The high brows on PBS think that Russia is making a poor showing in Ukraine and pretend to know warfare in the 20th century using the weapons of the 21st century. What they all ignore is the destruction of functionally obsolete battlefield weapons in the 21st century. A couple of guys with US made Javelin anti-armor missiles can destroy ANY tank or Fighting Vehicle. ANY tank is dead meat. Any aircraft that gets hit with a 21st century man-portable AA missile is toast. We and NATO have sent thousands to Ukraine to kill Russians just like we shipped Stinger missiles to the Taliban in the 80's.
That applies to ALL of our stuff too.
It also applies to anti-ship weapons from the 21st century. Amphibious warfare ships are unlikely to survive their next near shore experience in war. As with WWII when the numbers of AAA guns on warships multiplied to fill every inch of deck space in order to fight off hundreds of attackers at a time, so too will doctrine need to embrace the idea of fighting off swarms of ship-killing missiles launched far beyond visual range. Add hypersonic sea skimmers that give a target ship about a second from over-the-horizon to missile hit amidship and you should see that control of the seas is definitely a 19th century term and we're back to the 'Uncommanded Seas' of Julian Corbett's famous description.
1 comment:
Yep, oddly enough the Russian Black Sea flagship which was an uber scary CARRIER killer 40 years ago, was sunk by a couple of 21st century shore launched anti-ship missiles they never saw coming. It will be just exactly the same when the USN next closes a hostile shore. We will lose thousands of men when that happens to the amphibious forces.
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