UK vs EU members 2016.

This war would happen in 2016 after the UK votes to leave the EU. So who would win this war the UK or EU?

 

The EU. No doubt about it.

 

Why do you think the UK has no chance?

 

Same tech, UK no aircraft carriers at the moment, 60 vs 500 millions people? 160 fighters vs Armeè de l'air, Luftwaffe, A.M.I. ecc.? Royal Navy vs Marine Nationale, Marina Militare, Kriegsmarine, not even comparable industral capabilities.....without uncle Sam i see no match

 

HMS Queen Elizabeth should be ready by 2016, but the F-35B will not, so she would have to fly 40 Harriers instead, even if she did have F-35B's, the French carrier Charles De Gaulle would best her, with Rafales and airborne early warning aircraft. The UK could also have 9 Trafalgar class and Astute class submarines, far more capable than the French or German submarines with the Spearfish torpedo and Tomahawk. The UK has 6 Type 45 destroyers which could have 72 silos campared to the French, Italian and Spanish frigates with 48 silos, which Sea Ceptor a quad-pack sort range missile and Aster 30 a medium-long range missile, they would be the most powerful air defence ship in Europe. By 2016 the UK would have 120 Typhoons and could get 120 Tornado's operational within a month, so that's 240 aircraft. You also need to take into account that the UK would be defending and the only German and French pilots are as well trained as the British ones, of them only the Germans fly a aircraft as good as the Typhoon, which is the Typhoon, so I would expect the Germans in their Typhoons to be the main problem. If the UK doesn't win or draw the air battle it loses the war. Also I wouldn't expect the eastern Europeans to move their air forces to France, even the Germans couldn't move than 50% of their aircraft against the UK. I would think the war would be a stalemate with the UK taking Ireland, and the EU take Gibraltar.

 

I don't think the EU could handle Serbia (if the US left the Balkans) much less the UK.

 

6 Type 45 against lot of state of the art French, Italian, Dutch, German, Spanish frigates and french and italian destroyers equipped with the same systems? for subs you're right. Sea-Ceptor is not war tested, so aster-30, how we can say that is the best anti-aircraft ship in Europe if also antiship missile and ECR measures are not tested in war (newer variants of exocet, Teseo Mk2 and RBS-15 are not battletested), i can say that Teseo in tests with US navy passed US layered defenses 8 times on 10 but was a test, not a war. Tornado ECR Sead variant is operated only by germans and italians because UK specialized ADV variant. Also Italian pilots have the same training of germans and french, they train all togheter also with Israel lot of times.Also other countries in western europe wouldn't fly russians mercenaries. Greek pilots are highly trained because they always politically face the Turkey but i doubt they'd be deployed in great numbers cause of the costs. Maybe is more realistic adding 100 italian and 30 spanish 1st line planes (Typhoons, Tornado and F-1 F-16 of other countries are in no match against Typhoons but can be used to make sorties while Typhoons are engaged with same level fighters: I agree with you it would be a stall but if one has possibilities to win i think is not UK, a merely fact of numbers, in war everything can happen, war is directed by humans.

 

In my opinion there isn't a european nation that is capable nowadays to invade another one of the same level, if in Kossovo boots on the ground were needed it would have been a bloodbath also for NATO troops. But 20 nations against one, and we are not talking about secure the balcans that nobody wanted to do. A war against UK w'd be a full scale war with the activation of all weapons required and all logistics. In a stall as described by you have to think that UK has no more heavy industrial capability (is N.4 now in europe as industrial production after Germany, Italy and France), gas platforms would be among the first things to be destroyed, we have also to think about the strategic depth of a country, Uk has formidable defenses and the sea but little strategic depth, fuel w'd be sufficient for weeks, you dont need to take out each aircraft to make RAF inoperable, you can simply think the typhoon as a costly desktop knick-knack without fuel and spare parts. Think about axis in north africa without fuel for tanks or water for troops cause of the loss in supply lines in the Med.

 

So, are the EU and UK going to war with each other?

Casus belli?

 

Because we drive on different sides on the road, too many problems in Dover and Calais

 

I had this debate of Facebook, I was the only one that thought the UK had a chance, all the current and former members of the military said EU would win, they know more how tactics work and day to day operations. I worked out that the EU members have about 1,400 aircraft, that aren't old or used for naval service, of those 1,400 aircraft at most 700 or 50% would have used against the UK, I think the UK could get a 3-1 ratio, so those 240 aircraft could draw or even defeat the EU's 700, as there is no way the EU from airfields in French, Belgium and Holland could get more than 300 in the air at any given time, they would need to burn up fuel getting to the UK, meaning less time over the UK, then you have the UK air defences. I think the air battle would be a draw. Training comes down hour and hour spent in a aircraft practising the moves needed in a dogfight, it cost loads of money to do that, only the Germans, French and British have large enough budgets, I would count the Italians in the second level of pilots, none the less still very good pilots, just not as good as the other 3 nations. What internation training does it tactics, which would also be very important.

The Italians have only 4 battle fleet destroyers, their frigates are far to small. I count a total of 23 state of the art air defence ships, the UK would have 19 destroyer and 13 Type 23 anti submarine frigates, we sold 3 to Chile, nobody was happy about it, but the government still did it. The FREMM frigate isn't for air defence. So in naval term the British are about even, when you also take in account our submarine advantage and that we have seen combat and our air defence missiles have been used, I don't see the UK losing the naval battle. I would have rather the UK instead of spending £1.1 billion on each Type 45 destroyer, spend £800 million each on 6 new build Ticonderoga's with US missiles.

I think we can agree the British army is the best in Europe, how things have changed in the past 100 years, from the British having by far the more powerful navy and a crap army.

 

You do know the British have 2 bases on Cyprus, they could close off the Suez Canal and start sinking oil tankers. It comes with the problem if other countries not getting their aswell and also going to war with Britain, but if one of those attacks on the north sea goes wrong and you hit and kill some Norwegians, they could go to war and join the UK. We can still out do Europe in terms of ship building, Belfast, Glasgow, Portsmouth, Barrow, Newcastle their is more, if we had to we could crush Europe in terms of naval ship building. The aircraft are a different story and both the Tornado and Typhoon aren't build on the UK alone.

 

Italian FREMMs are different from french ones, french are more specialized in antisom. Some of the italians have multipurpose anti-air capability, different radars and system from french-ones. You can see the differences also from the photos, they both have Aster-15 and Aster-30, but only multirole italian version has a heavy anti-air capability. Because french FREMMs are designed to operate in groups with other units providing air coverage (FREDA frigates), italians are designed also to operate alone and have anti-aircraft capabilities with diffrent radars and sensors, as you say budget is important but cuts aren't done in training hours, problems of AMI are different (spare parts and number of aircraft) and in terms of budgets only in recent years Germany came to spend in air force more than Italy and has a shorter training, Germany wins hands down in army. In Naval shipbuilding UK is always at state of the art but now in Germany is the 1st shipbuilder, there are lot of shipyards in EU and for sure Germany,France, Italy, Spain, Holland and northern countries toghether can outnumber by far (France or Germany in terms of quantity are at the same level of UK, Italian fincantieri is building Indian frigates and US LCACs). The ships doesn't appear magically under construction in the yard, they need iron, rare minerals ecc. that have to be processed, the biggest heavy industries and chem plants are in Germany and Italy, very few industrial process are still in UK, coal is no more a killer application. In medium terms, Italy and France will decrease their industrial presence cause of teh financial crisis but i think Germany will mantain it and even increase. I think that on Cyprus there are lots of greek soldiers too, and fuel comes in large part from pipes from Russia and North Africa.

 

Do the French or Italians have plans to build a short or mudium range quad-pack missile? I am most worried about the Spanish frigates and French carrier, apart from that in naval terms the UK out classes everybody else by 2016, the Type 45 was build of air defence, it only have 8 Harpoon launchers and no anti submarine capability but a helicopter. The British pulled out of the Horizion class because we wanted a air defence destroyer and we thought it would be cheaper building it ourselves. The Swedish have good submarines, but no surface capability, the same for every other Baltic sea nation apart from Germany and Denmark, which has 3 good air defence frigates, long with German have 3. Charles De Gaulle seems to be always in refit or refueling. The Spanish and French are the main European shipbuilders, Germany is ahead of the Spanish at building submarines, but surface ships Spanish is better than Germany. The British can build anything, the French can't build submarines as good as the British. I just don't think people understand how power with the right investment the UK ship yards could be, steel is a problem, but the Indian guy that owns ArcelorMittal lives in Britain, Rio Tinto is British, we have steel factories in the north east of England, submarine yards at Barrow, ship building at Clyde, Belfast and Portsmouth, we would destroy the EU in terms of ship building, as we did before WW1. Britain's industry is on the way back, it will take 10 years for us to see the full effect.

I guess your right about flying hours. If the UK shut down the Suez, Greece would fall apart, Italian and Spain would need bailouts, mean while the British keep bringing in more the north sea oil and gas, the Germans may get it from Russia, but if the countries with good military lose, they would leave the war.

I think the war would be started by the UK trying to get free from the EU, EU member would go to war after the UK starts change trade deals and regulation, the UK would than invade and take Ireland, then shut down the Suez. If Greece starts taking parts of Cyprus, Turkey will not be happy.

The British army is the best in Europe, better MBT, better attack helicopter and has done the most fighting. The German army is a shadow of what is was.

 

Multipurpose FREMMs are planned for area anti-aircraft capability, Type 45 now has the same missile than an ita multipurpose FREMMs, Aster 15 and Aster 30...also from wiki (that is not a bible in military):The Type 45 design uses the Principal Anti-Air Missile System, now known in Royal Navy service as Sea Viper. It is a joint British, French and Italian design....
This kind of radar is better than Aegis on spanish frigates, Aegis is a very efficient in tracking target in medium range but one radar has also to manage the air space control, MultiFREMMs have a couple of radar working toghether a long range radar for air control and a tracking radar for weapons systems (shorter range than aegis but has to do only that so it's useless to have larger ones)
Italy also wanted an anti air unit, i think it's because political reason that Uk left the project, take a loof on the planned fusion MBDA-Bae, ++++ed up for political reasons, UK and France never want to trust on each other...french came out from Typhoon.
To mantain the control on Cyprus, you have to refill troops, fuel, ammo, spare parts flying over 2000 miles of enemy territory, good luck. Europe have its oil from pipelines, in times of war raw material can be transported by trains and trucks throught Russia as you said, ask also to Morsi if for him waste lot of money is ok or fight against Egyptian f-16, j-7, 1000 M1 abrams and entire egyptian army. Ok, english army is the best but has to manage a war against overwhelming forces. The best attack Helicopter is the same that use both Holland and Greece AW-64, that is a very good battletested heli, Tiger is fighting its first missions now against toyota warriors so its efficeincy is still to demonstrate, Mangusta is good as well and is battletested. The MBT is unique in europe but Leclerc, Leopard 2 (newer variants) and Ariete are similar. The Egypt and Russia response to control the canal by UK would be the WW3 beginning.

 

Yes but the FREMM's only have 32 missiles, where as the Type 45's by 2016 will have Sea Ceptor in quad-pack, meaning the Type 45 would have something like 120 missiles 64 Sea Ceptor and 56 Aster 30 missiles. The Horizon class will only have 48 missles, but the Spanish destroyers, Dutch, German and Danish air defence frigates will have RIM-162 quad-pack missiles and RIM-66 missile with greater range than the Aster 30. The Spanish use AEGIS, the Germans, Dutch and Danish use Thales systems and the French and Italians use PAAMS. It comes down to the number of missiles you have, PAAMS is only at best 10% better than AEGIS, and the Thales systems are about the same as what the UK has on our Type 23 frigates.

I think it was the Germans that blocked the BAE-MBDA merger.

If Greece sends troops to Cyprus Turkey would help the UK, if the EU hits Norwegian oil rigs Norway would help the UK. What problems would the Russians have? If Egypt attacks the UK, the UK would launch some Tomahawks on them. If the UK was going to start a war to get out of the EU, it would have the needed supplies in Cyprus for a long slog, plus troops, aircraft and submarines.

 

If UK makes a blockade of Suez with invasion of Egypt (with which forces if they are all engaged with all EU Navies, air forces etc.?), it w'd be a problem send an expeditionary force to take the control of the canal against the most powerful arab army and aviation (500.000 soldiers, 1 million reserves, 1000 m1 MBT, hundreds of f-16 and j-7, egypian fleet is not a problem). Egypt has royalties on the passage of ships and is a huge economic loss for it, add that a military intervention on sovereign country is not the healthier thing for political relations and for sure Russia, that is the main ally of Egypt will support it because Suez is a strategic asset, is not the seed-producing Syria, also in 1956 Russia supported Egypt and the shipping was not as important as today, french, UK and Israel withdrowed and lost control on the canal. China that is the largest exporter country and among the first in logistics can have something to say if its ships aren't on destination and products sold. Not all units will have sea ceptor in 2016, btw having 96 missiles instead of 48 i think is an advantage only in a long campaign but probability of being hit by an antiship missile during a saturation attack i think is much higher than firing even a quarter of them before being hit ( a sea skimming missile can be detected 10 km away, if it isn't stheath). I think that if it is so effective and if there is a stall in war this system can be fitted in all ships using Sylver VLS, FREMMs and Horizon class included, because it's an MBDA system, so can be produced also in France, Germany and Italy. Maybe this can be one of the last generations of SAM, microwave and laser for anti-air systems are already under test and a kinetic weapon can't be so effective as a direct energy system.

 

This is my exact point every time one of these threads is started. Without knowing what starts the war, there is no way of knowing exactly who would be on what side, where the fighting would occur, or anything else.

If you ask me, it would be a stalemate. Neither side possesses the kind of assets to be a real threat to the other. They could each do a lot of damage, but neither could "take the other out".

 

Although taking another look, I believe that the EU would win ultimately, and force the UK to he negotiation table.

Basically because England is dependent on imports, of everything from food to oil. All the EU would have to do it destroy the North Sea Oil Rigs, and cut off all imports of food. Blockade and embargo, and the UK would have little choice.

 

Once the RAF is destroyed the EU could do almost what it wanted. The RAF is the weakest part of the UK military compared to the EU so it would likely be destroyed. If the air battle goes well of the EU they could lose 100-200 aircraft, if it goes badly they could lose the air war. If they lose the air war the end result would be the UK keeping Ireland and losing Gibraltar.

I don't think the EU could destroy the north sea oil rigs, the Royal navy would defend them, as good as the German and Swedish submarines are they would be defeated by the Royal navy. The UK having 7 submarines in the north sea would make it hard for enemy surface ships to operate without air cover from helicopter carriers or carriers, which only France and Spain and Italy have. Once the UK takes Ireland it would be a lot easier to get food in from the US and Canada, it would also be harder for the EU to blockade. Also if the UK did stop shipping getting through the Suez, they would have to go around Africa and into the South Atlantic where the UK has bases.

 

You seem to miss how things would really be.

For one, theUK lacks the kind of naval assets to do like they did in WWII, and provide excorts to all of the shipping eeded to keep them going. And I can't see commercial merchent vessels agreing to travel through awar zne to make deliveries. So a blockade-embargo will cut them off. They can't provide enough with their own shipping, and nobody else would want to transit the area.

Same with the NS oil rigs. They do not need to be totally destroyed, just damaged to they are out of comission. One or two missile hits each will do that with no problem. The US was by itself able to greatly redue the production of Iranian oil rig in the Gulf during the Tanker War, when Iran started to arm their platforms for attacking passing third country shipping.

 

The EU doesn't have the capability to do what the Germans did, they only have about 50 submarines, Germany had far more. What would be needed to escort the marchent ship convoys then, 3 frigates, 1 helicopter carrier, 3 minesweepers? The oil rigs in Scottish waters are out of the range of EU cruise missiles, being more than 500km away, they don't have Tomahawk, and their submarines would be busy attacking British convoys. What if they attack the wrong oil rig that is in Norwegian waters?

 

You are thinking WWII again.

One reason so many subs were needed was that there was no RADAR or other systems to detect and track ships from a distance. This meant that a lot of sub and other ships had to be out just to try and catch anything they could find.

Today, they could do a lot of tracking just from satellites, and catch them at leisure. The same with the oil platforms. They do not have to destroy them, just do damage. And a cuise missile is overkill, just fly to within 40km and fire a few air to ground misiles at them and put them out of commission.

WWII is a good example for some things, but not others. And remember, who is going to bring in those supplies? During WWII the UK had a large Merchant Marine of their own, and that of the US to keep them going. In this scenario as given, this would not be the case. Germany largely left US shipping alone until 1942, not wanting to get the US into the war against them.

In this scenario, the US would likely stay neutral. And with most Merchant Marine ships being privately owned, they are not gonna want to risk loosing thm, or paying the outrageous insurance and wages involved in entering a war zone.

 

I was thinking they would need more submarines because they would be losing submarines. They only have 50 submarines total, and their submarines aren't as good as the UK submarines, only the Germans, Italians and Swedish have really good conventional powered submarines, the French have 6 small nuclear powered attack submarines with a armament of just 14 torpedo's or anti-ship missiles. So although they don't need as many to track shipping, they still need enough to overcome their losses.

The main north sea oil fields are 400 miles away from Europe, they couldn't just fly within 40 missiles and fire off a few air-ground missiles, they would have to win the air battle first.

In WW2 the UK had the marchant fleets of the whole British empire, that's why we had such a large fleet. The US would stay out, but would Canada, they are just as important as the US for getting needed goods to the UK. The UK also imports a lot of food from Ireland, if we take it that would help with the food problems, their is also ment to be some now oil fields off the coast of Ireland.

 

Scalp Naval (1600km range) to take out Oil rigs? Special forces? If subs aren't good as Uk ones it doesn't mean that they are invulnerable and royal navy will mantain the control on the area, Type 45 and Type 23 are pretty much the same as Horizion, Aquitaine, Bergamini, Alvaro de Bazan, Sachsen.