Not even nuclear powered. You can try and argue they're the second best in the world, but that's a huge gap between 1 and 2.

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It's not so much about offense as it is defense of routes in the Arctic

One of the biggest consequences of Sweden and Finland joining NATO is that the Baltic is now a NATO lake.

Access to St Petersburg is now only through a NATO controlled straight and their naval base at Kaliningrad is now totally surrounded by NATO assets

In particular it means they've shifted their submarine activity to their far north naval bases on the Kola Peninsula such as Severomorsk and Polyarny

In order for the subs and the rest of their fleet (including the so called "shadow tankers" they've been using to bypass the oil embargo) to access the Atlantic, they have to go through the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) Gap which narrows their options for avoiding NATO detection assets. They've been coming increasingly close to UK territorial waters over the past year seeing them as the easier path than increasing US presence in the Arctic now that we have essentially full military control of Greenland.

They're also conducting exercises to essentially tell NATO "we know where all the major data cables and oil pipelines are and we'll hit these if we feel too threatened"

So this exercise is in response to all this to tell Russia to back off from UK waters and that NATO is strong on both sides of the Gap here

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Still blows my mind that basic strategy us kids employed playing Risk in the 60s and 70s are still so highly relevant today. Can't change geography.

The newest CCP ones are almost certainly much more capable, pending validations etc. When the French replace the De Gaulle they will supposedly have one around 80K tons/nuclear as well which will be perhaps second/third (depending how they wind up doing it/what aircraft is developed over the next 10 years).

French/Brits alike outside of politicians mouthing off actually take a lot of pride in doing joint operations with American folks, from what I've read.

American Hardwood said:

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nortex97 said:

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England is…in the North Atlantic. Maybe he will deploy her to Liverpool.

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That's like saying I'm going to deploy my Tundra to the Stripes convenient store around the corner.

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That sounds like a long trip. Better stop at Buc-ee's along the way!

aggiehawg said:

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Quote:

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It's not so much about offense as it is defense of routes in the Arctic

One of the biggest consequences of Sweden and Finland joining NATO is that the Baltic is now a NATO lake.

Access to St Petersburg is now only through a NATO controlled straight and their naval base at Kaliningrad is now totally surrounded by NATO assets

In particular it means they've shifted their submarine activity to their far north naval bases on the Kola Peninsula such as Severomorsk and Polyarny

In order for the subs and the rest of their fleet (including the so called "shadow tankers" they've been using to bypass the oil embargo) to access the Atlantic, they have to go through the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) Gap which narrows their options for avoiding NATO detection assets. They've been coming increasingly close to UK territorial waters over the past year seeing them as the easier path than increasing US presence in the Arctic now that we have essentially full military control of Greenland.

They're also conducting exercises to essentially tell NATO "we know where all the major data cables and oil pipelines are and we'll hit these if we feel too threatened"

So this exercise is in response to all this to tell Russia to back off from UK waters and that NATO is strong on both sides of the Gap here

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Still blows my mind that basic strategy us kids employed playing Risk in the 60s and 70s are still so highly relevant today. Can't change geography.

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Exactly. It's why I encourage anyone with the short sighted view of "why does Greenland and the Arctic even matter?!" to remember the earth is a sphere and when you look at it like this:



You see how important it is from a military point of view because this is the shortest route via air for either planes or missiles and how important it is for controlling important strategic access choke points for naval vessels.

Greenland is the shield of North America for both air and sea so leaving it to Denmark who doesn't have the money or will to use it as such was never an option

You can barely see Texas on that map! So why should we care?

Given the rapidly changing demographics of some of our historically reliable "allies" at what point do we quit sharing tech with them? At some point we cant share/give/sell England advanced military systems when we know the tech will be copied and delivered to the ME or in the case of Australia, China.