JonesyTempest414
As it now seems we are committed to five 90m OPV,s can this hull be fitted with the Hunt class type 2193 sonar or the Sandown class type 2093 sonar. If so then I think the UK should commit to building a further 12 90m,s over a 12 year period modified to have a telescopic hangar which can work as a mission bay giving the navy 17 multi mission hulls
No hull mount sonars. The RN have extended support on the Remus 600’s and have been trialling this: http://www.atlas-elektronik.com/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/products/Mine_Warfare_Systems/ARCIMS.pdf
ARCIMS, like Thales Halcyon, is equally adept at streaming a sidescan towfish and feeding that picture back at a much more useable datarate than possible through a UUVs acoustic modem. For the Remus all thats required is a command data system that can integrate the picture and a crane cable of lifting the launch cradle. ARCIMS/Halcyon needs at most a couple of 11m capable davits or, at very least, that sizeable crane again. Those OPVs could offer quite a lot of MHPC capability to be fair….just by hanging on to that hoofing big crane!.
I wasn’t so much talking a cheap Frigate because as you say I cannot see any frigate being cheap. I was rather referring to a specialist frigate that can do away with some of the traditional functions of a frigate because it will always be around other vessels that can provide that function. They could then be a dedicated & specialized fleet escort freeing up the 8 “full” T26’s to perform other task.
I really struggle with the idea of a cheaper “general purpose” T26. As I said, I’m nothing but an interested bystander so I don’t understand the finer points, but I struggle to understand what a cheaper general purpose T26 look like? What systems and functions would you lose? Would the loss of these systems make it next to useless if a war were to actually break out? I don’t really see how you can make it cheaper without having a big HMS Clyde in which case just make more river classes.
You are by no means alone with this position. The politicians are, likely, hitting bended knee praying that something cheaper than a T26-lite is feasible and would dearly love to be presented with a solution along the lines you hint at. The reality is that the systems are already defined by T26. Mk45 for’d/Sea Ceptor/ASCG & (maybe) Harpoon as weapons go. 997 radar, Radamec 2500 EO (or whatever theyre called now!) etc. Any departures from that into cheaper sensors or 76/57mm guns etc means adding new systems to those supported by the service. In wholelife terms that cuts out the cost advantage of going with the smaller, less useful, ship design.
You can fit a 5″, small VLS, SSGW, chopper and appropriate sensors in a pretty modest hull, of course, the Kiwi Meko’s will have something very similar on less than 120m and under 4000ton full load. Problem is as stated….no room for growth….no room for much else at all in fact. As a service we learnt that painful lesson with the Leanders and 21’s.
Then we come to price….the Malaysian Gowinds are vessels pretty much dialled in to the suggested requirement….they are over £300mn a throw though. The outline concept price for T26 was £400mn per unit and that was with the active tail (itself about £20mn a set). You suspect that figure for T26 to be optimistic but when you see a, fairly pedestrian outfitted, 110m CODAD patrol frigate bouncing in at the money quoted you have to ask, if BAE can get within 25% of that price, no sane cost-benefit calculation would come down for the smaller ship.
Other that that is the simple expedient that we’ve tried this ‘specialist frigate’ design concept before. The original Type23 bore no relation whatsoever to the Duke class we know today. Originally it was little more than a tug for a Dowty 2031Z tail, a Sea Wolf system and a couple of 30mm REMSIGs!. Its perceived job….its only perceived job….was patrolling GIUK and the Atlantic basin and helping our cousins run Reforger should the need arise. What did arise of course was the Falklands conflict….and then we get the lessons learned of too-specialised ships having no tactical flexibility. Net result T23 as a properly capable frigate and T22B3 being the class T22 always should have been.
Dont know whether its a hideously sad observation that we have so may recent examples of making glaring mistakes in shipbuilding terms. T21, near-miss on T23, T42 being rebuilt smaller and cocking-up the bows. Fundamentally though the problem is nearly always we build too small and then run into trouble down the track. The one time we dont, when the T23 got its lessons-learned reprieve, we build a proper ship thats going to give service far longer than anticipated and is being upgraded to far higher capability levels than it was designed with. Conclusion there writes itself.
JonesyI’m no expert on these matters but what would be the potential of, instead of general purpose (cheap) frigates, the royal navy was to look at a new type of escort corvette.
I assume that a large proportion of the escort fleet’s resources will be spent following one of the QE around or taking part in other task forces of high value. I also assume that a QE won’t leave port without a Type 45 in tow.
Why doesn’t the Royal navy commission a class of perhaps 4 Corvette’s which essentially acts as a moving gun/missile/ASW platform in conjunction with a type 45 as fleet escort. It could be designed without a flight deck as it will always be with a carrier, with proper links could have a basic radar as it would always be with a type 45, Low storage as it will always have resupply ships close by and a relatively small crew. Significant savings could be made on omissions of these factors. This would free the Type 26’s to perform other duties especially in times of war you could potentially significantly increase the availability of T26 by decreasing the amount assigned to each carrier group. The ship could h
I’m sure my idea will have massive holes poked in it but I was really just curious about its feasibility.
It’s a commonly asked question. The short answer is that there is no such thing as a cheap frigate these days!.
Not if you want the kind of comprehensive capabity set discussed. Most of a ships costs are in its black boxes. Sensors, weapons, comms, EW etc. Put the same fit in a small hull as the big hull and you get an expensive small hull with no room for growth and development. See Royal Navy Type21 Amazon class frigate.
We have sunk more than a billion into the design of T26 to date. That money is spent, gone and will never be seen again. If we can leverage that design into a more austere GP frigate layout we make that billion do more for us. Effectively we divide it across 13 hulls and not just 8. That means unit cost for the 1st 8 T26s drops by more than £50mn and we save having to shell out another billion designing the cheap corvette!.
The net result being we end up with additional units of the same basic T26 type which we will already b set up to support and deploy all the emerging offboard systems being trialled now likely for a similar cost to the ‘from-scratch’ light frigate.
This really does sound like one of those political smokescreen announcements that, when we get close to winding up T26 units 5 and 6, will be reversed to ‘BAE has done such a great job with the new frigate and has found huge build savings so we’ll reward the great workforce and leadership by continuing into building a batch2 modified design’.
I’d stake 20 pounds on that today! :highly_amused:
JonesyArguments I’ve seen are that –
T26 has expensive propulsion, which could be replaced by something cheaper.
Although ‘air is free & steel is cheap’, a bigger hull needs more power to drive it, more maintenance, more internal fittings, etc., all of which cost money. Not as much as weapons or electronics, but still real money, so a smaller hull is cheaper, both to build & operate.
The T26 hull incorporates relatively (for a hull) expensive features to make it a good ASW ship, & a GP ship could put up with compromises which’d save a worthwhile amount.
Any comments on the above?I’ve seen suggestions which terrify me, e.g. that a new ‘light frigate’ could be based on the River Batch 2, stretched a bit. I’ve seen it posted elsewhere that the Anzacs & Lafayettes have more equipment than our GP frigates would need, & something smaller would do perfectly well, with a 57mm gun, a hangar just big enough for a Wildcat, & maybe 16 CAMM. Oh, & commonality with the 127mm gun on the T26 is wrong because it gets in the way of having a really small hull. I’m afraid that such talk may reach the ears of some British politicians & convince them.
I think I could live with something the size of the PPA, though.
Compared to a hull that, for the most part, would be in current build and that needs minimal redesign to accomodate the ‘simplification’ not a chance :). Commercially frigates are big now. As I said elsewhere here look at a FREMM, look at the new Indian hulls. Coupled to logistic/training wholelife savings and the build drumbeat yard savings of flowing into a ‘common’ hull design going for a light frigate is never going to be a substantially cheaper option.
The only reason to build a smaller hull is to support design teams in BAE.
Interesting that Warships1 continued its downward spiral from its halcyon days of the late 90’s.
JonesySo the question becomes what will this new GP Frigate look like, The USN replaced its OHPs with the barely armed LCS and given that the global combat ship is effectively destroyer sized there is room for a smaller ship without the acoustic dampening required for sub hunting in the Royal Navy. I just wonder what will happen to Cameron’s “not less than 13” pledge
The logical choice would be a simplified ‘batch 3’ T26. Eliminate the 2087, simpler COGAG or CODLAG machinery fit, reduced combat system maybe. Otherwise the elements in T26 are those that would need to be maintained. MCG, 997, Sea Ceptor, mission bay, significant aviation dept. Simply theres no gain producing a new design when the T26 hull covers the requirements. After building 8 its likely BAE will be well set up to continue that build into the ‘batch3’ in a cost effective manner and the support/logistics savings of the single basic type are obvious.
Essentially we’d end up with something similar to the way it went with batch3 T22. This fitting with the original 3+5+5 build concept in general terms…..just that the initial 3+5 go in as an ASW and the last 5 as ‘cheaper’ GP.
JonesyI am convinced a CSG with an air wing of jets with a 3700 km combat radius can be a powerful persistent force, controlling 32 million square kilometers (a sixteenth of Earth’s surface).
3700km combat radius???. What value is that when the longest range ISTAR capability organic to the fleet is the couple of hundred miles an E-2 can peer from patrol altitude?.
How long is it going to take a laden subsonic striker to chug out even 1850kms….offload….and get back aboard?. How many aircraft are you going to need to embark keep sortie rates up if planes are out half the day on a single mission?.
No need whatsoever for anything with that kind of radius of action. You need 500 miles out and 500 back at most and decent sortie rates inside that radial. Land attack missiles for anything longer.
JonesyI do disagree that weapons weight is a driving factor. Weight of bomb load may have been important during WWII, but with today’s PGMs it is the number of weapons that determines the number of targets which can be engaged in a single sortie. Weapons do not have to be massive if you nearly always hit within a couple meters of aimpoint. But the smallest bomb in the carrier’s magazine is the 500 lb Mk 82. :stupid:
….and this is one of the key flaws in the piece….so heavily flawed in fact that you can only consider it to be a deliberate omission. The simple fact is that the important metric is ‘effect’ not payload/range. Back in the 70’s you needed the ‘Alpha Strike’ to put together the range of capabilities necessary to put enough bomb-trucks over a target so that enough weapons could be placed within useful proximity to target. Now the paradigm is targets-per-plane not planes-per-target. Yet that very stark, key, point isnt discussed. Instead there are lamentations of how many strikefighters a KA-6 could drag out to range. Twaddle.
Personally, I think the article is spot on. The CSG becomes an irrelevant money pit if it cannot project power from outside the reach of DF-21s and AShM armed H-6 and TU-95s. Congress should mothball all the carriers and give their sustainment money to USAF.
That being the biggest validation of the flawed nature of the article of course. That it can, in its fervour to try and hark back to a still-irrelevant early 80’s Top Gun carrier-world, be used to try and further an equally flawed point about the efficacy of carrier airpower.
The simple, undeniable and indelible problem with land-based airpower is the land-base. You dont have one thats secure, logistically connected and conveniently located the air force is a no-show in any meaningful sense….thats the same if the air force is flying anyones flag. Air forces dont do strategic persistence and no amount of AAR is going to change that. History has proved this so many times….from Doolittle to San Carlos….that air force ignorance of this basic fact is a running joke now.
That addressed the issue of the other key flaw in the article comes into view. How does a carrier airgroup do deep-strike without a penetrating bomber and without U-Class turning into a me-too-B-2 which the USN clearly doesnt need as, quite rightly, strategic bombing of fixed targets is one of the few things an air force should be able to provide.
The answer is it shouldnt. Why is very long range strike a carrier airwing tasking?. It was under SIOP of course…but thats as relevant as Reforger today. This fixation with range then is wholly bizarre. What does the US Navy do to deal with A2AD threats then being the obvious question?. It does the sensible thing and clobbers them with standoff missiles!. I didnt notice mention of TLAM anywhere in the article written, perhaps I missed it, but if you are hitting something 1000 miles away from your carrier group from any subsonic system you have a good few hours of transit time to plug in to your engagement cycle. You arent hitting ‘pop-up’ or fleeting targets-of-opportunity 1000 miles away from a carrier deck any more than you are doing so from a continent away with a strategic bomber.
If you are servicing a fixed-target list then TLAM them. You dont need a manned aircraft to do the job and TLAM, these days, are pretty cheap. Going forward this long-shot option needs to be better than just TLAM of course. DARPA’s original ‘ArcLight’ programme and the CPGS concepts for a double- or triple-shot conventional SLIRBM capability embarked in the Virginia Payload Module subs point the way in this regard in my view. No-one seems to bat an eyelid anymore about Iskander-type conventional ballistic missiles….I see no reason why a submarine launched longer-range version of the same weapon-type would be especially problematic. Such a weapon would, of course, get around the subsonic striker full-range time-of-flight latency as well of course.
The carrier airwing is there to do what others cant. That is provide strategic persistence either covering a beachhead force, establishing sea-space/opposition littoral domination or providing an unmapped/undefended threat axis for a defender to contend with. It doesnt need to be weighted, heavily and at massive cost, to deal with targets 1000 miles away from the ship as, fantasy DF-21’s included, those threats are marginal. That is the case even if retired USN officers jump up and down shouting “look….look its a missile gap” whilst pointing wildly…….
Jonesyhttp://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNASReport-CarrierAirWing-151016.pdf
Likewise thanks. The message of the article is intended to provoke policy makers in a specific direction it’s therefore not to be taken as particularly accurate, honest or balanced…it’s none of those things. It’s an interesting read though.
JonesyAbout frigates posing as AAW destroyer, in the picture posted by Jonesy the ship sports a very particular large radar aerial amidship, surprise it is a LRR, the Smart-L, and its sheer size would tell anybody how much it’s relevant in the AAW’s role.
So an AAW ship must have a VSR?.
If I could ask you to direct your attention to an image of an Arleigh Burke class, an F100 or an Atago class ship and point out where the seperate VSR is please?. Thales states that a Herakles ship needs no seperate VSR just as BAE does with the T45’s Sampson set. For an AAW ship to be an AAW ship it needs an area missile and enough radar power and resolution to use it at the extent of its practical range. That doesnt demand a 956-sized hull any more let alone one Kirov sized.
JonesyYama,
Well, many of the modern ‘frigates’ are basically destroyers but not called such for political reasons. And in fact, historically they’d better termed ‘cruisers’…
Theres a steady drive to bigger hulls I agree, but, even a Type23 is more than 130m and its very definitely a frigate. The two classes I mentioned….Indian and Franco-Italian….as well as the Dutch unit all identify as frigates and all fall about 10-15m short of a 956 and up to a couple of thousand tonnes lighter in the displacement. Any way you cut it they are significantly smaller vessels….
…yet in the Dutch LCF you have an eminently capable AAW platform. This being the point….if 956 is the benchmark size for a DDG in this context…then a hull roughly 20% smaller is perfectly adequate for the task.
If you want to take the argument to the zenith of silliness examine the Singaporean Formidables. Thales states Herakles is a HVU single-type sufficient MFR set needing no VSR backup. The ship sports the capability to deploy with a loadout of 24 Aster30’s and, notionally, 32 CAMM-ER. Its smaller than a Krivak yet has the AAW potential of a far more substantial unit.
You absolutely do not need a modern DDG-sized hull to do AAW….and you very certainly dont need to deploy units the size of Kirov’s to do AAW with all their associated manning and support requirements!.
JonesyThere is no way a Frigate can replace a Destroyer in the AAW field.
If you got a long range 3D radar, long range AA missiles, a CMS designed to protect a large aerea containing several assets instead of self-protecting its own ship, a large battle management staff, able to coordinate several different ships’ AAW systems, then you have something able to replace a destroyer, an then it is a destroyer.
Or even a CG, specialized in AAW, depending on displacement and additional C4I capabilities.
Obviously there is little sense spending a lot in the Sovremenny’s.
Better to upgrade the Kirov cruisers, even maybe calling back from the deads a third Kirov wgatever it could cost, then restoring obsolete steam turbine powered destroyers.
Maybe it could even be better to design some stop gap destroyer, powered through gas turbines, broadly based on the Sovremenny as general arrangement and incorporating those updates that are readily available.
Something analogous to the choice to procure the Grigrovich and her sisters for the needs of the Black Sea fleet, i.e. choose an old proven design, update it wherever needed, and put it in line without further delays.
The hull could be the same of the Udaloy class.
Three such destroyers won’t cost a fortune, and would boost AAW and C4I capabilities of the three major russian fleets, meanwhile giving a feedback about effectiveness of new technologies deployed.
Could be even the right chance to try to step up technologically adopting variable pitch propellers, a steo long missing in soviet and russian ships and providing far greater cruise efficiency than fixed pitch ones.
Cant do AAW on a frigate hull?
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…not so sure about that. Frigates are 140m long these days…..look at Shivalik or FREMM!. The Dutch even have an F pennant on the above.
JonesyBy timely manner, I suspect what is meant would be on time and as cheaply as possible……
Quite. If I was heading the MoD I’d agree to the terms….on condition that, if the Treasury recognises the special nature of this program, the funding comes from a seperate Treasury pot and not the core Defence Equipment budget. That’ll wind Osbournes neck in at the rush.
In reality, given that the bulk of the billions mentioned will be spent on the hulls themselves and the 20-30yr lifecycle costs, the undeniable fact is that Successor SSBN represents a huge investment in the UK high-tech manufacturing sector and the local economies of Barrow and the urban west coast of Scotland. Packaged properly SSBN could be a great ‘stealth’ stimulus package for the UK economy and a real PR win for the Treasury. You suspect that fact hasnt quite been grasped though!
Jonesy[ATTACH=CONFIG]241926[/ATTACH]
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JonesyCould these actually sink all the carriers of any NAVY ?
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/sweden-has-a-sub-thats-so-deadly-the-us-navy-hired-it-t-1649695984
Swden is a supapower after all.
On the strength of the argument that all of the carriers of any NAVY wouldnt likely line up to be shot at simultaneously……can I take it your actual question is ‘Are the Swedish Navy’s SSK’s a genuinely potent force’?.
If thats the question then the answer is ‘within the limits of their performance….yes’.
With legacy blue-water oriented ASW sensors on the surface force, and poor tactical handling from the group ASWCS, SSK’s of many types would give a surface force a very unhappy time and the Swedish boats would definitely make that list. Thing is though that lesson became clear to many services over 30yrs ago when Argentine 209-type submarines presented the Royal Navy with an unassailable problem. 30 years is a long time to program a counter.
The excercises mentioned are set up at significant cost to give training to both sides….this must be remembered when reading any such article as that you link. If a SURTASS-LFA was present supporting the CSG or a number of escorts with LFA tails then the outcome would very likely be vastly different and the training value not shared out. Also there can be political goals to an exercise serial. Active tails were relatively late in reaching the USN…..a great way to have them moved up the funding priority queue is to have scope-shots of USN carriers from marauding ‘foreign’ submarines appear in the general media though!.
So, yes, they are dangerous if not taken seriously…..just like nearly any other threat system.
JonesySimply because it’s so visible. If you want to test something without causing a “flap”, then do it in the daytim
That said, I’m sure civilian “flap” reduction doesn’t figure highly on the list of priorities for the agency in charge of such things.
A test was declared prior to the date was it not?
There’s a valid NOTAM for these areas logged. The NOTAM isnt the most informative I’ve seen but it does describe hazardous operations.
Timing can be affected by local, transient, conditions all too easily especially in areas with significant air and sea movements seen. A later shot could be simply the result of range hold for any number of reasons and a desire not to waste the opportunity. Test shots would usually be in daylight though for reasons of trials imagery clarity.
JonesyA side that doesn’t use supersonic missiles rules them inferior. What a shock. Yet meanwhile everybody this days is going supersonic in regards to AShM’s.
Did you read it or just assume that?.
The piece is dated….but the author clearly lists the advantages of supersonics in it. His conclusion is, correctly (in general terms), that if only one type is to be selected that subsonic offers the best cost/benefit return. Soviet-era supersonics tech development was clearly mission-specific and of no bearing on this…..for the mission the required warhead, speed and fuel carriage for range dictated the abnormal missile parameters and those missiles parameters dictated the design of the ships that would carry them. In no way can you say that this was/is a ‘normal’ condition. The article is flawed though as it assumes a position where one or other is an objective right choice….when the right answer is a high-lo mix of both!.
I’m curious what you think ‘everyone is going supersonic’ means?. Is anyone throwing away their subsonics in the rush to convert to supersonic?. No. Have those now looking at supersonic previously built subsonics….yes.
Supersonics can complement subsonics, presenting a defender with an extra threat profile, if the general maritime surface threat level is there and the engagement criteria can be favourable for their use. A supersonic missile has uses, no attempt to deny that was obvious to me, but for capabilities explicit to the supersonic they are fewer and at higher cost than subsonics. If you can develop them at reasonable cost…..and ramrocket propulsion technology has certainly proliferated and become more accessible in the past decade and a bit which is why they are becoming more fashionable now….then theres no reason not to….but its no more than that.
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