Hasn’t the new radar in the E2-D been optimised for litorial as well as blue water operations making it much more useful as a AEW&C with the emphasis on the latter part namely control. It is no longer simply a radar in the sky but a capable battle management platform able to fuse and use data from many sources as well as sending the data to other locations.

It is now a true force multiplier with growth potential especailly if/when UCAVs come on line. However if this a capability the RN want for their CVFs or are they still aiming for the jack of all trades but master of none aviation support vessels as we are repeatedly told they are not going to be used a true carriers.

Yes it has and it is a very advanced set. Thing is though it is still a, very capable, monolithic solution!. Its not going to be a platform you risk to gather ISTAR data anywhere the slightest possibility of a threat exists. This is simply because you only have three in the airgroup!.

Yes you are right in that the ‘C’ in AEW&C is a crucial part of what Hawkeye offers, but, there are only three guys managing the plots. Historically the USN have used one E-2 to manage the offensive battle and a second to manage defence to prevent overload on the battle management team. Technology moves on – there is no need for the air/surface plot to be handled on the aircraft now. A good AAW escort can LINK the feeds from the distributed sensor assets and compile the picture without it ever going near the carrier and the escort can carry a much larger battle management staff. An AEW chopper on the AAW Escort can provide local lookdown coverage serving the ships area missile system and be receiving the feeds from the UAV’s line-of-sight. No need for a Hawkeye or CATOBAR carrier and any attempt at interferometry games will take the opposition to a loitering UAV or a fully-alert AAW destroyer!.

I dont believe the RN ‘expects’ to get Hawkeye any more than they expect to get Fleet Carriers. If they get a pair of catapult carriers they’ll doubtless be pleased with that, but, I dont believe there would be any palpable sense of loss if E-2D isnt part of the services future.

Verbatim,

Sorry, are you advocating something like podded airborne radars to be mounted on a fighter wet hardpoints?

No. Fastjets fly the absolute worst profile possible for the mission. Podded radars are the product of a deranged imagination in my view. I’m talking about distributed persistent air assets. As Malaya says principally long-endurance UAV’s like MQ-18, Mariner and, perhaps, Mantis. The former two of those have already flown radar equipped. Indivdual radar performance may not match E-2, but, when you can simply launch three or four and leave them on station for 20hrs it scarcely matters!. You can also be using them in scenarios where Hawkeye would never be risked.

As for E-2C being scarce, it is all up yourself: how many heliborne AEW can you actually employ?

You can deploy chopper AEW on every every AAW ship in the deployed group if you so chose…it would certainly complement the ships combat system far more than an ASW chopper would.

Maybe six or seven (i.e. all the UK got and will got)?

We converted 13 airframes.

OK, buy six or seven E-2C and, when required, embark them on your CV(s), they will still provide greater performances.

…and if we just bought Nimitz CVN’s that would provide better performance than CVF. Perhaps if we’d bought Seawolf class SSNs instead of Astute that would have provided more performance as well. Reality comes into the equation though Verbatim. We have no requirement for E-2 and, currently, no requirement for catapults on the carriers to be able to operate them. Contrary to what Oldnotbold says Hawkeye isnt useful enough to us to justify the costs of the catapults by itself.

Are you thinking to embark your heliborne AEW on some frigate or destroyer?

When needed yes. Or to an auxilliary or an amphib or a STUFT ship with a helideck welded on. Basically any asset in the group with the deck space and avcat bunkers to support the operation for as long as necessary.

That means your are sending them (frigate/destroyer plus heliborne AEW) hundreds of miles away from the main task group, otherwise it would be irrelevant provided an E-2 far exceed both cruise speed and range of any conceivable heliborne AEW.

Why?. If we send the AEW chopper ‘hundreds of miles’ away it wont be putting any coverage back over the fleet?. We arent limited to keeping the AEW withthe carrier with rotary AEW thats for sure. We would always want to have the capability somewhere within a rough 100kms of the fleet assembly area though.

And I cannot see an AW101 or Sea King AEW costing less tha an E-2, an helicopter usually is far more expensive to operate of a roughly similar in payload aircraft, and for the avionic, you got what you pay for, isn’t it?

Save for the one small detail you are missing. To get your E-2 you need a dirty great catapult equipped carrier….now add in the costs from running that and see where the scales tip!.

MrMalaya

So rather than comparing the existing technology we should be thinking 10-20 years hence (much as with the jets operating off the deck).

Bravo. Well said that man!.

Old,

The ability to cross deck your aircraft and their aircraft adds, very considerably, to both our, and their operational flexibility, in all sorts of situations. In fact, in general terms a Queen Elizabeth class Aircraft Carriers would be more likely to see a USN Air Group than an RAF Air group (if you do not believe that you obviously know nothing about RAF-FAA).

OK ‘very considerably’ and ‘all sorts of situations’ are woefully inadequate as an answer. A CATOBAR QE will have a dedicated FAA airgroup as we wont be able to keep any kind of jointness with the RAF – as you have been quite clearly hoping for all along – for you now to say that they are more likely to see a USN airgroup just contradicts your earlier comments and is plain nonsense.

The simple fact is that cross-decking is operationally insignificant. The ONLY real operational ability it brings is emergency recovery provision for allied naval aircraft. We wont be spending the money for catapults just so we can be there for the odd USN E-2 that develops a fuel leak or Rafale that takes battle damage.

The deployment of allied aircraft to CVF to ‘stage’ off our deck is, I’m afraid, utter nonsense. The USN strike planning cell would put in proper AAR support at a very early stage. If unavailable, and an allied operation, either RN aircraft would take the mission seeings our carrier would be closer or, if not an allied operation and political issues would interfere with British aircraft taking it, the US aircraft couldnt be seen to be supported by the RN anyway. Nice idea, but, not one that survives a collision with reality. Cross-decking is, largely, a jolly these days…its no real reason to take on the expense of catobar. Though I am fascinated to hear some of Old’s ‘situations’ that disprove what I am saying!.

If you cannot see the obvious advantages of being able to cross deck with UK’s majoe Ally, I doubt I could explain them to you.

No please do try. I would appreciate knowing what the strategic significance of being able to take a couple of French Rafales on board for a jolly is?. You seem to make out it is a very serious advantage…..I dont see it please do enlighten me?.

The problems with current, Helicopter bourne RN AEW is getting up threat fast enough, getting high enough and loiter time when you get there.

Are you familiar with the military principle of 7P’s?. Chopper based AEW has advantages all of its own which, not least, allow it to be seperated from the carrier and ‘up threat’ already!. Trying to use rotary AEW like fixed-wing AEW is the non-starter not the technology itself.

Hawkeye not only gets over all those problems, it has lots of other stuff that gives you information on the enemy, both passive and active. UK would be insane not to buy it, if they have CATOBAR Carriers, as soon as they can afford it. Hawkeye is streets and streets ahead of anything RN has now or planned.

Irrelevent. The Charles de Gaulle in its entire operational life has not undertaken one combat deployment that it could not have made without its E-2’s, but with ASaC7’s in the group instead. E-2 is a great legacy system, but, its expensive and too rare in the airgroup to provide forward ISTAR support over an area where a pop-up SAM threat could get lucky. The technology exists now to do better than Hawkeye and ignoring that, to bring in Hawkeye that there is no real requirement for, is straightforward idiocy.

Let us review some of what’s been discussed.

Round the block on this one again eh Swerve! 🙂

The T22s are getting very long in the tooth, have unique systems, & are expensive to run. SLEPping them does not seem worthwhile.

Agreed. They are, I believe, still intended to serve until 2015-2017/8 on current planning though. If you are alluding to my earlier comments of running-on with the 22B3’s I simply meant letting them run out to those dates…that getting us over the ‘hump’ of the CVF work and allowing for a more orderly replacement schedule.

This leaves us with a dilemma. T26 doesn’t fit the patrol frigates role, but the patrol frigate doesn’t replace the T22B3s. We’ll eventually need a high-end ASW ship to replace T23, even if that’s a decade later than the RN currently plans, & we’re kicking the ship designed to do that into the long grass.

There is a leap in logic there. Why do we need a similar sized hull to do the patrol job that the T22B3 did?. The problem is that the 22B3’s and 42’s especially cost a lot to keep on station. We need a smaller more efficient hull to do the job with lower ops costs.

Standard Khareef, as major units in the RNO, will be fitted to accomodate a command staff and thats on the basic 99m hull. I’m talking about a hull thats further stretched and, actually, not all that far off T42B2 dimensions. I dont see any reason why a large proportion of the C3I facilities invested currently in the 22B3’s couldnt be translated into a 3500ton 110-115m C2. It is definitely a hull that would be appropriate for the 22B3’s less well publicised mission equipment given the nature of its deployments.

One possible answer is to build something FM400 or even La Fayette like for the presence/anti-piracy/etc role, & carry on with versions of T26 for the T22B3 replacement, & eventually for the T23 ASW replacement…Sounds like an RN F125? Well, yes. Meanwhile, we build a batch (6?) of patrol frigates to do the low-end stuff, filling the hole which is sometimes being inappropriately filled by big expensive ships, & then replacing the older non-2087 T23s as they retire. These can be followed by a batch of cut-down models for the postponed C3 role.

Poor form snipping away like that and I do apologise, but, I needed to show the tapestry being woven there!?. What you are considering would be:

1) Type 26 as C1 and high-end C2 Batch 1 built ‘F125 style’ and Batch 2 built FREMM ASW style?
2) A ‘Type 83’ built off a hull like FM400 for lo-end C2 and, redesigned, downwards into C3.

I think that is a similar structure, to an extent, to what I’m suggesting, but, I dont see a need to split C2 into high and low spec classes as such and I think we need bigger than a FREMM/F125 sized hull for our fleet ASW escort for all the reasons stated above. We build C1 big, ie off a T45 baseline, and there is no need for a seperate F125-esque version. You just run on with the C1’s for four units after the 2087 arrays run out….or you build the first two and last two without the sonar, but, identical in all other respects etc. No need for a second design as the principle one has the size and space to handle multiple missions regardless.

FM400 is essentially what I’m talking about in Khareef. The French ship is about 10% larger and a few knots faster than I think we need. As stated earlier I dont see why any more than 110-115m and 3500tons is necessary. The Canadians were putting out SeaKing equipped escorts good for 28knts and 5000nms running on old steam plant technology in the 60’s on those dimensions!.

You can certainly deliver a Mk8 plus a couple of 4-cell quadpack FLAADS VLS modules, a 3D air/surface search set plus mission and command spaces and a hangar/flight deck for a Lynx plus UAV(s) on those numbers. That with range and endurance figures within 20% of the French design. BMT have done the work on mission-adaptable spaces with the Venator programme that literally lays C3 out on a plate so why pay DCN to adapt that to FM400 when a) it competes with their Gowind offering and b) Khareef is an existing proprietary design?.

I also think that if RN logistics really can’t cope with a new gun & ammo type without massive costs, the answer is not to have nothing between 30mm & 4.5″, but for heads to roll in the logistics organisation & revamp it so that it can cope easily, because it should be able to take such things in its stride.

Again the issue wouldnt be one of cant as such. Give them the funds and they will train up the Engineering Technicians and spare up accordingly. The issue is is why you would want to allocate funds to bring in a new weapon that is inherently poorly matched to the taskings of the hull it is to be fitted to?.

If you were talking about the new LW127 that Oto is building, bought by the Germans, then yes…you could understand that. If you want the gold-plated solution the new OTO gun is, on paper, quite the ticket – shame we cant afford gold-plate. People here arent talking about a weapon in that class though. They are talking about heavily compromised secondary calibres like 57 and 76mm. These are little to no use for shore bombardment, precious little use for serious AAW without costly add-ons and too short ranged for proper ASuW. Someone mentioned earlier the fast boat threat…..well you beat the fast boat threat by starting firing on them before they can get a detect on your ship!. Not by letting them close and trying to plink them off as they cross the visual horizon!. Again the bigger calibre is the answer there. I’m fascinated by the number of supporters the smaller calibre MCG’s have here based, seemingly, only on the fact that everyone else does it that way so we should too!.

I understand what people are saying regarding the Mk8 mod1 but it seems the vast majority of western style navies are moving away from 4.5″/5″ weapons except on command units, with the 76mm being the preferred choice, USN being the obvious exception.

True, but, ask the question as to why this is?. Is it because of the wonderous virtues of the OTO76 or is it because those mounts are cheap and available?. Well cheap and available describes Mk8 for the RN doesnt it?.

The cost of advanced ammunition like sensor fused rounds is not that great and give a major step up in capability allowing the weapons systems to be very effective vs aircraft, ASMs and surface targets.

The cost is ‘that great’ relative to the hulls and the tasking. We dont need to MCG for AAW as the C2 will have FLAADS for that and the C3 doesnt need to sport a real AAW weapon. The weapons are not ‘very effective’ against aircraft that dont fly into their engagement envelope. Seeings that that envelope for both 76mm and 57mm is actually quite small I cant agree with the idea that they are worth any real extra investment to embark.

With the 4.5 you are still really firing WWII style rounds. I would not also get fixated on the “It is our system” arguement as in the current climate that is actually a disadvantage with limited market and research. The same can be said for 155mm weapons….commonality with land based systems it bring no adavantages except for NGS.

Good!. WW2 style shells are cheap, reliable and easy to employ. They are precisely what we want to be using on these ships. Again we want simplicity and efficiency for these hulls and not the gold plated standard with guided shells and gated fuse rounds!. The same CAN indeed be said for 155…NGS, or at least the threat of NGS fire, is going to be a principle tool in the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ we use these hulls for. A mount good for NGS is almost a tailor made solution for C2/C3.

What actual capability does the Mk8 give the RN that another system does not?

None. Then again though it doesnt have to give any new capabilities does it?. The RN dont even practice AAW with main gun anymore if my memory serves correctly. We want the capabilities Mk8 does give and we want a cheap solution. Why spend money on new mounts that dont give us anything we need.

Added to this saving in weight and size and surely there are major advantages for equipping new RN platforms with a weapons system of this sort.

Space and weight?. Mk8 has been fitted quite happily to sub-2000ton corvettes!. At minimum we are talking of a 3500ton patrol frigate here.

This is why many nations are have decided to adopt this class of weapon. So keep the Mk8 mod1 on the T-45 and possibly the 6-8 C1/T-26 but give the C2 and C3 a smaller calibre more flexibel weapon

No. So many have adopted lighter weapons because they are cheap to buy and own and/or they have been reused from earlier ships. That argument, for us, actually supports the Mk8!.

Following some peoples arguement we would never have switched from .303 to 7.62 as it was our calibre, we knew its capabilites and had the manufacturing and facilities to support it.

We didnt choose to go to 7.62 though. NATO forced that on us. We wanted to go to 7mm for the EM2 rifle!.

Out of interest, if the stories are true that we are delaying T26, can the T23’s be upgraded much further?

Also are 13 T23 and 6 T45’s enough hulls to meet current requirements or do we need to urgently make a 1:1 replacement of the T22’s with something even if it is OPV’s?

On the question of T23 upgrades the answer is yes….they very definitely can. Argyll is the core example of whats left to do. She’s just received her mod1 main gun, new engines, new REMSIGs, updated GWS26 and a refresh of habitability spaces. With the Sea Wolf In Service Support (SWISS) deal running through to a dead stop in 2017 she’ll be upgraded once more between now and her out-of-service date in 2023 with ARTISAN and FLAADS at least. Plenty of capability left there.

Are 13 T23’s enough – nope. T45’s wont be doing routine patrols unless there is a show the flag issue going on. i.e NATO exercises where we want to show off the new toys etc!. The routine stuff will be the frigates bag and 13 to sustain permanent presence including east of suez isnt going to do the job. There are certain capabilities that will go with the 22B3’s that are not going to be simply replaced with a T23 as well. I think that there might be a little fine-print to be read with any offer on the RN’s part to dispose of the 22B3’s quickly!.

What about C2 class? Would you go for a scaled up version of the C3 with improved weapon and sensor fit or do you favour the current plan of building the C2 on the C1 hull but configured as general purpose frigate rather than a ASW platform?

C2 is this part:
“Take that basic hull, pare down the mission garage to twin RHIB/USV docks dead astern, a la Gowind, with enhanced aviation facilities and a permanent hangar forward of that with FLAADS, MCG, COMINT/ELINT and full LINK16 and you have an excellent high endurance stabilisation platform.”

The way I see it, and the way its been listed, C3 is a requirement for an Oceanic Capable Patrol Vessel. Anyway you cut it that is not a small vessel intended for pootling about on inshore minehunting tasks. The perception that has developed that C3 should be small and very cheap fundamentally misses the point. Oceanic Capable – for reasons of naval architecture – means 90m+ in length at least, so, we are in the 2500ton displacement bracket before we get started looking at capabilities.

It is, C3, a hull that will need to be designed for high endurance on station after an extended transit – MCM/route survey and droggy duties just need that endurance. That is also a useful factor for presence missions for anti-smuggling/MIOPS too. C2 as a forward presence vessel needs that endurance as well….just better armed for higher threat stations.

So we have a C3 that has to be at least 90m/2500ton or thereabouts and a C2 which shares many of the same requirements characteristics with C3 i.e long unsupported deployments and high endurance in he mission area. C2 has no real requirements as a fleet escort and, therefore, no necessity for expensive high capability primary propulsion units.

The problem we have had over the past decade or so has been that we have been undertaking routine patrol missions with expensive-to-run frontline escorts. If we build C2 to the same hull as C1 then we have to compromise the hull size of C1 or pay large-escort running costs for the C2’s. Neither being particularly attractive an option. If we take the leap of building C3 bigger than it needs to be (i.e 3500ton and 110m+) we get a candidate C2 hull in to the bargain. Likewise if we build C2 in the Leander mould instead of the German F125 approach then we get C3 in to the bargain. Both ways we do the routine patrol tasks cheap….which is where we want to be.

Also what do you favour for the Medium Calibre Gun – if I am understanding current equipment fits correctly the RN has nothing between the Mk 8 4.5 inch gun of the destroyers and frigates and the 30 mm gun of HMS Clyde

As you say its either Mk8 mod1 or REMSIG. To me thats self evident Mk8 mod1 is now a good mount and it fits very well with the patrol duties of both C3 and C2. If BAE are right in what they claim for their 155mm, being virtually the same ship impact as the original Mk8 mod0 mount, its possible that the 155mm could be a useful fit on the C2. Certainly plenty smaller ships than that envisaged here have mounted Mk8’s.

Just one thing to check, would a modern day Leander class be in the same weight class as the original Leander ~ 3,000 tonnes or would you expect to be heavier and if so how much heavier?

The Leanders were, at the end of their lives, just over 3300tons 113m long and 13-14m in the beam. That, for my money, would be about the starting point for the C2/C3 hull. The danger is, of course, that we build a modern day Type21 instead of a modern day Type 12, but, provided that we have margin for a medium calibre gun forward, a small VLS installation and optimised mission space be that enhanced aviation or a multirole mission deck/boat garage then the development in offboard systems will look after the future proofing that the Amazons lacked.

Excuse my ignorance here, but if the main requirements of an ASW vessel are to tow a large sonar array and operate one or more ASW helicopters, why do they have to look like dashing destroyers from WWII?

Traditionally the simple reason is that your principle fleet ASW ships have to not only keep up with a fast fleet, but, get ahead of it in order to drift, enabling sonar ops, before the main body can catch up. If you want a ship of a sufficient size to carry a couple of choppers, towed array, weapons and enough hands to make it all work you end up, if you want it to do 30knts+, with something that looks as you describe!. Things are a bit different with the littorals and you could ‘get away’ with a lower performance frigate/corvette for ASW in that environment. You would still want your primary ASW ships to be capable of a sustained fleet transit though.