YFred wrote:james_mav wrote:Icarus wrote:james_mav wrote:denizaksulu wrote:james_mav wrote:bill cobbett wrote:As has been said, we ain't going to fight WW3 with a small surface "fleet" of the sort some suggest. As ever CY will box way beyond its weight by using a little bit of intelligence so the important things are to guarantee a stand-off which buys time for an international condemnation of any Turkish Interference in CY EEZ.
At present all CY can do is to protest after the event. Protests which fall on deaf ears. I want a situation where bigger powers will have no choice but to tell Turkey to back down.
Just like the frequent war games that go on between Hellenic Air Force and mogolistan jets over the eastern Aegean, you can be certain that any mogolistani naval activity around Cyprus is closely shadowed by a Greek submarine, both for intelligence gathering purposes (i.e. learn as much as possible about enemy equipment and operating doctrine), and also as a deterrent. In the littoral waters around islands and near coastlines, there is very little a surface ship can do to protect itself against a submarine.
...and Turkey has no anti-submarine vessels I suppose? Damn NATO.
They do have an ASW capability, but this capability is limited in littoral combat zones. As you're probably aware, ASW relies on sonar, and sonar works notoriously badly in shallow water near coastlines due to the reflections from the seabed. This makes it tough to detect a quiet electric submarine in shallow water near a coastline.
This is the great equaliser in the Aegean - due to the large amount of coastline near the many islands, islets, and rocks, a defending submarine can lurk in the shallows close to an island or islet and wait for enemy surface combatant to blindly sail past. This danger would be present for a surface warship operating near the coast of Cyprus if it were being tracked by a submarine.
But the seabed within the Cypriot EEZ has a depth up to 2,000m in parts but probably averages around 500m.
Also, it is very unlikely that Turkey will send any submarines in the EEZ, because their primary objective would be to disrupt Oil and Gas exploration and drilling. As things stand right now, all they need to do is threaten to send in an armed boarding party.
They will certainly have submarines in the area. If their surface ships are in the area, there will be at least one Greek submarine on patrol, and the mogoloi know and expect this. They will deploy their own submarines to keep tabs on the Greek submarine!
As for the depth of the water, I agree - at a distance from Cyprus submarines are not as significant a threat. But in the case of a larger conflict, Greek submarines operating in Cyprus' littoral waters will make resupplying and reinforcing mogolistani forces currently on Cyprus fraught with danger.
Now you've lost all your senses. Don't you think that if Greece joins Cyprus in a conflict, the Turks will invade from the north and rescue the Turkish community in Northern Greece? In the mean time the Greeks will run for cover and leave the GCs to their own demise. Like last time?
35 years is a long time. If the mogoloi thought they would've got away with "rescuing" this mythical mogolistani population in western Thrace, they probably would've tried it by now.
As far as prevening a land war between Greece and mongolistan goes, the border is well chosen. The terrain makes it hard for either side to emerge victorious. An attack westward is hard because an attacker has cross mountains and concentrate forces in a narrow coastal strip and be pummeled. An eastward counterattack encounters easy terrain, but it would be tough for the Greek army to resupply an army as it moved further into eastern Thrace.
