Swerve fair point i’ve only seen speculation of CAMM being able to travel upto 30km and i’ve seen it as >25km on the web semi-official im thinking maybe 27-28km realistically.

The ESSM uses the self defense variant of the Mk41 launcher which is 5.6 metres externally wheras the Aster 15 uses the A43 launcher which is 4.3 metres internally so they are much closer in length than you might think. So im not to sure how close in size they would actually be but i think it would be close enough that it would be a design problem.

The Mk41 does weigh more but that is down to the fact that the Sylver launcher uses supposedly more advanced materials such as composites etc to lower weight. In my opinion weight is not a huge issue as it is mounted low in the hull furthermore most of the hulls we would put a missile capability on are large enough for this to be a non-issue. The Quad Packed ESSM would be heavier than a single Aster 15 there is no doubt in that as there would be less air in the cell and more missile.

There is also the outside option to integrate the Sylver launcher and ESSM missile therefore the launcher would not be an issue and it would be a simpler choice, i say this as the ESSM missile is roughly 3.66 metres long according to what a quick google shows so it would fit into the A43 launcher. Maybe integration would be a help in the export market as it would make the Sylver launcher more attractive to other nations i can’t see who though it would help ESSM sales as well as you could have a French ship design with a French sensor suite with a US missile but with the capability to use French missiles should ITAR spoil the fun.

Basically your point is correct, but i think that it is not a huge issue and would not present many problems in terms of design for the weight etc. I wonder how much money could be saved by ditching CAMM and just buying ESSM over the long term and having all the R&D as well as support in place.

Indeed. BTW, the active radar seeker used on Mica is very closely related to that on Aster.

Very true indeed, makes sense as it should have saved some cash and developments from Mica or Aster can be shared.

In regards to a shorter ranged Aster i think if you took the booster away it would have a tiny range as Aster 15 is only 30km’s so removing the booster would drop it right down into CIWS range. I personally think there is a massive abundance of Naval Systems in Europe thanks to all the differing navies and nationalistic pride in developing new systems. If i was given the choice i would have went with the NATO Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile as it is a proven system in-use worldwide and with a better range than proposed CAMM and cheaper to boot. The problem is it’s semi active but there is/was an Active version mooted so that could work.

For anyone that’s intrested there is a pic and a page of Text in Warship Technology
http://content.yudu.com/A1gka6/WTOCT09/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rina.org.uk%2Fwt.html if it’s not on the correct page then goto page 6.

Are you suprised it’s not a British ship, i live on the clyde and if you watch the ships go by few are British owned or flagged, hell if you look at the Shipping AIS system there are far far far more foreign ships. Just the way that the maritime industry in the UK has been attacked and neglected by Government, Sea Blindness is a dangerous thing and one day it will come back to bite us in the backside.

Btw, F-35 if you can get pics post them if you can:) we would be most thankfull.

Pj we all know CAMM is Quad-packed that is not in Question, nice pic from the MBDA site though.

What people are discussing is if the VL Mica can be quad packed atm, in my opinion the answer is not currently. However it should be quad-packable as it is not a huge missile therefore it just needs someone to order it quadpacked in a launcher, the Greek FREMM drawings and specs out there show 24 A35 cells each with a single missile so that is where im drawing my answer from.

Furthermore the DCNS Sylver PDF shows only one missile per cell> http://www.dcnsgroup.com/files/pdf/Sylver.pdf it’s on page 2 btw. Im sure there was some information somewhere on the great interweb about the exact dimensions of each cell that i read. If anyone knows the exact dimension’s please post.

EDIT: After trawling through some crap what i’ve found is each cell is 22 inches or 55.88 cm square, seems a bit small but that’s from The Naval Institute guide to world naval weapon systems.

I MOST CERTAINLY think the carriers should be built! My point was scheduling, FSC is the next intended project. If the carriers are cancelled there is nothing else in the books to keep the yards active until FSC…they would have to close through lack of work!

Thank beep for that, i was unsure of your meaning there, i also think the carriers should be built so i agree on that. I’ve already commented about my shipbuilding ideas elsewhere but i think generally a strategy needs to be drawn up one that includes all the ships we will definitely order. The MoD signed a 15 year commitment at some point this year so that should be the basis for a long term build program, in other words place firm orders for the full classes of ships. If a Government decides on this now they can have the schedule drawn up and all the details worked out with industry and then include penalty clauses for both the Government and Industry.

You have opened my eyes to a concept I hadn’t considered that BAE Systems might enjoy getting out of the ship building business…no longer having to keep open expensive yards and concentrate on systems that can be fitted onto ships built in foreign yards. A very sad idea but I can see the corporate thinking!!!

It is sad corporate thinking that get’s me to that conclusion, in shipbuilding margins are not that big and you need a stream of work to keep a yard viable. Coupled with the Sea Blindness in the UK as a whole and dithering by Government it’s not a safe steady industry. Simply put BAE can make more money from Systems hence the re-branding of the company, also other companies have done this before them and it has proven fruitful notably VT. BAE have also hinted that they want to be a systems only company and the only thing stopping them seems to be the UK government paying them not to.

What would happen to the shipyards i have no idea, the only one that is truely important is Barrow that builds submarines as you cannot buy SSN’s on the open market. The other yards Govan etc i feel would not be commercially attractive to anyone as they are very old yards hemmed in by the City of Glasgow. Modern shipbuilding is done in huge drydocks and blocks made in sprawling workshops, Govan etc simply do not have these facilities and could not be easily added.

On another note I do feel UK shipyards and suppliers are in a race now through to the next election to get as much work done on Queen Elizabeth to make any cancellation utterly perverse and foolish! Whilst I will welcome a change of government (a very hard thing for a Lib Dem to say about a coming Tory government) but some worrying statements have come out of them recently in respect of defence and the current crop of Tories have a known army bias. What frustrates me is with all these talk of cuts in programs from ALL parties is the lack of understanding of the concept of MONEY already spent and KNOCK ON!

One thing i think we can all agree on is that every political party has a definite Sea Blindness but also even worse a blindness to the Armed Forces as a whole. The problem however does not just lie with the politicians but the electorate as a whole, why we see things diffrently only we know. In my opinion the first role of a Government is to protect the people and the nation as a whole.

In regards to the Carrier that’s what i feel they should do as well is get as much work done as fast as possible and try and save some money through efficiency. The idea is to make the carriers a serious problem if they were cancelled and also to make them more attractive to be kept by pushing down the price and getting work done. The problem is this will never happen BAE is too selfish and narrow minded to do anything in my mind, i think they would rather get out of the shipbuilding game as they would rather be a defence systems company.

For example cancel the carriers and forget getting FSC from a British yard.

What are you saying here? are you saying you think the Carriers should be cancelled? If they are and we don’t build the FSC in our yards what will they do, sit there and die?

Stan, Nice to see you found the good old Jumper missile, something like this would be handy for situations where you need limited land attack and fast, you put lots of these on a Herky bird and fly them to a port and get them fitted to a C3. I wonder if it could also attack ships with the laser guidance unit, i dont see why not.

Meh quote away, you both past and present are correct it is the best deterrent.

The greater weight of shot really counts in NGS especially if you are going in against anything fortified in even the most rudimentry of fashion – target effects counts!. RoF for the proposed mount is more than adequate for fire support.

I suppose it’ll be handy for when we need it and the RM’s should enjoy some bigger booms.I remember the image of HMS Cardiff after doing some NGFS there were also other pictures that showed the aftermath of doing some prolonged firing.

Why do the RN keep rejecting the 5″ calibre – mostly because it is little improvement in capability over what we have/had. The mounts themselves (if we are talking about the US Mk45 or the OTO127) are arguably quite a bit better than the Mk8 mod 0 – in terms of reliability they couldnt be much worse!.

I thought they would have sorted the problems with the mount as most of the problems popped up in the Falklands when doing NGFS seems a hell of a long time to have a gun with problems. If the 155mm gun falls flat then whats the options for a gun for the new frigates do we have enough Mk8’s for hopefully 16 frigates and 6 T45 or will we make more. If we need to procure new guns i think it would be worth a switch to either the US or Oto 5″ gun for the longer term support and R&D benefits.

The Mk8 had the virtue of being developed from a weapon BAE put together for the Army so it had ‘jointness’ appeal plus it was, allegedly, a reasonably cheap weapon. I never saw proof of that mind. Seeing we had already decided to replace Mk6 with the Mk8 that was it for a 5″ the actual effects difference between the two basic rounds is marginal though obviously tips in favour of the 5″.

Jointness in my eyes is an excuse to procure something that tries to save money but ends up not ideal for the job and has problems. Also ends up costing more in the long run. Cheap in the British sense means it was at least 2 years late had unfixed problems for years and cost 150% more than it was meant to. So im sure it must be cheap in a British sense. Would it have been better in your opinion just to buy the 5″ mount from the Italians or the US? im thinking maybe not back then but i would have considered the 5″ mount instead of the Mod 1. Mind you BAE couldn’t rip us off silly:( if we had bought the gun from the yanks, though BAE now own the company woops.

I would ideally like to see all of the ‘C-X’ types carry facilities for the maritime interdiction role, since any of them may be called upon to perform these missions. If the C-1s, C-2s and C-3s could all have space for a pair of RHIBs, and space for a detachment of Marines, then that would be a major benefit. Ideally there would even be sufficient space to accomodate the MCM modular gear intended for the C-3. This could allow a series of modular sets of equipment and personnel to be embarked, on any of the ships that will make up the bulk of the surface fleet.

From what i’ve managed to gather from my readings the idea is to have space for around 30 RM’s or other people in addition to the crew, thats for the C2 and Venator. The C1 i dont think should be able to carry modular mine warfare kit the C2 yes i think should as it could be used for helping out C3’s doing the job by providing firepower and command facilities.

Although this would increase costs for the C-1 and C-2 a bit, it would give a very welcome boost to capability. The RN could therefore maintain a number of MCM units, Marine boarding parties, and any other modular units that are needed. These units would almost certainly be capable of being deployed on anything from a C-130J or A-400M to a chartered airliner (e.g. a 737).

Or you could use the Absalon for your C2 role and store the mission modules on the massive flex deck. You could also provide accomodation for RM’s and store their kit as well such as boats etc. Absalon is after all a ‘Command and Support ship’ so could command and support C3’s and all the gear. Better than relying on crab air to get you places no doubt far far away. (Runs and hides for bringing up the Absalon class again:o)

Two reasons, both from October 2006:
– France threatened to shoot down Israeli aircraft crossing the border, this was while there was still unloading operations going on with French amphibious ships
– the crew of a certain German ELINT ship was pretty much unpacking their Stingers after six IAF aircraft buzzed them and fired over the bow.

Erm! ok, thats news to me seems a step too far shooting across the bows. Next time i would like to send along a T45 and paint the ******s and see how they feel. Nice to see though that the french have good reason, hopefully they add more than Tetral.

i dont see much of a reason why as i doubt the Isreali AF would do anything stupid

Im afraid your wrong the IAF would do something stupid. They aren’t as nice as they make out. Oh! wait i said that:D
I thought all went ok’ish im suprised there was no big media storm and all that if there was sorry i missed it.