From a well respected member in this forum
I disagree that the French are to blame here.. They needed a design which could take-off and land on Foch with a decent payload. For that, Typhoon was a bit on the heavy side, with rather poor visibility at high-AoA landing.. and its front landing gear sucked completely for CATOBAR.. what else could they have done instead of stepping out? Give up the Marine Nationale?
It was the EF countries, especially Brits, who could have dealt with the issue more smartly.. I think RAF, LW, AMI or EdA could easily have lived with a Rafale-like design, there is no specific role in which Typhoon excels and Rafale sucks. Now, Typhoon in its revised form could have seen another 400+ airframes plus a carrier version for Royal Navy, if they weren’t so damn arrogant.
We know the French and Brits clashed over the design of the Eurofighter and France went their own way. Now in hindsight, both fighters are more or less the same, with Rafale being slightly better in A2G and carrier capable, and EF being slightly better in A2A and not carrier capable.
I would also have to agree, I don’t think Spain, Italy or Germany would’ve cared if it was Typhoon or Rafale in the end.
By: Marcellogo - 26th November 2016 at 02:02
When it came to military ships each navy has their own standards: some tend to favor seafaring capabilities, hence great spaces for fuel, lodging and storages, other instead fill up their ship with weaponry and leave little space for crew confort.
US Navy is probably the perfect example of the first approach while VMF and MMI are quite notorious for their attitude of fill up their own ships to the limit with firepower.
It depends by various factors, geografy included: USA ships have to cross minimum an ocean to get to any operation scenario, main russian bases are in the polar circle, and
Given that military ships are in reality a systems of systems, the idea of a real multinational programme in which anyone is allowed to have their own saying if is possible even more chimerical than with fighter planes.
I remember an humorous drawing made by the developing team working on horizon Destroyer showing them sailing on half-made one without the main radar, missile bays and gun towing a barge in which there were instead such items and their own PAAMS colleagues ferociously brawling.
In the meantime they were waiting on the deck for requirements from the partners nations to come: Italians sent a seagull carrying a single envelope in the beak, French a office shelf on the top of a sea tortoise and the Brits a Lynx helicopter carrying with an hook under the belly a whole strongbox with tons of papers leaking from the door…
So it’s perfectly plausible than the same ship would look as super equipped to an american or a british and instead just sufficient to an italian or a russian.
Still it’s not a casual thing, there are usually excellent reason for each of the mentioned nations to keep on building their own ship in the way they do.
By: swerve - 25th November 2016 at 22:15
The dam FTI/Belh@ra seems like a pocket battlestar Galactica, Captas 4, AESA sets, ASTER30, guns, a medium size Heli, UAV´s, exocets, etc on a 4000 ton´s displacement hull… I have this feeling that the Marine Natione is going to find it at least has expensive has their FREEM´s.
Yeah, but look at how many (or rather, how few) VLS cells it’ll have. And AESA radars don’t have to be huge & fancy. Look at the Sea Giraffe 1X – suitable for patrol boats. Nor is the medium helicopter that big a deal: you can operate one from a 2500 ton BAM.
It has a lot of different things, but mostly in mini configurations. VLS cells you can count on your fingers, cut-down Compact CAPTAS-4, Sea Fire radar touted by Thales as suitable for anything down to a corvette . . .
By: Marcellogo - 25th November 2016 at 21:55
The French FTI also uses Aster 30 missiles and AESA radar and is explicitly being developed for export in addition to domestic sales. I suspect export sales are under key discussion inside Italy even if the English language press coverage is not explicit. While competition is good for customers, the number of customers looking to buy heavily armed 4000 ton frigates is presumably low.
The French FTI also uses Aster 30 missiles and AESA radar and is explicitly being developed for export in addition to domestic sales. I suspect export sales are under key discussion inside Italy even if the English language press coverage is not explicit. While competition is good for customers, the number of customers looking to buy heavily armed 4000 ton frigates is presumably low.
That’s is the difference, FTI are constructed to be (also) exported, PPA not!
It was not absolutely my intention to made a comparison with some other project, just to clarify that we are actually engaging in a comprehensive naval program to renown a good half of our own fleet, not in building a product oriented to foreign market.
To be more clear, the PPA are not conceived to be a second rank ship built on a downgraded standard for better export sales.
It will instead be a class of ship built with the intention to became immediately operative in order to respond to a “clear and present danger”, although not of military nature, our country is actually facing and that they will be so constructed according to our own construction standard and will feature top tier characteristic, in some cases superior to the ones actually present in our own version of the Horizon and Fremm (see above post).
Like with the Typhoon, also in the sector of naval construction the multinational approach used in such programs failed: operational doctrine and constructive standard was too different between the different partners
So, given that our main problem was about the construction standards (redundancy, software architecture and safety measures) building export oriented (i.e. with lower standards )ships would have meant to go in the exactly opposite direction of what our navy is searching for.
So, only way left to us was to concentrate extra budget fundings in just a large scale program of concentrated acquisitions in the most sensible sector of our own order of battle, so to achieve a mass effect without compromising quality.
In any case, the fact France would built those five FTI to replace Lafajette means that they have abandoned the idea of building more than 8 Fremm?
By: Marcellogo - 25th November 2016 at 21:28
The dam FTI/Belh@ra seems like a pocket battlestar Galactica, Captas 4, AESA sets, ASTER30, guns, a medium size Heli, UAV´s, exocets, etc on a 4000 ton´s displacement hull… I have this feeling that the Marine Natione is going to find it at least has expensive has their FREEM´s.
So you think a french Fremm is expensive?
It means you have not ever looked to the Italian ones.
Seriously, just give a look to the specs of the two different versions: if things like the Exocet or the Heracles radar seems you so impressive to compare the ship that carries them to the Galactica, what you would say about OTOMAT, MILAS, EMPAR AESA, Strales and 127/64 mm Vulcano?
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November 21, 2016 at 3:31 am