Shipbucket

I concur with Rowdy. You're looking at a population the Size of Scotland (or for that matter Singapore) to get any meaningful amount of military presence.

As it stands I'd probably look into leasing Gripens from Saab as the Hungarians do, might as well look into Erieye for AEW&C too.

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Blood and Fire

just an idea, why not lease Ex Raf Tornado F.3/EF.3 they are good for interception, mini awacs, CAP capable of carring Sky Flash, AMRAAM possibly Meteor and/or ASRAAM and can still be equipped with 2 fusalge weapon station as per GR1/4 for Alarm or Harm missiles in the SEAD role, a minor software upgrade and adition of FLIR they could use ground attack/anti-ship munitions RAPTOR reconisance pods , truly multi role and as they are leased probably cheap, maintenence could be possibly done in the UK using the Tornado infrastructure in place in the UK till at least 2019..... ok they lack the Gr1/4 TFR and LRF but as most bombing missions are from medium altitude these days shouldnt be an issue

That's actually not a bad idea. All things considered you could probably run a flight each of both considering the outlay you'd be making.

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Blood and Fire

1)

Upgraded the bridge and to LW sea wolf (I hope its sufficiently LW, twin limbo was heavy so may fit ?).

2) re HMFIT

We get a defence budget of $2.5-3 Billion (A,B) before foreign assistance (i.e. the UK) which should about double that figure.(I,II)
A) 2.5-3 makes you like Peru, Philippines, Libya
B) 5-6 = Belgium, Thailand, Chile
This will NOT buy you SSKs (like AUS $26bn, By 2006, A$5.071 billion had been spent to build the (6) submarines so something like 1$Bn each )
or AWACS E3s ($270M in 1998$ )
But don't worry to much as I doubt Argentina can afford this stuff (especially if its hyper militarized basket case)

I) would the UK really be willing to spend 2.5 billion indefinitely (what does it get in return ? is there a Falklands lobby ?)
II) The main problem with this is that if the UK is willing to spend $2.5-3 Billion a year to not lose it (be it oil/gold/unobtanium) all it has to do is publicly base a few nukes down south, much cheaper and kills any Argentinian ideas off.

3) I like the Repulse class but why not Upholder ? (and why not UK/Canada/Aus/NZ/FI to save cost by doing a long production run say 6/4/6/2/2 ?) I thought that was what the Upholder class was ? a mix of Trafalgar and Oberon ?

JSB

Why is there no upholder the UK probably would still have built them evwn if the FI was sort of independent. You could have bought the Upholder class for a bargain price in the 90's. Fair enough if real life is followed you'd have to spend a bit to get them up to spec. as did Canada. But compared to the cost of building new even if you colaberate

Your AWACS problem would be solved with the F.3/EF.3 when fitted with JTID's and Data Link they were very effective mini awacs and could guide in and direct other air assets on to targets or send target information and istar information to land sea and air units. Even without E.3 you would still have a quantum leap over the Argentine capability. Argentina has been in economic trouble way before 82 so no reason to asume it wouldn't be in your AU. The F War was partly the military junta way of trying to prove to its own people that the country was still a thriving economy in reality after 82 loosing the war caused further economic problems argentina is still recovering from.

If in your AU by 82 or later you have a decent or strong military, doesn't have to be big. i could see Argentine decending into civil war by 85/6 anyway so that eliminates one potential problem for a time.

Thanks all for your continued interest in this AU and your helpful feedback. To satisfy each of your concerns (and my own itching desire to turn the Falklands Defense Forces into a world beater without looking like an Idiot) I've decided to split the AU in twain. I will Henceforth start working on things as;

1) Her Majesty's South Atlantic Territories: Uber realistic version of events with timeline starting post Falklands War and population in early 2010's rising to levels we've already talked about (250-300,000). This thread of the AU will take on-board all of the critical analysis contributed so far regarding affordability, manpower and correlation of forces etc, with the main aim of the forces being to operate in a commensurate capacity to those the UK deploys to the Falklands in real life. The military self-defence forces of HMSIT operate under the title of the Falklands Defense Service (FDS) as an autonomous adjunct to the armed forces of the UK.

2) The Pièce de résistance!! Otherwise known as the 'Democratic Commonwealth of the Falkland Islands' (DCF) whose timeline starts before WW2 and as of 2014 has a combined population (for reasons yet to be finalised) of close to 11 Million. It is Part of the Greater British Commonwealth and has close diplomatic and security ties with the USA, UK, Australia (in the guise of the Independent Federation of Australia - if I get LEUT-Easts' blessing of course!), and Israel. The Defense forces of this relatively tiny state will be formidable to protect it's unique Natural Resource wealth, it's large population and to defend against the brooding imperialist ambitions of South American nations such as Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, who are far more prosperous and expansionist in this AU than in reality (see the link to Venezuela's AU thread in my previous post!).

Ordered Development of the both the DCFI and HMSIT threads will be a longer term ambition, and i will set up separate forum threads for each in due course - but so as to facilitate the continuation of discussion here i will keep on posting designs and updates in this thread for the short to medium term. Content will relate to either or both of the future AU's.

Please see below some of my ponderings over the last day or two;

FDS Stanley (Ex. HMS Exmouth F84) in her final Mk IV configuration (Circa. 2010) just prior to retirement. This version is a rework of that previously submitted to this thread by JSB



You will note the redesigned bridge and superstructure, the automated OtoMelara 30mm and 0.50 cal turrets, LW SeaWolf and assoc. director, the triple tube launcher for ASW Torpedoes, the redesigned sonar and the final iteration of my AW149/Lynx Wildcat hybrid (colour schemes may change from here on in but that will be it).


This next one is to garner your opinion for force composition - Pls Ignore the quantities of aircraft in the SQDN descriptions, just consider the relative capabilities of the aircaft displayed Vs the needs of the HMSIT thread AU.



Regarding AWACs; the smaller AEW&C is a reworked Grumman S2 Turbo-Tracker (the USN's first true Naval AWACs birds (Designated E1-D)) were based on this airframe but looked slightly different - this iteration speculates that USN development of this airframe continued to achieve a capability just shy of the first generation E2 hawk-eye, which would have superseded this model of the E1). The Jaguar is the naval variant as I originally proposed with Blue Vixen Radar. The KC135-Rs would directly replace the Victor tankers on a 1-for-1 basis in the mid 2000's, the Buccaneers and Phantoms would be ex. Royal Navy FAA, as would be the Sea Harriers.


Edit:
FDS Stanly reworked to incl. SeaWolf and to correctly credit original artists. - sonar changed on the Type 14 MkIV

Cheers

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DCFI (Falkland Islands) AU Nation

in 'Democratic Commonwealth of the Falkland Islands' (DCF) mode,

I question the 'need' for the tankers (do you need the range to defend the FI, or are you planning on attacking Buenos Aires ).
Do you need 8 super tucano as training would mostly be done in UK ? (you are still to small at 11 mill to really operate fast jets on your own ).
I would go with E2/F4 mix second hand and can operate from small(ish) runways.

in 'Her Majesty's South Atlantic Territories' mode

1 flight of typhoons (as OTL) (ok maybe 2 if needed) + few more TA.


Keep it up.
JSB

JSB;

1) DCFI air fleet discussion:
- Israel has a population (official 2014 estimate) of about 8.2 Million and a land area of 22,770km2. It 'Independently' operates over 400 F-15/F-16/A-4 jets, plus numerous other fixed and rotary-winged assets (whilst Israel's history has necessitated such a capability, my argument is more about the economic capacity).
- DCFI will have population just under 11 Million, in a total land area of approx. 16,000km2 with the disparate island archipelagos separated by 1000s of nautical miles of ocean. Therefore i feel justified suggesting tankers/transports and training aircraft. Also, any flights out of the Falklands to anywhere (in either iteration of the AU) require tanker support to get there e.g. Ascension Island is over 6000kms from the falklands. Unless you're flying an airliner you're gonna need to top up the tanks to reach that far!!!

2) RE: HMSAT air fleet: I don't disagree with the idea of Typhoons (that's what the RAF fly down there and it works for them) but my timeline (in the military sense) starts immediately post Falklands war (1982) and therefore the options exist to fly other, older assets before modern jets like the Typhoon come along. Hence the drawings of Radar-equipped jaguars, Harriers and Phantoms.

3) What think ye of the 'Upgraded' Type 14?


Cheers

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Re type 14

(1st I like any interest in my ships )

Like - the front 30mm and that part of the bridge.
dislike - the top of bridge, from the type 21 it looks cut and past (may just be the colour ?)
- not sure about the bow sonar (not really RN style ?)
Personally I'm going off the idea of LW Sea Wolf (even if it fits its very expensive).

Would they rename it ? (depends on how separate the FIDS is from the RN ?)

My next try,

just 30mm to save costs !

JSB

I'm honestly happy with either iteration of the T14 (I obviously have a soft spot for my version, but your most recent one is awesome too) and just out of interest, the bridge on my versions is modeled on that off the type 22. I thought about goalkeeper when i was drawing mine, but ended up going with SeaWolf because i wanted the medium range capability, not just a CIWS.

I say 'versions' because I've finished my iteration of the T41 - FDS Grytviken (Ex. HMS Lynx) in it's final configuration (MkIII)



It's a bit of a radical rebuild, but i felt that if these vessels were going to continue in capable service till they were nearly 50 years old, they'd have to have been royally brought up to scratch to remain a credible deterrent. The biggest changes are the consolidation of the exhaust funnels into one structure and the new bridge and masts. Again 30mm and .50 cal mounts have been added, as well as box launchers for Exocet.

Cheers

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Current Worklist;

DCFI (Falkland Islands) AU Nation