On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 23:52:07 GMT, "Bjørnar Bolsøy" wrote:

"tadaa" wrote in :

If you expect a ground war, building ships would be kinda
stupid.

...with 2/3 of the Earth's surface being under water, expecting
*only* a "ground war' is a good way to get into trouble for
most countries...

Well it seems that USA with it's navy is quite capable of
getting into trouble . Quite frankly i don't see a point of
maintaining a strong navy if you are preparing to fight off
horde of tanks. How large navy should Austria have? Or Swiss? Or
from those countries that have shoreline Finland or Sweden?
Those large ships would just have been targets in the Baltic.
The point is that USA needs to have a navy to be able to project
force, but the Europeans were preparing for a war in Europe so
they didn't need that strong navy.

Norway and Turkey share a natural strategic role that way,
both having a millirary force designed not only for combating
an invation force, but also halting that invation force
from building forward airbases and a foothold for marching
throught to the rest of europe.

In fear of sounding overly patriotic, what makes for
instance Norway interesting is that just about the only way
you are going to get a large enough number of troops to
barricade against Nato mobilisation is to invade by sea.
Even though it's a 20,000km coastline (one of the longest
in the world) that's a very difficult task due to the broken
and rugged nature of the coast. There are only a few places
where such a landing of force is possible.


The Nazis did not have much trouble invading in WWII, I doubt
that the minuscule Norwegian armed forces would be much
more effective today than they were then.

The Navy is under a heavy restructuring and modernisation
programme, new frigats (about friggin' time), helicopters,
ultramodern fast attack boats and minesweepers and a
new hard-hitting commando force. Up until now we've based
much of our invation defence of these tactical points on
fixed 127/150mm coast artillery with underwater torpedo
and mine batteries. As an example, one medium fort is
expected to stop an invation force of about 30,000 troops.

Forts have done sooo well against modern armies. Remember
their inability to stop an invasion in WWII? Remember the
Maginot Line?

We used to have 40 or so of these forts of varying sizes
in operation, many of them German relics of WW2 (though
modernised of course). In later years their tactial
value came under heavy attack themselves and only a
handful remain. Not in full operation but maintaned as
part of a reserve. They have been replaced to a great
part with a special commando force with small and agile
attack boats and commando teams with the Hellfire missle.
It's all part of the new, modern (so they say at least)
doctrine of a highly mobile and agile defence force -- one
you won't see until it's too late.

It's also part of Norways will to having a closer
participation in conflicts around the world -- units
which can be sent anywhere.


Regards...

The successful defense of Oslo would be a major
accomplishment for the current Norwegian
armed forces, the rest of the country would be
taken quite easily. Norway, not unrealistically,
counts on the US for its defense.

Al Minyard