TurbiniaThe problem here is that if C3 becomes an austere Frigate, it’ll still be expensive, won’t be that capable without additional major investment and it’s going to be seen by politicians and civil servants as a “Frigate” so why do the RN need all those C2’s when they’ve got plenty of C3 hulls? If the RN want a “cheap” warship in the true sense, i.e. a front line vessel capable of combat ops then build a single role vessel fully capable in that role, or accept lower hull numbers, but IMO attempts to dress up a glorified patrol vessel as a cheap warship are dangerous and could lead to a disaster. The Type 21 design was lauded as a fine example of a great value low cost warship when new yet later proved a jumped up gun boat at not much less than a much more capable design had been costed when ordered. My understanding is C3 is meant to be a OPV cum MCMV cum GP secondary duties vessel, in which case a 3000-4000T Frigate hull with GT’s and provision for full military armament looks like a totally different requirement to what C3 is supposed to be. The proposals for C3 here seem to be actually what C2 is meant to be, now for C2 a common hull with C1 may well make sense, but not for C3 and C2.
TurbiniaI agree the hangar could be used for other purposes, but then it is lost to helicopters anyway, my feeling is that given the volume a hangar requires on a modest hull like C3 will probably be could be better used for other things. These vessels are intended for MCM, offshore patrol, constabulary duties and low threat GP work and it is unlikely they will carry a fully embarked chopper, rather act as a sattelite landing platform for other vessels choppers. Unlikely they will be used for ASW unless things get really desperate, but it is true ASuW and Police interception roles would benefit from an armed Lynx or similar. My own view is that this comes down to where the RN put their money, C3 makes sense as a low capability low end vessel to free up frigates and destroyers from menial tasks and to serve as MCMV’s and OPV’s (which generally don’t carry helicopters), to that end low cost is essential to keep as much money as possible in C1 & C2 (and like I say, I think that itself a bad idea, IMO C1 should be T45 and C2 T23 replacement).
TurbiniaDo you mean GE-Hitachi (80% owned by Hitachi), which is the firm bidding to supply nuclear power plants to the UK?
EDF wants to build nuclear power plants here, but I’d think it’s more likely to stick to French designs.
Nuclear has to be part of the mix, everybody in the industry agrees on that (OK, maybe apart from some in the wind sector:) ), the three reactor designs already pre-approved are French, US and Canadian AFAIK, but I’m no nuclear insider anymore.
TurbiniaPersonally, I think we should have a Joint UK Forces command, trim out the top brass and throw out a lot of high level time servers with a leaner, more front line focused command structure. These days given the down sizing of all three forces I no longer see a reason for three sets of bloated hierarchy when one should do, especially as joint force ops are now almost essential in any deployment. And despite the ambitions of the RAF, their main role is in support of ground ops (either land or sea) given that they have no strategic capability, and I say that as a former RAF man.
TurbiniaLet’s be honest, the availability (or lack of) of an air group is a great get out clause for the MoD, now they can slip the CVF schedule and say in total truth that it makes no difference anyway as what’s the point of an aircraft carrier with no aircraft. In that sense it actually makes sense to let the CVF schedule slip a bit more and maybe use funds elsewhere, so long as the slippage isn’t severe.
TurbiniaFor C3 I think the current OPV pattern of a heli-deck and refuelling facilities but no hangar makes most sense, that way they have chopper capability without losing a huge part of the top sides to a hangar that may seldom be needed.
TurbiniaJust ignore Star49, he has some objectionable racist refusal to accept Indians, Japanese, Chinese etc. are capable of high quality science and engineering.
TurbiniaShe was a bit of a dog, when I was still working for the offshore oil industry a few of my friends discussed her when the MoD were trying to sell the ship and said they’d recommended not going near it with a barge pole. Even if the RN wanted another DSV, why not just buy a commercial off the shelf design? One thing the offshore oil industry knows about is dive support and sub sea engineering ops, probably an awful lot more expertise than the RN in the field, and the commercial designs are excellent. And the fact that the RN have just used commercially chartered and leased offshore support vessels for the role since retiring Challenger illustrates that there is no technical reason why they needed to design their own ship. Cynical it may be, but I see just a mix of pride (we know better…) and political pork barrel largesse with tax payers money on this one.
TurbiniaUT isn’t a design, it’s a prefix for the Ulstein design house types and covers a huge range of designs spanning several decades, including most of the de-facto industry standard offshore support types like UT705, UT745 and UT755 PSV’s and UT722 AHTSS etc. Now part of Rolls Royce, Ulstein ship design was known as, well, the Rolls Royce of offshore support vessel designers. Their military designs are based on these, they’re strong, sea worthy and versatile, but heavy, slow and with limited military equipment fits. As a North Sea fisheries protection vessel they’d be great, but they’re unsuitable for C3 IMO without a huge re-design, which is entirely possible as with Ulstein Rolls Royce have the expertise to put something together.
TurbiniaI’d stick with steel for all three types, despite being old hat and the corrosion issue (which can be managed well enough) it is cheap, has excellent physical properties (steel alloy elements can be easily manipulated to optimise strengh, toughness, hardness etc.), is easily repairable (very pertinent to a warship) and is low risk, ultimately there are good reasons why steel remains the material of choice for almost all larger commercial and military vessels.
TurbiniaProblem is that it would involve a lot more than just a hull plug and would still be expensive to stretch a U214, and I’m guessing the RAN would want the U212, not the down spec 214. The Collins was an evolutionary extrapolation of Kockums sub designs and turned into an expensive clean sheet design. If the RAN want new subs, and they clearly do, then they just have to accept it’ll be hugely expensive and that for their own requirements the only existing suitable designs are nuclear (or Japanese) so that if they don’t want to go nuclear it means another new design like the Collins.
TurbiniaPAAMS is roughly 1/3 of the cost of a T45, therefore replacing PAAMS with a less capable system based around Aster 15 with no Sampson or Aster 30 (as has been alluded, BAE have offered a simpler single array development) would save significant money. Then again, IMO there is an argument for building more T45’s with PAAMS and accepting fewer tier 1 hulls if we call the Type 23 replacement tier 2 and eliminate the intended C2 so that effectively T45 is C1 and son-of-type 23 is C2. T45 is currently planned for 8, even if we say build those 8 and add 2 more for a total of 10, and then 15 T23 replacements that should be manageable if the T23 replacement is that, a dedicated sub hunter with point defence SAM. That would mean the RN true combat fleet being based on two hulls, and a class of 15 frigates would offer enough economies of production to negate any advantages of using the T45 hull for both types as no matter how you look at it, a 7,500T destroyer hull is never going to be cheap as such for a design that should be workable on a much lower displacement with lower engine power, smaller tanks etc.
I’ve been thinking about a frigate, and some musings,
option 1-single WR21 with same motor and 4.5KV switchgear and electrics as T45 and maybe 3 or 4 3MW diesels, say 25MW propulsive plus ships electrical load, single screw. If displacement was 4,500T that would still offer decent speed and would offer major synergy with the T45 in terms of engine equipment.
Option 2-single MT30 with IEP which would match the CVF GT, could still use a lot of T45 electrical equipment, so would still offer synergy with other RN vessels but offer 36MW propulsive with diesel gensets, that’d be a pretty fast ship if built on 4,500T
Option 3-complete clean sheet machinery fit, in which case anything would be open to discussion but lose any commonality with other types.
For weapons, in addition to it’s ASW fit a 57mm gun equipped with smart ammo, a 32 cell VL Mica system, a couple of light cannon, a single heli-deck and hangar big enough for Merlin and space for 8 Kongsberg NSM tubes.
That’s my pitch anyway, 15 of those to go with 10 T45’s.
TurbiniaDefence against small sea boat threats is another argument in favour of replacing Phalanx, Goalkeeper etc CIWS weapons with a gun like the 57mm Bofors. The 57mm is indeed CIWS, it’s smart fragmentation rounds give it an anti-missile capability and it’s greater engagement envelope combined with these smart rounds easily counter it’s lower cyclic rate of fire. The Italian and French navies are going down the same road with the 76mm gun. Personally I’d love to see the RN replace Phalanx with the 57mm gun and RAM as protection for their big ships, but whether the money is there to do it is another question. Phalanx is vulnerable to saturation attack and it’s engagement envelope means ships relying on it are still in real danger from high kinetic energy fragments even if Phalanx makes an interception. Also, aren’t many of the big Russian anti-shipping missiles hardened against light callibre cannon rounds to counter CIWS?
TurbiniaThe real argument under all of this is that true warship capability is not cheap, and the RN (along with many others) have to identify where they want their balance between hull numbers and capability to be given that it is extremely unlikely they could ever have the sort of hull numbers they want out of the high capability designs we’d all like to see. Do we accept low hull numbers of high quality types? There is still a requirement for a minimum number of hulls in spite of greater capability and increased availability of modern types. Do we go down the “fitted for but not with” route to cut costs but have more hulls than we’ve otherwise have which do offer an upgrade path to high quality war vessels if required? Far from ideal but also far from the worst option IMO. Do we build a low end Police vessel to bulk up hull numbers and remove the requirement to carry out such duties from the war fleet? Again not without it’s problems (one being the danger of politicians just looking at such vessels as “warships” and seeing an excuse for more cuts) but also again far from the worst option. Whichever way the RN goes is full of pitfalls (and a massive increase in their budget isn’t going to happen so they can’t hide from these hard choices in dreams of more money) and is going to require major compromises somewhere. Another option, which so far hasn’t been considered by anybody AFAIK, is to split Policing duties away from the RN and give fishery patrol, counter-drug interdiction, counter-piracy patrol, all SAR co-ordination etc etc. to a civil or paramilitary Policing agency, turn the MCA from a SAR, admin and standards agency into a true Coastguard, that’d just be moving budgets around I know but it may be that they could do it more efficiently and it’d remove the responsibility from the RN and remove the whole temptation of trying to turn OPV’s into frigates. I’m just glad I am not the one who has to make the choice, as there is no way of avoiding that this one is very difficult whichever way you look at it. If they build an austere warship down to a cost they have to accept it’ll be very limited in all areas (except OPV duties which don’t need such vessels anyway) and if they build a dedicated single role vessel they’ll get true capability in one area but no versatility (still the way I’d go despite the risks).
TurbiniaTrue, but it is not just the defence contractors, the political obsession with headline cost and civil servants attitudes to “value” encourage defence contractors to offer absurd bids and then worry about the real cost later, defence expenditure is a sewer on both sides.
On CVF, my feeling is that the government have now invested too much political capital in them, it’s close to several key Labour party seats and it’s a bribe to Scotland to not vote SNP, I think they’re secure. Whether they’ll have the aircraft and escorts to be useful is another question.
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