Daring enjoys ‘truly amazing’ experience working with American carriers
21 March 2012
Britain’s most advanced warship, HMS Daring, has worked with two American aircraft carrier groups as her Gulf mission steps up a gear.Awesome.
The new destroyer has been showing off her air defence and fighter control prowess with the USS Carl Vinson and Abraham Lincoln and their task groups.
On her maiden deployment, HMS Daring has worked with not one but two US Carrier Strike Groups – here the USS Carl Vinson, but also her sister Abraham Lincoln.
The Portsmouth-based warship – the first of six cutting-edge Type 45 destroyers – has been exercising with both 100,000-ton flattops as she integrates with our closest allies.
That integration has taken the form of swapping sailors with several American ships, notably cruisers USS Cape St George and Bunker Hill, as well as the two carriers, allowing the two navies to share expertise and ideas and forge good working relationships.
The Carl Vinson leads US Carrier Strike Group One, while the Lincoln is the flagship of Group Nine (there are 11 such groups in all, comprising one carrier, one cruiser, two destroyers, one hunter-killer submarine and a support ship, plus an air group of more than 60 jets, helicopters and pistol-engined aircraft).
The culmination of this effort was HMS Daring working fully with the Carl Vinson and her impressive air wing of fast jets.
The Sampson radar (the spiky spinning egg atop Daring’s main mast) and command and control system allow multiple targets to be tracked to ranges of up to hundreds of kilometres. That information is fed to the Aster missiles in the silo on the ship’s forecastle.
With the Long Range Radar (the large black slab just forward of the ship’s hangar) it means Daring can track many thousands of air contacts giving her unprecedented surveillance of huge areas of air space.
Which means that she is a valuable asset for a US Carrier Strike Group providing such a comprehensive air picture of the complex Gulf airspace.
“Working with the US carriers and their air wings is the culmination of many months of training and hard work for the ship’s company,” explained Lt David Berry, one of two fighter controllers aboard Daring.
“For me, this is the pinnacle of my fighter controlling career and it is truly amazing to watch it all come together in this operational theatre. Taking control of F-18 Super Hornets in this busy operational environment is hugely rewarding.”Daring is attached to the Combined Maritime Task Forces on a wide-ranging maritime security – tackling piracy, smuggling, people-trafficking, terrorism and other criminal activities – as well as working with Coalition and regional allies.
Daring’s not the only Royal Navy vessel to link up with a US carrier group. In the Arabian Sea – outside the Gulf – the Abraham Lincoln joined forces with Britain’s capital ship, HMS Westminster.
The Portsmouth-based frigate is also on a maritime security patrol of waters east of Suez while ‘Abe’ is conducting both that mission and supporting operations in Afghanistan, codenamed Enduring Freedom.
Another joint training exercise.
But the part about a Destroyer taking operational control of fighters struck me as odd. Does the US Navy work this way? Do our Aegis Destroyers take operational control of our fighter wings or is this a purely British way of doing business?
The issue is this.
If its how we do business then awesome. Works for me.
If its not how we do business then being joint is STUPID! Would I take a Marine Rifle Squad and deploy them in a way that's foreign to them? No I wouldn't. So if we don't hand operational control of our fighters to our own destroyers then why are we doing it with our good friends the Brits?
If we're going to be joint then we need to be able to slot a destroyer from the UK into one of our battle formations and have it operate to our standards...and vice versa once they get their carrier in the water.
Changing tactics and operational models for the sake of being joint is just not worth the loss of efficiency.
But I wait to be corrected.
The vessel's role is air-defence so there's no reason why it shouldn't have op. control of any asset involved in that duty. Not an unusual or remarkable event at all.
ReplyDeletethen why in God's name do we spend so much money on E-2's?
ReplyDeleteoh Solomon, come on, see what sense this makes, say in a war situation your e-2's have been shot out of the sky, your fighters are in chaos, what better way to have practiced alternatives!! plus our conservative goverment are tight asses and probably wont buy e-2's because we wont be getting emals anytime soon!!!! sucks to be a brit right now, who loves the RN.
ReplyDeletedon't get me wrong. i love the Royal Navy too. i just don't understand that part of this training evolution.
ReplyDeleteya know we have NATO E-3 fleets with cooperation from France i could easily see a NATO E-2 fleet deployed on aircraft carriers.
or if that doesn't come to fruition then that package that's being proposed for the Merlin could easily be sold to the Marines to act as airborne control for F-35B's.
but back to your point, i wonder again why operational control would pass to destroyers when carriers have dedicated air control facilities and can direct all aircraft once they're within say 100 miles of the carrier...which is inside the destroyer screen.
I think your just misinterpreting "operational control"
ReplyDeleteThe T45 is going to have a much clearer picture of whats happening than a fighter, even an F35/22, or even an airborne radar platform like an E2.
Its nothing new or unusual for a gound controller with access to radar to be bossing around the fighter pilots in the air, see battle of britain, with all those giant maps and little wooden spitfires moved around with snooker cues :)
Admitadly, its possible the US hasnt done so "in anger" for two generations, but most pieces on the air battle at San Carlos list fighter control by the destroyers as one of the key advantages the UK had.
If memory serves, the US planneda fleet of radar submarines, whos job was to provide fighter control hundreds of miles in front of the carriers.
it still doesn't make sense. how is a destroyer...that can't see over the horizon, going to have a much clearer picture of an air battle?
ReplyDeleteyour examples from history don't pass the tests either. i can point to operational success at Tarawa, Iwo Jima and even Normandy but it doesn't apply today.
neither Argentina or the UK had airborne air control platforms, so the battle of San Carlos definitely doesn't apply.
Solomon I think it depends largely on the exercise they were taking part in. The T45's reason for existence is fleet air defence now like you I stand to be corrected but I was under the impression that even with US Aegis system when the vampires are about to come flying in its the primary air defence ship than takes control of the local airspace to manage the battle from both an aviation and missile engagement point of view.
ReplyDeletenow that makes sense....they deconflict the airspace so that there won't be friendlies in the way of missiles going out....
ReplyDeleteok. i can see that.
"it still doesn't make sense. how is a destroyer...that can't see over the horizon, going to have a much clearer picture of an air battle?"
ReplyDeleteThe horizon is only really relevent when enemy is sea skimming.
Its going to be the destroyers locating enemy AAR, AWACS and incoming strike groups that are 300miles away and 40,000 ft up.
Or so I would have thought.