already outdated at that time. You know: surface missile launch (Julliet and Echo, maybe except those fitted with relatively modern SS-N-12) and very short range SLCMs (Charlie, Papa) were good for sinking Chinese Navy galleons but not US Navy ships! :rotfl:

Originally Posted by Kapitan

a ship is only as good as the captain and crew, could you fit a DDG up the neva river after a fast patrol craft probably not, just because the nanchuka and trantu craft dont look big doesnt mean to say they are not in anyway un capible of sinking a ship the size of a DDG.l

Theoretically they can but practically it is very hard or even impossible. Look at First Gulf War: US Navy and Royal Navy hadn't any troubles with sinking all Iraqi small coastal warships using heloes armed with anti-ship missiles.
Besides we talk here about blue water engagements. There is no place for missile corvettes in such battles...

[SeaQueen]

I don't know if this adds anything to this discussion, but I figured I'd just say it.

It's important to recognize that most naval discourse in public forums such as Congressional hearings and what not is not about what the present-day threat actually is.

Due to the long lead-times and great expense of shipbuilding, the Navy is pretty much forced to meet present threats with whatever it has at the present time. They really can't change how many ships are in the present day Navy and basically crosses it's fingers that the admirals of yesteryear were able to convince Congress to build enough ships or more for them to do what they currently need to do. In this sense, the Navy is used to making do.

Instead, the Navy generally talks about worst-case projections of a threat some time 15-20 years in the future so that it can justify building what it thinks it needs to meet the future projected threat. The future is, of course, subject to great uncertainty and nobody antipated the Soviet union collapsing as rapidly as it did. So, even though at the time they were talking about Oscars being a major problem they probably weren't, because the Navy wasn't really talking about present day Oscar force. The Navy anticipated that the Oscar's present construction rate would be the same or greater in the future, hence their numbers would be far larger, they would need more ships and the associated construction budget to build them.

Of course, once the Soviet Union collapsed, construction slowed and stopped. Once the next Congressional budget cycle came around, the Navy had to re-justify it's construction budget again based on a new projected threat which maybe didn't include so many Oscars.

In this sense, one should always take whatever the Navy says to be the most dangerous threat with a grain of salt. They don't really know, they're only ever making their best guess about the future based on what is known.

From the perspective of a wargamer, though, this means that when reading in the news, Proceedings, Surface Warfare, or whatever, and trying to imagine what was going through the heads of the admirals that are writing there, you shouldn't ask yourself, "In 1988 the Soviets has N Oscars and our CVBG looked like this, how would the battle play out?" Instead, you have to ask, "In 1988 they had N Oscars and by 2008 they'd have M more. How would the battle play out?" That really says something about how Admirals think when talking in public about naval matters. Looking at it through that lens, you'd also have to imagine a navy with a whole fleet of Seawolf submarines and various other radical differences from what we actually have today. That was the time of the Lehman's 600 ship navy. Today we have around 300 ships.

In light of that consideration, Oscars look a lot scarier, our Navy looked a lot beefy-er and the whole game would have been something totally different.

Originally Posted by Gorshkov

Yes, Oscars posed sole real threat to American CBGs screened by AEGIS ships. Unfortunately there were only several Oscars available in 1980s. Remaining Soviet SSGNs were already outdated at that time. You know: surface missile launch (Julliet and Echo, maybe except those fitted with relatively modern SS-N-12) and very short range SLCMs (Charlie, Papa) were good for sinking Chinese Navy galleons but not US Navy ships!

[Chock]

I wouldn't rule out future Blue Water conflicts at all, and you can be sure the Navies of the world will not do so either. Sure tiny diesel subs might be the sexy stars of the moment, particularly when the US and Iran are rattling sabres over the Gulf. But in years to come, with a resurgent Russia, China on the up, the US having to protect it's finger in various oil pies and all the other players too, at some point the sabre rattling may go to the next level as resources dwindle and the protaganists have to make a choice between fading away and making a move to stay on top.

Not a nice scenario, but certainly one planners for future procurement of weaponry have to consider.

Chock