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Would it be possible for US to park a couple of Carrier groups in the Black Sea ?


Hannibal

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Listening to a lot of strong talk on the Right wing talk shows .A Caller said the US should put a couple of Carrier Groups in the Black sea to intimadate the Russians.Now I know this would never happen but if the turks gave us clearance how long could Us carrier groups last in the black see if the Russian tried to take them out ?

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Oh, now it is a new thread.

1. It would last a long time in their.

2. It would so piss off the Russians.

3. Kiss world peace goodbye.

I don't think we are going to do that; it would be one hell of a risk. Too dangerous and irresponsible.

Besides, we have Turkey, don't we?

And Romania, Bulgaria and others to work with and/or object.

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The 1936 montreaux convention governing passage of het straights prohibits aircraft carriers.

From Wiki:

Non-Turkish warships in the Straits must be under 15,000 tons. No more than nine non-Turkish warships, with a total aggregate tonnage of no more than 30,000 tons, may pass at any one time, and they are permitted to stay in the Straits for no longer than three weeks. The number of foreign warships permitted in the Straits at any one time is restricted to one. Black Sea states are given more leeway, being authorised to send capital ships of any tonnage through the Straits (but only one at a time and specifically excluding aircraft carriers). They are also allowed to send submarines through the Straits, with prior notice, as long as the vessels have been constructed, purchased or sent for repair outside the Black Sea. The less restrictive rules applicable to Black Sea states were agreed as, effectively, a concession to the Soviet Union, the only Black Sea state other than Turkey with any significant number of capital ships or submarines.

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Now you know why the Moskva, Kiev and Minsk were officially listed as large antisubmarine vessels! Personally, I think it would be military suicide, and that's using off the cuff survival estimates against much less lethal weapons than the Russians have now, should they decide to move directly against said CVBG.

The fundamental problem, as shown on the map

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Black_Sea_map.png

is lack of sea room. Sea room allows the force commander to, at will, close the shore in order to enhance offensive reach/create a presence, or, conversely, depressurize a situation by backing off, simultaneously reducing the likelihood of effective attacks by limiting the number of usable threat platforms and increasing the battle space available in which to engage them.

A combat deployed, let alone nuclear scared, CVBG takes up an enormous amount of ocean and sky alike, and, as the saying goes, it doesn't play well with others. Rather, it wants to operate inside a pristine bubble provided by its supporting SSNs (don't leave home without them!), F/A-18 CAP and the SAM and gun defenses of the escorts and the carriers themselves. This would be highly disruptive to both ordinary shipping and air travel in the region, especially since everything and everyone is a suspect, right down to that guy in a skiff. It doesn't take much to really hurt a modern warship, and that skiff can carry more than enough to do so. An RPG into the CIC of, say, an Aegis cruiser would make the admiral most unhappy. Here's what's in a standard CVBG. Multiply by two if you want to send two carriers!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/batgru-composition.htm

What do you want done? Here are the CVBG's combat tasks.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/batgru-tasks.htm

Have you thought about ROEs? By sticking yourself in this situation, you're now exposed to lots of nontraditional threats, including TBMs.

http://www.fas.org/spp/eprint/np14/np14chp3.htm

Then there are mines, including the very nasty RVM series.

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=267&linkid=1727

SMDM Model 3 SP

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=331&linkid=2403

PMK-2

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=331&linkid=2404

Quiet diesel-electric subs; perfect for this environment

KILO SSK

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=307&linkid=1758

Firing torpedoes, including the 200 knot Shkval

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=267&linkid=1728

Worried about sunburn? You should be! this one can be fired by suface ships, subs and aircraft.

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=263&linkid=1687

Then there are coastal batteries.

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=312&linkid=1724

Firing this

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&linkid=1685&catid=263

And to think, we haven't even really seriously looked at the air threat yet. I'll skip it.

But I'll humor the proposal. Let's say Turkey agrees, and our naval horde comes sailing through the Straits. How hard would it be to a) drop explosives and incendiaries on the ships passing below, B) snipe the flight deck planes with the Russian 12.7mm antimateriel rifle firing API from, say, 1500 meters out, c) mortar the area, d) attack with ATGM and MON directional mines, e) arrange for one or more smallish MRLs in trucks or delivery vans to pelt the area on command? These are only a few of the possibilities.

How about a collision at sea that creates a breakdown in CVBG security? Small boats, light planes, RC planes with explosive charges, minisubs, etc.? Have some demonstrate, while others attack. Beginning to see why this is a bad idea? That's why they're called chokepoints, and this time, it'd be our neck being throttled! A single, well handled Spetsnaz squad could cause millions of dollars in damage, considerable casualties and wreak untold havoc not just militarily but politically if we were so stupid as to try something like this. Wouldn't Turkey just love to see a flaming aircraft carrier under its bridge--on CNN--because one of those 12.7 rounds set a plane on fire, which set another plane on fire...? Unless things have changed dramatically, that same weapon can shoot clear through the CIC on most of our surface warships, as, I suspect, will most assault rifles.

There are multitudes of ways this could go very badly for us, and that's without even factoring in active military opposition. How, for example, is Turkey's Muslim population going to react when the Navy arrives en masse? How will the Turkish government then react? Is Turkey going to permit us to use its bases if it deems our actions ill advised?

What if Russia "puts the arm" on Turkey in any number of clever, deniable ways. "So sad, Mr. Minister, that...."

What if it permits only token surface vessels and no carriers or subs? Now what? You've got vulnerable, exposed U.S. presence in the "Russian Lake" and no way to properly protect it. As Thucydides observed: "A collision at sea can ruin your entire day." Care to bet there wouldn't be any?

This is but a sampling of what I'd take to anyone asking me about the wisdom of this idea, were this exercise being considered in earnest. Route sanitization alone would be the stuff of security officer nightmares.

Regards,

John Kettler

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So I think we're all agreed. Sending carriers to the Black Sea is a total armchair Tom Clancy fantasy.

For the record, the distance between the water and the bridge deck of the Bosphorous Bridge and the Sultan Mehment Bridge is 64m. As far as I can ascertain, a Nimitz class has a height of about 75m measured from the keel. They draw 10-12m though. So you could just scrape one under the bridge if you took some of the top arrays off for safety.

Then of course you need to have the poltical leadership willing to say "If Russian aircraft apprach we are prepared to shoot them down." Somehow I doubt that's the case.

As far as this goes, I think that when you have a great hammer like a CAG, every problem starts to look like a nail. Especially for the uninformed.

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Lost in the shuffle of the recent conflict is the fact that the Russians sent an FFG into the Eastern med on the 10th to participate in combined anti-terror operations with the US Navy, while most of the rest of the Black Sea Fleet was doing its thing off the Georgian coast. US-Russian naval relations have been fairly cozy in the past few years. Sending US warships into the Black Sea would be a lot like the Russians sending theirs to the Chesapeake. No one emerges from that situation happy.

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Guest BigDukeSixField

Well can any of you arm chair admirals explain what Bush meant when he said that US air and naval forces would be delivering the Georgians humanitarian aid?

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BigDukeSixField,

A friend of mine was telling me that some TV reporter didn't fare as well as you in his attempts to interview a bullet headed, strongly bellied, probable Russian lieutenant colonel. From what he saw, the guy answered "no comment" to a couple of questions,

brusquely said he didn't have time to talk and just walked away from the stunned reporter, whom, I gather, was then "encouraged" to leave by some of the colonel's troops.

Regarding "naval" forces, this is likely confusion on the part of our fearless. You know his pronunciation's terrible (see "nuclear"), so clearly he was referring to the highly classified SpecOp unit Omphalos, which was poor form on his part, seeing as how it officially doesn't exist. Worse, he thinks it's one of those New Age units that is built around meditation, except, he thinks the Unit's meditating on its units, as it were! No wonder he misspoke!

Regards,

John Kettler

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Guest BigDukeSixField

Well I was out to visit the Russian army again today and they were friendly enough. Got there about midday, they were having lunch, offered me some. (Said "no", independant media etc. Too bad too it was rice, canned meat, veggies and gravy) The officers usually are a bit less friendly than the troops, but that's no biggie, the officers are Russians and even if they could keep track of all their troops - not easy with stuff so spread out - it's not like they are efficient enough to keep all their troops from talking to the press. I walked through a company position pretty much unmolested, although one tank crew made me go away when I took their picture. Just doin' me job, but they didn't want to hear about it. One private asked me what day it was.

In a shooting war things would be different, but that's over, this is sort of a little Cold War.

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Well can any of you arm chair admirals explain what Bush meant when he said that US air and naval forces would be delivering the Georgians humanitarian aid?

US Navy supply ship.

I'd imagine it's cheaper than sending a civilian ship, considering insurance rates probably just got jacked.

Not to mention the obvious of it being faster due to immediate availability, and the fact that you screw with it, you are screwing with the fleet.

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Redwolf,

That's "rogue players," unless you know something about their activities we don't. If so, don't tell us!

People,

There has been a string of major developments in the Georgia and related stories. Please see the last few pages of the Breaking News (Red on Red) thread at CMSF.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=82992

Lack the time and the energy to keep duplicating the material. Suffice it to say, it's pertinent to this discussion.

Regards,

John Kettler

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