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14 octobre 2015 3 14 /10 /octobre /2015 11:30
photo Russia MoD

photo Russia MoD

 

13.10.2015 Le Fauteuil de Colbert

 

Nous sommes plusieurs observateurs à nous rejoindre sur un point précis à propos de la démonstration navale russe.

 

C'est le fait d'une canonnière (gunboat) - ce petit navire au pouvoir stratégique démesuré par rapport à son tonnage -, elle serait peut-être à rapprocher du concept de "caporal stratégique". Il y eu celle qui appuya les conquêtes coloniales, celle qui, dotait de missiles anti-navires, bouleversa les engagements et maintenant, celle qui, par le missile de croisière, voit l'influence de la mer décuplée, même à l'ère aéronavale. Bien que l'embarquement de missiles à très longue portée ne soit pas tellement une nouveauté. 

 

Cette nouvelle canonnière, façon russe, ne cesse d'interpeller le rapport entretenu par l'Occident (au sens très large : Europe, États-Unis, Japon, Corée du Sud, Australie, etc) avec la domination aérienne. Ce qui accréditerait le discours ambiant sur les menaces A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area-Denial) et démontrerait une certaine égalisation technologique avec les challengers (Russie, Chine, Iran ?).

Cependant, ce discours ambiant pourrait avoir aussi tous les aspects d'une navy scare. C'est-à-dire la peur de la perte de la supériorité navale, autrefois, aérienne aujourd'hui, sans qu'il y ait précisément de fondement rationnel à tout cela. Plusieurs choses nous invitent à considérer cette thèse et savoir raison garder.

 

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4 février 2015 3 04 /02 /février /2015 08:50
 Photo BAE Systems

Photo BAE Systems

 

02/02/2015 Richard de Silva - DefenceIQ


According to a new study, there may be a need for investment in a “more offensive” surface warfare strategy, given the evolving global threat environment and the spectrum of utility for systems such as long-range missiles, directed energy and electromagnetic rail guns.

 

The research, conducted by Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), recommended that the U.S. Navy not only invests further in these systems but looks to increase their impact by restructuring the surface fleet and embracing new tactics. It argues that controlling the waters in the coming years will play a particularly vital role in strategic defence, not least because of the increasing opportunity of interoperation between naval, air, land and space assets.

Analysts are looking towards the mid-2020s as a make-or-break deadline, a period in which it is envisaged that there will be a global focus on anti-access/area-denial. A2/AD has already been causing strategic pressures in the Persian Gulf, the East China Sea, and other waters that require multinational port access, shipping routes or military patrols. When done correctly, the tactic can prevent troops from landing by sea or limit the range at which surface vessels can support forces inshore.

In tandem, there is a renewed focus among many nations on the growing threat of ballistic missiles. Spurred further by the conflict in Ukraine, fears that were last at their height during the Cold War have returned, but since this time, anti-missile strategic focus has centred primarily on asymmetric threats, such as counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) systems.

A great deal of interest now lies on the US Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, comprising a network of warships designed to intercept ballistic missiles post-boost phase and prior to reentry. Latest tests (as of November 2014) conducted by the Missile Defense Agency in the Pacific with recent upgrades have been reported as successful.

It is interesting to note that China has also identified a need to develop its seaborne missile capability and has announced that its own version of Aegis is also to expand with plans to launch eight new warships (Types 052C and 052D) to augment its ten existing destroyers and new aircraft carrier. Construction is to begin this year.

Most recently, the US Navy sees the deployment of two additional Aegis destroyers (F-100) in Spain his year as providing a “significant deterrent”, according to remarks made to Sputnik News Agency. A representative of US Naval Forces Europe stated that the placement of the vessels maximised “their operational flexibility for missions in the Atlantic and Mediterranean” while further enabling rapid response to any crisis.

The F100 Álvaro de Bazán class multi-role frigate is one of the few non-US warships to carry the Aegis Combat System and its associated AN/SPY-1 radar, along with ballistic resistant steel in the hull and anti-vibration power plants. Other nations to carry the honour are Japan, South Korea and Norway.

Captain Manuel Martinez-Ruiz, programme director for the F-100 (as well as overseeing the impending introduction of the F-110 frigates) – believes the vessels are up to the task of dealing with a range of threats in the coming years and have already demonstrated their value as an AEGIS component during recent exercises.

“The Spanish Navy’s F-100 Frigates have shown excellent AAW capabilities since the commissioning of F-101 Alvaro de Bazán in 2001, and having participated in numerous NATO, US and UNO Coalition operations,” Martinez-Ruiz told Defence IQ.

“On the other hand, frigate F-104 Mendez Nuñez had a limited BMS&T (ballistic missile defense surveillance and tracking) role at FTM-12 (Flight Test Maritime-12) while  Alvaro de Bazan conducted some interoperability tests during Maritime Theatre Missile Defence events during Combat Systems Ship's Qualification Trials. Recently, the F-100 C2 capabilities have been improved through Joint Range Extension.”

“While I consider land based asymmetric threats to be something to pay attention to in the future at the tactical level, I believe ballistic missile defence threats – both current and emerging – are something that impacts us on a more strategic and political level, and involves much more complex action among our agencies and nations. What is clear however is that the Spanish Navy’s future ships, such as the F-110 frigates, will be focused more on countering asymmetric threats.”

As technology evolves, the opportunities for surface warship capabilities are ever-increasing as long as the R&D funding can keep up. Of course, with rising complexities, new challenges also rear their heads, particularly when it comes to introducing new systems into an existing family of systems and then testing them within the parameters of a realistic scenario.

“I think the biggest challenge is to be able to characterise anti-aircraft warfare and BMD threats in order to operate them in a coordinated way by improving ‘detect-control-engage’ technology,” Martin-Ruiz explained. “The need to face emerging BMD and AAW threats at force level in this way requires an improved C2 architecture, sensor-to-shooter technology, as well as mission planning capabilities. Also, increasing radar sensitivity with electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) capabilities will be the next hurdle for radar technology.”

The field is further complicated by the increasingly urgent need to ensure that multinational systems are integrated alongside standardised methods and tactics, a situation that can only be achieved through continued multilateral naval exercises.

“That will be extremely important in the coming years,” Martinez-Ruiz confirms, “as will the need to increase interoperability among NATO and allied forces. New protocols such as JRE-C and more robust data link capabilities with images and progressive streaming video transmission mechanisms (for example, JPEG2000 based on wavelets) are possibly required to face asymmetric and emerging threats. There are some exciting multinational projects underway now such as NATO’s Smart Defence project and the MTMD forum in which our Navy is interested.”

 

Martinez-Ruiz will be briefing the delegation at this year’s Integrated Air and Missile Defenceconference (Seville, Spain, 16-18 March). He identified a specific set of focuses with which he hopes those attending will truly engage. These include European initiatives on AIMD, threat assessment and mission planning, characterisation of emerging threats, technology for asymmetric threats, and discussion on mission modules and UAVs.

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12 novembre 2013 2 12 /11 /novembre /2013 13:35
How A2/AD Can Defeat China

 

November 12, 2013 By  J. Michael Cole - thediplomat.com

 

Most of the debate that has surrounded the emergence of China as a major military player in the Asia-Pacific has focused on the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) development of an anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) strategy and its potential impact on a U.S.-led regional security architecture that remains anchored to old concepts.

As China expands its military capabilities and, alongside those, its claims to various territories within the region, the PLA has developed and fielded a variety of platforms that are intended to deter and delay external intervention by U.S. forces in, say, an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The much-discussed Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D) anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), which could theoretically threaten a U.S. carrier battle group on its way to the region, is at the core of such a strategy.

Far less discussed, however, is the fact that China’s A2/AD strategy, or the likelihood that it will directly affect the course of a conflict, is contingent on a U.S. or allied response along conventional lines. In other words, China’s deterrence/denial efforts assume two things: first, that outside forces would seek to deploy closer to China in order to conduct operations; and second, that such deployments would involve traditional warships, aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft and bombers — in other words, everything that the ill-defined Air-Sea Battle strategy promises to include.

This “asymmetrical” approach provides China with a relatively inexpensive way to counter an opponent’s superior platforms: the PLA can afford to build and deploy several DF-21D launchers, while the U.S. would be loath to risk losing modern surface combatants, let alone a multi-billion-dollar aircraft carrier.

Now a new report by the RAND Corporation proposes turning the tables on China by creating a regional A2/AD alliance, relying principally on anti-ship missiles (ASM), to impose a “far blockade” on China should the latter threaten regional security. Under the plan explored in Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles in the Western Pacific, U.S. forces and partner countries would respond to Chinese aggression by deploying land-based anti-ship cruise missiles with operational ranges of between 100 km and 200 km at various chokepoints — among them the Strait of Malacca, the Straits of Sunda and Lombok and the Java Sea Routes, waters between Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as sea areas between Japan and South Korea — to keep the PLA Navy (PLAN) vessels (and presumably merchant ships) bottled inside the first island chain.

The presence of such missiles, the report argues, would undermine the ability of PLAN warships, transport vessels, and amphibious craft to safely carry out sea operations in those areas while denying them access into the West Pacific. In addition, the size of the aggregate territory involved in the proposed alliance (optimally Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and perhaps Australia) as well as the number of islets on which ASM launchers could be dispersed, would severely challenge the PLA’s ability to locate such systems and render them inoperable using ballistic missiles, air strikes or sabotage.

By resorting to such a plan, small regional powers would be in a position to wage their own A2/AD strategy against China and to threaten, at a relative low cost, more formidable and far more expensive Chinese naval platforms such as warships, landing helicopter docks, and carriers.

However, creating a multinational ASM strategy would not be without its challenges, nor can its formation be taken for granted. Although a number of ASM systems are currently available and their acquisition within the financial means of even the weakest of the partners involved, their effectiveness would depend on the ability of member states to also receive cueing and targeting data from U.S. sensors, which creates challenges (by no means insurmountable) in terms of ensuring that all the platforms involved can communicate.

Moreover, to avoid fostering the impression in Beijing that the U.S. and regional countries are seeking to keep it bottled in, ASM units probably could not be deployed permanently, and instead should be pre-positioned (presumably on U.S. territory) for rapid deployment amid rising tensions resulting from Chinese aggression or threat thereof. Access to heavy lift capabilities and operational airfields in partner countries would therefore be crucial elements for the success of this strategy.

For obvious reasons, proposing such an alliance would be controversial. Nor can it be assumed, as the report notes, that countries in China’s periphery would be willing to risk Beijing’s ire by joining the effort, unless conditions in the region deteriorate dramatically and the PLA’s posture becomes more aggressive than it is currently.

Moreover, an ASM component alone would be insufficient to ensure the ability of a member country to counter a Chinese attack. While “far blockade” would make the operations of the PLAN more difficult by denying its surface combatants the ability to expand beyond the first island chain or to approach enemy waters, it would have little value against other branches of the Chinese military, such as its air force and the Second Artillery Corps.

That said, as an instrument of deterrence, a flexible multinational ASM partnership could achieve much more, and at a much lower cost, than the longstanding approach of sales by the U.S. of highly expensive (and oftentimes vulnerable) conventional platforms like fighter aircraft and warships to regional allies

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19 septembre 2013 4 19 /09 /septembre /2013 11:20
Think Fast

Fast Mover: A B-52 carries an X-51 hypersonic demonstrator for a test launch in May, when the vehicle reached speeds over Mach 5. (Bobbi Zapka / US Air Force)

 

Sep. 17, 2013 By AARON MEHTA – Defense News

 

USAF Sees Speed as Part of the A2/AD Solution

 

WASHINGTON — For much of the past decade, the buzzword A2/AD — anti-access/area-denial — has been closely linked with stealth technology. But with many nations slowly developing their own stealth capabilities, the US Air Force is looking for new advantages it can create to counter a foe’s A2/AD threats.

 

“The US enjoys several tremendous advantages, including space and stealth technologies,” said Mark Lewis, former Air Force chief scientist. “So what comes after stealth? I’d argue part of the answer is speed.”

 

Stealth technology is based on a simple concept: If the enemy doesn’t know you are there, he can’t stop you. Speed, Lewis argues, takes that calculus and turns it on its side. A platform or weapon coming in at extremely high speeds will likely light up a radar system, but it’s also coming so fast that an enemy will not be able to react in time.

 

The Air Force is researching how weapons can take advantage of speed in future A2/AD conflicts through platforms such as the Boeing-designed X-51 WaveRider hypersonic demonstration vehicle. A booster accelerates the missile to over Mach 4, at which point the booster separates and a scramjet engine takes over, theoretically reaching speeds upwards of Mach 6 — about 4,000 miles per hour. A Tomahawk cruise missile, by comparison, travels about 550 miles per hour.

 

The X-51 is designed to release off the wing of a B-52, but future versions could eventually fit into the bay of an F-22 — or the new in-development long-range bomber. At around 4,000 pounds and with a range of 400 nautical miles, a weapon based on the X-51 should ideally bring a mix of range and speed that could be incredibly useful against an enemy’s A2/AD systems — assuming it works. Out of four active tests of the missile, two failed and two succeeded, most recently in May, when an X-51 flew for several minutes at Mach 5.1.

 

While high-speed weapons may be the future, they are unlikely to replace stealth technology.

 

“I don’t think of it as versus stealth; I think of it as in-addition-to stealth,” Lewis said. “You want to have a mix of capabilities. That’s the direction I think the Air Force will ultimately be moving towards.”

 

Speed and stealth can serve two different missions, argues James Acton, senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy program.

 

“I don’t know if in 20-30 years stealth or speed will be the best way to penetrate defenses,” he said during a Sept. 3 speech. “But I do think it is a critical issue that needs to be taken [into] account.”

 

“At a time when there was a lot more money available, it was OK to say all forms of solving the problem should be investigated,” he added. “At a time of fiscal austerity, I think it’s important to prioritize the option that carries the least risk of failing to fulfill military goals. The question is comparing risk.”

Global Strike Capability

 

Acton is the author of a major study on the Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) family of systems, which could provide another option for countering A2/AD systems.

 

A long-range, non-nuclear weapon capable of quickly striking anywhere in the globe, CPGS is simple in concept but technically difficult in practice. CPGS has been in development since 2003, but the program has finally matured enough that its use should be viable by the early 2020s.

 

Theoretically, CPGS could be perfect for a strike aimed at crippling the A2/AD capabilities of an enemy nation, in particular a large country such as China. Given their cost and limited number, CPGS weapons would likely not be used to take out anti-aircraft batteries when something more simple, such as a Tomahawk missile, would do. It would also not be as useful against mobile targets.

 

Instead, CPGS could be used to destroy key sites, such as command-and-control centers that form the hub of integrated defense systems.

 

“Long-range missiles are part of the long-range strike family of systems, but may not be the best weapons to use against mobile/movable targets such as missile TELs [transporter erector launchers], or hardened/deeply buried targets. Plus, they tend to be costly,” Mark Gunzinger, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who served in a number of Pentagon roles, wrote in an email.

 

“For limited strikes against appropriate targets, they may be the weapon of choice,” he added. “For a serious air campaign in A2AD conditions, survivable, penetrating strike systems as well as standoff attack missiles are needed.”

 

That last point is key when shaping the Air Force’s counter-A2/AD future. It is unlikely to come from one specific magic technology. Instead, the service will likely need a range of technologies capable of adapting to a variety of situations.

 

“Different missions have different requirements, and that’s the place where a strategic acquisitions process should begin,” Acton said.

 

He added that before the Pentagon commits to any new weapons systems, it needs to undergo a full study looking at how they would operate under a number of potential threat scenarios.

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