AlphaZulu: From the bits I’ve seen recently, I’m incredibly impressed with how the French military communicates with the people who pay for it (and theoretically control how it’s used): Something the UK’s MoD could stand to learn from – especially the RN!:mad:

Factual info, pretty matter of factly stated, with a discussion of some of the problems, written for intelligent grown-ups… rather than out of date info, spinny slogans and ‘this is a jet – it goes vrooom!’:mad:

And lashings of eye-candy, of about the highest standard I’ve come across.

GoldenPawn: The lower image of the two you just posted: Oh my….

Cheers for the link Swerve!:)

I was hoping that the 40mm gun mounts might provide a clue as to which country the proposal’s aimed at… but haven’t come up with anything sensible.

The 40mms and AW101s suggest Italy, but that seems unlikely for every other reason… maybe as something for them to ponder should F-35B be a flop?

Arquebus: In all honesty, most of the above cost points apply even moreso to the uber-UCAVs – how many cheaper (than Toms) munitions do you need to drop before you’ve paid for the entire programme+lifecycle costs? It’s lots and lots: they defo have their place (persistance and cheaper (in all ways) than manned planes), but being cheaper than expendable cruise missiles isn’t in the running… again barring full-on, endless war.

Costs aside, the main reason that they’re not operational yet is that there are some heinous technical issues to be resolved yet – but plenty of posts out there discussing this, so I won’t warm it over again.

Regards.

Arquebus: OK, I typed out a monster post, but back of the envelope approximations seem too embarrassing to share – try it yourself with your own envelope and see what you get:-

Hellish black hole of money-devouring doom that is procuring a new system these days, guaranteed!

What do you do with the old missiles that have been paid for already? The $100m for launching 100 regular Toms at Libya disappeared forever when the missiles were bought, back in the day, not fired now [BTW, range might not have mattered here, but all future engagements won’t be of this type – range really does matter for a cruise missile.].

How much more does the Tom II cost by virtue of its being better- and more sturdily-engineered to be re-useable?

How much do the expendable bits (booster and payload) cost? – you’re not getting them back.

How many spare sets of expendable bits do you carry in inventory, and where do you keep them?

How much is the recovery method? – helos cost tens of thousands of $ per flight hour.

How much is maintenance? Stealth retouching? Fatigue and replacing expensive components? Can some random seaman who would have been aboard anyway loafing about, laughing in the face of ‘optimal manning’, really do this, or do you need additional mechanics, who need specific training?

Is this whole turnaround accomplished on the ship, including reloading these beasts back into the VLS silos, at sea?! Extra cost and complexity and compromising of the ship’s design – I’d guess not but…

… if not then you can’t really benefit from reducing missiles purchased too much, since each group of combatants need a certain number of cruise missiles per deployment.

Plus fewer missiles bought increases unit price.

Which of these costs are up-front one-offs, and which (infrastructure, logistics, wages, storage space oportunity cost) keep needing to be paid, year upon year, whether the missiles are ever fired or not; which apply only after the missile is fired and recovered?

How likely are you to lose a missile, and how many shots does each afford before it gets written-off?

Suppose you decide that being re-useable, you can halve the number of missiles you would otherwise buy – say 2000 units plus 2000 expendable bits sets. Big saving, but nowhere near offsetting the costs mentioned – each is still more expensive than a throw-away Tom, up-front and in accumulating, infrastructural costs.

You sort of get your money back by firing and re-using them (which won’t make it more likely that they’ll be inappropriately used than an expensive one-shot missile would, obviously…:rolleyes:), but only by actually spending further money (expendable bits and turnaround).

Killer is that though your (say) 50 Tom IIs fired twice against Libya have started to recoup some drops in the ocean of the expenses of the entire system (assuming most are successfully recovered and turned-around), in comparison to 100 regular Toms, your 1,950 Tom IIs that have never been fired have yet to do so.

As with the ‘cheaper’ uber-UCAVs, you kind of save money by spending vast amounts extra of it (which presupposes that you’ll have it then) but you need to find yourself in the happy circumstance where you can destroy a country every few years, or WWIII or something (but without it damaging your economy/infrastructure too much) to justify that many launches over the weapon system’s life.

It’d be useful for some robot vehicles, but it’s always the problem with ‘cheap, re-usable’ sytems: Add all of the re-use costs, lots up front and some logistical ones that cost year after year come rain or shine, and they only become cheaper upon being pretty heavily used.

For sure, the future is one of dropping bombs on everything everywhere so cool, but the problem with the ‘you’ve gotta spend money to save money, innit!’ approach is that it presupposes that you will have that ready money in the future – could easily still be half a mill per shot (from second shot onwards, increasing with wear), when everything’s factored in.

For a Tomahawk II-type your main problems are that it has to fit into existing VLS silos, but re-useability costs volume, so you have to reduce useful performance in some way (effective range most probably); and getting back out might be more tricky than going in, so you need decent LO but it must be low-maintenance, even after repeated launch/recovery cycles.

And again, if God forbid you never fire it at anything (or successfully recover them in adequate numbers), then your cost-reduction plan has simply added billions and logistical complications over and above the expendable missiles’ cost (which will probably have the higher performance too).

[Thus speaks the limitless wisdom of the back of the envelope….:D]

Distiller: Great links! I shall have a good peruse….

Can’t speak for Distiller but I guess he means literally ‘in-flight recovery’: it’s recovered (think ‘captured’ really) by something else whilst flying.

Could be by something also flying, or the arrestor wire (or even net or something) on an extendable boom that some of the smaller UAVs have already been recovered with (the UAV has a suitable hook to catch on the wire), including on ships.

Dunno….

Rii: Yup, the OCPV partnership always seemed less likely, but last I read, Australia was looking at a monohull (being especially interested in the Freedom design), but around 500t lighter than the UK wanted… wasn’t that long ago but I guess the programme’s moved on since, as you say.

Nope, I don’t think that a multihull (especially a small and aluminium one) would be too suitable for the oceans up this way.:eek:

Re: ‘GCS’/’Commonwealth Frigate’/etc: Yup, it’s meant to be swing-role, ‘plug ‘n’ play’, with the ships built in their own countries (if that’s desired) – a cheap, numerous, common hull (maybe common propulsion too…) into which you can fit your favoured sensors and weapons… we’ll see….