The Falklands thread

Loved the Harriers - beautiful piece of engineering!

Only bettered in my engineering-loving (well, and boobies) teenage mind by the English Electric Lightning:

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Old post, but I missed it first time around.

Point the first: Sheffield did not have Sea Wolf Missiles, it had Sea Darts which were anti-aircraft but not anti-missile.

Point the second: we still have one carrier: the Illustrious. And in a few year's time, we'll have a couple more.


Sea dart can also destroy missles

G/W1
This engagement was the first validated, successful engagement of a missile by a missile during combat at sea, though the engagement was tail-end after the Silkworm had flown past the Gloucester.

Also illustrious can only operate helicopters

Illustrious is currently the Royal Navy's sole remaining aircraft carrier, having been converted to operate helicopters following the retirement of the United Kingdom's Harrier aircraft.
 
yup is she not currently outfitted for helicopters only,

iirc she was in for a refit last year to convert her for this



take that back, just asked someone i know who works in Rosyth and apparantley she retained her ramp :) why would they keep a ski jump on a helicopter carrier i wonder :)
 
MacRS4 said:
Loved the Harriers - beautiful piece of engineering!

Only bettered in my engineering-loving (well, and boobies) teenage mind by the English Electric Lightning:
Annoying piece of engineering just like the Vulcan Nuclear Bomber, used to fly regularly over my house as well as the Lightnings in the 80's, thankfully RAF (Memphis Belle) Binbrook closed down. :)
 
christ if thats them moving on what were we up against in 82? row boats with sling shots attached?

4 third rate destroyers from the early 80s and some rattly subs.

looking at that list do they have anything in their navy dating after 1983? its as if they've gave up as a naval force 30 years ago

oh and regarding the quality of their navy :)

Well if they have a long term plan to take back the Falklands the last thing they would do is post their latest hardware on Wikipedia, chances are they would aim to lure us into a false sense of security.

Well unless they plan on walking on the sea floor using straws to breath i fail to see how they can approach the island without us knowing about it.

We would know about it but if they attacked in big enough number we would get easily overwhelmed in a very short space of time and it could be all over by the time we got reinforcements there.
 
quick question,

now i know we sold a load of harriers to the Americans for peanuts but do we have a stock of them sitting mothballed somewhere still?
 
take that back, just asked someone i know who works in Rosyth and apparantley she retained her ramp :) why would they keep a ski jump on a helicopter carrier i wonder :)

As it would be expensive to remove it, lusty is only being used at the moment as the new ones havent finished beig built yet. New ones look beautifull, and at 65,000 tonns each of them is equal in weight to the 3 previous aircraft carriers.

If they where to attack this would be the best time, with HMS ocean in london for the olympics, the rest of the type 42's getting ready to be scrapped and with half the type 45's in sea trials or being fitted the navy isint in the best fighting posistion.
 
Well if they have a long term plan to take back the Falklands the last thing they would do is post their latest hardware on Wikipedia, chances are they would aim to lure us into a false sense of security.

.

tbh its quite hard to hide the acquisition or use ofa multi thousand ton warship tbh,

people tend to notice things like that :)
 
Yea I hope youre right! Its just that Im mad that they really went to town on cutting back. Do we have any good defence against those stupid Exocets? Do our warships have those Gatling-type cannons on them like the US has? (Sorry Im not too cued up on Naval stuff!)

The first line of defence for Type 45 is her SAMPSON radar, which is mounted high above the ship's superstructure on a mast, so as to reduce the radar horizon that a seaskimming missile can exploit. SAMPSON is a massively powerful phased array radar (which means it uses electromagnetism to 'bend' radar beams), capable of tracking aircraft and both cruise and ballistic missiles out to hundreds of kilometers away from the ship.

Second are her missiles, known in RN service as Sea Viper, but known in the industry as MBDA Aster 15 & 30. Both missiles are identical, only differing in the size of their rocket motor (Aster 30 possessing a larger motor being a longer range weapon). Aster 30 can engage targets "in excess of 100 kilometers" away from the launch platform, with each missile featuring it's own active radar seeker, meaning the ship doesn't have to track the target constantly and guide the missile to the target itself, massively increasing the number of targets it can engage simultaneously. A massive advance over previous missile systems, like Sea Dart that was fitted to the Type 42 destroyers that the Type 45 replace.

Finally, Type 45's are fitted with a Phalanx Mk1.B on either beam of the ship, which consists of a radar directed 20mm Gatling gun capable of spewing 4500 rounds per minute out to around 5 kilometers.
 
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We would know about it but if they attacked in big enough number but we would get easily overwhelmed in a very short space of time and it could be all over by the time we got reinforcements there.

They would need to send everything they have at once, all the aircraft would be sorted out without issue imho, we have the best gear in the world to deal with that threat, they don't really have many ships and they can't transport huge numbers of troops, airlift is out of the question, and our sub would sink anything that's a threat to the island.

If they made land and started to take a foothold our guys on the ground, which we have in much larger numbers this time, would sort it out.

24 hours later more people arrive.
 
I miss the days of sleek aircraft, at least the harrier had a beefy awesomeness to it that countered the stocky look.

You have to wonder how many phones are ringing at BAE at the moment.
 
quick question,

now i know we sold a load of harriers to the Americans for peanuts but do we have a stock of them sitting mothballed somewhere still?

Nope we sold everything to them for peanuts, spare airframes, lots of parts, got nothing of them left at all, wasent a good deal seeing as the Americans even said they got them for cheap even saying they are still a very cappable aircraft that they will continue to use untill the f-35s come out (At nearly $150 million a pop currently with this gonig to rise due to the devolpment costs.)
 
Well if they have a long term plan to take back the Falklands the last thing they would do is post their latest hardware on Wikipedia, chances are they would aim to lure us into a false sense of security.

We would know about it but if they attacked in big enough number we would get easily overwhelmed in a very short space of time and it could be all over by the time we got reinforcements there.

I suggest you don't know much about the way global millitary procurement works, you don't build a Navy of world class ability withouth the rest of the world knowing and the same applies for an air force. They have to purchase them from somewhere as their own ability to build their own designs is somewhat small.

I think you'll find we have a couple of subs down there, as task force sets sail for the Falklands and this time we will be ready for it and their aircrat, remember working at the edge of their envelope would soon be a turkey shoot. 82 is very different to 2012. Whilst a full scale attack would result in a big fight, reality is we are much differently equiped and prepped these days where are Argentina isnt that much different in capability terms...
 
Does make you wonder how many SAS lads have been going on a southern holiday recently, the falklanders themselves have a trained malitia with much better hardware then before.

Then again its a case of whether cameron would risk civilian casualties in defence of the island.
 
Nope we sold everything to them for peanuts, spare airframes, lots of parts, got nothing of them left at all, wasent a good deal seeing as the Americans even said they got them for cheap even saying they are still a very cappable aircraft that they will continue to use untill the f-35s come out (At nearly $150 million a pop currently with this gonig to rise due to the devolpment costs.)

The US operates a very different military to ours, they have or should i say had the budget to service many different types of aircraft, whilst diversity in type and design is a nice thing to have it's far from cost effective, they did the right thing ditching the Harrier, better that than the Tornado going.
 
[TW]Fox;21216697 said:
We handed over Hong Kong because we leased it from the Chinese and this lease came to an end,

Not quite true actually - we owned Hong Kong it was conquered during the opium wars - it's the new territories on the chinese mainland that were leased - we wanted to extend the lease for the new territories past 97, China didn't want to extend and also wanted Hong Kong island back. The Hong Kong Govt tried to get involved in the talks and the Chinese took that badly too. In the they weren't budging, I think they threatened to cut the water supply. Negotiations resulted in the one country two systems solution so the HK population could keep a lot of their basic freedoms etc...

Anyway the Falklands are rather different as there is no original population or any real settlement of the Islands prior to the current lots. They never even belonged to the Argies in the first place - the whole claim is very strenuous and just based on proximity.
 
But ditching the harrier did leave a massive carrier shaped hole in the service.

Indeed, but you need to ask yourself, in what situation do we need an outdated carrier providing outdated planes? Most of the time we can use a forward base around the world and i'm not a great fan of sending our guys into battle with outdated kit, especially when you've got the best kit sat at home.
 
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