oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Nov 18, 2021 14:18:09 GMT
All good posts. Keep it up. It's a great diversion for me right now and you are keeping me sane. 
One more point to consider in favor of Ascension or Diego Garcia.
I would discount the sudden close range strike on either Island.
Why? Because Soviet SSBN SOP was based on "The Bastion" NOT ocean roaming hiding place of Western SSBNs.
The Delta SSBN equipped with SS-N-8 missiles gave the Soviet Union the potential even to launch attacks on the United States from home waters in the Barents Sea. The Northern Fleet came to define the Barents Sea (and later the Sea of Okhotsk) as closed areas for these SSBNs. These ‘Bastions’ became heavily defended by attack submarines, surface vessels and air power.
The strategic nuclear deterrent submarines and the Bastion Concept came to be recognized as the centerpiece of Russia’s second strike capability.
Even when the Soviets were relying on a fleet of The Yankee class, the first true Soviet SSBN, despite the earlier Hotel class. Combined with SS-N-6 missiles, the Yankee SSBNs, which became operational in 1967, had an approximate 2500 km range which allowed them to patrol at great distance from the US coasts in the mid-Atlantic.
Why? Because the Soviets knew Nato ASW forces had an unacceptable probability of tracking and eliminating their early, very noisy boomers.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Nov 18, 2021 15:09:48 GMT
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Nov 18, 2021 16:08:05 GMT
Never heard of the Blue Water until your post my friend. Took a quick look up. Ten kiliton Warhead and a range of 55 miles (89 km) tells me it is a tac nuke and not really a good fit for the UK's major war deterrent or (God Forbid) counter strike weapon.
Am I missing something here?
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Nov 18, 2021 16:10:54 GMT
Never heard of the Blue Water until your post my friend. Took a quick look up. Ten kiliton Warhead and a range of 55 miles (89 km) tells me it is a tac nuke and not really a good fit for the UK's major war deterrent or (god Forbid) counter strike weapon.
Am I missing something here?
No but it was a British design and not a American design. |
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Nov 18, 2021 16:43:14 GMT
Never heard of the Blue Water until your post my friend. Took a quick look up. Ten kiliton Warhead and a range of 55 miles (89 km) tells me it is a tac nuke and not really a good fit for the UK's major war deterrent or (god Forbid) counter strike weapon.
Am I missing something here?
No but it was a British design and not a American design. I see your point.
The way I see UK indigenous ICBM programs, the Brit's sold their souls to the devil with SkyBolt. The adoption of the alternate Polaris sealed their fate. How many times do nations have to be burned by relying on the US? When you try to have national defense on the cheap you are making a huge mistake. General Horner USAF of Op Desert Shield/Storm was telling his Saudi counterpart God's Own Truth when he advised him to never depend on the US for the defense of your nation.
"All it takes is ONE Election and every agreement you have with the US is not worth the paper it is written on."
And as I see it NOTHING has changed.
I am an unapologetic American Nationalist/Patriot but I don't lie to myself or to the people I respect like you folks here. Enough said.  |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Nov 18, 2021 16:45:27 GMT
No but it was a British design and not a American design.
"All it takes is ONE Election and every agreement you have with the US is not worth the paper it is written on." Never trust a American president, after 4 ore 8 years a new one can change everything. The British have learn that several times i think. |
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Nov 18, 2021 17:26:27 GMT
"All it takes is ONE Election and every agreement you have with the US is not worth the paper it is written on." Never trust a American president, after 4 ore 8 years a new one can change everything. The British have learn that several times i think. The Brits my friend, should really know better. After all they are passed masters of the same betrayals.
Lord Palmerston 1784–1865
British statesman; Prime Minister, 1855–8, 1859–65
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
speech, House of Commons, 1 March 1848
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Nov 18, 2021 22:10:05 GMT
Never trust a American president, after 4 ore 8 years a new one can change everything. The British have learn that several times i think. The Brits my friend, should really know better. After all they are passed masters of the same betrayals.
Lord Palmerston 1784–1865
British statesman; Prime Minister, 1855–8, 1859–65
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
speech, House of Commons, 1 March 1848
Except that sometime between 1919 and 1945 Britain forgot that lesson. 
It doesn't mean that Britain or any other country is an unreliable ally. Just that if interests cease to be mutual then both/all sides should realise that the alliance is being undermined by circumstance. If an old ally becomes a bigger potential threat than an old rival then its likely that the alliance will weaken. Not saying that an intelligent leader would plan to back-stab an ally as that would both cause resentment and make your nation look especially unreliable. But if you can't modify the changes that weaken the mutual benefits the alliance brings then its going to falter.
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Post by simon darkshade on Nov 19, 2021 0:47:17 GMT
Blue Water is completely beside the point, being a short range battlefield missile.
The threat to tiny island bases is not an SLBM, but SSN launched cruise missiles or an SS-N-16 coming in from very short range at Mach 1.5. The Soviets had a number of options not limited to SSBNs.
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Nov 19, 2021 13:20:36 GMT
Blue Water is completely beside the point, being a short range battlefield missile. The threat to tiny island bases is not an SLBM, but SSN launched cruise missiles or an SS-N-16 coming in from very short range at Mach 1.5. The Soviets had a number of options not limited to SSBNs. Simon to the best of my memory a cruise missile, especially soviet ones of the cold war, could be destroyed by the same systems used against attack aircraft. So a fairly rudimentary air defense would provide enough protection to the island base to place in doubt the chances for a successful decapitation strike by cruise missiles. We know now just how risk adverse the Soviet leadership was.
Now to the SS-N-16. It was an ASW weapons with a parachute retarded nuclear depth charge. Seems like a very poor choice to take out siloed ICBMs to me.
Simon what am I missing here?
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Post by simon darkshade on Nov 20, 2021 5:21:56 GMT
The British only had rudimentary systems - Rapier and Bloodhound - with the former lacking all-weather capacity until 1979.
Neither of these was suited to defence against cruise missiles, with Bloodhound being suited to high altitude bombers and Rapier being a low altitude, short range Bofors replacement.
Rapier's radar has a range of 15km and it has a reaction time of 6 seconds from detection to missile launch and a flight time to its maximum range of 8.2km in 13 seconds. A swarm of P-500s coming it at Mach 3 is going to get inside that envelope quickly and Bloodhound doesn't even enter the equation for it.
The Vodopad threat comes directly from Stuart Slade, who discussed it and described its quasi-ballistic nature as extremely destabilising; a version can deliver a nuclear warhead of reasonable size (I'm remembering 200kt here quite strongly) at a high speed from a short range that makes it very, very difficult to react to. I can't dig out the precise reference, as it was on the 'old' TBO board, not the current iteration, but he mentioned it at least twice.
We now enter the issue of the postage stamp size of the islands. You might be able to fit 10-12 silos on Ascension and DG, but they will be so close together as allow for a single warhead to destroy multiple or all silos. When the threat is so significant (ICBMs aimed at key points of the Rodina), the Reds are going to go all out to be able to neutralise them in the event of war.
As dispersal fields for strategic bombers, they make a smidgeon of sense, even though they disperse them a long way from anywhere. As missile bases, they are too vulnerable to the type of forces that the Soviets can deploy from the late 60s onwards.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Nov 20, 2021 8:52:24 GMT
We now enter the issue of the postage stamp size of the islands. You might be able to fit 10-12 silos on Ascension and DG, but they will be so close together as allow for a single warhead to destroy multiple or all silos. When the threat is so significant (ICBMs aimed at key points of the Rodina), the Reds are going to go all out to be able to neutralise them in the event of war. Any missile heading towards a target is going to be spotted if there is rader coverage, so how long does it take to launch a missile before it hits those silos. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Nov 20, 2021 9:38:04 GMT
Radar isn’t a magical panacea and, in any case, the other portions of my post outlined how little time there would be to react.
A Mach 3 missile will cover a distance of 20km in 19 seconds, or less than a third of the time needed to launch an ICBM. Even launching SAMs has some physical limits.
The problem of these particular postage stamp island is that 20km offshore is pretty deep water.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Nov 20, 2021 10:41:28 GMT
The British only had rudimentary systems - Rapier and Bloodhound - with the former lacking all-weather capacity until 1979. Was the Bloodhound Mk. I deployment not used primary to protect eight missile sites; RAF Dunholme Lodge, RAF Watton, RAF Marham, RAF Rattlesden, RAF Woolfox Lodge, RAF Carnaby, RAF Warboys, RAF Breighton and RAF Misson with a trial site at RAF North Coates. The primary reason for these sites being chosen was the defence of the nearby V bomber stations. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Nov 20, 2021 11:09:33 GMT
That is the second paragraph of the wikipedia entry on the Bloodhound and is factually correct - that is where they were deployed.
It also has no bearing whatsoever on what I said.
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