The Brits did it first, leveraging carriers, long range aerial tankers, long range bombers, surface ships for air defense and submarines to keep the opposing fleet bottled up.
Air Sea at its finest.
The Marines and Para's retook the islands during the ground phase but that's a different and fascinating story. But I digress. Check out Grand Logistics take on the Harrier at war.
The Black Buck raids in during the Falklands war required huge amounts of resources and produced very little effect. They were a waste, IMHO.
ReplyDeletethey did have some problems with ship positioning, they put some of their ships in bays where their radars became ineffective, and let the ship carrying their helos get hit but an exocet, they should have kept one or two screening ships off shore to give inbound intel.
ReplyDeleteThey had to put the ships in the bays during the amphibious ops to protect the amphibs. They were actually lucky that the Argies took shots at the warships rather than concentrating on the landing ships.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, they did keep screening ships offshore. Wasn't Sheffield hit while on picket duty west of the Falklands?
IMHO, it's more instructive to look back to WWII for instances of land-based air and naval coordination. Especially in the Pacific, where the same geographic constraints still hold true today.
well i know they had to protect the landing ships but why did they not leave one out in the bay as a radar ship? i mean they didnt see the argentinian AF until the last second, and then all they had to use was their machine guns, i know today our phalanx would kill those things that close but with the missiles they have today wouldnt help much, and i think it was hit but it would have given more warning to the landing forces, but i do commend the UK forces for perservering even in the midst of some setbacks.
ReplyDeleteI have some serious doubts on the UKs ability to do the same thing today if they had too
ReplyDeleteB. Smitty.
ReplyDeleteit showed that the UK could do it. the psychological impact made up for its military irrelevance.
Joe.
they were concentrating on protecting the amphibs. the picket ships (although some now classify these ships as battleships) were expendable. the landing force had to make it ashore or the entire enterprise was for naught. remember they already had a transport hit and lost a bunch of equipment.
B. Smitty.
i was looking at the Falklands experience because it most closely parallels what i believe we would face in the pacific today. the anti-ship missiles, operating far from home, the use of long range bombers etc. ww2 with the exception of midway, simply showed forces advancing on each other and attempting to stave off defeat. midway was the only battle where one side didn't have an advantage over the other.
joe.
don't be such a big fan of the phalanx missiles. it might destroy the missile but because of most of them being large and flying very fast, the ship will still be hit with shrapnel, fuel etc...why do you think the Navy has switched to that rolling airframe point defense missile?
jonfrazier04.
they couldn't do a repeat now if they had to. i really believe that the Argentinians are simply waiting for the right time and the islands and all the oilfields surrounding them will be in there hands again.