If anyone is getting upset at so called “confrontational” posts on this forum it is frankly because a lot of expressed opinions are unformed and based on a hugely inaccurate perception of current and historical capability. The armchair provides a very different perspective than the bridge wing chair. I know which one I trust.
As a personal preference, I don't like the splitting up of comments as it feels aggressive in a format that lacks tone and social cues. However I am going to do so in order to clarify my position and what I wrote and not as a hostile retort.
LOL of course the current fleet is more capable but that is thanks to technological development. The 1960s fleet was far more capable if you adjust for technology. Your claims otherwise simply display an ignorance of comparative and historical naval capability.
If you inferred that I seriously compared vessels of two eras and almost 50 years apart, then you are mistaken and I perhaps did not do an adequate job of explaining myself. I can only assume that this ridiculous meaning was taken deliberately in order to mock.
Cold War so the USN and RN were at full strength and the RAN only had a minor supporting role?
This was a gross misrepresentation of what I said.
I said that the two eras budgets were difficult to compare when in one Australia was considered to be a part of a military stand-off between two superpowers and in the other Australia was/is considered to be in a fairly benign threat environment with few immediate threats to national security.
How can the context of the 1960s with the Indonesian Confrontation and the threat (real or imagined) of the Soviet Union and communism not be relevant to public investment in the military? This is the reason that during the 1960s the defence budget as a percentage of GDP was
50% higher than it is today.
I don't think that a current government could sell a 50% increase in defence budget without a similar perceived threat to Australia, and I don't think that using China as that threat is working with the Australian public.
Just a shame then that the River class DE was primarily an anti-submarine ship… Their sonar and Ikara was still a formidable ASW capability in the 1980s.
If you read what I said and not assume, I didn't criticise the capability of the Rivers of 1968, but they didn't have Ikara in 1968 (or SeaCat) but got them in their mid/late-70s modernisations, and by 1987 the ships were still capable A/S vessels but VERY vulnerable, despite the CLOS SeaCat. Great for patrolling in benign environments, not so great if you wanted to deploy them somewhere where they would be at risk from Exocet-generation of ASMs.
Was there thought given to replacing the SeaCat with a CIWS? I can't remember the general discourse at the time.
I do have to apologise to HMAS
Yarra and her crews though, she slipped my mind and I momentarily forgot that she existed.
I did criticise the Daring destroyers. I referred to them, affectionately I assure you, as "gun boats". I also criticised the three converted Q-class frigates and
Anzac. I'm not sure to what extent these last four were in or out of service in 1968.
Vendetta may have provided sterling work on the gun line in Vietnam, but the technology world had moved past them (probably in the 8 years they spent being built!) by the late-60s and faced with ASMs and Russian nuclear submarines, their late-40s/early-50s gear was dated and the three Darings didn't have their radars and FCS modernised until the 1970s. I'm willing to be corrected but I don't think their A/S gear was modernised at all during their service. They should have been given a FRAM-like modernisation.
Melbourne was a valuable and effective ASW carrier, however I'm a bit more suspicious of the fleet air defence capabilities. Although adequate against MPA threats, I don't think its A-4s would have been very effective in the air defence role against ASM-equipped aggressors. Maybe contemporary experience in exercises doesn't back this up, but I can't help thinking that a subsonic attack aircraft fitted with rear-aspect-only AIM-9B with a range of 5km doesn't make it easy for the A-4s to get into a firing position. Which leaves almost all the air defence duties to the DDGs.
Well in 1968 there were 3 Charles F. Adams class DDGs, 3 Daring class DDs, 4 River class Des and in reserve 4 Rapid class FFs. That is 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 = 14. Reserve category is the same as today’s “reduced readiness” where the ship is extant and the Navy has crew for it but they are on shore duties or part time service.
The thrust of my post was that the RAN of 1968 had some modern escorts (3 x DDGs plus
4 x DEs, sorry
Yarra) but some others of questionable (3 x Darings) or marginal (
Anzac and the 3 x Q-class) utility.
The whole thing was in response to a comparison of the RAN of 1968 to that of today/tomorrow. My argument is that despite not having a light CV and a "loss" of escort hulls, the RAN will be more capable with 11 hulls (3 x AWD plus 8 x mod Anzacs) in 2018 or so than the RAN was in 1968.
Finally, I'm not upset at being called "uninformed" and I am willing to lose Internet Face™ by not engaging in an argument further and conceding totally to my ignorance.
nfloorl: