Indian Navy Developments & Discussions

[randombully]

If you were a navy operating an LHD like this, why would you operate something like F35B over some attack helicopter like the Apache or Bell Viper ?
What benefit does STOVL jet provide over attack chopper, or any other speshul variety like AWS Choppa or even extra transport choppers so you don't have to be dependent on the hovercrafts/landing boats?

View attachment 15603

Currently f 35B can only carry air to air missiles internally and with it's short range it can't go far from fleet, but it can protect the fleet from enemy's fighter jets, by taking them down.

 

[Ayan Barat]

Currently f 35B can only carry air to air missiles internally and with it's short range it can't go far from fleet

F-35B dropping Small Diameter Bomb from its internal weapons bay

F-35B dropping Big Diameter Bomb from its internal weapons bay


Yaar, your name is bully and from the last couple of messages you're continuously getting bullied by me. Kya gunda banega re tu

Also the combat radius of F-35B is more than 800km; way less than what's norm on heavy fighters but to get more accurate idea you need to compare it to other VTOL fighters, especially the one that got replaced by F-35B.
Harriers had a combat radius of more than 500km.

A F-35B armed with JSM can engage a target 1,200km away from its Carrier Strike Group.

If you were a navy operating an LHD like this, why would you operate something like F35B over some attack helicopter like the Apache or Bell Viper ?

Now answering this
LHD's are supposed to have everything of their own. The helis would clear the beach, then LCACs would deliver troops and equipment all while helis would provide close air support and during the transit to the beach the F-35B would provide CAP against enemy naval strike fighters. Definitely you'd have other ships and air cover, but on paper a LHD is supposed to be "self sufficient"

But this concept of "Helicopter carrier" was designed when helicopters were the hottest thing in the market and people generally hated Harrier (only available VTOL at that time). But currently attack helicopters are slowly losing their edge against UAVs and F-35B is proving to be a formidable fighter despite being VTOL. So that's why you see countries like Japan just naming their "vessels" helicopter carrier but using them as full fledged VTOL aircraft carrier.

 

[randombully]

F-35B dropping Small Diameter Bomb from its internal weapons bay
View attachment 15607
F-35B dropping Big Diameter Bomb from its internal weapons bay
View attachment 15608

Yaar, your name is bully and from the last couple of messages you're continuously getting bullied by me. Kya gunda banega re tu

Also the combat radius of F-35B is more than 800km; way less than what's norm on heavy fighters but to get more accurate idea you need to compare it to other VTOL fighters, especially the one that got replaced by F-35B.
Harriers had a combat radius of more than 500km.

A F-35B armed with JSM can engage a target 1,200km away from its Carrier Strike Group.


Now answering this
LHD's are supposed to have everything of their own. The helis would clear the beach, then LCACs would deliver troops and equipment all while helis would provide close air support and during the transit to the beach the F-35B would provide CAP against enemy naval strike fighters. Definitely you'd have other ships and air cover, but on paper a LHD is supposed to be "self sufficient"

But this concept of "Helicopter carrier" was designed when helicopters were the hottest thing in the market and people generally hated Harrier (only available VTOL at that time). But currently attack helicopters are slowly losing their edge against UAVs and F-35B is proving to be a formidable fighter despite being VTOL. So that's why you see countries like Japan just naming their "vessels" helicopter carrier but using them as full fledged VTOL aircraft carrier.

My guy, I was talking in carrier battle role
F35 b is currently not capable of carrying antiship missile in its internal weapons bay, though it's being integrated and will start to carry it in future.
So in this same carries battle role, it can only carry air to air missile to protect the fleet.
And that 800km is max range, when it's taking off using the small ramp of heli carrier with payload inside it's bay, it combat radius range will barely reach 500km.

 

[Ayan Barat]

My guy, I was talking in carrier battle role
F35 b is currently not capable of carrying antiship missile in its internal weapons bay, though it's being integrated and will start to carry it in future.
So in this same carries battle role, it can only carry air to air missile to protect the fleet.
And that 800km is max range, when it's taking off using the small ramp of heli carrier with payload inside it's bay, it combat radius range will barely reach 500km.

I've already mentioned that...

A F-35B armed with JSM can engage a target 1,200km away from its Carrier Strike Group.

...but still.

Anyways

 

[randombully]

I've already mentioned that...

...but still.

Anyways
View attachment 15609
View attachment 15610

Those plans can take few months to few years to integrate.
So far only f35C of US navy has been seen with an anti ship missile, that too on its external pylons not in internal bay.

 

[Ayan Barat]

So far only f35C of US navy has been seen with an anti ship missile, that too on its external pylons not in internal bay.

हार नहीं मानूंगा, रार नहीं ठानूंगा
काल के कपाल पर लिखता मिटाता हूं
गीत नया गाता हूं।
- you probably

 

[randombully]

That

हार नहीं मानूंगा, रार नहीं ठानूंगा
काल के कपाल पर लिखता मिटाता हूं
गीत नया गाता हूं।
- you probably
View attachment 15612

हार नहीं मानूंगा, रार नहीं ठानूंगा
काल के कपाल पर लिखता मिटाता हूं
गीत नया गाता हूं।
- you probably
View attachment 15612

That's a protype, the production of this missile is gonna start at around 2027.
Currently LRASM is the only "developed and in use" anti ship missile that f35 has been seen with in its external pylon, and only the f 35C variant is seen with it
There's no news about f35B being integrated with LRASM.
Most logical choice will be to integrate f35b with a much lighter joint strike missile but again it's not in production yet.

 

[shade2]

F-35B dropping Small Diameter Bomb from its internal weapons bay
View attachment 15607
F-35B dropping Big Diameter Bomb from its internal weapons bay
View attachment 15608

Yaar, your name is bully and from the last couple of messages you're continuously getting bullied by me. Kya gunda banega re tu

Also the combat radius of F-35B is more than 800km; way less than what's norm on heavy fighters but to get more accurate idea you need to compare it to other VTOL fighters, especially the one that got replaced by F-35B.
Harriers had a combat radius of more than 500km.

A F-35B armed with JSM can engage a target 1,200km away from its Carrier Strike Group.


Now answering this
LHD's are supposed to have everything of their own. The helis would clear the beach, then LCACs would deliver troops and equipment all while helis would provide close air support and during the transit to the beach the F-35B would provide CAP against enemy naval strike fighters. Definitely you'd have other ships and air cover, but on paper a LHD is supposed to be "self sufficient"

But this concept of "Helicopter carrier" was designed when helicopters were the hottest thing in the market and people generally hated Harrier (only available VTOL at that time). But currently attack helicopters are slowly losing their edge against UAVs and F-35B is proving to be a formidable fighter despite being VTOL. So that's why you see countries like Japan just naming their "vessels" helicopter carrier but using them as full fledged VTOL aircraft carrier.

Is pic related style normal take off landing drone halal if you are a country that cannot get F35Bs but still has an LHD with a short ramp?
For the CAP purposes of defeating enemy fighters

It doesn't seem big enough like a piloted fighter though so idk what it can carry

 

[Ayan Barat]

That


That's a protype, the production of this missile is gonna start at around 2027.
Currently LRASM is the only "developed and in use" anti ship missile that f35 has been seen with in its external pylon, and only the f 35C variant is seen with it
There's no news about f35B being integrated with LRASM.
Most logical choice will be to integrate f35b with a much lighter joint strike missile but again it's not in production yet.

I can go on and type a long post to answer this post of yours and then you'd come up with another absurd claim. So I guess it's better for me to just leave

Sorry to say but you're giving me some serious Kung Lun Dragon vibes from DFI

 

[randombully]

I can go on and type a long post to answer this post of yours and then you'd come up with another absurd claim. So I guess it's better for me to just leave

Sorry to say but you're giving me some serious Kung Lun Dragon vibes from DFI

US Air Force orders first JSM lot for F-35A fighters - Airforce Technology

The US Air Force has selected the Norwegian Joint Strike Missile as an internal strike capability for the F-35A fleet.

www.airforce-technology.com

US airforce ordered first lot of the this missile in middle of this year's, and delivery will start by roughly 2027, so nothings absurd about it.
And until delivery starts f35 does not have joint strike missile in its arsenal.
Also this order is for f35 "A".

 

[Blood+]

So basically an anti-ship air base in Andaman; as soon as there's a dot on the OTHR you scramble the AWACS and if there's indeed a naval attack package, you send it those MKIs to swarm with smaller but long ranged stand-off weapons. There's also those long ranged Kamikaze drones.

Not any argument against it, but some considerations

Thanks for this impeccably detailed and insightful input, but then again, we expect nothing short of you. Anyway, I'd like to debate over a few minor details and further expand upon my original comment as I had left out a lot of things for brevity's sake.

1. The detection range of the air search radar and the engagment range of those Chinese S-400 type missile would be way more than this 250km+.

For one, the primary long range air-defense missiles of the PLAN DDG fleet consists of the HHQ-9, (a copy of some S-300 variant, possibly the PMU2 version) with semi-active radar homing and range of about 150-200 km. So, this one, at least in theory, shouldn't pose too big of a challenge in my projected scenario.

Now, granted, they might have made, heck they must have made a lot of improvements over the years and the data available in the public domain is long outdated, but even then, these long range SAMs have been proven to be utterly unreliable in shooting down maneuverable air targets like fighters, especially at longer ranges.

For example, On 17 May 2022, a Russian S-300 site in Syria tried to intercept a flight of Israeli F-16s, during which they fired off no less than a dozen missiles at those planes but failed to hit even one of them!!

These missiles work great against slow moving aerial targets with predictable flightpaths like bombers/tankers etc. and even cruise/ tactical ballistic missiles but not so much against fighters.
And I mean, it makes sense, right?? These SAMs are really heavy and therefore bleeds their energy far more rapidly once they have run out of fuel.


Plus, I just used a random figure. In reality, the range can be as high as 400 km and above if we can get the Americans to share their tech of Powered JDAMs. Plus, this same tech can be used to create long range decoys as well.

Plus, I wonder if a a ground launched RudraM 3 or even a modified MLRS rocket design with deployable glide fins can be sued against surface ships.

Also the use of these no to low-powered munitions (glide, small rocket, turbojet) presents a rather unique dilemma as compared to high-powered missiles; you want to climb to the highest possible altitude to increase the range as much as possible but in a naval run you want to be near the waves as much as possible.

Yeah, that IS a indeed big problem but what CAN you do?? You can't use cruise missiles to mount such level of saturation attacks for obvious reasons.

Also the terminal speed of glide bombs would be slow enough for even the CIWS to engage.

It's not that this fact was totally lost on me. But, even after accounting for this, I still think a saturation attack with powered glide bombs and stealthy suicide drones can punch through their CIWS screens for one simple reason.

Type 055 -

Type 052D -

What do you see in common between these two?? That's right, just a single gun based CIWS, mounted up front, leaving a huge blind spot at the back as well as being vulnerable to multi-direction attacks. In this one regard at least, they're inferior to their IN counterparts.

And even if they don't manage to hit a ship, they'll surely be able to make the PLAN ships waste a good chunk of their air defense missiles, which will pave the path for the subsequent BrahMos salvos to overwhelm their air defense (hopefully).

And all these brings us back to where we started; BrahMos. There are two problems with BrahMos that makes it almost impossible to use in a swarm attack like you could have used these cheaper glide bombs; it's high cost and the fact that you can carry at max just three (that too theoretically) on a MKI.
So I'd keep your plan as it is but just replace the munitions with BrahMos and BrahMos-OB. What's BrahMos-OB!!??
Well it's BrahMos-Oonga Boonga; it would be a small, lightweight missile with no warhead or seeker but would fly at the same speed as BrahMos...and have the same RCS. So now you've increased the hit probability per Su-30MkI without increasing the cost and the weight limit.

Yeah, I had proposed of an almost similar approach involving the STAR target drones back in the DFI days. What I had said was to fit the modified STARs with a simple one-way datalink so that they can follow the lead of the actual BrahMos missiles.

2. Another point; this common notion of "Andaman is an unsinkable carrier" is just pure lie; definitely it's unsinkable but not unburnable. People have no idea about the wrath of ballistic missile it would face if there's a base there that's deemed a threat by the PLA. You'll be needing an absolute God tier AD/BMD system.
So this also needs to be addressed

I never held such a notion, rest assured. But we absolutely CAN improve our odds by constructing hardened underground hangars and ordnance/POL storage facilities. And of course, a strong air-defense detachment would be of utmost importance, but that's kinda obvious.

Another assymetric approach that I'd like IN to explore other than this naval strike thing is an evolved version of torpedos mines. It's been more than four decades since US has inducted the CAPTOR mines; a small shell that lays dormant on the sea bed with multiple sensor and after getting triggered they fire the torpedo. We can have something similar but with an unmanned surface vehicle instead of torpedo. As soon as an early warning systems detects naval presense we remotely fire a bunch of these systems nearest to them and take control using satellite links. Also being USV, we'd have the ability to call off the attack at any moment
Just my tidbit

Yes, and now that we are one step closer to deploying a long range boost-glide missile, this should become an even more viable option.

PS - Sorry for posting yet another long ahh post but I'm sure you've already figured out how big of a ponderous b@stard I am, right??

 

[Binayak95]

Thanks for this impeccably detailed and insightful input, but then again, we expect nothing short of you. Anyway, I'd like to debate over a few minor details and further expand upon my original comment as I had left out a lot of things for brevity's sake.


For one, the primary long range air-defense missiles of the PLAN DDG fleet consists of the HHQ-9, (a copy of some S-300 variant, possibly the PMU2 version) with semi-active radar homing and range of about 150-200 km. So, this one, at least in theory, shouldn't pose too big of a challenge in my projected scenario.

Now, granted, they might have made, heck they must have made a lot of improvements over the years and the data available in the public domain is long outdated, but even then, these long range SAMs have been proven to be utterly unreliable in shooting down maneuverable air targets like fighters, especially at longer ranges.

For example, On 17 May 2022, a Russian S-300 site in Syria tried to intercept a flight of Israeli F-16s, during which they fired off no less than a dozen missiles at those planes but failed to hit even one of them!!

These missiles work great against slow moving aerial targets with predictable flightpaths like bombers/tankers etc. and even cruise/ tactical ballistic missiles but not so much against fighters.
And I mean, it makes sense, right?? These SAMs are really heavy and therefore bleeds their energy far more rapidly once they have run out of fuel.


Plus, I just used a random figure. In reality, the range can be as high as 400 km and above if we can get the Americans to share their tech of Powered JDAMs. Plus, this same tech can be used to create long range decoys as well.

Plus, I wonder if a a ground launched RudraM 3 or even a modified MLRS rocket design with deployable glide fins can be sued against surface ships.


Yeah, that IS a indeed big problem but what CAN you do?? You can't use cruise missiles to mount such level of saturation attacks for obvious reasons.


It's not that this fact was totally lost on me. But, even after accounting for this, I still think a saturation attack with powered glide bombs and stealthy suicide drones can punch through their CIWS screens for one simple reason.

Type 055 -

Type 052D -

What do you see in common between these two?? That's right, just a single gun based CIWS, mounted up front, leaving a huge blind spot at the back as well as being vulnerable to multi-direction attacks. In this one regard at least, they're inferior to their IN counterparts.

And even if they don't manage to hit a ship, they'll surely be able to make the PLAN ships waste a good chunk of their air defense missiles, which will pave the path for the subsequent BrahMos salvos to overwhelm their air defense (hopefully).


Yeah, I had proposed of an almost similar approach involving the STAR target drones back in the DFI days. What I had said was to fit the modified STARs with a simple one-way datalink so that they can follow the lead of the actual BrahMos missiles.


I never held such a notion, rest assured. But we absolutely CAN improve our odds by constructing hardened underground hangars and ordnance/POL storage facilities. And of course, a strong air-defense detachment would be of utmost importance, but that's kinda obvious.


Yes, and now that we are one step closer to deploying a long range boost-glide missile, this should become an even more viable option.

PS - Sorry for posting yet another long ahh post but I'm sure you've already figured out how big of a ponderous b@stard I am, right??

Regarding S300 failure against F16s and in general coalition air strikes over the last few months, we are probably off on not counting in extremely capable EW suites, Wild Weasel and Electronic Attack capabilities that the same countries possess. Do we? EW -yes, but we are not to specc with wild weasel tactics at all.

And the effectiveness of IADS is limited to the operators handling them - and having been in the bunkers where electronic tracks come in at Mahajan, S400 is a highly capable system in the right hands. let's assume chinese are just as capable unless demonstrated otherwise.

Regarding chinese ships and their air defence. Their saturation defense is spotty. OTH targetting is poor, thanks to lower mounted AESAs, and i dont believe we have seen evidence of realistic simulations and PMFs from them - something which we take VERY seriously. Happy to be corrected on this issue.

Those long range SAMs can, however intercept our fighters and kamakaze UAVs, but what about Kamakaze USVs? or USVs armed with small NASM-SR type missiles, or heck USVs with torpedoes. Bring back the TORPEDO BOAT.

Plenty of levers to pull to turn the A&N into a hedgehog of a defense.

Least of which, I know where i'd love to deploy the first ground battery of LrAShMs

 

[Blood+]

Regarding S300 failure against F16s and in general coalition air strikes over the last few months, we are probably off on not counting in extremely capable EW suites, Wild Weasel and Electronic Attack capabilities that the same countries possess. Do we? EW -yes, but we are not to specc with wild weasel tactics at all.

I don't deny any of that. But even so, range vs energy paradigm needs to considered regardless.

And the effectiveness of IADS is limited to the operators handling them - and having been in the bunkers where electronic tracks come in at Mahajan, S400 is a highly capable system in the right hands. let's assume chinese are just as capable unless demonstrated otherwise.

True but what's the maximum slant range of the HHQ-9s?? From what I could gather from open source info, the range of the latest 'B' variant maxes out at about 250 km or so. Therefore, if you could extend the range of your PGMs to say 250-300 km (as the figure I had used in my original comment), your planes could target their ships without having to enter their engagement envelopment.

And apart from that, no matter how great an operator you have sitting in front of the console, even he cannot overwrite simple physics. You cannot fire a SAM (or any missile for that matter) at a target at the extreme edge of its envelopment and hope the missile to be any effective!! Against a maneuvering target like a fighter, the effective range of a missile is decreased to ~60% of its max slant range (when talking about missiles with single pulse rocket motors);

Let's be generous and go with 70% for the HHQ-9B. So, a fighter, at least in theory, could comfortably come as close as 200 km within a PLAN DDG to drop their load before having to go cold. Now, please don't think I'm trying to be condescending here. I know that you were already aware of everything I just said but I thought I'd mention this for the context.

Regarding chinese ships and their air defence. Their saturation defense is spotty. OTH targetting is poor, thanks to lower mounted AESAs, and i dont believe we have seen evidence of realistic simulations and PMFs from them - something which we take VERY seriously. Happy to be corrected on this issue.

Yeah, absolutely, and the absence of a secondary L band air search radar would contribute to their trouble as well. And this is also one of the reason I'm not a big fan of this kind of radar arrangement, although I do appreciate the that there aren't really any other realistic way to mount such large radar arrays onboard a ship. I guess the guys at PLAN are banking on having continuous AWACS coverage at all times.

Those long range SAMs can, however intercept our fighters and kamakaze UAVs,

Of course they can, but if we could get them to waste their million dollar worth SAMs on drones which would cost at most 20k, it's already a win in my book. Plus, it'll likely soften up their air defenses enough for when the real deals arrive in all their majestic fury.

but what about Kamakaze USVs? or USVs armed with small NASM-SR type missiles, or heck USVs with torpedoes. Bring back the TORPEDO BOAT.

And somehow I managed to completely miss that part. That's the difference between a pro and an amateur, I guess.

Plenty of levers to pull to turn the A&N into a hedgehog of a defense. Least of which, I know where i'd love to deploy the first ground battery of LrAShMs

No doubt about that.