ADF General discussion thread

[Volkodav]

Yanked from the RAN thread....



YES!!!!

/rant on. There are a few RAA officers who need to be escorted off Russell ASAP. The over-complication of long range strike is killing us / rant off

There are two hard parts about land-based long range strike:

The first is targeting. You need SMEs for that (a bunch of which we have - they wear blue uniforms). That can be built at anytime and don't need launchers. Start putting RAA and Int on the RAAF courses, into 460 Sqn, pay them more - whatever. Fundamentally this is a Joint problem anyhow - so it's ready to go

The second is the missile. Its technically, full of bang and 1s and 0s. Designing it will take time. But..... that's not a RAA problem! Just buy ones that fit the launcher holes and connect to the C2 systems. Pass the maintenance bill to RAEME or the RAAF or industry - but you can hand wave that log away.

What's left is some trucks! With DG placards. That's it! They receive the targeting data over AFATADS (or whatever BMS). They drive to the firing point, park the specified direction, take cover and watch fireworks. Then, when all the noise is done, they drive the trucks to a reload point. All that is as complex as a Pizza Hut delivery - and 17 yr olds do that.

When we stood up 8113, the Centre strongly recommended that the HiMARs units be ARes units. Simply capabilities, easily maintained skills, the ARes get to hold it over the ARA for being more important; it was win:win. Unfortunately..

*le sigh*

100% an ideal reserve capability.

Most training can be undertaken on simulators. The equipment, although very advanced, is not difficult to use or maintain.

 

[old faithful]

i agree 100% on this, the A Res needs to be used in the best possible way, and Fire and forget systems that are easily maintained, easy to train with and have a real purpose are perfectly suited to A Res. MANPADS would be useful in that area as well, as long as the right system is selected.
I am sure some form of anti drone units could be A res as well, along with some reserve cyber geeks for ECM.

 

[swerve]

No - we assessed that based on the air defences in the region, its location and the size of our foot print it wasn't worth putting a GBAD det in. Noting that even when we had RBS-70 and Rapier it never went over there. We have minimal resources; it just doesn't justify it. Like they don't have AFVs or artillery

I'd argue that it made sense at the time, and may still do. There have been multiple strikes on Iran and by Iran in the past two decades, with no threat to the Gulf States. I'd even argue that Tehran's decision to strike things like AMAB, Akrotiri and the French base (plus a bunch of other targets) reflects a level of insanity that you wouldn't forecast. They've gone from Paris and London stepping back to supporting force; likewise they have turned Saudi and the Gulf States from publicly neutral to actively involved. Launching most of these strikes makes no sense logically

For all the course of action analysis we do - we usually can't afford to spend much time on genuinely irrational threat decision making.

I imagine the thinking might be that attacking them would show those countries the folly of allying themselves with the USA, or hosting US troops. I suspect that if that is what they thought, it's not working

 

[spoz]

No - we assessed that based on the air defences in the region, its location and the size of our foot print it wasn't worth putting a GBAD det in. Noting that even when we had RBS-70 and Rapier it never went over there. We have minimal resources; it just doesn't justify it. Like they don't have AFVs or artillery

I'd argue that it made sense at the time, and may still do. There have been multiple strikes on Iran and by Iran in the past two decades, with no threat to the Gulf States. I'd even argue that Tehran's decision to strike things like AMAB, Akrotiri and the French base (plus a bunch of other targets) reflects a level of insanity that you wouldn't forecast. They've gone from Paris and London stepping back to supporting force; likewise they have turned Saudi and the Gulf States from publicly neutral to actively involved. Launching most of these strikes makes no sense logically

For all the course of action analysis we do - we usually can't afford to spend much time on genuinely irrational threat decision making.

The other thing is - count the numbers deployed, and understand the reality of dealing with host countries. We do not really have combat forces in the ME/Gulf, we have log elements and a bunch of scattered observers/peacekeepers these days (and I’m, some intel). And for any foreign country, that country needs to agree forces we wish to locate there. They have an absolute veto on what we do. And it’s one thing to locate support bases and non combat elements in a country, quite another to locate combat elements. That is particularly so if you are wanting to locate air defence elements in the air space of other countries - they are very reluctant because of their resulting de facto inability to control that airspace with all the consequent potential for a blue on blue or blue on green incident.