I dont think I’d agree that the ‘threat failed to materialise’!. First action of the Falklands campaign….Black Buck 1 knocking back the Stanley runway. Varying levels of herosim by RAF Tonka lads JP233-ing runways in the opening moves of Desert Storm etc. Even the current, low-instensity, action in Georgia has seen Russian attention towards airstrips.

I dont think its hugely debateable that, had the Cold War gone hot by the mid-80’s that the threat to those fixed bases would’ve very much materialised.

Basically the Blue Vixen launched AMRAAMs in TWS mode and didnt need to go to STT (lock on)

Yeah thats it. I wasnt too sure how prevalent the ability to fire BVRAAM’s in Track-While-Scan was so I didnt want to use the terms inaccurately. Essentially the issue is one of resolution in TWS – if you have it then it renders Single-Target-Track superflous.

Would you have more details on this Jonesy, esp about the BVR battle?

The book is called No Escape Zone or something similar and its not a bad read. Richardson is a bit more sober about FRS.1’s capabilities as he’s flying it in the 90’s, as opposed to Nigel Wards 80’s experience, and he makes several comments about how he’s itching for the FA2 to appear!.

The BVR merges, and there were a couple from memory, were preparatory for the op ALLIED FORCE missions and, as such, were intended to give the FRS1 lads practice at trying to defeat Serb MiG-29’s. In short it was a way for the FAA lads to see whether doppler notch would work against SLOT BACK.

From memory, and I read the book some years ago so I’d recommend verification, the merges were 2 vs 2 and Richardson had a dastardly plan for the 1st one. The Fulcrums came down the hill and lit up the SHAR’s. Richardson’s wingman went into the notch laterally, but, Richardson opted to go vertically – downwards!. He caught the German pilot totally by suprise, heard the lock break on RWR, pulled out of the dive, went into a maximum rate climb and caught ‘his’ MiG, with an AIM-9 shot, in afterburner going over the top.

The second merge didnt go so well though as, again, he went for the notch and again he heard the lock break. He started his manoever back and found the MiG-29 in his face with a swiftly re-enabled lock. According to the Luftwaffe pilot he didnt quite hit the notch and the German deliberately broke the lock to make Richardson think he’d gotten away with it. It was then a simple matter for him to position for the SHAR’s pullout and reactivate his weapons system….bang.

Hopefully someone can corroborate my memory on that and, as I said, its a book that I’d definitely recommend.

Sens

No easy answer about that, because related to the mission in mind and the net-work it is operating. Part of a naval task-force as a gap-filler in the defence of that fleet or the multi-role Harrier II with a much smaller task-force in mind. Both with AIM-120, there is no difference in A2A capability.

Yes there was a difference. Blue Vixen was a very much more capable air-air performer. There was a sequence of comments from USN F-14 and F-18 pilots, after one of the Purple exercise serials, that we’re ‘killed’ by FA2 complaining that their RWR kit hadnt picked up the SHAR launches that killed them. It turned out that the American RWR gear was keyed to look for a PRF shift to initiate the launch detection and Blue Vixen never needed to make the PRF shift.

Also the earlier GR.3 based Sea Harrier airframe was much less draggy than the Harrier II versions with the barn-door wing so it held a significant performance advantage over the US version.

Ken,

I think you may be getting confused with the later book by Nick Richardson. He described DACT with a pair of Luftwaffe MiG-29’s which involved his FRS.1 getting shot in the face after a couple of failed attempts at ‘doppler notching’!.

RN and Russian Navy. U wanna play that match.

You want to match up the RN’s training, capability and experience with the Russian Navy’s and you think that Russia would come out on top of that do you. Star our T-class SSN force would be sufficient to remove the Northern Fleet as an effective naval force on its own. Not that its much of one right now. A carrier with a modest airwing both in capabilities and size, one heavyweight cruiser, a handful of DDG’s for ASW/ASuW and a few halfway competent SSNs that may have had half a dozen training sorties between them in the last 3 years!. You think thats something do you?.

Just look at the submarines and missile testing and tactics experiance of Russian design bureaus and Naval experiance. China/India cannot make even the down graded export version of Sizzler/Brahmos by itself (Even with all the world money) and Russian sure knows how to tackle them. And that is merely 80s tech at best.

Back to Star-world we go. When did Yakhont or 34M54E pass IOC in the Russian Navy and what units are they deployed on?. Otherwise yes, I agree, Russian weapons designers have come up with some interesting kit. A point which has utterly no relevence whatsoever to the current situation that exists in the Black Sea.

No one is underestitmating them but dont come with that ludicorous comparision of comparing experiance, knowledge base, training, eqiipment, quckly develop counter measures by research bureaus, interaction with export customer base that is available to Russian navy.

Quckly develop countermeasures?. So the Russian Navy is going to go from minimal littoral ASW capabilities in the Black Sea, as it stands, to a complete capability set in a few days is it?. Well, for their sake I hope you are right Star, otherwise if they ‘accidentally’ sink a Turkish vessel assigned to the NATO group then those Turk SSK’s are well within their capabilities to end the Russian Navies presence in the Black Sea!.

Planeman,

Didn’t Russia sell some KH-31s to USA for training US defences?

Yep as sferrins detailed these were a modified variant that was designated the MA-31. A google search on that desig shoud give you more but, effectively, the rounds provided were very poor quality examples of the basic Kh-31 airframe – possibly built that way deliberately.

Certainly the test serials employing MA-31 proved largely valueless as the missiles performance could never be guaranteed. At one point the USN had to go to the extremes of setting up a Q-4 drone as the release platform as the range performance had proven so poor that, to get a release at a range where the drone would actually reach the target, the drone had to be released closer to the defending ship than was permitted from a manned aircraft.

a cruiser and 3 missiles boats means 16 bazalt’s and 20 moskit’s. shooting down 36 supersonic ashm starting at a range of 30 km will drive the three mk-91 on a burke crazy, especially if the attack is well planned (different flight paths, simultaneous impact). imho this number of missiles is more than a single burke can handle at such a short distance.

The Spanish have an F100 in the group along with the Burke – any reason you think they’ll leave the USN ship to it?. If not there’s another pair of directors and, according to the Spanish Navy, 64 ESSM and 32 SM-2!.

You cant ignore the fact that the Bazalt isnt a skimmer either!. If SPY-1 doesnt pick up a high altitude diver at the farthest extent of the SM-2 engagement envelope there is something very wrong there – seeing that is the weapon profile that the system was developed to defeat. 5 fire channels combined with ESSM and softkill against Moskit I’d not be so confident in from the attack perspective.

Russians will know more about U boats than Turks. think over it.
and they have certainly produced the largest number of SSK after coldwar.

By that logic though Star the Royal Navy should have had no issue at all with that Argentine 209. The RN were, and are, arguably the worlds foremost ASW force – that little German diesel boat gave us issues out of all proportion with its size. You underestimate Turk SSK’s in the Black Sea if you want. IMO the Moskva would have a very interesting life if it sortied to engage in hostilities.

latest Amur class is in final trials with 3 more joining by next year

Maybe true but of little help in the Black Sea today

And than there is issue of training. Russians are miles ahead of Turks or any other navy.

You think the Russians can teach the Germans, Norwegians, Aussies, Canadians or Japanese anything about SSK ops do you?. The Turks and Greeks have, by rumour, been playing their own games under the eastern Med for decades. Like I said underestimate them if you want…I wouldn’t!.

Planeman,

Just curious on this, aren’t the Russian SSMs and AShMs quite a dangerous adversary? Also I imagine Russia would use aircraft, not that she will.

You dont attack a ship with the weapons the ship was intended to defeat!. The NATO group has two AEGIS ships with 5 simultaneous fire channels controlling something upwards of 100 SM2/ESSM weapons. Air attack is going to have to be on quite a scale. If the ships stay in port for the Russian ‘attack’ then you can forget anything with an active radar seeker being useable. Anti-radar and imaging seekers only in that case. By no means impossible for the Russians but a dangerous commitment of forces and probably a good way to see them lose Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet!.

I wouldnt be so disheartened Planeman. What you’ve actually done is to show people how vital it is to correctly define the scope of a project before embarking on the basics of the design. Also what happens when project definition is ill-thought out how quickly capability-creep takes a project out of all bounds of sense even though the ‘individual steps’ may seem almost plausible.

You started this with the premise that the RN needed a new escort to fit into the CVF taskgroup going forwards. In reality most of this designs itself based on the limits around it. Seeings AAW is covered by the t45’s for the next two decades at least, and the ageing T22B3/T23 fleet is going to present a Fleet ASW gap with a secondary ‘DLG’ requirement the roles required of this escort are manifest. These roles also define the sensors that will be employed and, therefore, the hull numbers in the class.

There are only eight 2087 towed array sonars in the escort fleet, so, the RN’s next ASW combattant class numbers 8 hulls only!. 8 hulls is too few to be risking them inshore chasing down SSK’s and we arent going to be affording an allround competent GP frigate for C2 when we cant afford to send T23’s on deployment today. That means the new 2087 ships must be capable of as much standoff ASW as we can provide them with. Standoff ASW for the RN means Merlin HM1 and so the new escort MUST be an aviation-weighted design. Noting that sentence used the word ‘escort’ and not ‘carrier’ as this still needs to be a vessel capable of consorting HVU’s and NOT an HVU itself in need of escort!.

So we have already pre-defined mission, sensors, performance, armament, hull numbers and only, realistically, have cost/logistics/supportability left as a variable. By that I mean can we provide a hull that services all the pre-defined criteria for a price that can be met by the defence budget. Thats the challenge and it, I’m afraid, is not met by the kind of fancy pentamaran through-deck CGH’s you want to draw. I would like to see what your design package could do with the below concept though:

Essentially the same concept as I put through above, but, pared down to provide as much pull through from T45 and the decommissioning Dukes.

Essentially still a big ship, knocking on cruiser sized, but nothing really ‘big-ticket’ expensive. No PAAMS so saving of near £200mn on T45 before stretch costs. Sensors/weapons transferred across, mostly, from T23. A43 cells for theoretical quadpack CAAMS, 32 LACM capable cells for meaningful secondary land-attack capability. Hul stretch allowing for increase in dieso and avcat bunkerage, air ordnance stores etc. Cant see why this wouldnt be considerably cheaper than T45. C1 sorted IMO!

Distiller,

I dont actually think we’re all that far apart on our dimensions here. Currently the T45 flight deck has the length and is stressed to accomodate a Chinook. A Chinnie is 30m long plus half its rotor arc forward is about another 10m.The flight deck is therefore already on the order of 40m long!. Stretching that to 50m isnt going to represent any dramatic alteration to the vessel.

If you want to put 3 Merlins in the hangar, you better do it with the tail straight, every inch counts for maintainance. That means a long hangar of at least 25 meter, the overall length of the aviation complex 55/60m (assuming a 30m flight deck).

Truth be told I dont think it could be done on 60m for the whole complex. The existing vessel is 150m long. I’m thinking that you’d be looking at a 20m stretch in the A module for 170m in total and that something on the order of 85m of that length at maindeck level would be needed for the aviation dept. A 50m flight deck and 35m hangar, 20m in the beam, would be sufficient. Given that the aviation department would constitute the vessels real primary weapons system devoting so much of the ship to the task is not extraordinary. Again the Shirane example is the obvious one.

Radar

for me it does not make much sense to have two different types of helis on a destroyer, so i need trained pilots, mechanics, spare parts, … for both of them on board. personally i would prefer two 10t helis like the nh-90. the eh-101 is imho a nice heli but more for a carrier and other through-deck ships. for a frigate or destroyer sized ship i would prefer a 10t class heli like the nh-90.

Ordinarily I’d absolutely concur with the concept of streamlining maintenance requirements aboard. In this case though the simple fact is that we have a very modest number of Merlins!. Deploying 3 to a DDH such as this in wartime surge is one thing. Doing it in peacetime, when we may only have 20 operational in total, is a non-starter…FLynx will be available and useful for force protection, MIOPS, light ASuW, recon etc. Useful enough to suffer a little pain in maintenance terms.

personally i would prefer two 10t helis like the nh-90. the eh-101 is imho a nice heli but more for a carrier and other through-deck ships. for a frigate or destroyer sized ship i would prefer a 10t class heli like the nh-90. btw: afaik it’s very hard to get reliable numbers to compare the endurance of e.g. the nh-90 the s-70/mh-60 and the eh-101. there are a lot of numbers around for all of them but not for a similar asw-mission profil.

Again, whilst the NH90 is an excellent helicopter and I wish we’d chosen it over FLynx, the issue here is to make the ship big enough to operate an airgroup of Merlins and not shrink the choppers to fit a smaller ship. We aren’t the USN and need more out of the individual ship and helicopter than the USN does because we will never have as many ships and choppers deployed.

As to the performance comparisons you dont need specifics to see the gulf in capability between the AW101 and MH60 variants. AW cite a mission endurance, for its naval variant, of nearly 5hrs. No Seahawk variant is going to compete with that and that time-on-station is the characteristic that will matter to us the most.