Swerve

It should not be beyond the wit of man, or even BVT (actually, I think the VT part is rather good at this sort of thing), to build something with similar range (at economical speeds) & endurance to BAM, but a bit more dash speed, good seakeeping, a deck for Merlin & hangar for Future Lynx (& preferably something a bit bigger), work deck, etc, in a package of about the same size. Oh, & I’d like to see costings for accepting the Oto 76mm into service, because despite what Jonesy says, I can see considerable advantages to it over the 4.5″ for relatively small ships, not least a lot less weight on the foredeck. And if the 155mm plans go ahead, C3 could be introduced into a navy which is phasing out the 4.5″.

AAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!! (meant tongue-in-cheek!) 😉

VT already HAS designed and is building something comparably sized to BAM – Khareef!. The only problem with it is that most of you keep calling it a frigate!. With the best will in the world why is Khareef going to be ‘deliberately’ confused with a frigate and BAM not?.

The Darings are being completed with Mk8-1’s so I’d not say 4.5″ is exactly being ‘phased out’.

The weapon is fitted, quite happily, to vessels down to 1500tons displacement so why would a vessel with 1000tons more be unduly troubled by 20tons on the foredeck instead of 7 or 8?. The only concern might be for recoil forces causing the deck to require a few tons of additional stiffening, but, its not like the OTO wouldnt require some stiffening either!.

Lastly, again, what does the OTO do, in terms of C3’s mission, that the Mk8 doesnt do better?. Anti-aircraft – C3 isnt anticipated to engage aircraft all that often and SIGMA offers equivalent capability cheaper. Anti-speedboat?. Well, hell, thats a good reason to go with a whole new weapons system isnt it?!. Myself I’d probably just use the DS30’s or miniguns on the speedboats.

Jack is right here. The SNEBs hadn’t been trialled for deck EM hazard susceptability and, by the time the Crab GR3’s were being embarked, it was too late to undertake the trials as they were in an operational environment. Other weapons systems were deck trialled on the transit south, when it was much more sensible to do so.

I’m not sure what the actually differences might have been between the SNEB firing sequence and the RN 2″ pod sequence I suspect it would be little different. If someone can provide details of SNEB operation I can try a few people to see if the 2″ RP was any different – the system wasnt one I got to see in any detail.

Jonesy,

stop analysing this rationally in terms of requirements. That’s unrealistic. Start analysing it in terms of the prejudices of Treasury people & MoD bureaucrats who will be looking for ways to cut, because that’s the world we’re stuck with.

Any assessment of needs has to start with the requirements. We cant develop an escort and then try and fit it in to the fleet just on the basis that it sort of replaces what we had before – but with slightly shinier and newer technology. I know you to be far more erudite than to propose that Swerve but despite the illogicality, petty-mindedness, agenda’s and politics of the other side the armed forces have to be the ones to rise above that. No-one expects much of the politicians or civil servants other than their usual grubbing around. The forces, RN in particular as the Senior Service, have to be, and be seen, to be more professional and responsible than that.

The concept I have put up is a method, in conjunction with newer more efficient ships like T45, to significantly reduce the RN’s operations budget and that is where we keep feeling the hit….more so than in procurements. As I’ve said, and apologies for repeating this, but the danger isnt in ‘not getting the most capable warships we can’ the danger is being seen as an irrelevence with our fantastically expensive warships sitting at idle alongside at some level of ‘extended readiness’ or chasing themselves round the Solent. This while the Army undertakes bona fide heroics in some godforsaken hole somewhere and the RAF keep going uppiddy-up-up at airshows and stuffing James May into the back of a Typhoon any time they need a bit of good publicity.

Look at CVF: the RN has managed to persuade them that two large carriers can do the job of three small ones.

Didnt work like that. The brief was that carrier strike had to be delivered for the same year-on-year cost as the 3 CVS. The study was done and reported back that 2 40k ton CVA’s could do more than the 3 CVS’s.

I’m sure that an argument for three 40K carriers, i.e. the same tonnage in three hulls, would have lost. Same number is OK, but not if they’re bigger. Increase in size requires cut in numbers. Once you’ve accepted the cut in numbers, you can put forward technical arguments for more capability per unit (note how CVF has grown).

CVF has grown because that growth is the cheapest option for delivering the operational requirements. Its not a case of ‘right, we’ve got the carriers now lets see how far we can push our luck!’.

I know & you know that many of their ideas are hare-brained, e.g. scrapping the Typhoon gun to save money (yet another “money-saving” idea that added to costs), but unfortunately, that’s how they work, & we can’t do anything about it.

Another good example. This time though it is an example of inter-service dirty tricks…something the RAF are the accepted masters of. The Typhoon gun scrapping didnt come from the Treasury or the MoD’s army of civil servants. It came from the RAF. Most people know absolutely nothing about defence equipment but they comprehend the basics. A downgraded DASS on Typhoon would’ve saved a decent wedge of cash but they opted to delete the gun why?.

They did it because in the papers ‘RAF cant afford guns for its fighters’ resonates exactly the same as ‘RAF cant afford to keep Red Arrows’ the image of plucky Spitfires unable to defeat the nazi’s because there are no guns on the fighters hits the spot with the ranks of the unwashed!.. Hey presto some mumbling about retaining guns as ballast and, some years later, guns are back on the menu thankyou and goodnight.

So, I repeat: what we will actually get (not what we should get, what we will get) if the RN proposes to buy two classes of ships on the same hull some of which can be called frigates, is, at best, a one-for-one replacement of the frigate element of the fleet with these ships. If they are smaller & less capable than existing frigates, we’ll get a capability cut.

I agree it is a capability cut but focussed in the right area. Do we need the full capabilities of HMS Iron Duke to chase down druggies in the Gulf of Mexico?. Seems to me like we need the Medium Range Radar, the Lynx, the Mk8, SATCOM and stowage for a small EMF and the rest is all a bit overkill. That being just the one example so lets build that vessel and keep the warfighters back for exercises and, well, warfighting!.

But increase in numbers is damn near impossible, regardless of what you do. Therefore, you must not, ever, accept a smaller replacement for anything. It may not get you the best navy you could get for the money, but unfortunately, that’s how it works.

But there is no increase in numbers here. Even 27 C3/C2’s would represent an 8 hull decrease in the minor war fleet and the ‘patrol’ tasked escorts. Total tonnage might increase a bit but that is more than justifiable by the streamlining of the support elements. Bottom line to all this is an increase in efficiency….doing the routine things cheaper and more efficiently than we do them now. This is meant to be the mantra of the sitting administration isnt it?.

The only thing that could change it is a shift in government policy in favour of increasing naval strength, in which case a programme like yours might make sense. But that won’t happen before 2010, & probably not (do you see David Cameron boosting the RN?) then.

Or increasing the support to the UK manufacturing sector (hasnt Brown just stated a commitment to this end?). Seems to me that building circa 28 of these ‘cheap’ vessels to undertake our patrol requirements would be a win for the RN, a win for Industry, a win for the Treasury (whole-life support costs down plus increased revenue/employment from BVT) and a win for the politicians who get to foster that employment and wrap themselves in the flag a bit. I’ve looked at this as objectively and dispassionately as possible and I dont see any negatives here. Please feel free to tear into it though! 🙂

Jonesy: Do you feel there is any merit in upgrading the current DS30 turrets to something along the lines of the MS30 Sigma?…A switch to a modified Sigma, perhaps with a different cannon (e.g. a Mauser 27mm?) and side-mounted Starstreak IIs, might be an option. This would give somewhat more protection for the ships not getting more expensive Phalanx units. I know this is low priority, but could be pretty useful for improving fleet-wide defences.

Its logical certainly but, perhaps, a little premature. The Type23’s have just undergone upgrade to their manual DS30Mk1 guns to remote-operated (manual-backup) REMSIG DS30Mk2 under the £15mn ASCG project. Upgrading again to full AUTSIG mounts with or without the missiles isnt too likely seeing REMSIG only gained IOC last year!. There is however, according to reports last year, a £300k contract put out to industry, by DTIC, to study the value of the light gun mounts effects on a range of target sets and to make proposals to enhance lethality. Full AUTSIG and SIGMA capability would potentially fit that bill.

For CVF I think full SIGMA capability would be quite desireable from the outset. AUTSIG is certainly a must IMO as we dont really want seperate directors all round the vessel and the concept of having to wait for a gun crew to man the mount after running however many decks to get to action stations on a CVF is plainly absurd!. IMO if we’re going to have AUTSIG mounts anyway then adding the capability to take a couple of extra shots beyond the gun engagement envelope is just good sense.

As for the idea of using Project Khareef as a basis for C-3, it may be a good idea. I do wonder, however, whether an enlarged version, e.g. the VT 3,000ton variant, complete with the weapons of Khareef, but also the proposed work deck of the C-3, might be able to fill both C-2 and C-3. I know this is not the plan, in large part to preserve numbers, but there would be some benefits.

That would be the worst of both worlds to my way of thinking I’m afraid. What we would end up is an overly expensive C3 with too many systems aboard that would be useless under routine conditions and an under-equipped C2 that wouldnt have the aviation capability that the C2 mission would benefit so intensly from, but, the C3 mission capabilities that would be of little use!. I really would stress a need for specialist versions of the same basic hull and machinery fit.

Kev,

Any way to beef up the range a bit without significant alterations?

No way of telling without a look at the specs to be honest. The likelihood I’d say is no given that the vessel is designed to patrol in local waters off the Omani coast for extended periods at low-ish speeds. Also I’d imagine that the 12ft stretch and additional 500 tons displacement that Vospers put on their C3 concept modified-Khareef would be something to do with expanded fuel bunkerage amongst other things!.

A 3200nm range isnt necessarily an insurmountable issue as on-station endurance characteristics are pretty good. With the escort fleet depletion we are going to need something for the RFA’s to do after all!. So all that would really be needed is support on transit to distant station and we rarely try and do that in one hop anyway. Note that I’m not saying that stock Khareef is a great solution for C3 just, as Swerve indicated, if we wanted a smaller 2500ton OPV design then its worth noting we have one ready in the works!.

Swerve,

Maybe we could settle for something BAM-sized, though 20 knots might be a little slow. It should have diesel or diesel-electric propulsion, excellent range at economical cruise speed, main gun plus light guns, sensors of similar calibre to those of the Thetis

Well for revolutionary thought why not just go with the off-the-shelf Project Khareef design being built for Oman right now (as above) for C3?. Perhaps with a slight mod to the stern to handle RHIBs and UUV’s.

There is still 25 minor war vessels to replace with C3 so we are still looking at a requirement for, at very least, 16 hulls possibly more like 20 for realistic coverage. Vospers are building 3 for Oman at £400mn for the lot plus initial support. 20 with standard RN kit and lesser weaponry could, realistically, be deliverable for round the £100mn mark per unit. No development costs, ready build infrastructure and a proven OPV design that we can clearly and irrevocably show is an OPV because thats what the Omani’s specified VT to build for them.

£2bn to cover all of the RN’s MCMW, patrol and droggie taskings sounds relatively reasonable. Especially when you consider how many T45’s that same amount of money would buy us!?. The Khareef is a bit short on range at 3200nm but 25knts on her diesels isnt too shabby and the Omani’s seem to think they will be adequately equipped for ops in the Gulf as is!.

Bottom line the whole deal would be more expensive as C2 would still be required to replace the 22B3’s and non-2087 Dukes. Using the F125 as a start point you’d be looking at something like 6 hulls of about £350mn apiece there. Would provide an interesting capability mix though.

I know, getting the politicians is to think of the concepts as the correct ones and then getting the funding approved based on this catagorisation is always going to be a challenge.

On the flip side of that though….if the RN cant sell a scheme to replace, in full or in part, 8 seperate classes of vessel (Hunt, Sandown, River, Clyde, Echo, Roebuck, T22B3 and non-2087 T23) with two long-run batches of a single circa 3000ton hull then there is something deeply wrong with the way that HM forces approach procurement!.

Jonesy, can’t agree with your last two sentences. You mentioned that the RN would send/is sending everything forward it can find in the harbors.

Not quite – they are sending anything cheap out on patrol missions whenever they can get away with it. Basically gapping patrol slots that are meant to have an escort filling them without actually leaving the slot empty. Sending out the Largs Bay was very much more economical than sending out HMS Iron Duke (current APT(N)) early.

That would mean that even C3, although originally not meant to do that, would very much STAY in a conflict area/war zone. I bet they would not send it away. Hence I think even a C3 needs proper self-defense against missiles.

Dont see it. C3, as I have it, isnt a high-threat capable vessel just like OPV(H) isnt. Again the point is that for a high threat potential station you would have a C2 or better deployed….that being the whole point of C2. Why have your ‘cheap’ C3 tote around weapons systems that it would have no other use for just on the off chance that a low-threat scenario somewhere goes high-threat before we can have appropriate vessels deployed. If a real popup missile threat were to emerge to a C3 it would have softkill systems capable of providing a proper defence anyway and the simple virtue of retreating over the radar horizon from the ‘popup’ shore missile battery is a great way of stopping rudimentry inbounds.

And regarding the Mk8: For “colonial” actions I see it much more likely that some kind of land-attack missile would be fired inland, than pounding away on some coastal target with a large gun.

Again I disagree that a C3 would ever see a land-attack missile in any shape or form. As soon as you give C3 GWS60 and CAMMs or even a multirole gun like the OTO or the Bofors you are hollowing out the foundations for C2. I’ve said it before but C3 cannot, initially, look like it is able to be modular converted into a high-threat capable patroller. That, to keep the numbers up and the costs down, has to be a seperate and distinct version of the common hull.