Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1365706
will be a must in the GIUK region (between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK). The convoys would also require an escort. 68 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and 22 legacy Ticonderoga cruisers seem to be impressive, and they are - compared to the smaller navies. One should remember though that some of those assets would be tied to the Pacific theater. It is not really probable that they would be missing on the Indian Ocean too. Some of them would become a part of carrier strike groups/landing ship groups. Other vessels could be assigned the missile defense mission, with this impacting their ability to carry out escort tasks, and actively taking on the enemy forces. This shows the error that the Littoral Combat Ship program was. It resulted in the acquisition of vessels with inferior potential - with symbolic value in the air defense domain, and no value at all, when it comes to the ASW capabilities. "Mission Module" for 10 warships with a towed sonar array, torpedo countermeasures, and ASW helicopters, is currently tested. Regardless of the above, the LCS suffers from numerous problems. There is no wonder then, that the US Navy decided to take a step back to the conventional frigates. In 2020 an agreement was signed to build the first series of warships based on the Italian- French FREMM frigates. It is going to take a couple of years though before these are commissioned. Paradoxically, the allies will need to support the US Navy in case of war - with warships capable of escorting convoys on the Atlantic. This includes Canadian, British, French, or even German fleets. Submarines, looking for the Russian warships, would also play a role here. The "Red Storm" scenario depicted in the above brief and general body of the text is not an optimistic one. Even though the West would be advantageous in the air, it would be a tie in the naval domain (due to the requirements in the Atlantic). When it comes to the land domain, Russia is still the party that would be coming out on top. Therefore, one should expect that, as it happened in the case of frigates, or in the case of the European MBT inventory, procurement programs filling in the capability gaps that are indispensable in a conventional international conflict would become a priority. Less attention is going to be paid to the capabilities that are indispensable in peacekeeping, or anti- guerilla operations. ANALYSIS