Work share is the key

Like the Horizon’s where also, FREMM is a work share project.
Initially a share based on 27/10, but I think now 8/2.
That’s a share of costs but also a share of work.
That means for the first 10 ships, 80% of the value of the common work will go to France and 20% to Italy. Where Italy claimed the work for the license build GE engines, the counteroffer from FR was the more powerful, more efficient MT30 but that would not lead to French employment.
Much more important for the French are the missiles. While you buy one time an Italian gun, missiles are consumables. Their part in the missile profit is much larger then the Italian.
It’s like the printer from HP, affordable when you buy it, expensive to use.
That’s why at a first glance Italy has a reasonable part of FREMM, but if you count it for the lifetime ….?

Back to an improved EMPAR, wouldn’t it be logical to launch the improved EMPAR on a project of 27+10 or more realistic 8+2 (France never built the number of ships they initially announced for the last 9 projects).
A series of 10 could carry the initial development costs of an improved EMPAR.
That would be more worth than the license production of a GE engine IMHO.

The French FREMM is indeed more a shipbuilding employment program to fill up DCN’s order book for merger and take over value counting, than a well balanced choice to solve the weaknesses of the MN.

Improved EMPAR

If an improved EMPAR is on the drawing board, one would at least expect that IT tried to convince FR to use it on the FREMM (like they did for the engines). I have not heard any sign of that, so I doubt. I walked around at Euronaval 2006 and have not seen any sign into the direction of an active EMPAR.

To say:

That means that new Empar will be close or better than the Sampson aesa radar?

,
sounds not professional to me.
Sampson is a back-to-back rotating active phased array and has two times as much “time on target” as a single active phased array rotating antenna with the same rotation speed.

The fact that there is so much enthusiasm around a rumor (any source?), let me think that even the armchair admirals are not very pleased by the current radar.

Weight of SMART-S Mk2,

I just e-mailed a request for information to Thales with respect to the SMART-S weight.
Wait and see if they react.

Got the same day an e-mail from their External Communications Manager.
I’ll give you the translation because my question and his answer where in Dutch.

The SMART-S antenna mass is around 1200Kg and contains the transmitters and receivers.
The SMART-S below deck part contains a processing cabinet and a drive control cabinet, the combined mass is around 900Kg
The below deck part can be mounted deep down in the ship, because there is no wave-guide connection to the radar as the T/R function is inside the antenna

At a first glance, the total weight is comparable with SeaGiraffe (2050kg) and TRS-3S (2180kg).
But for those two, the antenna and transmitter/receiver have to be close to each other to prevent waveguide loss, so that’s all mass that is mounted high in the mast and as such influences the metacentric height (characteristic of ship to determine it’s stability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacentric_height).
For SMART-S those 900Kg’s can be mounted below the center of gravity to contribute to the ships stability.

No wave-guide, means no rotary-joint, both save transmission losses.
No wave-guide means also no wave-guide dryer, both save mass.

That would mean that SMART-S could be mounted on a higher mast and pushes the radar horizon further.

Must be a Dutch joke to call a radar smart-ass.

See attached a picture of the future RNLN OPV that I found on a Dutch naval board.

If I connect that to an article in IDR of November, where the CEO Arno Peels is interviewed, the contents of the mast becomes a little bit clear: two type of radars plus IR and TV… all non rotating!

See Threat: Impression of the OPV for RNLN http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1066850#post1066850

The first of class OPV for the RNLN is planned for 2009-2010.
Length around 100 meters, and 3000 tons.

We have to wait for more detailed specifications, but if this fits on an OPV,
why is an integrated mast a problem for FREMM as stated by DCN?

Can’t see the logic.

To MConrads,
Yes your right, the translation must be: the AAW capability is very complex.
Strange sentence: After the Horizon one would expect that they understand the AAW domain, and have a solution for it.

(b.t.w. I just installed Firefox 2.001, it has a spelling checker included while I’m typing, great!).

Before I go to your question, please let me ask you one.
Can you give us the center height of the Herakles antenna on the FR FREMM and the EMPAR antenna on the IT FREMM ?
To do a radar horizon calculation.

To MConrads and others:
Back to radar.
Take an RNLN M-frigate (in service ’91)
It samples the outside world with it’s LW08 L-band radar in 2D. (3D on long range is almost useless because on long range everything has a low elevation as seen from your ship. So you don’t win a lot if you need to assign a tracker.)
It samples the outside world with it’s SMART-S, S-band 3D radar up to medium range.
For surface and low-E: Scout I band, 2D.
In case of a hostile activity, it samples that also with the STIR I-band (low part of X, around 8-10Ghz) or K-band ( around 20-24Ghz) plus zoom TV/IR
Imagine: an M-frigate is able to take at least 3 different frequency samples of a threat, up to 7. (I ignore ESM, because FREMM has it also)
So it covers a wide part of the spectrum, for all weather conditions, environments & object sizes.

Now take a FR FREMM. It samples only in S-band. Bad weather conditions for S-band? …. sorry, reduced capability FREMM. Bearing motor down ……. sorry, FREMM out of order. Rotary joint ? Processing rack down ? ……. sorry, you got it.
If you fire the missile, in the end-game it activates it’s Ku-band (16Ghz) seeker. Here it is:

http://www.mbda.net/mbda/site/FO/scripts/siteFO_contenu.php?lang=EN&noeu_id=155
From that moment on, you get for a very short time your second frequency sample in the 16Ghz band.
Now if the seeker does stupid things, you will see that Heracles is just looking in the other direction and can’t correct the missile.
I assume (correct me if wrong) that the end game takes some 2-4 seconds.
If it’s longer, a fighter has all the time to jam the seeker head.
And you don’t need much jamming power&intelligence to jam a battery driven TWT with white noise. If Aster uses a mode of “home on jammer”, the second fighter will always escape! Advanced attack missiles will use the same trick when they are fired in a salvo.
In a complicated littoral environment there will be many objects that will distract the attention of the missile. Many sources can take care of jamming or misleading.

So the strange thing is, in time of cold war, at open oceans an active missile was useful for massive attacks, but it was not there for long range.
Now cold war is over, the operational area is in the littorals, a much more complicated environment, some try to advocate missiles that know where to go.

That’s my main point: Aster is a solution by technicians for a problem that (mainly) disappeared while they where inventing the solution: inertia!

That’s while I believe in semi-active as the best current solution in the littorals.
So a combination of semi-active and active could bring some news on the table, IMHO SM-6 can do that. But it will take a long time before such a missile is mature (as Aster does).

The radar suite is all about probability of detection and a derivative of the missile selection.
For self defense you don’t care about aircrafts some 400 Km away.

If your missiles has some 15Km range then the rule of thumb is ready for engagement at 30km, target conformation at 60Km, sustained situational awareness 120Km.
This is impossible for sea skimmers of coarse. Radar horizon will be around 24Km in average. For that, extreme high probability of detection (Pd) and extreme low false alarm (Pfa) rate enables your safe trip home.
That means you need a high frequency (in the sense of repeating) capability that searches the horizon. A sustained 1Hz is not bad. If your radar horizon is shorter, you need to compensate that with a higher update frequency. Pd and Pfa become even more important!

Will be continued!
In the next episodes of how to pimp your FREMM:
– radar waves and sea waves
– how to avoid interference between both
– how to improve Pd
– how to reduce Pfa
– the elephant and the bucket
– how push the radar horizon away
– typical objects in a littoral environment
– multi sensor fusion
– the role of NEC
– the maturity of a missile
and many more to come.
Stay tuned!

Sumeet,
your post

drop me an e-mail

I can follow.
your post

About the ICWI Mode

it’s in a jumble, that it takes more time to understand it.

Back to

drop me an e-mail

Sorry, I was not clear. I could download your link, thanks for that.
But I searched the site by myself and could not find it due to white pages, nevermind.

But what do you say about combining surveillance features with fire control ones into the same radar ?

I think I made my point clear, but if you insist on a one radar concept,
then an active phased array S-band radar is the best solution, because it’s middle of the road.

The PDF shows an FC radar (or uplink capability?) for missiles on top of the MF-STAR, that looks like an ESSM or SM2 guidance. That does not fit in your story.

Yes Barak is CLOS, that’s more complicated than the Aster uplink.

Since this radar uses multiple beam principle, many Barak-1 can ride on those beams towards multiple incoming threats simultaneously

I assume you mean pencils to command the Barak. It’s like multiple FC channels.
The CLOS version you have to bring to the target, the missile assumes it has itit’s own FC radar for that. If it can handle multiple targets than you need a kind of Intermitted CLOS. Sounds not impossible to me with an active phased array. But beware: Marketing BS could be” each phase can do one missile!
(like the sentence in the PDF: Illuminator enslavement for semi-active missiles, that just means it can assign an illuminator)
The PDF does not mention mutiple missiles.

Barak-NG which will use INS cum mid course updates till it reaches terminal stage when it opens up its active radar seeker

That’s the same concept as Aster.
In this concept you make the radar a “consumable”. After the hit, it’s gone.
So there will always be a simple radar inside, also because it has to run on battery. There is just not much power! Jamming becomes real easy. A lot of space inside the missile becomes transmitter, battery or processing and there is no space left for “BANG”.
That’s why Aster uses the pif-paf to get a head-on kill (instead of near-kill like a missile with a decent warhead).
Plus you have to transport all the way to your target: the battery and transmitter and processing, while it does not contribute to you objective: to bring “BANG” to the target.

From a missile supplier point of view, these are great missiles: expensive, margin, re-supply, it’s like HP does with your printer. The printer is almost for free, cost of ownership is extreme high.
That does not care if you are a peacefull country, but if you ever think to use your missile: buyers beware!

drawbacks of this multiple beam tech

Multibeam, Yes there are: You need extreme good radar engineers and a long radar history to start with. In the RNLN there was the first (rotating) multi-beam radar on the M-frigates, in the German navy on their F123, so that’s developed more than 20 years ago. A radar with full doppler processing, a more expensive solution. You need a bunch of power, hard to generate even with a TWT in those years, while at that time most radar had still a magnatron.
Nowedays generated by powerbooks, easier to do, but still you need the skills.
Pencil beam radar do have the freedom of look back and forward. that does look as a big advantage, but in generally, it is’nt. The drive goes on and if you look back, you can’t do your regular volume search.
Now if you have a lot of surplus budget, that would not be a problem. But with technology of today, you can hardly generate enough pencils for a long range volume seach.

The look-back tricks are like my wife, she spends the money of the next month, already now!

The SPY-1 has no problem to track a ballistic missile, the problem is: where to find it!
The US uses satellite allerts to know a ballistic missile launch (from sat, to US, to ship), and then they know where to find a missile and to track it.
The multibeam SMART-L has proven, that you even can detect ballistic missiles (see f.i. recent press anouncement)

Also S-Band offers better performance under ECM than L-Band

Don’t think so: Do some enquiry on jammers, how many do L-band, how many aircraft can batlle that power to jam it?

It’s not easy to build an L-band multibeam radar, it’s huge, you need the production facilities, the knowledge.
S-band technology is much more accesible in size, components etc.

Lockheed promotes only S-band to upgrade their installed base of SPY-1 radars.
Plus as said before active phased array L-band is impracticle on navy ships smaller than a DD1000, imagine a square of SMART-L’s, it’s 8×8 meter.

The discussion of active versus passive is a backfield discussion to me.
For a long time there where steam train’s still in use to transport coals. That was oke.
In the UK there was even for a long time an additional guy on the train for the coals, while they use already electricity.
That’s a kind of resistance to change that’s well known.

The performance of active phased array is defined by software (as my car nowedays) If you don’t understand radar, you can not write he software.
Software engineering principles and quality nowedays is on a much higher level than the days of software for SPY-1 (just a little bit software compared to radars of today).
That now became spaghetti software. (not mine, but judgement from NAVSEA)

Sea Giraffe AMB

To Radar,
the brochure was on my left pile.
I have scanned it, see attachment.

Can’t find any info on the Saab website.
It’s removed from the Erisson website.

Weight is not mentioned. Strange! If weight is such a selling feature of the AMB, you would expect it in the brochure!
I have seen somewhere 2200Kg, will be including all electronic cabinets I asume.

Selected by Sweden for Visby, Poland for upgrade Orkan and UAE for Baynunhah
The Visby cone is (still?) empty.
Upgrade Orkan could be the first with operational experience at sea.
Baynunhah will take some additional time before it goes to sea.