Wednesday, September 11, 2013

1st Sea Lord Goes Salamander

In the latest edition of DefenseNews, Andrew Chuter interviews Admiral Sir George Zambellas, RN.

He doesn't actually say, "LCS" - but as we know that LCS is actually just a Corvette; I think we know where he stands.
"At some point, you cannot offset quality for increased scale because if you do, you lose military authority for the utility force you have got. In other words, you are not credible. That is why I have no time for the concept of a police force at sea through corvettes,"

"If you are going to operate a relatively small frigate force, you need to achieve genuine operability across different tasks. lll The danger of the argument of those who say, ' Oh let's have more smaller, less-capable ships is, you immediately constrain your operational and terefore political flexibility. The irony is that the smaller your force, the more you need to invest in high-end, capable ships if you are to remain a serious player in defense,"
Oh, my stars and garters; I'm getting faint.

One final note. There is the #1 RN Admiral and he has four medals and a couple of other thingys. Unlike our 4-stars, he doesn't have a badge for everything and a salad bar going over his shoulder like a North Korean GOFO.

Something else I like about the Brits. Your end of tour award is your next set of orders.

Someone get URR's smelling salts. On a discussion of the lessons from Libya, after ISTAR he says,
The second example has to do with fires from the sea - missiles and guns. Modern precision munitions coming the Navy's way will have a degree of accuracy inland which means you must know exactly what is going on at the other end. ... We need to do better with naval fires ...
Can we get him to help with our strategic re-boot?

Raised in Rhodesia, helo pilot who commanded three surface ships. What's not to like.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting that he uses the phrase "less-capable ships" which also spells LCS.