Type 45 launch website

Oh really? Can that be documented?

There’s stuff on line about them, some of them are also being updated to block 1b status, there was a story about this in desider a couple of months ago.

Because they got used to protect bases in Iraq and Stan.

Oh really? Can that be documented?

But the RN has already retired at least 4 of its T-42’s, why haven’t their Phalanxes been installed on T-45’s already?

IMHO they should have Goalkeeper instead and reserve the Phalanxes for fitting to Amphib’s and RFA’s.

Because they got used to protect bases in Iraq and Stan.

But the RN has already retired at least 4 of its T-42’s, why haven’t their Phalanxes been installed on T-45’s already?

IMHO they should have Goalkeeper instead and reserve the Phalanxes for fitting to Amphib’s and RFA’s.

my meoldrama was tongue in cheek.

I think we all expected some tinkering to happen before it was all sorted.

What I am disappointed in is the fact that we havent increased our pool resources when it comes to phalanx e.t.c

We have a world where anti shippinng missiles are prevolent and what we need are ships at sea that can defend themselves.

That’s not really a concern, as the T-42s retire, the Phalanxes will be installed onto the T-45s, as I understand it, it could be achieved in a slight amount of time.

my meoldrama was tongue in cheek.

I think we all expected some tinkering to happen before it was all sorted.

What I am disappointed in is the fact that we havent increased our pool resources when it comes to phalanx e.t.c

We have a world where anti shippinng missiles are prevolent and what we need are ships at sea that can defend themselves.

Reel in the melodrama, have a look at the threa don the issue on warships1…. Lewis Page has a history of sticking the boot into any surface combatant that isn’t an aircraft carrier, like Max Hastings he believes the whole concept of destroyers and frigates to be outmoded.

This article is a gleeful take on a single test failure. The fact that the PAAMs system has suceeded in every test up until this one says that the system is fine, test schedules make room for possible problems… this changes nothing.

This is after all the reason why weapons get tested. Problems occur in new weapons and old, fixes get worked on, etc, etc. This isn’t a huge deal but Lewis Page who has been openly critical of the PAAMS programme (and any thing else the MOD does) for years has seized upon this with gleeful abandon and spun it out as total failure.

Its Lewis Page, so you have to take a large pinch of salt. Have a look around the other military websites and a few folks who are much closer to this than him are suggesting he is misinformed regarding the Sea Viper. Are there many other people out there claiming that the Aegis is still a superior system ?

If this is the case. the RN is over.

Reel in the melodrama, have a look at the threa don the issue on warships1…. Lewis Page has a history of sticking the boot into any surface combatant that isn’t an aircraft carrier, like Max Hastings he believes the whole concept of destroyers and frigates to be outmoded.

This article is a gleeful take on a single test failure. The fact that the PAAMs system has suceeded in every test up until this one says that the system is fine, test schedules make room for possible problems… this changes nothing.

If this is the case. the RN is over.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/02/type_45_viper_paams_fail/
Navy’s £1bn+ destroyers set to remain unarmed for years

Ex-British miracle missiles in new test FAIL

By Lewis Page

Posted in Science, 2nd December 2009 14:46 GMT

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The “Sea Viper” missile system for the Royal Navy’s new Type 45 destroyers looks set to suffer further setbacks following a reported failure during test firings. The weapons are already so late that the first £1bn+ Type 45 has been in naval service for nearly a year – almost completely unarmed.
HMS Daring during sea trials

Might as well park her up for a bit, lads. You’re wasting your time

News of the test failure comes courtesy of the Ares blog, reporting remarks by Andrew Tyler of the UK Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organisation.

“[The test failure] has been a setback,” says the MoD mandarin.

“We are working extremely hard with the other partner nations and the company to resolve what the problems were with the final firing … [It is] too early to come up with the diagnosis.”

Sea Viper is the Royal Navy’s name for its version of the Principal Anti Air Missile System (PAAMS), European industry’s answer to the highly successful American Aegis/Standard, which has nowadays developed to the point of being able to shoot down satellites in low orbit (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/spy_sat_shoot_hit_secrets_safe/). Sea Viper/PAAMS is largely French and Italian in origin, but includes some British technology too.

The system’s promised special sauce is that it is supposed to be able to knock down supersonic sea-skimming antiship missiles, a thing that even the latest Standard SM-2s may be unable to do. Such missiles are a terrible threat to surface ships without air cover, as they will only be seen by a mast-mounted radar as they emerge above the horizon during the final minute of their flight. Sea Viper/PAAMS is supposed to be able to detect a hostile shipkiller the second it appears, fire an Aster countermissile almost instantly, tip the Aster over from its vertical launch and fly it to intercept the shipkiller head-on at a closing speed in excess of Mach 5.

There has always been some doubt as to whether this is worth doing – it would be cheaper and simpler to deliver maritime air cover from carriers than provide every convoy or task group with a screen of £1bn+ destroyers. Airborne radar can cover vast areas of ocean, tracking sea-skimmers over their entire flight, and patrolling jets would have a much easier task taking down the shipkillers with time in hand from behind – or, even easier, attacking the plane or ship carrying them.
HMS Daring will probably be on her third captain by the time she’s actually armed

Now it seems possible that the miracle destroyers can’t actually be built anyway, or certainly not yet by the PAAMS coalition. Ares reports (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3afe9f8c24-186a-4a57-83c5-ef292ba7fe73) that the final test was “the most stressing of the test firing program”. Shooting down multiple supersonic sea-skimmers is the most difficult thing that Sea Viper would ever be tasked to do – so we can take it that it can’t in fact do what it says on the tin.

This is embarrassing on many fronts for the MoD. Firstly, the Ministry deliberately chose to continue with PAAMS when the multinational Euro-warship project foundered and Blighty went on alone with the Type 45 – even though an Aegis system in a British hull would have been far cheaper and more capable (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/23/type_45_cpac_slammage/page2.html).

Secondly, the only real reason this was done was in order to preserve British jobs and tech expertise. This too has been a failure as BAE Systems – the UK part of PAAMS – has already fired those workers anyway (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article6934053.ece), before the system is even in service. The weapons are no longer even partly British.

Thirdly, Sea Viper/PAAMS is about the only reason for having a Type 45 destroyer. Space has been included in the ships’ design for Tomahawk cruise missiles, but none have been bought and there is no sign that any will be. We already have the ships, but in the absence of Sea Viper they are embarrassing, expensive white elephants.

HMS Daring, first of the Type 45s, will have been in Navy hands for a year in eight days’ time. She is armed with nothing but a 4.5-inch “Kryten” gun turret and a pair of light 30mm cannon, suitable for shooting up pirate dhows and the like. This is an utterly pathetic amount of punch for a £1.1bn (at the latest estimate) warship with a crew of 200. Her first captain has already been and gone; the second, it now seems certain, will also depart before the ship is capable of achieving anything even vaguely in proportion to her cost or even vaguely worth his time commanding her. It won’t be at all surprising if the same thing happens with the second Type 45, Dauntless, which has just arrived (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h_0eRNsFUCRFvXETb7Uq0ITqf9JA) in Portsmouth ahead of handover to the Navy tomorrow.

The whole saga is made even more depressing by the fact that it is very largely the vast expense of the Type 45s which has led to the swingeing cuts to the rest of the British fleet seen in recent years, and which is imperilling the future of the new carriers which would be so much more useful.

We’ve asked the MoD for more details on the test failure, but as of publication hadn’t heard back. We’ll update this as soon as we hear. ®

Edit: My god i didn’t realise i was posting on a dead thread.

Film of HMS Dragon launch today. Usual slight foul up with the bottle breaking ceremony as well as it didn’t look like she was going to move 😀

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7734104.stm

Dauntless is launched today 😎 No doubt it will be on the local news.:rolleyes:

There are a lot of savings to be made out of the Daring-design. I’m not sure making it smaller would be necessary, as most of the cost comes from the weapons systems, sensors, etc, not the hull. If you cut the expensive radar, etc out you’ve got loads of cash. Then you can bump ASW, Harpoon and even a Tomohawk/Naval Scalp on there, whilst still keeping the price down. Maybe if the hull was shrunk a bit there could be some further cost reductions, but it would be best not to remove too much for fear of losing savings from using Daring as a baseline.

By the way, guys, don’t forget that HMS Dauntless is being launched on 23rd January!

I agree, even though I’m not that impressed with the T45 it would be a terrible waste if the production run was cut short. I think the RN should except very basically equipped T45 hulls that can be upgraded to full capability as needed or when it can be afforded.

Some info on SPECTAR can be found here http://frn.beedall.com/sampson.htm

My line of though is that the T-45 should be done the way FREMM is- have X number of AAW variants with sampson and then X number with SPECTAR and ASW and cruise missiles. They should aall get BAE’s proposed 39cal 155 naval gun. I doubt we will see any news on the T23 replacement for a long time- I mean how many incarnations has that project been through now?

Douggie – have you got any info on the spectar? had a look on the net but couldn’t see much

Some info on SPECTAR can be found here http://frn.beedall.com/sampson.htm

BAE Systems has also studied multi-face versions of SAMPSON with three, four and even five arrays, including a zenith array looking straight up. More realistically, a half-size version of SAMPSON (for use on smaller warships such as corvettes) is being promoted for export under the designation SPECTAR, and this will comprise a single active array, identical in size, shape and number-of-moduleso the array of which SAMPSON will have two. The company says that the single-face SPECTAR configuration would require less below-decks equipment and lower power, being a cost-effective option for medium-range systems.

The River-class seem awfully small to fulfill any meaningful T-23 replacement type role.

Given the in-built “upgradability” of the T-45 design it seems like a logical choice to base a T23 replacement on..

So I expect we’ll see something based on the River then!

Agreed that the River-class is too small. If something smaller & cheaper than a modified T-45 is wanted to take over some of the role of the T-23s, as the lo- part of a hi-lo mix, I think it would still have to be at least the size of the Thetis-class, but faster, & without the heavy hull.

There are a lot of savings to be made out of the Daring-design. I’m not sure making it smaller would be necessary, as most of the cost comes from the weapons systems, sensors, etc, not the hull. If you cut the expensive radar, etc out you’ve got loads of cash. Then you can bump ASW, Harpoon and even a Tomohawk/Naval Scalp on there, whilst still keeping the price down. Maybe if the hull was shrunk a bit there could be some further cost reductions, but it would be best not to remove too much for fear of losing savings from using Daring as a baseline.

By the way, guys, don’t forget that HMS Dauntless is being launched on 23rd January!

I would have to disagree with that. The River-class is too small to fulfill the RN’s needs, and they won’t order something that won’t (or perhaps I should say can’t) work.

It is more realistic that more modified T-45s will be built to fulfill the frigate-role.

Agreed that the River-class is too small. If something smaller & cheaper than a modified T-45 is wanted to take over some of the role of the T-23s, as the lo- part of a hi-lo mix, I think it would still have to be at least the size of the Thetis-class, but faster, & without the heavy hull.