At the time these lines were written, the Russo-Ukrainian War had been going on for more than six months. Unsurprisingly, the “Special Operation” did not come to reality as a “Blitz”. The Russian military revealed numerous shortcomings in warfare – from logistics to protection. If we take a look back at the end of 1982, the Falklands War was going on with great losses in material and personnel on both sides – most of which have been the result of wrong tactics, nearly defenseless warships (e.g., due to a lack of electronic countermeasures and chaff launchers) and weak logistics. An update of the Malvinas War (or South Atlantic War) published in Naval Forces V/1982 provided the readership with the reality of the conflict: until June 1982, the British lost two Type 42 destroyers, two Type 21 frigates, one large container ship and one landing ship, in addition to one severely damaged Type 42 destroyer and two frigates. The author, Christian Eliot, questions why the very gallant Argentine Air Force had decimated the British Naval Task Force in such a way that the whole operation might have had to be abandoned. The Falkland Islands Operation provided two reasons: first, the British Naval Task Force found the lack of airborne early warning (AEW) a great disadvantage, and second, shipboard detection sensors (radar, electro-optical) were not working properly under severe environmental conditions. What an exciting comparison to the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which sank shortly after a Ukrainian missile attack in April 2022. Her own detection sensors were of little use.
The editorial director, Vice Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch (Ret), wrote in the first lines in his editorial that “in peacetime, the main task of the armed forces is to prepare for war […] the greater their deterrent effect, the less likely war becomes.” This is completely true with regard to the 1980-era (and today’s) naval battlespace. Remember, the sinking of the destroyer HMS Sheffield came as a complete surprise, as she was the first warship to “feel the sting” of a modern anti-ship missile. Lon O. Nordeen, Jr. explained in his reportage “Countering the anti-ship missile” that a remarkable diversity of anti-ship missiles was in service with the world’s navies and aviation forces in the early 1980s, so that the use of electronic support measures (ESM) became a factor in missile defences at that time. He warned that defences must potentially contend with simultaneous Mach 3 steep angle diving missile attacks and small, subsonic sea skimming threats, the latter approaching simultaneously from a variety of bearings. He concluded that naval forces (in the 1980s) must be able to counter a greater diversity of highly capable anti-ship missiles. A task force or major surface ships must have detection systems, electronic jamming equipment, decoys and hard-kill point defence guns or missile systems and a comprehensive command-and-control system to orchestrate their proper employment. That’s the situation today, 40 years after the end of the Falklands War.
