Japan vs USSR war 1990 [hypothetical scenario]

Greetings

Like to discuss a hypothetical scenario

With the fall of berlin wall and collapse of communism in eastern Europe fully underway and the SOviet forces being withdrawn the Japanease nationalists consider this an ideal time to take back kuril Islands in a lightning campaign.Esp with the developing crisis in the middle east and US /France/Britain preoccupied with Saddam.

Using overflights by soviet recon aircrafts and presence of soviet navy vessels close to the territorial waters as a provocation the Japanese declare war on USSR and attack the Kurils.Using paratroops to compensate for lack of offensive naval /marines force and a blockade of the islands with the their 2 dozen DD/Frigates they isolate the Soviet garrison in the Kurils and subject it to constant air attacks using their 100 + F-15./F-4 fighter jets.

What options do the soviet commanders in the Far east have to respond ?
Does the Soviet Pacific fleet try to challenge the might of the Japanese navy ?
How do the 2 fleets compare ?
WHat kind of naval air battles will most likely occur ?

Soviets have a huge army but in a small campaign Japanese will not need conscription, they need only a few thousand troops to occupy these islands the real war will be at Sea and in the air

SO according to military balance 1990
it is approx.
Japanese Fleet
34 DD/FF ( most Harpoon equipped)
12 ASROC equipped DD/FF
12 subs
But no Aegis equipped kongo class in service and no aircraft carriers
120 F-15
72 F-4 phantoms

Soviet pacific fleet in 1990 have
they have approx.
50 subs
25 DD/FF ( some ASW specialized albeit)
30 missile craft
150 naval bombers Tu-16/Tu-22 SSM equipped
In the pacific fleet plus 200 Mig-25/31 in the Far East with 250 Mig-23/Su-15 fighters

Do the Japanese in 1990 have air to air refulling ?
Precision guided munitions for their airforce ?
They do have Harppon antiship missiles, subsonic but lethal
100 + Orion ASW planes

The Harpoon outclasses the SSN-2 Styx carried by the soviet coastal craft like OSA boats and the SSN-7 carried by some soviet subs

The Orion ASW planes will pose a significant threat to soviet subs but will need F-15 escort all the time otherwise they will be vulnerable to soviet fighters

The soviets had practicised coordinated missile attacks against surface ships by missiles from surface ships /subs/naval bombers so in theory that will this be a headache for the Japanese navy in 1990 esp without the Kongo class aegis equipped ships and no aircraft carriers

The japanese subs will have to deal with significantly powerful ASW soviet ships of KAra, udaloy classes

Japanese fighters esp F-15 are superior although outnumbered.

Please leave aside assumptions like japan being a pacifist country will never be an aggressor , stranger things have happened in real history.
Please try to comment of the military options the Soviets or the Japanese have at that time and likely the tactics they would employ to try to defeat each others fleet .

M-JMSDF would completely wreck the Red Banner Pacific Fleet in a Midway style middle of the ocean fleet-on-fleet engagement.

But wars are not thought in some imaginary "spherical horse in vacuum" type of battle.

While the Soviet fleet would likely falls to the Japanese fleet, Soviet long-range aviation would make mincemeat of the Japanese navy. Then it would make mincemeat of Japan itself. While Japan has/had a very strong Navy, their ability to interdict long-range aviation (or to make their own deep raids) is almost non-existent.

So, in a fleet-on-fleet exercise, Japan would beat USSR in the Pacific. In a military-on-military exercity, Japan wouldn't stand a chance.

That is a hypothetical nonsense comperision to compare a microstate with a defence doctrine, incapable of manufactoring most essential tactical relevant technology themselfs with a pseudo-xeno constitution brought upon Japanese by USA to stay only with a defensive army with absolute tiny budget and numbers are trying to take away Kuril Islands from the strongest army on the planet in 1990. Even Serbia had better chances of actually achieving non fractioning of Kosovo away from Yugo then Japan taking Kuril Islands from SU/Russia despite having such devastating and traitors from within.

That is like someone would still dream from a 1000 year german reich reaching from europe to china sea, impossible.

GarryB wrote:

Please leave aside assumptions like japan being a pacifist country will never be an aggressor

Shouldn't that be "never be an aggressor again..."

I think even in the early 1990s the west including Japan seriously underestimated the anti ship missile threat and that the Soviet/Russian navy did not.

You compare the Harpoon with the SS-N-2... what a senseless comparison...

Harpoon against 30mm gatling guns and short range SAMs makes the task of the Harpoon a very uphill task indeed.

And SS-N-19 and SS-N-22 would rip through the Japanese navy like a hot knife through butter...

Keep in mind that the Russians don't have to take out the entire Japanese navy... they just have to kick them off a few islands and give them a bloody nose.

I rather doubt Japan would want to start WWIII over the Northern territories... the only question is how far would the Russians go to keep them?

How effective are 30 mm and SAM against Harpoons ?

Why comparison of SSN-2 and Harpoon "senseless"

artjomh wrote:M-JMSDF would completely wreck the Red Banner Pacific Fleet in a Midway style middle of the ocean fleet-on-fleet engagement.

But wars are not thought in some imaginary "spherical horse in vacuum" type of battle.

While the Soviet fleet would likely falls to the Japanese fleet, Soviet long-range aviation would make mincemeat of the Japanese navy. Then it would make mincemeat of Japan itself. While Japan has/had a very strong Navy, their ability to interdict long-range aviation (or to make their own deep raids) is almost non-existent.

So, in a fleet-on-fleet exercise, Japan would beat USSR in the Pacific. In a military-on-military exercity, Japan wouldn't stand a chance.

Please explain why you think soviet pacific fleet will be defeated by the JMSDF ?
A comparison of strengths and weakness if you don't mind
thanks

GarryB wrote:

How effective are 30 mm and SAM against Harpoons ?

Against subsonic low flying anti ship missiles... that is what they were designed for and they did their job.

More complex systems like Kashtan and Kashtan-M were developed to deal with supersonic AShMs.


Which Harpoon is not.

Why comparison of SSN-2 and Harpoon "senseless"

Because Harpoon is not used against SS-N-2s, it is used against the defences of the Soviet Navy... Harpoon could be in every way superior to SS-N-2, but that means nothing at all... Granit is in every way superior to Harpoon too and that is irrelevant too... To get a decent comparison you compare the anti ship missile with the anti ship defences... So Harpoon against 30mm gatling turrets and short range SAMs, and Granit and Sunburn against Phalanx and SM-2... and to be honest the chances of the Soviet missiles getting through is very high with no carrier battle groups... Sunburn was designed from the outset to penetrate AEGIS defences, and even today Granit is a threat to the US Navy which is rather more capable than Japans navy in 1990.

Thanks makes sense ...so how do you think the SSN-19, SSN-12, SSN-22 , SSN-9 will fare against the phanlax and SAMs of the JMSDF and vice versa
Is there a source or book you can recommend for that

fucking hypoteticals, we would use nuclear weapons if we got attack or get fucked hard and deep by japan in the 90's to say it short

everything was falling apart, most division were skeleton devisions who would needed to be mobelized first and only were stacked to 10% while some soldiers were actually starving, in 1 case a base on a island was actaully "forgoten" and soldiers starved to death

NationalRus wrote:fucking hypoteticals, we would use nuclear weapons if we got attack or get fucked hard and deep by japan in the 90's to say it short

everything was falling apart, most division were skeleton devisions who would needed to be mobelized first and only were stacked to 10% while some soldiers were actually starving, in 1 case a base on a island was actaully "forgoten" and soldiers starved to death

I think in 1990 the Soviet pacific fleet could have defeated the Japanese without resorting to nukes that is the whole premise of this scenario

GarryB wrote:

Thanks makes sense ...so how do you think the SSN-19, SSN-12, SSN-22 , SSN-9 will fare against the phanlax and SAMs of the JMSDF and vice versa

SS-N-22 was designed from the outset to defeat AEGIS... very simply the combination of staying below the 7m minimum altitude of the Standard SAM carried on AEGIS cruisers and terminal manouvering and mach 2 speed mean the only defence they have is Phalanx... a system currently being replaced by Sea Ram because it suffers from multipath interference against sea skimming targets and would not stop a subsonic sea skimmer let alone a supersonic one.

Phalanx would not stop any Soviet AShM except the subsonic non sea skimmers like the ancient SS-N-2.

Most of the 30mm gatlings on Soviet ships should deal with a Harpoon, in fact should be able to deal with 2-3 at a time. Their SAMs should also be able to handle a couple as well...

Is there a source or book you can recommend for that

Try a look through the Auspower website and read a few articles by Carlos Kopp.

Thanks and in 1990 Japan had no AEGIS equipped ships so that makes it easier even for the slower missiles

In 1990 the AVMF had 140 Badgers and 150 backfires, most of them could launch their missiles well outside of the reach of the AIM-7 armed F-15, this will be a big threat to the Japanese navy too probably much more than any cruise missiles launched from surface ships. ANd at that range  i.e > 100 miles the soviet bombers are relatively immune from interception as japs have no ship borne interecpetors unlike the American carrier groups.

Any thoughts /comments ?

GarryB wrote:Even by 1990 the Soviets didn't have that many Flankers and Fulcrums in service, but the ones they did have had R-73s and R-27s and R-27Es and would have been serious trouble for Japans fighters... the R-27 would not have been devastating... most BVR AAMs of the time were not that great against a capable opponent, but the R-73 was head and shoulders above the Sidewinder models of the time.

The West had faith their close in dogfighting training would give them an edge in air combat, but tests in the 1990s showed that the helmet mounted sight and high off boresight AAM makes WVR combat very one sided... very simply the Japanese aircraft would have to fight at arms length because if they let the Soviet aircraft get within visual range they were likely dead.

I rather suspect the Soviets would try to keep the conflict localised to the Kurile islands and therefore they would focus on sending a force to remove japanese forces from the islands and the sea around them without causing too many casualties.

Some soviet ships are armed with very short range anti-ship weapons ( granted the primary function of these weapons and ships is ASW) like the Rastrub SSN-14 Silex
How will such ships fare against Harppoon equipped JNSDF ships ?
Assuming there are no other ASuW available at that time to protect them ?

Is this thread a joke?

2SPOOKY4U wrote:Is this thread a joke?

I thought the same.

A broken country like Japan that has only an army as self defense means, without any tactical or strategic weapons even their navy does not have tactical capabilities to win such a war, but lets compare them...

Werewolf wrote:

2SPOOKY4U wrote:Is this thread a joke?

I thought the same.

A broken country like Japan that has only an army as self defense means, without any tactical or strategic weapons even their navy does not have tactical capabilities to win such a war, but lets compare them...

Japanese have 10 very capable subamries and 34 harpoon armed destroyers /frigates plus 100 Harpoon available in 1990 not an insignificant force esp in a scenario without nukes

Explain please how navy does not have the capability to give the pacific fleet a bloody nose ?

nastle77 wrote:

Werewolf wrote:

2SPOOKY4U wrote:Is this thread a joke?

I thought the same.

A broken country like Japan that has only an army as self defense means, without any tactical or strategic weapons even their navy does not have tactical capabilities to win such a war, but lets compare them...

Japanese have 10 very capable subamries and 34 harpoon armed destroyers /frigates plus 100 Harpoon available in 1990 not an insignificant force esp in a scenario without nukes

Explain please how navy does not have the capability to give the pacific fleet a bloody nose ?

The USSRs submarine fleet alone could annihilate the surface fleet, while the surface using the RORSAT submarine tracking capability to launch Veter.

The USSR navy and its supporting assets was deemed capable of destroying the entire NATO fleet.

A US vassal? Please.

The USSRs submarine fleet alone could annihilate the surface fleet,

Im sure it can but please explain in detail how you think that can be done

Which subs will be used by the pacific fleet for these ASuW missions?

How will they avoid the P-3 orions ? and the Jap ASW forces ?

What number of AsuW capable subs are available in the pacific fleet?

Will the SSBN play any role in this conflict at all ?

How will the diesel electric subs be used ? given their limited range and speed vs SSN ?

WIll the older cruise missile subs Charlie and Juliet classes be used and how ?

During the cold war how much of a threat was the p 3 Orion to the Soviet submarines and surface Naval forces especially considering over a hundred were deployed by the Japanese self-defense Force and other allies on in the periphery of soviet naval bases
What strategy did the Soviets have to counter this ?

Indeed I think the su 15 would be sufficent provided they have the range
How did the P3 typically operate ? In groups or singly? Did they always have escort fighters ?

Were the orions equipped for ASUW during the cold war ?

During the late cold war era , were the soviet ASW subs like Victor and Alfa classes able to also capable of ASUW ?
I think the type 53 and type 65 torpedoes should be effective against all kinds of ships ?
Did they have a chance of sinking ASROC equipped ships? Did the type 53 and 65 torpedoes outrange ASROC ?