There is nothing wrong with your explanation – I think that the age of 36 I still not grown out of an adolescent need to drool over equipment and think of everything in terms of buying military hardware.

I hear you! I’m as guilty, kit is cool and its tangible, talking about “capabilities” isn’t!

In a sense the MoD already do this in Afghanistan but in a haphazard and badly thought out way – i.e. they needed a way to stop rockets and mortars attacks, they could have spent lots of money buying in a new system or get Thales or somebody to design a new one for them, instead they borrowed the RN CIWS systems to provide protection which left RN short.

In sense though it makes sense to use the RN crews as they were just sitting on ships not “doing anything” and their capability was in need.

Personally I cannot help but wonder with a software tweak if the Stormer HVM’s could not have provided intercept capabilities (I am off to look a bit more closely at Star Streak’s seeker head to see if it could have done the job) rather than take them out service as is being done currently.

Would be hard (its laser guided) and 20mm rounds are cheaper than missiles.

No you’re getting there, maybe its me not explaining it appropriately. 🙂

Take your disaster example. You sit down and ask what it is we want to achieve? what outcome does the UK Govt want from this? There will be several – delivering a given amount of food aid, tents, water etc. There will be supporting NGOs and the Govts own aid bodies to deliver that aid. There will be wider security implications of the a region and country hit by a natural disaster and of course the unspoken side of “wanting to be seen” doing the right thing, like a child a Govt wants a pat on the back and kudos for its country for helping.

Now typically the response from the UK govt is not a military one, they generally judge that its cheaper and easier to support civilian organisations to do the aid job and in terms of direct support they “achieve the effect” by sending a specialist team of fireman and policemen from around the UK and send them on a chartered aircraft. Which makes sense as the military does not need to maintain a (expensive) unit trained in this area, the Fire and police forces have those skills to hand and people like Oxfam and the Red Cross “do aid” every day. The result the UK govt wants can be got at without creating specialist military units, holding specialist kit and is garnered from a a wide range of people and organisations.

This can be transferred to a purely military context. If we wanted to “do something” about piracy what would we do? The Daily Mail answer would be to send a task force of ships, institute old style convoys, demand the formation of a specialist anti-piracy force et etc. The public would expect pictures of grey warships sailing off to fight the foe. But can we get to the result we want a better, cheaper, more efficient way?

What do we want to achieve? simple answer is our own and allied shipping should have free movement through a given area of sea without all the associated threats piracy brings, in short to protect British and allied commerce.

Might it be enough to put half a dozen marines on every UK ship that sails through the area? taking them off when they come out the otherside and putting them on a ship going the other way. For the cost of a company of soldiers (less than a single Frigates company) we give protection to all our shipping.

You want better survelliance? Ok we deploy 2-3 of the RAFs Reaper (Taranis-Maritime for the FAA anyone??!!) UAVs to a nearby friendly airfield and they can mount round the clock wide area surveillance over the allied shipping, steering ships away from potential hazards they can’t see over the horizon. You would only need a small launch and engineering team on the ground and the pilots and observers would be still back in the UK (or US!).

We get the result we want by other means, no need to go out and buy an anti-piracy ship or tie up a frigate on a job that its skills aren’t always needed on. You look around at the options. So in the case of C3, what do we need to do? what results do we want? and then we look at the systems we have and ones we would like to own. None of it has to be “specialist”, we might have units or kit in the inventory already that could do some of the role perfectly well.

So to take your point further it would be like saying right what is the best way to provide a low cost escort to provide ASuW, Anti-shipping and land attack in low and medium threat environments and deciding that rather than a frigate you could get the same mission profile if you built a aviation vessel to commercial standards with a large rear deck area, and mission modules, and basic radar equipment designed to support UAV’s and Lynx’s in anti-ship/submarine role, and use mission modules where necessary to carry SCALP-N or Tomahawk (assuming that they can be fitted into a mission module and integrated into the ships radar) for land attack.

meh, sort of…(thats still quite platform centric) it would be more like saying “what is the best way to provide the various functions of ‘escort’ the Navy needs to provide?” In some cases a fully tooled up frigate will be best, for instance when you are far from land and certainly a long way from a friendly base then a full spec warship might be the answer. But in a different scenario the ‘effect’ might be better created using other platforms such as MPAs supporting smaller craft, or maybe a long endurance UAV would do the job. I would certainly like to see the RN being more creative and investigating the possibilities of various size UAVs, airships, space based systems as well as the traditional floaty things. Trouble is officers can’t aspire to command a UAV or a satellite in the same way they can aspire to a Frigate and thats a tradition hard to break.

The day the Navy realises there is more to life (and war) than ships, the Army realises that tanks and rifles aren’t always the answer and the RAF stops its love affair with fast jets we might finally get some where! With FOAS it looked like the RAF was, but then it was cancelled.

Some days it feels the MoD is run by a combination of Yosemite Sam when Bugs Bunny is getting the best of him, Wylie Coyote, Baldrick and Lord Percy 😀

So an old bafoon with a giant moustache, who sources all his kit from one company, while aspousoing cunning plans and being next to useless? Yeah I could go with that. 😀

…while the Forces no longer need to maintain the ability to “apply lethal force”, Cold War models of large standing armies were what is needed.

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the military had to become slower and less adaptable; less moblie; less integrated; and better sperated with “other levels of national power and influence, at home and abroad

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They will need to be more focused on scale when contributing to multinational operations, with the emphasis moving away from quality.

“And we should have more duplication of capabilities held in large numbers by our NATO allies.”

Just another politician stating the bleedin obvious. Why don’t they just shut up until they do actually have a policy with hard figures to announce?

Well then presumably you’d secure an area inland as a base of operations, after the initial defenses were attrited. Then you wouldn’t have to operate solely from the carrier. That’s what the USMC plan is.

But a scenario where you don’t “land” and are using a carrier in a gunboat diplomacy/ as a pure strike platform then you are not going to get a convienent land base for the F35s. Tankers based in a friendly country that is nearby, but too far for useful basing of the F35s is what swerve is talking about here. Remember the UK is not viewing the F35B as a pure Harrier replacement like the USMC are. As it happens the RAF/FAA have alway used the Harrier differently to the USMC anyway. On this side of the pond its being seen as our future strike platform and naval air defender, not just a CAS aircraft.

Sorry – that was me who suggested QE as anti-piracy and asked about C3 and Ocean replacements.

Also sorry to you and Swerve as I am guilty of narrow thinking about the whole C3 situation, as I am bit fixated on C3 (or any other platform) in the role of anti-piracy/anti-smuggling and therefore I am stuck in the rut of “imagining” a Merlin launched from a C3 being used to intercept pirates/smugglers and fast roping some marines in rather than all the other roles the C3 might be used for.

Still like to see the C3 with enough space to operate a good range of helicopters and carry a UAV

Its ok! I think in some ways you are right, by fixing on the higher end of the sorts of fight the C3 will be involved in you will get less of a compromise ship. If the designers get hung up on fisheries protection and MCM it might not be a great ship for hunting pirates.

OK, I should have read more carefully. It turns out that we agree.

You see I thought we generally sang from the same hymn sheet on that one!

I’d much rather C3 (if it ever materialises) has a helicopter deck large enough for a Merlin, & a hangar capable of taking something bigger than a Wildcat.

I keep looking at BAM – fixed hangar big enough for NH90.

BAM is the kind of ship I think we should be plugging for, I really see it as a bit of a no brainer, a good size flight deck and hanger is just steel and that is relatively cheap. The hanger can even be a stripped out shell that can be fitted with kit when a helicopter is needed.

There is a need though to view C3 as an overall concept and desired ability rather than just a ship type. EEZ is not always best delivered by a ship, to monitor and control UK waters a combination of ship, UAV, helicopter and MPA is probably desirable and that would work for many of the other roles. With limited funding and the need to do more with less it might be time to talk about C3 (and C1 and 2) more in terms of a desired effect than just outright hardware. Just some thoughts.

Ideas can evolve, but in this case, you were proposing a solution to only part of the C3 requirement, & the part that can already be done by other ships. I think you’d fallen into what seems to be the standard trap, of concentrating on a small part of the requirement, & focusing on alternative methods of achieving that.

No thats no what I was saying at all! Somebody said “could a QE do anti-piracy?” I said it would be a waste of ship but suggested a smaller avaition vessel like Argus would be a good on an anti-piracy op. Yet another person made a comment abut C3 and Ocean replacements AND then I pointed out that in SOME areas SOME of the roles of C3 possible could be achieved to good effect by aviation. I would suggest that one of the Navy’s standard traps it falls into is thinking that there is one solution to a problem (ie one type of ship) and that one area that the other services do well is in considering solutions that talk about “acheiving effect” using a system or range of systems. I am a big fan of the C3 concept ships, I was just suggesting that in some cases other methods could garner the same or greater effect.

A ‘C3’ with a fleet of helicopters aboard misses the point. It’s expensive. The whole point of C3 is that it should be cheap, so that we can afford a significant number, enough to replace the patrol, survey, & MCM fleets, & fill in for proper warships in low-risk areas. A single helicopter, or a couple of rotary-wing UAVs, is OK, but there’s no point in postulating something carrying a fleet of helicopters costing a few times what a single C3 should cost. It needs to have a small crew, because of cost & recruitment issues, & to be able to operate from small, austere, ports, & in confined waters.

I’m not suggesting that all C3s carry a top end helicopter at all, I did not even suggest that every C3 carried helicopters or UAVs. I was postulating that a C3 with the ability to carry a merlin would be a very useful ability. Notice I say ability, one C3 having a Merlin aboard to aid in a particular mission is a good idea I think. I am aware of the nature of the C3 concept to realise its supposed to be cheap etc, therefore fitting them with a decent flight deck would enable them to expand their capabilities by several orders should the need arise.

No, I think it’s a different concept, for a different role. A Merlin or Apache won’t do EEZ patrol, survey, or MCM.

Not permanently no, but a Merlin could be darn useful on a prolonged anti-drug deployment to the west indies, it would be useful on an anti-piracy job in the indian ocean. I mentioned Apache just as a thought provoking idea, if you send a C3 on a inshore SF support job, small raid insertion, pre invasion survey or MCM job then the ability to carry an Apache to, for instance ride shot gun would be useful.

Also, we don’t have enough of them to put one on every patrol vessel. Better to keep them on the real warships. If we ever get the budget to put top-end helicopters on every C3, we’d probably have the budget to buy more frigates to carry the helicopters.

As I said I never suggested that at all! What I am saying is that a C3 which has no, or tiny aviation facilities is going to be not as adaptable as it should be and a great effect could be achived with the cheap C3s if they have a good helicopter deck and a useful hanger. Not suggesting they have a permanent ships flight or assigned aviation.