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"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
... 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 ![]() 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 Nazis had quite a lot of trouble invading. ISTR they lost a few ships and took heavy casualties from shore-based defences. 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? See above. 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. Norway is a member of an organisation called NATO which boasts several other members besides the US of A. All are pledged to help one another in the event of outside attack. John |
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