If you remember from my previous post I suggested that a fleet consisting of 13 frigates, 3 CVL, 5-6 tankers, and 4 RFA-operated assault ships struggles to provide a continuous offensive presence because we have to off-deck many of the required ASW helicopters onto the assault ships. There are many solutions to this problem. One is simply “more ships”. There are however, two other options that immediately spring to mind, namely CVF or LHD.
Larger Carrier (CVF)
Increasing the size of the airwing on the CVL from 20 aircraft to 30 allows the carrier to be dedicated to Sea Control aviation duties, including ASW. This relieves the burden on the amphibious ships and allows them to concentrate on supporting the landed troops.
Increasing the size still further to around the 40 aircraft mark allows us to embark many of the additional aircraft required for assault/support operations and removes the need for any aviation maintenance capability on the assault ships. This makes the assault ships even cheaper as they become simply lillypads for helicopter landing, takeoff, and refuel.
We also end up with a carrier that can do some serious damage if needed.
Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD)
The other option is to “bolt” the Sea Control Carrier onto the top of the assault ship to save money on crews and hulls. This yields a ship that can operate as either a Sea Control Carrier or an assault ship. It cannot easily do both at the same time as a flooded well deck and manuevering to launch landing craft would conflict with the need to manuever for winds to launch and recover jets. This means we would need more ships which negates the cost saving advantage.
That said, it is worth bearing in mind that four such ships could provide sustained defensive sea control near one’s home waters, or the ability to “surge” two ships forward for an offensive – with one tasked for sea control and the other as a true helicopter-carrying assault ship. The two on station would be sustained by the two back at port.
It then becomes a costing exercise to determine which is the most sensible avenue to pursue.
Conclusion
Given the original £2b figure per CVF, the choice is obvious. Increase the size of the aircraft carrier. Furthermore, by accepting possible gaps in sustained operations, we can reduce the number of carrier hulls to two.
This along with RFA-owned/operated amphibious assault ships is the way I belive the U.K. is headed. The need for a heavy amphibious assault is diminishing. The need for continuous presence and logistical support is increasing.
I therefore question the sale in 2011 of the RFA Largs Bay to Australia in favour of keeping our LPDs.
“Simon” is a tax-payer (annoyed about: the aircraft carrier debacle, and generally the way the U.K. is run) – okay I’m just a grumpy old man! I have a degree in aerospace engineering and work as a self-employed IT consultant. Unfortunately the bottom fell out of the defence industry when I graduated so I was left high-and-dry with a degree in a discipline considered unimportant by HMG. I’m just biding my time until Britain wants to rebuild her empire with imagination, ingenuity, and a nice hot cuppa.
This post appeared in its original formand was cross-posted by permission from Think Defence.
A more appropriate Falklands model for the Chinese?
If the Pentagon’s reading of China’s interest in “Falklands-style” campaigns of long-range power projection is accurate, the task of maintaining a U.S.-centric security order in East Asia may turn out to be more manageable than expected. But the PLA Navy cannot be counted on to dilute its efforts to the extent DoD now thinks plausible.
To this day, Britain’s 1982 campaign to recapture the Falkland Islands remains among the most relevant examples both of long-range maritime power projection with limited means, and of a weaker power using niche capabilities to complicate operational access and inflict significant damage on the opponent’s projection forces.
“The PLA Navy’s goal over the coming decades is to become a stronger regional force that is able to project power across the globe for high-intensity operations over a period of several months, similar to the United Kingdom’s deployment to the South Atlantic to retake the Falkland Islands in the early 1980s.”
The analogy as such is hardly new, of course, and has already spawned a small literature of its own, including Lyle Goldstein’s insightful piece in Survival and a thorough analysis by Christopher Yung. A more recent contribution by CDR Jim Griffin, USN in Proceedings makes many of the same arguments in a more implicit fashion. All three treatments suggest that the Falklands experience has considerable relevance for the PLAN in both strategic and war-fighting terms. What is new in the Pentagon report, however, is the rather one-dimensional spin it imparts to the PLAN’s adoption of the Falklands campaign as a potential paradigm for future operations.
If we accept DoD’s take on the analogy, we would expect that China will cast itself unambiguously in the role of the expeditionary power (i.e., Great Britain) and, over the next several decades, spare no efforts to attain at least a limited capability for sustained power projection over transoceanic distances. It is certainly true that this would serve the desire of many Chinese naval enthusiasts to climb the rungs of the global naval hierarchy, Felix Seidler’s discussionof which I find most useful. However, it is not yet clear that the Pentagon’s interpretation accurately reflects what Chinese strategists have in mind when they plan for “Falklands-style” campaigns.
As Robert Ross argues in his 2009 piece on “China’s Naval Nationalism,” a blue-water orientation is not a natural strategic choice for a continental power that faces multiple potential threat axes on land as well as from the sea. For such actors, access-denial strategies, broadly conceived, tend to provide a much better return on investment. Thus, to the extent that the operational requirements for access-denial and long-range power projection differ, the strong Mahanian tendency that is evident in the Chinese discourse about maritime strategy would seem to give rise to an additional diffusion of effort (brown/green-water and blue-water) within the more fundamental diffusion of effort between land and sea. (It should be noted here that, for all his insistence of control over maritime communications, such a course would have been utterly foreign to Mahan.)
In other words, given China’s current position and the many uncertainties it continues to face, any attempt at replicating the capability profile of a “Rank 3”navy [“conducting one major ‘out of area operation and (…) engaging in high-level naval operations in closer ocean areas” (Grove 1990: 238)] would amount to a distraction from its key strategic dilemmas. A transoceanic expeditionary capability, in particular, would almost certainly constitute a misinvestment of limited resources. In a very real sense, every yuan invested in dedicated long-range projection forces is a yuan not invested in the control over China’s immediate regional environment. And every Type 052D sailing the Mediterranean on anything other than a one-off port visit will mean several destroyers not sailing the West Pacific.
Of course, this is not to say that China won’t do its potential opponents the favor of going down this risky path. Speaking in broad historical terms, rising continental powers do it all the time – and suffer the consequences. But Goldstein’s and Yung’s works on the PLA’s engagement with the Falklands experience suggest that PLA planners have so far emphasized an “Argentina Plus” approach that combines the far more compatible paradigms of robust access-denial and regional power-projection, and may continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
If such is the case, there will still be more than enough to write about in the Pentagon’s next Annual Report to Congress. As far as analogies go, a much more formidable Argentina that chooses to threaten U.S. interests where it is strong seems to me a far more worrying prospect than a cut-rate Great Britain that is all over the map.
Michael Haas is a Graduate Research Assistant at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Germany. The views presented here are his alone and do not reflect an institutional perspective.
Last week an article came out about state-sponsored hacking that had nothing to do Edward Snowden or the NSA. Bloomberg News detailed the ongoing hacking of U.S. defense contractor QinetiQ. Two paragraphs in the piece particularly struck me:
“The [China-based] spies also took an interest in engineers working on an innovative maintenance program for the Army’s combat helicopter fleet. They targeted at least 17 people working on what’s known as Condition Based Maintenance, which uses on-board sensors to collect data on Apache and Blackhawk helicopters deployed around the world, according to experts familiar with the program.
The CBM databases contain highly sensitive information including the aircrafts’ individual PIN numbers, and could have provided the hackers with a view of the deployment, performance, flight hours, durability and other critical information of every U.S. combat helicopter from Alaska to Afghanistan, according to Abdel Bayoumi, who heads the Condition Based Maintenance Center at the University of South Carolina.”
A remote diagnostic system: safe and secure…
While it’s unclear whether the hackers succeeded in accessing or exploiting the data, it is clear that they saw the information as valuable. And rightly so – systems such as condition based maintenance, remote diagnostics, and remote C2 systems are designed to reduce the workload burden on front-line “warfighters”, or the logistics burden on their platforms, by shifting the location of the work to be done elsewhere. This can also facilitate the use off-site processing power for more in-depth analysis of historical data sets and trends for such things as predicting part failures. The Army is not alone in pursuing CBM. The U.S. Navy has integrated CBM into its Arleigh Burke-class DDG engineering main spaces, meaning “ship and shore engineers have real maintenance data available, in real time, at their fingertips.”
However, the very information that enables this arrangement and the benefits it brings also creates risk. Every data link or information conduit created for the benefit of an operator means a point of vulnerability that can be targeted, and potentially exploited – whether revealing or corrupting potentially crucial information. This applies not only for CBM, but more dramatically for the C2 circuits for unmanned systems. I’m by no means the first to point out that CBM, et al, means tempting targets. UAV hacking has garnered a great deal of attention in the past year, but the Bloomberg article confirms an active interest exists in hijacking the enabling access of lower profile access points.
This raises several questions for CBM and remote diagnostics, not least of which is “is it worth it?” At what point does the benefit derived from the remote access become outweighed by the risks of that access being compromised? Given the sophistication of adversary hacking, should planners operate from the starting assumption that the data will be exploited and limit the extent of its use to non-critical systems? If operating under this assumption, should “cyber defense” attempts to protect this information be kept to a minimum so as not to incur unnecessary additional costs? Or should the resources be devoted to make the access as secure as the C2 systems allowing pilots to fly drones in Afghanistan from Nevada?
Scott is a former active duty U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer, and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He now serves as an officer in the Navy Reserve and civilian writer/editor at the Pentagon. Scott is a graduate of Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval War College.
Note: The views expressed above are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their governments, militaries, or the Center for International Maritime Security.
Someone recently turned the tables on me with a question about what “military effect” I was actually after when I argue for the concept of a Sea Control Carrier. What follows is an attempt to indicate the minimum capabilities of such a platform necessary to achieve any realistic sustained defence or offence. It’s not really based on a known threat, but rather a “theoretical” nation [albeit using Royal Navy models] with aspirations of international reach and influence based on a series of requirements to “fly the flag”, protect an area of investment, or launch 3Cdo [3rd Commando Brigade] into hostile territory (ish). It assumes threats from land, sea and air in all circumstances.
After some careful consideration I have come up with the following requirements:
1.To provide 24-7 Combat Air Patrol (CAP – lead and wingman continually airborne).
2.To provide 24-7 Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW – two helicopters continually in the air “dipping” and deploying sonobuoys)
3.To provide 24-7 Airborne Early Warning (AEW- a single asset continually monitoring the horizon for incoming threats)
My desire for 24-7 CAP is because I do not believe that Deck-Launched Intercept (DLI) will give a fast enough or far-reaching enough response in the future (see graph below). In addition, it “sizes” the requirement such that the ship can swing-role for rapid-response air support. The ASW capability is assumed to work in conjunction with a towed-array frigate. Now let’s work some rough math…
An enemy incoming at Mach 0.9 and a Deck-Launched and CAP Intercept. At point of detection (200km) both aircraft accelerate as fast as possible giving the enemy aircraft a massive advantage when up against the DLI jet starting from zero knots. Current technologies are probably about “break even” in terms of AMRAAM intercept distance and anti-ship missiles, however this is likely to change.
Flight Hours and Air Crew
The above requirements mean 48 flight-hours for the jets, which we’ll assume require 25 man-maintenance-hours per flight-hour (1200 maintenance hours) which equates to a minimum of 150 man-days. Likely to be more if the aircraft is Low Observable. Similarly, there is a total of 72 flight-hours for the helicopters which we’ll assume require 10 man-maintenance-hours per flight-hour (720 maintenance hours) which equates to a minimum of 90 man-days.
A total maintenance team of 240 men, along with around 60 further pilots and systems operators and another 10% for “management”. A total of about 330 airgroup personnel. Minimum.
It is my impression that a ~27,000 tonne, 20 aircraft, CVL can provide this with 8 jets, 8 ASW helicopters and 4 AEW helicopters.
However, I am asking for this airgroup to undertake three two-hour CAP sorties per day, per aircraft, forever (well at least for a couple of months). Regardless of how hard I try to push my head into the sand it simply isn’t going to happen. History has shown carrier air wings to deliver between one and two sorties per day over a sustained period so perhaps we can settle for 1.5 sorties per day and 16-18 jets.
The point here is that a small “Cavour-sized” carrier can only deliver about half of my requirement. In other words it can deliver the “jet” component, or daytime cover, or single aircraft CAP and ASW. Any CVL will therefore need to be supplemented with enough escort/support ships to sustain the required ASW capability.
The Fleet
Following from this conceptual CVL I’d now like to examine how the fleet could operate to provide sustained presence, defence, and ultimately offence. Much of the numbers following are for illustrative purposes only, again representing a “theoretical” nation:
Presence
We’ll begin with frigates. Thirteen of them. 3-4 of them in deep maintenance/refit and the remainder providing 85% availability. This gives us eight active ships, with two assigned to each of four key locations around the globe – rotating back-to-back – operating independently, policing, and flying the flag.
In addition we’ll need a number of tankers to sustain their presence.
Defence
This is the real point of this section. This is the ability to supplement the active frigate as local tensions rise in one of the four key locations. This supplement increases the area of control/dominance from a ~20km to ~200km radius using the Sea Control Carrier above.
We therefore require a sustained sea control capability, which can only come about with at least three Sea Control Carriers.
Furthermore, we have already identified that the CVL above cannot sustain the level of aviation that is required to totally dominate the area. We can assume that the CVL can support the jets and AEW capability, but we need other ships to operate the ASW squadron. Well, we already have a frigate with an embarked helicopter and in order to sustain any kind of operation we are going to need one of the tankers on station for much of the time.
This therefore puts the onus on the tanker to embark the remaining seven helicopters with hangar facilities for at least three of them. This is hardly a tanker. The ship that fits the bill is probably more akin to RFA Argus or an aviation optimised Bay class. This means dragging another ship along in order to provide sustained control of the sea.
We now have a frigate, a tanker, a carrier and an aviation heavy support ship on station.
Offence
Obviously the above task group provides a fair level of offensive air power, however, here I mean “offence” in the form of amphibious assault.
RFA Argus
I’ll keep this relatively simple and just suggest that we need to sustain a single commando battalion in theatre or launch a heavy assault with almost all of 3Cdo. To this end we will need four amphibious assault ships all similar to the Rotterdam/Galicia design. These ships would generally be operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) with a small contingent of Royal Marines so the assumption is that four such ships will provide three operational, one for each of 40, 42 and 45 Commando [battalions].
Again, the point is not to discuss force balance or numbers, but simply to indicate that these ships could double up as the aviation heavy support ships as required above.
All-out war would see all eight frigates on the front line operating the majority of the ASW squadron, therefore freeing up space on the assault ships to operate utility/lift helicopters.
Total Approximate Numbers: Ships 13 frigates (8 available, 4 tasks)
3 Sea Control Carriers (2 available, 1 task)
5-6 tankers (4 available, one per task)
4 assault ships (3 available, one per Commando)
Aircraft for Sea Control
16-18 jets on the carrier
4 AEW helicopters on the carrier
1 ASW helicopter on the frigate
1 ASW helicopter on the tanker
6 ASW helicopters on the assault ship operating as the aviation heavy support ship
Conclusion
What I have tried to do here is provide a minimal fleet design. It is not a fantasy fleet, it is simply an indication of how a fleet could be built to provide various levels of capability. The use of a small carrier keeps the cost minimal, but at a high price in terms of overall effectiveness. We are severely limited with our aviation assets because we have to “off deck” much of our sea control ASW squadron onto tankers and assault ships that would otherwise be operating utility/lift helicopters.
This means that our sustained offensive presence deploys almost zero utility/lift helicopters because the aviation space on the amphib is being used to operate the majority of the ASW squadron.
A larger carrier would be better, which I will cover in a second post entitled “CVF or LHD”.
“Simon” is a tax-payer (annoyed about: the aircraft carrier debacle, and generally the way the U.K. is run) – okay I’m just a grumpy old man! I have a degree in aerospace engineering and work as a self-employed IT consultant. Unfortunately the bottom fell out of the defence industry when I graduated so I was left high-and-dry with a degree in a discipline considered unimportant by HMG. I’m just biding my time until Britain wants to rebuild her empire with imagination, ingenuity, and a nice hot cuppa.
This post appeared in its original form and was cross-posted by permission from Think Defence.
If you remember from my previous post I suggested that a fleet consisting of 13 frigates, 3 CVL, 5-6 tankers, and 4 RFA-operated assault ships struggles to provide a continuous offensive presence because we have to off-deck many of the required ASW helicopters onto the assault ships. There are many solutions to this problem. One is simply “more ships”. There are however, two other options that immediately spring to mind, namely CVF or LHD.
