"Best defense headline ever" Topic

"UK Royal Navy wants a disaggregated fleet that de-couples combat punch from ship platforms"

link

Apparently the aim is to fatally baffle the enemy with gobbledygook

Interesting

Any chance they have a copy written in English?

Gobbledygook is what military technocrats excel at. I couldn't keep up with all the latest TLA's* during my last few years of service.

*TLA stands for Three Letter Acronym. When someone starts throwing around a bunch of acronyms and it all starts to sound like gobbledygook, that's when I look straight in their face and say "I'm not familiar with those TLA's". I always loved the confused reaction I'd get back.

"UK Royal Navy wants a disaggregated fleet that de-couples combat punch from ship platforms"

Don't we all ?

Perhaps the RAF could assist . . . ;)

They should think about that.
I'm pretty sure that if you disaggregate this ships, they're no longer a fleet, and you don't need an admiral.
And if we could de-couple combat punch from ship platforms, we wouldn't need a navy, would we?

USAFpilot, they have to keep changing the acronyms. It's how they keep track of when they last sent you to a training course.

Isn't the of point missiles and big guns to disaggregate "ship platforms"?

That's how you "CinCFleet."

A little punch drunk, I think…

"So, we'll put the ships over here, and the weapons platforms over there, and …Hey! Why are the weapons sinking?"

As I said in the other post, apparently the goal is not to defeat the enemy but rather deter them from ever acting.

They use terminology like "operations just below the level of conflict"

Note same terminology is used for new Marine paradigm.

Basically the whole purpose is not to fight wars but rather to prevent them from happening by denying the enemy to initiate a surprise strike ala Pearl Harbour.

Literally the goal is to be a fleet in being.

Of course current British procurement is a million miles away from any such concepts – new carriers and Type 26 frigates are as conventional "focused firepower" as you can get.

Also the British Navy lacks hull numbers to make such a "disaggregated" approach work. Losing even 4 ships (same as Falklands) represent a 25% loss of total hull numbers and probably closer to 50% operational capability.

Sounds like a 'good lunch' was had… lol.

"…decouples combat punch from platforms"?

Ah, "distributed". Why didn't they just say so???

I happen to know Admiral James, and I'd say two things: He's got a brain the size of a planet and, whilst he can talk doctrine & concepts with the best of them, he's not one for ethereal BS for the sake of it.

It strikes me this is about at least 4 related but separate things:

1. A networked system of systems is the logical next stage in an evolutionary journey that's been going on since at least the 1960s in the RN (ADAWS & Link 10 in HMS BRISTOL 1965). Go back 20 years and I was the big 'if it flies it dies' guy in my destroyer – until my secure UHF failed (again!) and/or the Type 1022 radar went down (admittedly rare). Effectively I, my radar, my comms, my datalink, and my missile system created a single point of failure for the task group. Why not build a TG where all the warfare officers can use all of the sensors, all of the comms, and all of the weapons to fight the battle?

2. Western tech superiority as a compensation for lack of numbers has been on the wane for years. I'm sure Admiral James and others would be delighted to hear Boris Johnson has once again committed the UK to maintaining a two fleet standard. But it just isn't going to happen and the RN – like all militaries – needs to work out how to operate in the world as it is, not as they would like it to be.

3. Likewise, the RN's traditional MO of blockading the enemy fleet, sinking or seizing all foreign trade, and bombarding coastal towns & cities into surrender might well be what 'real men' (TM) do, but it just isn't how conflicts play out in the C21. Why have an operational doctrine that pretends if we just hang on in there the next war will be a 'proper' one?

4. PODS is an interesting idea, but again, not a terribly new one. In essence, wouldn't it be great if we could 'task organise' a ship like you would a land battle group. I foresee practical issues however. One, to really have the flexibility at a fleet level you'll need to buy 2-3 ships worth of kit/capability, but only a small proportion of it will ever be at sea. That makes your cost per deployable platform look very unattractive. Two – and possibly overcomable (is that a word?) with modern tech – is how do you flex capability once deployed? Back to my destroyer dits, I once agreed we wouldn't need advanced AD training before our planned deployment to the Caribbean *as long as Fleet could guarantee there was no chance of being told to turn left at Gib and divert to the Med because something unexpected had kicked off*. We got the training.

It's good to call BS and keep people's feet on the ground, but I'd also say we should cut our leaders some slack when they appear to be consciously trying to prepare our forces for the next war and not the last one.

Rant over.

A networked system of systems is the logical next stage

1. Cylons
and
B. Skynet

The whole networked battlefleet idea sounds great, but what if it gets overloaded, and how to coordinate the weaponry from so many vessels at once, against multiple targets.

I suspect making that happen will be a real challenge, AND if it gets hacked, or fails, everyone is disarmed, not just one vessel.

The whole pods weaponry designs to be switched out easily as needed was/is a total failure with the LCS (Little Crappy Ship) program, so good luck with that.

@emckinney – fear not, Jack & Jenny could take a Cylon any day!

@Thresher01 – in many ways this sounds like a repackaging of the old force multiplier idea. Most ships operate alone much of the time, so they will always need to be able to fight as stand-alone units. Can we find a way to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts when they do operate together though?

As for the PODs, I'm also not terribly optimistic, but I suppose it's one of those ideas you need to keep coming back to now and again until someone cracks it. Long-range guns (but no fire control), torpedoes and aircraft were all about as much use as a chocolate fireguard when they first came out, but thankfully someone kept going and made something out of them (of course the flip side is a whole host of programmes over the years that should have been shut down much earlier, but that's a whole other thread).