£5b Game

Sorry to bust the bubble, but, the Embraer P-99 MPA cannot carry any weapons for ASW or ASuW, its wing is just too close to the ground so there is simply no vertical clearance. May I interest in a MPA derivative of the KC-390? 😉

This is (at this point) just speculation, but who knows, if the P-8 ends costing way too much……

Regards,

Hammer

An interesting idea, but not exactly available in the short term, unlike C-295 MPA.

Sorry to bust the bubble, but, the Embraer P-99 MPA cannot carry any weapons for ASW or ASuW, its wing is just too close to the ground so there is simply no vertical clearance.

Oh yea of little vision this is a fantasy masked as pragmatism thread. Wingtip torpedo rails, overwing launchers, deploying out of doors, etc there’s a million and one (well half a dozen) ways to make this ‘work’.

Thanks for the info though.

Sorry to bust the bubble, but, the Embraer P-99 MPA cannot carry any weapons for ASW or ASuW, its wing is just too close to the ground so there is simply no vertical clearance. May I interest in a MPA derivative of the KC-390? 😉

This is (at this point) just speculation, but who knows, if the P-8 ends costing way too much……

Regards,

Hammer

That’s lots of information following my first idea so I’m going to take it at face value and have another stab.

There don’t seem to be hard numbers for new funky UAVs so I’m going to say that they clearly are important but I don’t have info to recommend. Also there is presumabky risk involved in new developments and I worry that that will add expense and delay (and cold feet by Dave and Co.

3 Astutes each at £700mn
SSNs provide ASUW and ASW warfighting capacity and a traditional deterrence (one down South to prevent future cost man and materiel of a second Falklands conflict and shows commitment to FI oil fields and Antarctic natural wealth). Plus 10 SSNs sounds like a nice scary round number

9 low-cost Maritime Patrol at £50mn each
Open tender to C-295 and to Embraer

3 E2Ds at £80mn each
Three is the minimum required to provide proper AEW coverage. In the brave new world we can work with France to pool and upgrade our AEW resources. If older, lower spec (and thus cheaper) E2 models are actually available buy more of them but to the same total cost. I do like the idea of using Vikings mind so again open tender, but anyone responded signs up to fixed price contract.

10 C3s at £140mn each
I take on board the comments raised about having existing patrol hulls. But they are expensive to run and take high end warships away from high end warship tasks. We also have to train our COs and other executive branch before giving them warship and watch.

Grand Total: £5bn on the button

I would pay BAe £300 Million for the continuation of MRA4 and give them to the navy.

I would also keep Lusty and Ark Royal in service (£500 Million Budgeted) and also run a production run of 20 FA2 to fly off them (£400 Million Budgeted for new builds) and also keep 20 GR9 flying in the hands of the Navy. (£100 Million Budgeted)

I would buy 8 National Security Cutters but with British Equipment as C3(1.5 Billion Licence build)

I would also have a permanent secondment of Pilots, WSOs and support staff on detachment to the USN pending CVF (£20 Million for the privilege)

Another thing that I would do is keep Largs Bay in service and also order another Ocean for the RFA as a replacement for Argus (would have hospital in part of hanger) (£300 Million)

Also spend £1 Billion on a buy of F/A-18 that are put into the hands of the navy as martime strike/support a/c until CVF becomes operational.

The rest would be spent on mixed buy of 6 used S-3 with Erikeye Radar, 2 S-3 Striped for COD and 4 KS-3

I like these games so here goes

Well Astute 8-9 laid down Cost £1.5bn

8 x Embraer R-99 Maritime patrol aircraft (with ASW capabilities) – cost approx. £600 million just so we have something as a replacement for the MK4

Also agree with some C3 corvettes 10 at £140 each so 1.5billion for the lot

buy Phalanx to be fitted to all the ships say about £200 million or so for Phalanx on everything

Fit the Type 45s with Harpoon and add the ability for cruise missiles alla Scalp so about another £200 million

Now that leaves me with a £1billion or so left over

so either New tankers for the RFA or a buy of Merlin and the improved Lynx

If i had more power and money, i would also end the UK’s Trident program and replace it with a SSGN program based off slightly enlarged ‘A’ class submarines. Hopefully with the money saved from trident development, the submarine force could be even expanded to 13 boats.

I would also think long and hard about what i would want in a Type 26 program, and possibly even scrap it for T45 UVX serise of 6 ships.

This would be the equilvant of 7.93 billion dollars USD so i will be converting it to that for my own sake but.

I would begin replacing most of the RFA with a common hulled tanker and stores ship, either based on a modified Wave class or a mix the Aegir- 10, 18, and 18R. at least 5 or 6 tankers would be ordered. 110 mil*6= 1.04 billion USD

Like Stan, I would also purchases a dozen C3 style corvettes and lift as much equipment off the current RN ships as possible so it would have to be stable enough for the 114mm. (possibly a greatly enlarged River OPV?) set the price at
-100-140 million pounds, up to 2.66b USD

Keep the Larg’s bay in service and make her also the Fleets medical ship and Aviation training vessel to replace the aging Argus.
-16 million pounds with say 5 million for the conversion, 21 mil total.

Totally lifting what Jones said about the
“ISTAR is the next big area of concern for the Royal Navy. We dont have much outside of what can be developed by towed sonar, chopper radar (soon not to include ASaC) and, eventually, what the carrier strike fastjets will be able to collect. This has to change and the remainder of the £5bn I’d sink into four UAV/USV projects. MQ18/Seaspray7500E, Mantis AEW.Mk1/AR.Mk1, Camcopter AR.Mk1 and Spartan ASW.

MQ18 is the situational awareness asset for routine deployed RN forces. Seaspray 7500E gives air-air, air-surface and SAR imaging modes and, at 110kg, is within weight limits flown non-stop for 24hrs by MQ18. Embarking a pair of these on any RFA with the spare hangar space or escort in a group gives persistent radar coverage and all weather imagery potential. Funding the radar integration would be potentially expensive, but, could be game-changing for the RN especially in deployments where we have no through deck presence.

Mantis would be the big ticket. BAE would be paid to develop two variants an AEW/Maritime Patrol platform with Searchwater and an Armed Reconnaisance platform both navalised and carrier-deployable. Early production radar-equipped vehicles would go to form operational ocean-surveillance squadrons for the basis of a UK BAMS programme mitigating the loss of Nimrod.

Camcopter AR.Mk1 would be a modest, low value, off-the-shelf purchase to provide OTH VISIDENT and overwatch for deployed escorts on MIOPS type taskings.

Spartan ASW would be part of the littoral environment sensor suite for the T26’s and T85’s for barrier ASW ops and is fairly self explanatory.

Item 3, UAV development and deployment strategy. MQ18, Mantis, Schiebel Camcopter, Thales Spartan. £1.35bn” or 2.14 bil USD

current expanses are 5.48 billion USD for me. the other expenses would be 5 based off the Austal 102m Next gen trimeran for uses as a multi role support ship comming in at 1 billion (200 m each)

and that last billion would go in to ensuring all ships are fitted with their for payloads and sufficient spares.

No need for the spend on that one KG. We have plenty of those, but, ours come with a red cross and a Union Jack in the top left quadrant!.

£5bn saved. Less washing powder and electricity costs for the spin dryer.

Item 1
2 Additional Astute’s
Cost £1.6bn

Item 2
I’m going to swap 3 future T26s for Type 46 Destroyers
Basically these will be Type 45 but with 64 A70 cells for potential ABM Astor down the line and I’m buying some Naval Scalp (50x£1m each?) to go with them. I reckon these should come in at around £750 – £800m each so go with £775m x3= £2.325bn, since these will be swapped for Type 26 later (call unit price £400mx3=1.2bn), for an overall Escort fleet of 9 Destroyers and 10 Frigates.
Cost £1.175bn (£2.325-£1.2+£0.05)

Item 3
10 E2D Hawkeyes guess at around £80m each.
Cost £0.8bn

Item 4
Largs Bay to be kept in service I reckon £20m should cover this.
Cost £0.02bn

Item 5
Mantis – Armed reconnaisance carrier capable to flesh out the CVFs airwing and provide a little relief to the F35cs, I’m looking for around 20 of these at around £30m each.
Cost £0.6bn

Item 6
CEC for the entire escort fleet, carriers and LPDs, I’m guessing at a cost of around £8m a ship.
Cost £0.184bn

Total: £4.379bn

Remaining cash I’d look to get the rest of the Merlin Mk1s converted to Mk2 standard and buy more more Wildcats, possibly more Phalanx units as well.

Assuming that the £5bn is new money extra and over the current planning for Carrier Strike etc I’m very tempted to follow Al down the SSN route. There is certainly vast amounts of sense in there. I’d limit it to two hulls though for a fixed £700mn unit cost as BAE claim to be able to do:

Item 1, Astute Class hulls 8 & 9 £1.4bn

I’m not concerned too much about the RN’s patrol capability near to mid term if the decision is made to move away from S2C2 and back to FSC with T26’s replacing T23. T23 gives me patrol hulls for now and T26 later. Multirole corvette hulls will make sense in the future, but, not right now.

Immediately I’m more concerned about the impending loss of the deployed C3I capability from the T22B3 disposal. T45 is supposed to offer C3 facilities, but, there are precious few of them and they can not be used similar to the deployment patterns of the 22B3’s. I would place an order with BAE for a follow on batch of 3 non-PAAMS Type 45 DDH variants. Flag facilities, COBLU, LACM, strike planning, UAV compatibility etc would all be key components in the design. With redesign costs unit price of £750mn should cover them.

Item 2, Type 85 DDH hulls 1-3 £2.25bn

ISTAR is the next big area of concern for the Royal Navy. We dont have much outside of what can be developed by towed sonar, chopper radar (soon not to include ASaC) and, eventually, what the carrier strike fastjets will be able to collect. This has to change and the remainder of the £5bn I’d sink into four UAV/USV projects. MQ18/Seaspray7500E, Mantis AEW.Mk1/AR.Mk1, Camcopter AR.Mk1 and Spartan ASW.

MQ18 is the situational awareness asset for routine deployed RN forces. Seaspray 7500E gives air-air, air-surface and SAR imaging modes and, at 110kg, is within weight limits flown non-stop for 24hrs by MQ18. Embarking a pair of these on any RFA with the spare hangar space or escort in a group gives persistent radar coverage and all weather imagery potential. Funding the radar integration would be potentially expensive, but, could be game-changing for the RN especially in deployments where we have no through deck presence.

Mantis would be the big ticket. BAE would be paid to develop two variants an AEW/Maritime Patrol platform with Searchwater and an Armed Reconnaisance platform both navalised and carrier-deployable. Early production radar-equipped vehicles would go to form operational ocean-surveillance squadrons for the basis of a UK BAMS programme mitigating the loss of Nimrod.

Camcopter AR.Mk1 would be a modest, low value, off-the-shelf purchase to provide OTH VISIDENT and overwatch for deployed escorts on MIOPS type taskings.

Spartan ASW would be part of the littoral environment sensor suite for the T26’s and T85’s for barrier ASW ops and is fairly self explanatory.

Item 3, UAV development and deployment strategy. MQ18, Mantis, Schiebel Camcopter, Thales Spartan. £1.35bn

A more affordable alternative to the P-8

8 x C-295 Maritime patrol aircraft (with ASW capabilities?) – cost approx. £400 million in total?

where are all the armchair generals now?

I would keep Ark Royal and Illustrious in service, together with their Harriers and AEW Sea Kings, keep the four Type 22s, keep all four Bay class landing ships, and allow BAE to finish the Nimrod MRA4 programme, which was near to completion anyway. I’m sure that would come to a lot less than £5bn. The most expensive component would be the Nimrods, but again, most of the money has been spent.

Now that the CAD problems have been nailed and manufacturing has been set up one should be able to nail BAE systems back on cost for another 3 Astutes. To give us 10 total. Another £2.55bn all in, same as the first three should have cost. This gives ConDems time to decide what they want to do about Trident replacement and keeps Barrow in business until that happens avoiding costly loss of capability (and making redundant a load of productive workers).

Sub-total £2.55bn

Agree with Stan Hyd on some P8s

7 at £146mn each

Sub-total £3.572bn

Also agree with him on some C3 corvettes

10 at £140mn each

Grand total £4.972bn

Ok here is my £5b for better or worse.

12 – C3 Corvettes – Im using my image but it doesn’t have to be this one. Just over 100 meters.

Set a Max cost contract with BAe of £140mill a ship

Total Cost £1.68 billion

6 P-8 Poseidon’s to give us back that capability.

Cost £146 million a plane.

Total cost £876 million

2 Extended or XL – Wave Class Fleet Tanker

Cost per ship (well the orginals cost £110mill in 99 soooo) £180mill for extended version.

Total cost £360 million

Controversial buy – 24 F/A 18 Super Hornets

Soley for the FAA. Split the future F-35 buy into two batches 1st batch F-35 C going to RAF totaling 50 aircract – second batch 50+ for FAA.

Total cost with support? £1 billion

Total spent

£3.916 billion I’ll spend the rest later today

As I like the lines on the old FRS1 but would otherwise give 800 NAS their toys back and something to put them on.