If we did go down the Cavour route i’d be pretty adamant about wanting Aster aboard because that shortage of Destroyers is not going away anytime soon. I wish the CVF did too but that’ll never happen either.

If your using ASTER on your carrier something gone very very wrong. The whole point of the carrier is to insure that that dosn’t happen. hence the focus on plane numbers over defensive armament.

It was trialled on a T42 but then 911 happened and anything which might be used to defend the US was rapidly taken back.

There is a resistance to arming logistic vessels. (This is certainly the case in UK and may be partly down to Rn v RFA snobbery.)

I think that there is a general concern that weapon systems require integration and thus sensors and personnel which logistic vessels do not have. Partly for effective use of the weapon and partly to avoid blue on blue situations.

Additionally as Grim says, you put weapons on a non-combatant and it may end up taking risks which it has no business taking. Either through crew overconfidence or being tasked inappropriately.

Al

The reason I ask is that CIWIS have been fitted to many log vessels and since RAM and SEARAM is considered replacement for Phalanx so I was curious if the replacement had been fitted to log vessels. RFA fleet has been fitted with Phalanx frequently.

Size isnt the issue here gents – equipment is what really costs. The key factor is that we are looking for a transformational move in capability in support of the warfighting fleet.

You may say that a 3k ton hull is going to be scoffed as a replacement for a 500ton Single Role Minehunter. When its pointed out that the SRM needs to be carried into, and back out, of theatre on a semisub transporter and has no other mission value worthy of note its suddenly hard to make that point stick.

C3 as a multirole….even swingrole….droggy, MCMW and Patrol vessel makes too much sense to ignore. Fitting all that into one hull needs something akin to Khareef/Venator to accomplish.

The Venator is probably the optimum solution in terms of capability package and it was noteworthy that BMT defined a variant with CAMM and a variant without it in its marketing literature. Without the GWS I see little reason to expect a 3k ton diesel-powered minor combattant to weigh in with all that high an acquisition or running cost. Khareef would actually be a much more comprehensively outfitted hull and VT have signed on to deliver 3 for £400mn.

Even a limited order 8 of a more austere hull, with Khareef as a yardstick, would be difficult to conceive of as much over £100mn per unit and we are all aware that the ultimate requirement for C3 will not stop at 8 hulls. I would be very interested to see what numbers BVT could come up with for a non-CAMM ‘batch1’ of 8 hulls plus a CAMM variant ‘batch 2’ of another 8 to be built as the Sandowns pay off.

The structure would be for a two tier combattant fleet, as earlier alluded too, with the T45, C1 and C2 replicating the fleet structure we had with T42, T22 and T21. Then a two tier minor war fleet reflecting the diminished home waters role with active threat and benign-environment patrol taskings supporting and offloading the C2 force where necessary. For the cost of ‘just’ adding the already ‘designed-in’ CAMM VLS to the second batch of Venators we get a very, very flexible fleet.

Personally though I still think its a massive mistake to seperate C3 from C2 seeings we are actually tasked so heavily for patrol duties around the place.

Their remains plans for CAMM i think to be canister mounted so their is potential for it to be mounted like a RAM mount. It planned to be the replacement of Rapier so if there’s lightweight mount available it could be very handy if your building the VT Ventors FFBNW CAMM

Fs?

Faithful, Fearless, Fighter, Foresight, Formidable, Fortitude, Fortune & Furious? All used before. I don’t think we should revive Fancy, Fandango, Fiona, Foam or Fubbs on those grounds, though.

Or sailors? Cunningham deserves a ship. Plenty of names used before, e.g. Hood, Rodney, Benbow, Drake, Howard, Effingham (I know, using both would be repetitive), Hawkins, Anson, Barham, Blackwood, Blake, Cochrane, Collingwood if it wasn’t taken, Grenville, Raleigh – plenty of choice. Or some new ones. Fisher? Beatty? Parker (did OK at Copenhagen)? Napier? Fitzroy? Harwood (good job at the River Plate)? Somerville? Jellicoe?

I think we can probably do without Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

BTW, the first Duncan was named for an admiral, the hero of Camperdown. I don’t think it’s a bad name.

If we go captains and Admirals could we have Iron Duke again as that defiantly by favorite commission ship name.
You could also revive counties again some could names which could be resu again Antrim was good name

Anyone want to be Byng to be a commissioned ship 🙂

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4058309&c=FEA&s=CVS

U.S. Navy Readiness Flaws Exposed
On Ships and Subs, Problems Included Corrosion, Broken Radios
By philip ewing
Published: 27 April 2009
Print Print | Print Email

The U.S. Navy has systemic, service-wide problems with preventive maintenance, surface ship firefighting systems, corrosion, communications, steering and anchoring, according to an internal readiness presentation obtained by Defense News.

The document added new levels of detail to an ongoing issue: As the Navy has fielded smaller crews, seen tightening budgets, cut schoolhouse training and converted to a corporate-style “enterprise” model of operations, the service has struggled to keep its surface fleet in fighting shape.

The briefing slides summarized the findings of 38 surface ship and 13 submarine inspections completed last year by the Navy’s exacting Board of Inspection and Survey (InSurv).

Some of the problems:

■ Six ships – one cruiser, two destroyers, two small-deck amphibs and one attack submarine – were ruled “unfit” in 2008, and could not get underway for demonstrations. Before this report came out, only two ships were publicly known to have been deemed unfit in 2008.

■ Inspectors found that 27 ships had problems with the Halon systems that help fight fires in the main enginerooms, and 21 had problems with the aqueous fire fighting foam systems, designed to put out aviation fires.

■ Of the nine classes of ships inspected, seven had problems with their high-frequency radio systems because sailors didn’t know how to maintain them.

■ None of the four dock landing ships scheduled for material inspections in 2008 could meet them on time, and two of the four still hadn’t been inspected when the report was prepared. Two of three material inspections for mine countermeasures ships had to be rescheduled.

The undated report was prepared by Rear Adm. Mike Klein, president of InSurv.

The 2008 report is the broadest picture yet to emerge about the condition of the force. It also details recurring problems that InSurv recommends the Navy should fix.

Navy officials say they have already begun taking steps they say will resolve the fleet’s material problems.

Fleet Forces Command and Naval Surface Force spokesmen declined requests to interview subject-matter experts to discuss the findings of the report, saying it had not yet been presented to senior leadership.

But officials in both those commands have spoken recently about the importance of maintaining the fleet for as long as possible. On March 25, four admirals – from the Navy staff, Fleet Forces and Naval Sea Systems Command – told the readiness subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee that despite a few bad apples, the surface force was in a good state of readiness overall.

When shown the InSurv report, the chairman of that subcommittee, Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, said he planned to continue prodding the Navy to ensure he was satisfied its ships were fit to fight.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of it – we can’t afford for our young men and women to be residing in these conditions,” Ortiz said.

‘Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish’

Five former ship commanding officers, asked to review the report, said its findings were troubling. Each has close knowledge of the Navy’s current practices. Four agreed to speak on the condition their names not be used because they were not authorized to talk about the report.

A retired submarine skipper said the report showed problems he’d have expected from the old Soviet Navy, which he said fielded good ships and then permitted th em to rust and fail for lack of funding.

A retired cruiser commander said that nothing in the report surprised him, and that it reminded him of the “penny-wise, pound-foolish” mentality he spent years dealing with.

It “sounds good for any current administration of senior naval officers to say, ‘Look how much money I saved the Navy, boss,'” an administration that then promotes out to the next level. That leaves the next generation to grapple with the cutbacks that “made their predecessors look so good,” he said.

A second retired cruiser commander acknowledged the InSurv report findings were bothersome, but he cautioned that the nature of such reports meant things in the fleet might not be as bad as the document makes them seem. InSurv inspectors rate with what he called a “binary” system, in which the only possible grades are “A” or “F.” So even if a piece of equipment is functioning relatively well, it will be failed for not meeting precise regulations.

Extrapolated to the entire fleet, that phenomenon could explain why ships are getting Fs that actually deserve Bs or Cs – not quite outstanding, but certainly not rust-buckets.

Of course, InSurv’s job is listing problems on the ships it inspects, said the second cruiser skipper, and it can’t let them slide. The difficult thing is, “Where will you draw the line?” he asked.

Preventative Maintenance Woes

The experts agreed the report’s most worrisome finding was that sailors across the service continued to have problems with preventive maintenance and with assessing their own states of readiness.

The experts blamed smaller crews, shrinking budgets and less real-life training for a generation of sailors often too overworked to care properly for their ships. The factors added up to crews unable to perform regular inspections and maintenance, which enabled small problems to fester into chronic conditions.

The 2008 annual report covered a year in which Vice Adm. D.C. Curtis, Naval Surface Force commander, declared the surface force needed to “get back to basics” after the destroyer Stout and the cruiser Chosin were deemed “unfit for sustained combat operations” in their InSurvs. Curtis set ship self-assessment as a top priority, as did Rear Adm. Kevin Quinn, commander of surface forces for the Atlantic Fleet. Quinn’s initiative called for the fleet to “take a fix” on how it was doing with readiness.

According to the 2008 annual report, the answer is that readiness is suffering. The report contains photos of leaky pipes and badly corroded bulkheads, signs that crews had walked past problems for so long that they became major hazards.

Still, even though every crew member bears some responsibility for knowing when a ship is in bad shape, none bears more than the commanding officer, said Jan van Tol, a retired Navy captain whose career included the command of three ships, including the amphibious assault ship Essex. When captains aren’t trained to conduct and follow up on regular inspections, the system collapses, he said.

“I’m an operations guy by background. My engineering ability fits at the end of my pinkie. What made the difference in my ability to conduct zone inspections was the Senior Officer Material Readiness Course” – an 11-week course that put officers on temporary assigned duty to a training ship.

“That course was disestablished in the 1990s because it was expensive,” van Tol said. “The Navy had made the decision that the costs were greater than the benefits. My peers, overall, tend to believe that was a significant mistake.”

Stretching Service Life

The Navy’s top officials have repeated since the beginning of the year that they are putting a new priority on maintaining the current fleet. Each ship must serve for its full design life if the Navy is to grow to its goal of at least 313 ships, said NavSea commander Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy; 75 percent of that fleet is already in the water today.

Rear Adm. James McManamon, NavSea’s deputy commander of surface warfare, made a presentation at a conference April 9 about the Surface Ship Life Cycle Management Activity, in which he outlined NavSea’s plans to get maximum life from ships.

Scheduled to stand up May 8, the program will take its cues from similar submarine and aircraft carrier planning authorities. That means better use of classwide maintenance plans, detailed surveys to determine the current condition of today’s ships, and a willingness to pay a little more now to resolve problems that will cost a lot to fix in a few years, McManamon said. ■

I went aboard the PNS Tipu Sultan a few years back, it was interesting standing on an ex RN frigate fitted out with Chinese weapon systems.

The crew were nice as well, saluted me onto deck and gave me a gift as well. Always gave me a warm memory of their kindness.

are my eyes deceiving me is Tippu Sultan a T 21

Oh that’s alright then, and something better wouldn’t have been useful in Iraq either. Strange how there’s still a massive deficit in helicopter lift, although I’m sure you’ll tell me that’s fine too.

That’s not a capability that’s listing hulls. The CVS haven’t worked up properly with a UK fixed wing CAG in ages, the seven amphibs are all very good but have little in the way of self defence capability which if you’re going to project power would indicate some escorts might be in order. Tomahawk firing SSNs are great once the war has started but are self defeating if you’re working on gunship diplomacy. The escorts are the weak link, they’re overworked and there aren’t enough, hence my earlier statement that the RN isn’t a balanced fleet. The PLAN has more weapons carrying platforms which could make life very difficult if they didn’t want the RN to project power somewhere. You can’t power project with a fleet of amphibious ships alone.

I was of course responding to your comment on operations in Normandy, as you could tell from the quote I used in my response which last time I checked was in ’44 not ’40. Now stop sounding like an MoD spokesman and tell me which other European nation is commited to operations on the scale we are that’s suffering the same funding shortfall.

pardon they have quite frequently the last to excises had a UK harrier CAG on the CVS. which was oh only a couple of months ago

pray do tell us of an amphibs with more than a CIWS which the what the RN amphibs have.

Navy hopes high tide will help free grounded warship

One of the biggest and most technologically advanced warships based at Pearl Harbor remained aground today in 17 to 22 feet of water a half-mile off Honolulu International Airport’s Reef Runway.

No one was injured in the incident, which was reported around 9 last night, the Navy said.

Navy tugs tried early in the morning to nudge the 9,600-ton and 567-foot guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal off the sandy and rocky bottom, but were unsuccessful, officials said.

Crew members on the Clean Islands, an oil recovery vessel that was positioned behind the Port Royal as a precaution, said the water was so shallow they could see the bottom.

The Navy said divers from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One from Pearl Harbor and the salvage ship USS Salvor would try to tow the warship.

An initial attempt to free the Port Royal between 11 p.m. Thursday and high tide at 2 a.m. Friday was not successful, the Navy said.

Officials said the guided missile cruiser left port yesterday for several days of sea trials after leaving drydock about a month ago for routine maintenance. Shore-based Navy officials were being transferred to Hickam harbor by small boat when the grounding occurred, the Navy said.

Navy officials said a high tide that could float the cruiser off the bottom is expected at 2:45 a.m. tomorrow morning.

“We’re certainly working on bringing to bear the resources we have to move her off the current position. We’re still putting that plan together,” Navy Capt. W. Scott Gureck, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet, said this morning. “Obviously, the high tide gives us an opportunity to do that.”

The cause of the grounding is under investigation, but the highly-visible stranding is an embarrassment to the Navy, which does not take such incidents lightly.

“I’m not going to speculate on what happened,” Gureck said.

Ship captains, who bear ultimate responsibility for the vessel under their command, are typically relieved of duty during such an investigation. Often, a grounding is a career-ender.

The Port Royal has been under the command of Capt. John Carroll since October. Carroll commanded the frigate Rodney M. Davis out of Everett, Wash., in 2002, and deployed to the Arabian Gulf as part of the Nimitz strike group in support of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

He was the reactor officer on the aircraft carrier George Washington, and more recently graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Officials said the crew was still aboard, along with other Navy officials, including Rear Adm. Dixon R. Smith, commander, Navy Region Hawai’i and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific.

Gureck said state Adjutant Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee and other state officials were notified of the stranding.

Lee said he was informed by the Navy that the bow of the ship was stuck on the reef.

Asked if the Navy explained how the ship ran aground, Lee said, “Just coming

into Pearl Harbor at night and it got a little too close to the reef, is what was explained to me.”

Gureck said, “We’re keeping everyone informed. We’re very mindful of the fact that we don’t want any fuel leak if we can possibly avoid it.”

He added this morning that, “So, far, there’s no leak that we’re aware of.”

Coast Guard Lt. John Titchen said the grounding was being monitored, and three overflights had been made as of this morning in HH-65 Dolphin helicopters.

The Navy has jurisdiction over the stranding because it involves a Navy vessel and because it took place in the channel leading to Pearl Harbor, Titchen said.

Titchen said there was no oil sheen that would indicate an oil spill.

“We know that there is no oil spill at this point, and we’re confident the Navy is doing everything it can,” he said.

It was unclear today when the last Navy ship grounding occurred off Hawai’i’s shores.

In July, the skipper of the San Diego-based amphibious landing ship Pearl Harbor was relieved of command after the ship ran aground in the Persian Gulf, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The newspaper said Cmdr. Xavier Valverde had been reassigned to the staff of the Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain while the incident was investigated.

Commissioned in 1994 and costing $1 billion, the Port Royal has a crew of about 360.

The Port Royal is one of three cruisers home ported at Pearl Harbor, along with six destroyers, two frigates and about 15 Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarines.

Officials said there could be damage to the Port Royal’s sonar dome, which is encased in an eight-inch thick rubber housing protruding under the front of the bow.

There also could be damage to the shaft and propeller and twin sets of struts that stabilize them at the stern. If there is serious damage, repairs could take up to six months, including the possible need to find a replacement rubber sonar housing for a cruiser, officials said.

Port Royal is the 27th and final Ticonderoga-class cruiser, and has been retrofitted with theater ballistic missile shoot-down capability.

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20090206&Kategori=BREAKING01&Lopenr=90206018&Ref=AR&Show=0

someones going to lose their job over this incident!