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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Taiwan's new frigate program and a persistent superstition
Message-ID: <1991Jun29.013623.1253@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Date: 29 Jun 91 01:36:23 GMT
References: <1991Jun27.021149.4826@cbnews.cb.att.com>
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: jih@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rong-Song Jih)
>I have been puzzled for years by Taiwan's installation of
>Sea Charpparal and Sidewinders on some of those aging destroyers.
>The extremely short ranges of these two SAM make
>them useful only when a Kamikaze-type attack is encountered
>--- which is very unlikely in the 90's...

Britain's naval planners thought point-blank-range bombing attacks very
unlikely in the 1980s, too, but the Falklands proved otherwise... and
showed up some major deficiencies in RN short-range air defences.
Light antiaircraft guns are also very short-ranged, but by the end of
the Falklands War the British ships bristled with them.

You can simplify the problem of air defence considerably if you assume
that it will all be handled at long range; the trouble is, it won't.
-- 
Lightweight protocols?  TCP/IP *is*     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
lightweight already; just look at OSI.  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry