Ones of those amorphous definitions that seems to change depending on your viewpoint is the ‘littoral’
Whilst catching up with a spot of twitter this evening I saw this being re-tweeted
Importance of the littoral : 61% of world’s total Gross National Income comes from within 100 km of the coastline
Why not 200, or 5, or 5?
So, off to Google Map Tools.
Two other definitions
1. A coastal region; a shore.
2. The region or zone between the limits of high and low tides.
So by the Tweet definition, proclaiming 100km as within the littoral, it would seem the residents of Leeds are now in a coastal region.
Is this another example of using dodgy and misleading statistics to reinforce a point of view, clutching at straws in order to desperately make your perspective sound impressive or just a reasonable statement of fact?
We are an island as well you know 
Or it highlights how small an island nation we are.
Littoral…
Ugh, that word just gives me the creeps. I put it up there with “Warfighter”.
Ever been to Nebraska?
Seriously though, this is meaningless, the point is that the Global economy depends on the sea, even something manufactured in Nebraska would be exported by sea.
Lies! Lies and statistics!
I blame the US, they could not possibly tell their people that they were constructing something so plebian as a “patrol vessel” or a “corvette” or a “frigate” for the low, low price of 450M USD, without research cost, 1.8B with. So they had to build “Litoral Combat Ships” used best against asymetrical threats, piracy and budgets, mostly your own.
Compared to much of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Eurasia Leeds is very close to the sea. One of the little ships in the HM’s pageant was a steam tug from Yorkshire’s river network. Of course on the other side of the hill there is the Manchester Ship Canal. In the south west we find Gloucester is an inland port thanks to the Gloucester and Sharpness/Berkeley Canal. And the Thames goes the other way. The whole island isn’t just close to the sea but riddled with ship canals too.
TD,
no idea how you use Google Map Tools, but surely the better graphic is to overlay various 12.1nm offshore sea ranges onto a map. i.e. range of Chinook with a bellyful of Royal on board, NGS reach inland, coverage of CORMORANT, etc. You could expand the definition to come up with just how far offshore QEC would need to be deployed for safety so that the CAP is more of a 40 minute commuter run for a 10 minute workday and 40 minutes back, and even the Andrew reckon it is ridiculously too far.
@James
TD was complaining about the tweet defination being too broad and sneaky, it wasn’t him defining “litoral”.
Don’t do a Cleopatra and maul the messenger.
Dunno – seems like a dodgy definition on the face of it, but it shows what you can accomplish with an even slightly decent naval presence in the enemy’s littorals… in a *really* demoralising ‘So you think you’re safe do you?’ kind of way.
On the odd occasion when I’m stood outside Leeds train station smoking tabs, I’ve felt totally secure that I could laugh in the face of any puny frigates that might be sailing off Southport or wherever: Pretty sure me and my fellow commuters never dreamt that a single nefarious frigate could rain a few hundred Vulcano rounds on us over the next quarter of an hour or so, if it wanted.
That might cure a few potential foes of their sea-blindness eh?
It highlights that you are never further than 70 miles form the sea in the UK.
Compare that to 1030 miles in N America. 570 miles in Australia and well over 1000 in Asia.
Perhaps a better illustration of the importance of the littoral is shown by the lights at the link below.
http://www.nightearth.com/
Without wishing to turn this into another semantics argument, the problem I’ve always had with the term “sea-blindness” is that it implicitly assumes (or is used in such a context) that the solution to “sea blindness” is to take to the high seas with a large naval force.
In the scenario above involving raining Vulcano rounds, the solution could be many things, many of them non-floating based.
Chris.B.: Yup, the phrase sea-blindness does usually get used as part of an argument that then goes into trade, then SLOC and EEZ protection, then global SLOC with big beautiful fleets of aircraft carriers, and so on, but it doesn’t intrinsically contain that whole argument chain whenever it’s used.
What I meant above is sea-blindness also includes fairly deeply (they think) in-land folks thinking that they’re perfectly safe from any attack from the sea, as long as they don’t go too near to anything that might merit a visit from a scarce ship-launched SSM.
I’m as far from being sea-blind (all definitions thereof) as it’s possible to be, and know far more about naval weapons than most of your average punters, but I was honestly a bit shocked that all of the places where I travel, which all seem like pretty epic train journeys apart, and all totally landlocked, could all be hit by a Vulcano from a pair of cheap-ass frigates; one off Southport, one off Grimsby. I imagine that most folks would be even more shocked than I would if the Vulcanos started coming in, all over the place to cause maximal demoralisation [I refuse to use that horrible phrase, but you know the one I mean?], with the frigates’ big magazines.
Just to be clear:-
I’m not on about anybody doing that to us, but thinking in terms of somebody (maybe us) doing that to somebody else, equally ‘Sea? lol whatevs – it’s miles away!’ but with less ability to do much about those pesky frigates than we have;
I’m not suggesting that the best defence against such a tactic is to have a Grand Fleet patrolling your waters;
I am saying that I’ve always been in favour of the ol’ 127/64; and this post of TD’s has made me appreciate it even more as an additional tool in the military box (and the usefulness of having some stuff operating in the enemy’s littorals).
BTW, unless anyone else does first, I’ll have a dig around to see if there are any official military definitions of littoral/littoral ops, and why the 100km/61% GNI figure (I guess that there’s a big GNI drop off after that 100km point?).
APATS: Cheers for that Nightearth link – interesting.
I think a more useful tool is to take one ship with asm and place it in the choke points of the world with a chart showing what goes through there. That might make the point to people what the ocean means to them.
@tsz52,
I get where you’re coming from. Throw in TLAM and things get even deeper.
Until you realise that if you are in ER 76mm range, your frigate is also in MRLS/155mm range, then it becomes a duel.
Pfah – away with your puny 76mm. Anyway, that’s why all these new spangly ships designed to operate in the littorals are made of aluminium – the land artillery shells just pass straight through without detonating… or something….
One can see how,
‘An future front line littoral warfighter, using effects based opperational concepts’
Might find that definition useful (sorry Chris B):)
Surely this is a case for horses (or definitions) for courses?
Littoral, in a millitary sense should surely mean those areas of the land mass, overwhich a marine based opposing force can effectivly opperate. ]
Therefore littoral means different things to different naval forces.
For the USA Nimtzes and all, then yes the whole uk is littoral.
@tsz
The Vulcano is 76mm. Unless you meant the upsized 127mm one.
But the 76mm one is more common.
And the Freedom LCS is made of aluminium/steel components mix, which has been speculated to be the cause of some of the hull cracks(different expansion rates). Oh well, shit happens.
Observer,
a fairly one-sided duel. The floaty little boat needs some STA of its’ target, which may not be easy to obtain unless it is blindly firing at a grid and last week’s satellite imagery. It is a lot easier for the land-based force to track the ship by radar or eyes on, and coordinate fires from as you mention 155 or GMLRS, plus send land-launched munitions at it. And send out some patrol boats with ATGW if AShM or AH are not available.
I’m pretty sure that any little frigate underneath a bombardment of GMLRS, 155mm HE, and inbound missiles is going to blink first. The paintwork is going to get seriously scratched.
Raises an interesting question. What would be the effect of 40 rounds of 155mm HE with impact fuses hitting a modern frigate, and ATGWs the hull? It probably would not sink the boat, I guess, but how disabling would it be in terms of combat systems, personnel, damage control water pipes, and communication antennae? I think it could probably take the ship out of action, at least.
If so, it is another calculus. The frigate would probably need base dockyard repair, and certainly not able to function effectively as part of the overall effort, so it is “effectively sunk” as far as that conflict goes. 40 rounds of 155mm cost less than £50,000, and can be precision fired out to about 35 miles. Too much of naval doctrine assumes that the floaty little boats operate without OPFOR having a say in matters.
…actually, make that 1 second delay fuses. A 155mm HE shell that penetrates to a compartment or passageway before exploding is going to cause some serious overpressure in confined spaces. 40 of them would be pretty devastating internally to personnel, systems and controls.
Al Faw to Basra ~ 100km
http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm
Really a question of what sort of capabilities you want your Navy-Marines to have.
When it comes to geography our minds are still walking around the African savannah and only moving a few miles a day.
I wrote this one because the tweet had the words ‘go navy’ at the end. Typical pro navy cheerleading from we are an island crowd that distort stats to build up the importance of maritime forces. I don’t disagree on the importance of the oceans but like to see balance
I have some “Fly Navy” stickers. For balance.
“Is this another example of using dodgy and misleading statistics to reinforce a point of view, clutching at straws in order to desperately make your perspective sound impressive or just a reasonable statement of fact?”
I see nothing wrong with the notion per-see, tho by no means am I defending the given definition of 100km.
I also see nothing wrong with the word ‘littoral’ itself, as pointed out elsewhere it seems to be an established term in British defence lexicon.
What is the littoral?
Is it the landward depth to which naval assets can deploy comprehensive ‘effect’?
Ie the aggregate of NGS, tac-tom, and naval air, in which case you might plausibly argue it was in the region of 80km…..
Is it the landward depth to which an amphibious task group is expected to penetrate in a 72 hour mission as per British ‘doctrine’?
Ie the presumption of an unopposed landing in hostile country, followed by up to 40km of manoeuvre deemed necessary to support objectives…..
I’m not being prescriptive here, quite obviously I have made the examples up, but……. I see no problem with defining the littoral.
In fact, I would be very surprised if we haven’t, purposefully using the term to define the limits of naval effect!
@James: I’m not a massive fan of NGS against modern opponents, but come on. I daresay a single 155 would have a very significant impact on a destroyer, but getting that impact would require a sea search radar and a hell of a lot of 155mm/GMLRS since the target is moving, and this would be against an opponent with the ability to shoot down such shells if they were getting close. To both get the rate of fire required to saturate the defences and to compensate for both the inaccuracy of dumb shells and the lack of terminal guidance, I reckon you would need a regiment, and that isn’t cheap. A radar and some truck mounted ASM’s on the other hand would be very effective.
As for ATGW from small boats, launching a Javelin (MILAN would be impossible due to the unfortunate tendency of the sea to move during guidance) from within 2.5k of an alarmed destroyer, would be optimistic at best. I am a massive fan of Keith Mills, but he wisely drew in the Guerrico before opening fire, who’s captain seemed to assume he was invulnerable.
Vulcano seems like a great replacement for the 4.5, especially with a few SF teams ashore who can supply the GPS locations of every bunker and trench in advance of a landing: much faster and cheaper than sending aircraft.
Fire kills ships dead and forever. Anything else just makes holes.
Torpedo’s excepted.
wf,
obviously this is all conjecture, but I made the example merely to illustrate that life is not entirely one-sided, and that OPFOR has a say. I lose track of the amount of times I have been subjected to Powerpoint briefings illustrating some fantastic networked capability (either Fires or comms networking) in which everything is interconnected and working perfectly and nothing goes wrong. I’ve even given a few of them myself, to my shame, both in green or in a business suit. Life is not like that, in reality.
So if you sail a frigate nearish to the enemy shore and try to put it into action, OPFOR is going to get pissed off and reel out whatever he’s got to try to stop you. It may not be doctrinally correct or how we would do things, but then he’s not us.
A patrol boat with a Soviet ATGW bolted on is a threat, as are 4 of them in a converging arc. Aim the ATGWs at the arse end of the boat, and the chances are that CIWS may be overwhelmed by volley fire, and bang, your rudder or prop shaft has taken damage, and you are stopped in the water or sailing around in small predictable circles. If each patrol boat only fires 4 missiles, you’ve got 16 incoming in volleys, and the likelihood of a leaker increases substantially. So, assuming OPFOR gets lucky, does the Captain RN of the floaty little boat feel his chances of surviving mission kill have significantly decreased?
The cunning patrol boat commander would also order one of the boats to fire directly at the visible CIWS, and they are not armoured. You may think that is an unlikely scenario, except that is exactly what the Iranians train for.
As far back as 1998, BATES had a mode for predicting movement and reverse engineering a firing solution in 4 dimensions for AS90: the three geospatial dimensions, plus a “firing now!” time to ensure that all rounds landed on target at the same time. BATES was pretty crap software, but the maths is universal and not that hard, so we can’t expect OPFOR not to be able to do the same.
I’m not predicting complete ruination of the littoral doctrine, merely observing that OPFOR gets a say, and that floaty little boats are very susceptible to unconventional attack.
I have no doubt at all that a proponent of the littoral doctrine will quickly come back and declare such a scenario inconceivable, much as the Captains of Repulse and Prince of Wales probably did in December 1941.
Pretty ignorant statement…I assume New York city produces (or should it be now produced?) a healthy chunk of the USA’s GDP, but almost all of it from tertiary/services…
As mentioned, all it does is make people realise how small an island we are, but without reminding people that most of our GDP comes from the tertiary services…not trade/the seas, it would have been wiser to mention the amount of food/resource inports from the sea the UK needs, not GDP.
Ahhh the ‘go navy’ and ‘fly navy’ stickers… always fun to zap over.
James,
“You may think that is an unlikely scenario, except that is exactly what the Iranians train for.”
Don’t you think we train to counter what they openly train for? Haven’t you noticed the autocannon and MGs that festoon every warship and auxiliary? Haven’t we discussed swarm attacks on here before?
In the NGFS scenario why have they been allowed to get close enough to an FF/DD to launch ATGWs? Why (other than overly restrictive ROE) were they not taken out by carrier air, or the FF/DD’s helicopter or medium calibre gun?
It is nice to see this is all viewed from the perspective of how we make money and not protecting the population.
My God man!
Money is happiness and progress!
Anything that interferes in this such as rest, family and bodily functions is an enemy of the state and an enemy of progress. Have a word with yourself.
@James: all agreed. I’m just not a fan of the “it’s so simple, fifty quid and some duct tape and will be useless” tendency. It’s not quite that simple.
ATGW are useful if you are within 2-3 km, and the sea is going to have to look like a millpond for you to target CIWS or VLS silos from a small boat. It’s is an issue if your ROE is overly restrictive or you are being stupid, but not otherwise. Artillery is designed (and conversely it’s maths) for targets that don’t move, hence the howitzer economy and advantages of high ballistic arcs.
Repulse and POW were sunk by very conventional air attack, against which ship mounted AA was insufficient. An argument for carrier air…tssk, you’re slipping James
Anixtu,
it depends on how you see the start point. You see it as “all weapons cleared for immediate use”, I see it as “holy crap, who changed the rules?”. The Iranians were clearly able to get one over on HMS Cornwall with patrol boats, so let’s not assume it cannot happen, particularly when the hostages were taken in international waters, well out of range of the bristling MGs you refer to, but well within the 5 km range of the ATGW mounted on the Iranian patrol boats, far less the torpedoes on the 3 Iranian MTBs that stood back one thousand yards in their own waters. And not even the ship’s helicopter to give support. What happened there was an example of unconventional tactics by OPFOR, and the Andrew did not see it coming, nor had any effective defence. You can say the same for the Captain of the USS Cole.
Clearly, an institutional cockup by the Andrew and an individual gross failure by both the OIC the boarding party and the Captain of HMS Cornwall, who instead of being imprisoned which he clearly should have been, for quite a few years and lose all his pension rights, was moved “to a post where his talents and experience can be used to best effect” i.e. yet another typical MoD establishment cover-up and failure to address the real flaws in thinking.
Please don’t come back and tell me that lessons were learned and that it could never happen again, because that is risible. What will happen next is something different, and the Andrew will be caught out again.
It’s not an anti-Navy position, because the Army or RAF are equally capable of making stupid mistakes. It’s just that in the context of this thread, it is littoral warfare we are discussing.
One thing I am amazed we haven’t seen emerge in recent designs for small craft and ships that expect to be within small arms and ATGW range is armour.
I know the Royal Marine ORC’s have Dyneema panels and there is localised lightweight armour on others but if we look at the US experience in Vietnam they had small craft that definately went in harms way and real combat experience saw the development of a range of boats but what characterised pretty much all of them was armour of varying types.
Have ‘we’ tossed aside that hard won experience
It is the same as another pet subject of mine, gun shields.
We have repeatedly got rid in peacetime and had to refit in conflict, time and time again
Well the Libyans used both 155MM self propelled artillery and MLRS against Ships during OUP and never got closer than 500M. Though apparently that was quite exciting!
The problem they had was targeting and the Ships manouvering. That and the fact that they generally got some 4.5 from the RN 100M from the French or some fast air down their throat pretty quickly.
Those were duels fought at almost visual ranges. A frigate 30NM offshore would require a radar antenna height of 100M to detect it. Move the Frigate 50Nm offshore and teh coastal radar need to be 300M high. add in a bit of live time satellite or a UAV and it is a decent first strike option against the radar installations and any coastal batteries.
wf,
Repulse and POW sunk by, on that day, very unconventional air attack. That’s the issue.
You’d be surprised at what patrol boat ATGW can do. DERA managed to take out small floating pallet targets with Milan at Rosehearty Bay from a leased PB-sized small boat in Sea State 4, and that was back in 1986. They scored 11 hits – on a f*cking pallet, not a frigate – from 15 missiles fired. Milan was hardly that advanced in target tracking and guidance either. I don’t know about you, but Sea State 4 is distinctly non-millpond to me, especially onboard a smallish PB hull.
(‘Twas a trial for both Commachio Group and School of Infantry, onboard operators from both units)
Also, artillery fire is perfectly capable of firing on predictive targets, as opposed to static ones. It’s only dam geometry and a stopwatch. You can probably get the software to work it all out in an iPhone these days.
Lots of fairly conventional, maybe even complacent thinking going on here…..
APATS,
you also assume all advantages with the frigate. OPFOR is perfectly capable of hoisting a radar several thousand meters into the air over his own coastline. Moving the frigate from 30-50 nms offshore degrades the frigate’s mission much more than it does OPFORS’s capabilities.
James, Of course arty can fire on predictive targets but the whole point in a ship moving under fire is that it is not predictive. Alterations of course and or speed every x seconds is the order of the day.
I have read the trials papers and the results of the Maritime Warfare Centre Green paper which has a matrix of sea states weapons systems embarked on certain platforms and accurate firing ranges. This forms a response matrix.
Trust me lots of people take this very seriously. Anti FIAC drills both as part of a scenario with build up and completely unannounced form a good part of a Ships pre deployment training.
James, It then becomes a beautiful SAM target. Ships have never really been capable of taking on shore installations in a pounding match but their strength has always been that they can move and are inherently harder to locate than fixed shore emplacements.
APATS,
Hmmm, overall I believe the balance of advantage is with the coastline. If OPFOR starts chucking different threats simultaneously, life gets tricky on the floaty little boat.
So far we’ve got:
Radar for tracking. Several radars.
UAVs launched easily from on shore. The Iranians now have UAVs with TOW-type missiles.
Artillery batteries with software for firing on moving targets. Several batteries no doubt, up and down the coastline.
Patrol boats with decent enough ATGW, 4-5 km range. Lots of them.
MTBs with 10 km range torpedoes. Also lots of them.
We haven’t spoken yet about SSKs or sea mines, particularly those with some autonomy or reverse engineered from CAPTOR. Or the upgraded SILKWORM missiles.
All of this happening right here, right now in the next likely OPFOR, who also possess a choke point in Hormuz.
Going to be a brave Captain RN in his floaty little boat who thinks his Merlin and a Skynet connection gives him an advantage.
Observer – ref:
“The Vulcano is 76mm. Unless you meant the upsized 127mm one.
But the 76mm one is more common”
Well actually the 127mm came first, then 155mm and only recently did they announce development of a 76mm version, which I don’t believe has finished testing yet – in fact I am not sure any version is actually “in production” for the Italian or any other nations forces – yet……
James, we have gone from a shore battery on the coast to the whole Iranian ORBAT! I do not believe that would take a brave RN FF/DD CO but rather a foolish one.
The answer to that threat is that right here and I mean right now in that AOR are the Abraham Lincoln and Enterprise with their associated Battle Groups. Coalition Air forces at Al Udeid in Qatar. 5th Fleet and coalition assets in Bahrain, a few subs plus anything we stage out of Diego.
APATS,
as there were when HMS Cornwall had her face rubbed in the shit.
The point being that if you are Iran, you play a different game. You get coy on the boundaries you claim, you get underhand on things like mines, you don’t play NATO rules, you go for small, cheap and expendable threats like swarm attacks using PBs and ATGW, you play the casualties game, you obfuscate in the UN, you sell oil cheap to the non-permanent members of the UNSC and oil very cheap to the veto-wielding Chinese.
Hornblower is meanwhile seriously under-equipped, and also trying to plan things like the friendship visit to Muscat in 2 weeks time.
@James: I stand corrected. My only experience with Milan was using the simulator built into the FP and I found it fiddly enough (don’t like twist grips!). At what sort of range were they firing?
Still lairy about artillery striking moving targets, especially given recent experience. I’ll put that into the “if desperate but don’t base your defence policy on it” box. I hope my previous ideas re the applicability of ATGM in unconventional scenarios convince you I’m not just ruling options out
James,
Indeed but you continue to change the goal posts slightly. If we did decide to attack Iran I was pointing out the forces available for the job. The original discussion was about Frigates being used to shell littoral areas. Cornwall was the Iranians beating their chest and us maintaining the status quo as the priority was to continue rebuilding the Iraqi Navy and providing security for the Oil Platforms in the NAG before handing them over. We were never going to bomb or shell Iran over the incident.
APATS,
but that’s you trying to get both sides to play by our rules (much as I do with the children when they argue). All Iran wants is freedom of national manoeuvre (i.e. f*ck off from our 12 mile area), and freedom of threat (see what we can do in the Strait of Hormuz). She doesn’t want to take on the USN. On the other hand, if a frigate starts shelling some coastal installation, she’ll be on street fighter rules. And I do believe that in a much deeper intellectual manner than we’ll ever achieve, she will have studied the capabilities and also political constraints of likely enemies and built her forces to suit.
Incidents like the Cornwall are nothing more than them testing the boundaries to see of reactions at both tactical military and political levels, for fine-tuning. Sadly, the Andrew let us down big time with Cornwall, hence my view that a treason charge should have been considered for a number of senior officers over that incident. It could have been seen coming from months out. Instead, we sent some tearful little boys and girls out on some motorised dinghies.
James, A singleton frigate is not going to start shelling Iran! It may well however shell pirate bases in Somalia and did indeed shell targets ashore in Libya. With extended range guided ammo its ability to do so will be increased. As even guided shells are cheaper than missiles then it offers a useful option.
With the UAE pipeline to Fujaraih opening in the next week, Iran is quiclly becoming the only Gulf country without any means of by passing a closure of the Straits of Hormuz.
As for the Iranian forces capabilities, an awful lot of tri service multi national red cells have done plenty of work as well. Iran would of course get a vote, the enemy always does but whether that vote would be any more succesful than lbyas or Iraqs is open to question.
Hopefully such a situation can be avoided!
If that had been a two vehicle cavalry patrol moving in a disputed area then under the same circumstances surrounded and outnumbered by a similar equipped “enemy” with heavy units close by the outcome, considering the British way, would have been the same.
Post GW2 the MoD handled security poorly in the upper Gulf. Labour’s “us too” foreign policy was never matched by the necessary hardware. And as I have said the RN doesn’t produce “soldier sailors” which is what needed in such operations. (Really these things should be left to Royal but they can’t be picking up Army slack and doing their real job.) We needed 6 to 8 of these or something similar,
http://www.swiftships.com/subcommon.php?pN&IhG&tVr
No way would HMG stump up for such nor would a 1SL ask for them either firstly because it isn’t the RN way and secondly I fear there is no “imagination” in the Service.
The advantage that nations like Iran also have is they do not necessarily have the same approach to thing like cluster munitions.
Whilst conventional tube artillery against a rapidly and unpredictably moving ship might be difficult to get a hit with, can the same be said against rockets with bomblets.
Didn’t we used the characterise MLRS as being able to take out a grid square?
If you put a ship inside a km by km square, as an example, would it be able to escape damage, would that damage be enough to render it a mission kill?
@James: you’re thinking all the right things IMHO vs the Iranians. I might have included Shkval rocket assisted torpedoes as something that worried me too. But as always, major coordination of a swarming assault in time will require quite a bit of chatter, giving us an opportunity to preempt if we’re awake.
The crux would seem to be ensuring our ROE are sufficiently aggressive. Perhaps we could do our own out of the box thinking to engineer an incident that would justify an expansion in the ROE. Or perhaps the Israelis could supply one for us