CHAPTER 13.pdf

CHAPTER 13

Modern Fixed and Mobile

Coastal Defence

M ODERN FIXED AND MOBILE shore-based coastal defences

represent an attempt to square the circle of providing effec-

tive cover over, if not over a whole coastline, then certainly

its most vulnerable or important points - and at the lowest

cost. Essentially the choices involved in stationary or

mobile coast defence from the shore involve educated

guesswork about where an enemy or potential adversary

might choose to strike.

The irony of successful deterrence is that one can never

know precisely what elements of a deterrent package might

have swayed an adversary's decision not to attack, but

clearly there are some obvious probabilities. The geography

of Scandinavia favours the defender and the strategically

significant fjord or skerry can be protected with moderate

ease against all but the most determined attacker by the

usual combination of mines, shore-fired torpedoes and

SSMs - provided that control of the air can at least be

contested. Major ports and naval forces are obvious defence

priorities, as are exposed coastlines within a manageable

distance of a key objective - such as a capital city - but

otherwise the defender has in the past always had more 'key

points' to defend than reasonably sized forces with which to

shield them.

What has radically altered this assessment of the classic

coast defence dilemma is the appearance of the SSM.

Whereas torpedoes and coastal artillery - mobile or not -

can only provide protection out to at most a few tens of

kilometres, some SSMs can reach out to 150km, completely

altering the balance 1 in favour of the well-equipped and

astute defender - provided he can protect both this asset

and the means of target detection and fire control from

attack.

Lessons learned from post-1945 experiences of coastal

defence have generally confirmed the validity of the above

analysis. When coastal defence or, as in Normandy in 1944,

the ability to respond quickly failed, the results were cata-

strophic. MacArthur's landing at Inchon in 1950, which so

completely turned the tables against the outflanked North

Koreans, is an obvious case in point. It is perhaps less fair to

criticise the Egyptian performance against the Anglo-

French forces in 1956, although some of the usual measures

such as the sinking of blockships were used. It was no

accident though that, after Suez, Nasser made sure that

Egypt was well-equipped with Soviet-supplied coast de-

fence missiles and long range guns.

There was little opportunity for classic coast defence op-

erations in most of the brush-fire wars of the 1960s to 1990s,

although the mere threat of attack from the sea apparently

played an major role in misleading Saddam Hussein about

the Allied coalition's intentions in 1991. The mere presence

of substantial US Marine landing forces was enough to pro-

voke the laying of thousands of mines off Kuwait, many of

which still lurk in the shallows outside those channels

which were cleared by coalition mine hunters.

An opportunity for the classic application of coast defence

disciplines presented itself to the hapless Argentineans de-

fending the Falkland Islands during their brief occupation

in 1982. The problem, as ever in coast defence, was that

there were simply not enough troops and equipment. The

Falklands conflict is the most interesting recent example of

the opportunities presented, and challenges faced, in

attempting to mount any kind of viable coast defence.

Thus the settlement at San Carlos was indeed identified

by the Argentines as a possible landing point, but the forces

available to harass the British landing on 21 May were

meagre, comprising just sixty-two men, two 106mm recoil-

less guns and two 81mm mortars at Fanning Head, a tower-

ing headland overlooking the approach to the landing

beaches. This well-positioned, if small, sub-company

strength force was dislodged by a cleverly devised combina-

tion of attack and negotiation involving the Royal Marines'

Special Boat Service.

What is worth remembering about this skirmish in which

the British prevailed is that had those two Argentine guns

and two mortars been brought to bear on the ships quietly

sailing into San Carlos Water, there is no doubt that they

could have done incalculable damage - out of all propor-

tions to the size of the Argentine force engaged. After all,

the Argentines would have learned precisely this lesson a

month and a half before when, on 3 April 1982, their cor-

vette Guerrko was badly damaged at South Georgia by a

combination of withering small arms fire and 84mm and

66mm anti-tank rockets, all in the hands of a tiny 22-strong

Royal Marines garrison.

A third engagement during the Falklands conflict is also

of crucial relevance to this narrative as it was the first known

occasion when an SSM was fired against a warship from a

land site. On 13 June, following an earlier failed attempt to

attack British ships bombarding Port Stanley on 27-28 May,

a jury-rigged twin MM38 Exocet SSM installation mounted

on a trailer engaged the County class destroyer Glamorgan.

An Exocet caused severe damage to the ship, whose crew

knew of the Exocet threat but miscalculated its range. The

author has heard that the mistake was described by an ob-

server afterwards as a case of 'cutting across the penalty

area'. The war ended on the next day, but it is tempting to

conclude that the 'gun line' of warships bombarding Port

Stanley might have been withdrawn to a slightly safer dis-

tance had the war continued. 1

Interestingly, the British learned the lesson and after the

war contracted Vosper Thornycroft to devise a trailer-

mounted twin MM38 Exocet launcher called Excalibur,

which was installed for a few years at Gibraltar. The trailer

had an integral Type 1006 radar and power generation, but

the mounting is understood to have now been withdrawn

from Gibraltar.

Weapons like the shore-based versions of Exocet and

Harpoon, with essentially the same characteristics as their

shipborne variants, clearly represent the most potent shore-

based coast defence solution currently available, although

heavy artillery is another, while a third approach - so far not

yet widely adopted - is unguided rocketry.

In no country, except perhaps the Scandinavian nations,

is coast defence taken so seriously that it is regarded as a

primary mission of the armed forces. It is thus not surprising

that it has been in Scandinavia that the most coherent,

rational approach to the problem has been taken, with

impressive results given these countries' severely squeezed

defence budgets.

Sweden has one of the most developed coast defence

systems of any country in the world today, and perhaps the

best equipped. The Coastal Artillery is a separate arm of

service within the navy and as such is equipped, not only

with both coastal artillery and missiles, but also with its own

dedicated fleet of patrol craft, minelayers and, of crucial

importance to the provision of mobile coastal defence, am-

phibious vessels.

Coastal Defence 120 mm emplacement. Another

Swedish concept, now in service, is the Bofors 120

mm 62 cal ERSTA installation. The magazine

servicing and gun-cooling arrangement can be seen

in this cutaway

The gunnery has been extensively modernised and com-

prises the Bofors 120mm 62cal ERSTA turret in fixed

mountings, supplemented by fixed 75mm mountings. The

ERSTA turret has a maximum 27km range, which like the

75mm fixed guns fire from well-concealed turrets disguised

to appear like rocky outcrops. A deep magazine and servic-

ing and cooling system lie beneath the ERSTA turret,

which draws target information from a NobelTech 9 KM

400 surveillance radar.

Significant though these fixed guns are for Sweden's de-

fence, the provision of mobile weaponry is an increasing

trend and these assets comprise 120mm guns including

Bofors CD-80 Karin guns, 55cal weapons which have been

specially designed for the coastal defence role, as well as

75mm and 40mm AA guns. Supporting them are 81mm

mortars for close-range defence. The Karin fires the same

shell as the ERSTA turret but an enhanced range shell

which can reach out to 30km is also available.

A very important future coast defence project is the

STARKA system being developed by NobelTech for both

the Swedish and Norwegian coastal artillery for service from

1997-98. This will use mobile 155mm howitzers firing from

pre-prepared positions, from which they can swiftly with-

draw, either to other positions or to safer cliffside hides. A

request for studies went out to industry in February-March

1992. They began in the following April and the project

moved on surprisingly quickly given its sheer complexity.

Trials of appropriate systems were intended to be complete

by June 1995, to be followed by production orders for the

self-propelled artillery. Sweden's Bofors, France's GIAT

and Britain's VSEL have all showed interest in providing

the armament. Assuming the project is funded, the

howitzers are likely to be 39cal weapons, although longer 48

cal or the future NATO long range standard of 52cal, had

not been ruled out. 2

Sweden's coastal defence missile arsenal is truly formid-

able. For long-range protection, there is the Saab

RBS-15KA SSM fired from a four-round truck launcher,

plus the RBS-08A and RB-52 SSMs, the latter being

French-supplied SS-11 wire-guided missiles which are

being replaced for close-range defence by the Rockwell

AGM-114A Hellfire - known to the Swedes as the RBS-17.

This provides a form of coastal defence which can be car-

ried and deployed by one man. Some 700 were originally

ordered in 1987, with ninety launchers, to equip twenty-five

battalions to replace the thirty-two RB52 battalions.

The RBS-15KA is identical to the ship-launched version,

being powered by two booster rockets and a Microturbo

TR160 turbojet, and has a maximum range of 100km. The

missile's resistance to countermeasures has been improved

under a mid-life update contract awarded in 1991. The

RBS-17 Hellfire, marketed by Rockwell as Shore Defence

Hellfire, is a lightweight man-portable weapon system

derived from the anti-tank missile. Besides the modified

missile itself, the system consists of an El Op Portable

Advanced Laser (PAL) designator with an 8km range for

targeting, a compact, foldable tripod launcher, and launch

control equipment. The missile itself has a blast fragmenta-

tion warhead instead of the anti-armour warhead of the air-

launched Hellfire and its autopilot is also modified to allow

it to be fired at a 10 or 20 degree elevation, instead of the

horizontal of an anti-tank helicopter's weapon pylon. The

RBS-17 can lock on to its target before or after launch.

Finally, naval craft in Swedish Coastal Artillery service

currently consist of a fleet of nine coastal and sixteen

inshore minelayers, plus eighteen patrol craft and no less

than 150 landing craft of various types to move troops and

artillery around the densely island-strewn Swedish archi-

pelago. All of these coast defence assets are organised into

six coastal artillery brigades within which there are fifty-

three static defence and a dozen mobile units, including

amphibious defence and minelaying formations.

In the late 1980s Norway decided to overhaul its elderly

coast defence network and in June 1990 a contract was

awarded by the Royal Norwegian Navy's Material Com-

mand to Norsk Forsvarsteknologi (NFT) to modernise all

the minefields and torpedo batteries at the Norwegian

Coastal Artillery's fortresses along Norway's very long coast-

line. Nine controlled minefields and shore-mounted

torpedo batteries are being modernised and three more are

being added, these minefields and torpedoes all being

controlled from the fortresses, the last of which will be

complete in June 1997. The programme involves the mod-

ernisation of five minefields and four torpedo batteries, with

the addition of two new minefields at Namsen Fjord and in

Tromso and one more torpedo battery at Namsen Fjord at a

total cost of NKr 700 million ($93 million). The first of the

modernised complexes was being readied at the time of

writing near Bergen.

The minefields are receiving a new weapons control sys-

tem based on NFT's KMC 9000 tactical fire control console

with new Saab electro-optical and Terma radar sensors. The

existing mines are being modernised with new sensors and

command and communication systems. Safety for innocent

shipping is a priority and the mines can be automatically

deactivated when required.

The torpedoes will similarly be modernised, as will their

loading and mid-course correction arrangements and the

above-water tubes will be replaced by submerged ones. All

these minefields and torpedo batteries are also being pro-

vided with new communications equipment and a complete

training package. Incredibly, the Norwegians still use not

only the venerable British Mk8 torpedo for coastal defence,

but also the Tl, a Norwegian-built, German-designed G-7a

of 1940s vintage. It is not clear if these weapons will remain

in service beyond the completion of the new programme;

Norway is a Tp61 user, its variant being the Tp617, and it

would seem logical to standardise on this 533mm weapon.

Unofficial sources quoted in 1992 said that Norway then

had twenty-six coastal fortresses and fifty artillery batteries

and there were still twenty-six coastal fortresses in early

1995, equipped with 75mm, 90mm, 105mm, 120mm,

127mm and 150mm guns. The 105mm and 150mm are Ger-

man relics of the Second World War which have been

modernised. The further modernisation of the rest of

Norwegian coastal artillery has involved the installation of

Bofors 120mm ERSTA guns and new 90mm guns, plus AA

defences which include 20mm armoured turrets from NFT

which use Rheinmetall Rh 202 20mm guns. This remark-

able little turret, with 360 degree traverse and 50 degree

elevation, has a 150 degree field of view and a sight with 8x

magnification.

Norway may also benefit in 1997-98 from the afore-

mentioned joint Swedish-Norwegian STARKA project for

new mobile 155mm artillery, for which the Norwegian

designation is IM-battery. However at the time of writing

there was some uncertainty over Norwegian commitment to

further coastal defence expenditure. Coastal protection is

not cheap: in 1992 the cost of a Norwegian coastal fort was

officially stated to be NKr 819 million or $160 million, pro-

viding an indicator of the investment involved. Strangely,

one weapon which has not yet entered service with Nor-

way's coastal defences is NFT's Penguin SSM, although

the Norwegian Defence Ministry has looked at launcher

options including a truck launcher with six missiles. The

weapon is in very widespread use on sundry Norwegian

FACs and on F-16A/B fighters. In the coast defence role,

Penguin Mk.2 could achieve a range of between 25 and

27km.

One other Scandinavian country which does use shore-

fired SSMs though is Denmark, which as already mentioned

has two batteries of 100km+ range McDonnell Douglas

Harpoon lCs taken from the decommissioned 1960s-built

frigates Niels Juel and Herluf Trolle. Danish company NEA

Lindberg designed and manufactured the specialist equip-

ment used in this conversion. Each battery comprises two

Scania launch vehicles with quad launchers plus a Scania

command vehicle, all these vehicles towing their own gen-

erators on support trailers.

Otherwise Denmark still retains coastal artillery at Stevns

and Langeland forts, where often 150mm guns taken from

German battleships, four at Stevns fort are in two twin

SKC/28 mountings taken from the Gneisenau. These forts

were reduced to reserve status in 1983 but are put through

their paces by reservists once a year, firing live ammunition

and supported by coastal radar networks. One 1994 report

said only one fort was still operational while another said

Denmark still uses ex-US 3in (76mm) 50cal naval mount-

ings for coastal defence. There were also six other forts until

recently equipped with a wide range of artillery including

210mm, 170mm, 150mm, 120mm and 105mm with, until

1983, 40mm guns for protection against air threats.

Hellfire

The lightest current coastal

defence missile system is the

Hellfire, from McDonnell

Douglas. A variant of the

helicopter-fired anti-tank

missile, the Shore Defence

Hellfire is now in service

with the Swedish Coastal

Artillery (McDonnell

Douglas)

Finland, like its Scandinavian neighbours, has always re-

spected the usefulness of coastal defence and today fields

five RBS-15KA quad launchers, plus copious static artillery,

comprising 170 M-54 130mm guns, M-60 122mm and D-

10T 100mm tank turrets (from decommissioned T-55

tanks), organised in two army coast artillery regiments and

three independent battalions, one of them mobile. 3

The emphasis on coastal defence shown by Scandinavian

countries is still shared by a surprisingly large number of

countries, although this is still mainly a preoccupation of the

major powers, several European nations and a handful of

Latin American and Asian states. In Africa for example, only

one sub-Saharan country, Angola, is known to possess a

coastal defence system - with a Soviet-supplied SS-C-1

Sepal battery at Luanda. Cost is clearly an obvious factor in

discouraging the acquisition of specialised coast defence

capabilities in Africa.

Similarly, in the rest of Western Europe beyond Scan-

dinavia, only Spain and Portugal have dedicated coast

defence units. Portugal's are equipped with six 234mm,

9.2in Vickers pattern weapons installed in the 1950s

(Ireland's 9.2in guns and their 1938 vintage shells were kept

in working order as late as the early 1980s).

Meanwhile Spain still has a galaxy of coastal artillery in

two groups in the Balearics and at her North African

enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, with other guns stationed

near the strait of Gibraltar - what the Spanish call 'el

Estrecho'. These units have seventeen Vickers Model 1926

381mm 45cal (15in) , sixteen Vickers Model 1912 305mm

50cal ( 1 2 i n ) and ninety-seven 152mm. The 305mm guns

were removed from the previously described small battle-

ships Espana and Jaime I upon decommissioning. Eight are

stationed near the straits at Punta Paloma Baja, Punta

Caraminal and at Cadiz/San Fernando. Also guarding the

straits are two 381mm (15in) at Punta Paloma Alta - the

largest such artillery still in use anywhere. 4

Elsewhere in Europe - besides Turkey's 1950s-supplied

9.2in (234mm) guns - coast defence is only of interest to the

former Warsaw Pact. Bulgaria has two regiments and twenty

batteries with 150 100mm and four SM-4-1 130mm, plus

Above: STARKA

The Swedish Coastal Artillery’s STARKA concept under study from 1992,

which has also been offered to Norway, is based on the premise that future

coastal artillery will service longer if it is mobile. Self propelled artillery can

suddenly emerge and then withdraw after firing.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: