Where does the RN intend to patrol in the future? Has contraction of the mission crept in, too?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Royal_Navy_deployments

Not an exhaustive list of everything the RN does but it covers a lot of the regular stuff and shows where the RN has interests. Mainly Atlantic/western approaches…South Atlantic…Caribbean…North Sea/GIUK….Gibraltar/Med approaches and the Gulf. Not really much different than it has been for the last few decades.

Ah – I see Jonesy beat me to it.

….but with nowhere close to the same level of wit and eloquence!

Pencil EMKIT in for a QE refit, I say, & start the feasibility studies ASAP.

UAV ISTAR from the QE’s is in the Defence Ctte notes…unfortunately they seem to have an issue getting beyond the STOVL mindset….luckily we have a window of opportunity for the penny to start dropping before the next refit!.

For recovery a semi-permanent deck edge installation along these lines would seem all thats required… http://www.dvidshub.net/video/52034/marine-pilots-test-m-31-arresting-gear#.U0VbyvldUXs …you’d simply create bolt-in mounting plates on deck and move the gear from one ship to the other as duty carrier switches between hulls!.

The Hercules is once again a hero:

http://www.129rqw.ang.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123406271

I’m sure that saving a toddlers life is its own reward but you do hope there’s some recognition for these lads. Man overboard drills on seaboats in far calmer waters is an evolution that needs some practice to get right…certainly took me a few goes!. Jumping into the Pacific to try and climb aboard a 12m yacht thats being crewed by a family witnessing their 1yr old in extreme distress sounds like an operation a very long way from being routine or straightforward.

Feasible yes, but with some assumptions like being alert and being able to detect that torpedo, as you note. LCS do not have hull sonars, only a drop down mine-avoidance set at best which is an active, high frequency, very short range job, and would require a towed detection or decoy set like SLQ-25. I do not see that being planned at the moment, so all but the ASW-module equipped LCS are vulnerable to being taken out without ever knowing who shot at them. And even when they are expecting attack and are alert, some passive-homing electric torpedoes may go undetected until they are on the ship if I am to believe the comments of a former ASW officer.

If there is a ‘drop down mine avoidance set’ that should be quite sufficient for basic torpedo detection. It doesnt take much of a hydrophone array to detect contra-rotating screws shoving several tons of metal through the water at 50knts. As I said I’ve seen information that one is present on LCS and several sources that make no mention!. Curious thing is that they are damned handy things to have aboard for all sorts of routine ship-handling evolutions…and you’d think a vessel optimised for the littoral would benefit disproportionately from having such a sensor installed. The MFS7000 on T45, for example, is the same kind of mine/obstacle avoidance set and, against popular opinion, is damned useful and cost a mere couple of �million. If you think a couple of million happens to be a bit pricey think about the costs of sticking the hull on a rock…or clipping a buoy and pulling the mooring cable into the screws…or shearing off a rudder. That kind of sonar pays for itself very quickly!.

For the rest its difficult to respond to this without repeating myself Pred. Like Leon you are starting your analysis from the wrong end of the engagement cycle…weapon release. Before a submarine can fire a torpedo the warfare team generate a firing solution. Building that solution factors in what the target can do to evade the weapon and how the solution can be refined to reduce that factor to as near zero as possible. As the attacker cannot tell whether he is engaging an ASW LCS or not he is faced with a gamble. If he fires early with the weapon on a stalking profile…as your ASW officer describes…and it IS an ASW LCS he’s wasted a torpedo and alerted the opposition to his presence and, worst case, rough location. His mission has therefore just got more complicated by several orders of magnitude. This is bad news. If it isnt ASW rigged and there really is no hull set you may have a successful attack. Depends how the CO feels as to whether he’d try the speculative stalking-attack I’d guess.

Personally, if at all possible, on a non-ASW LCS, in threat waters, I’d have my Seahawks laying a few intermittent sonobuoy lines along my rough course in advance and try and stay inside a ‘corridor’ between the lines. It’d be a bit heath-robinson but, as mentioned, stopping the ship taking a hit is worth a bit of expenditure, so, if it takes a good few dozen extra passive buoys embarked and expended…so be it!.

So, any slower ship with torpedo defence system may better off than the fast one without, add acoustic quieting and the equation should change further, particularly if it is your job to go and find those submarines in the first place.

Quieting used to be more about minimising ownship noise to maximise passive sonar performance than any concept of stealth as such. The irony is that the move to LFAS (low frequency active sonar) has lessened the dependency on passive detection and opened the door to noisier ships. As I mentioned earlier S2087 has a purely passive component and this is viable and useful, but, its no longer essential to tow it behind the nautical equivalent of a library to get hits back. Truth is if the attacking sub holds you on its system and its talking to the eel down the wire whether you are quiet or not is pretty much irrelevant. Quieting will knock back his ability to find you in the first place…right at the start of the engagement cycle…not by the time you get to weapon release!.

Faced with an LCS probably anyway anti-ship missiles are the best option for a submarine. An LCS will likely be destroyed by one hit, its missile defence is minimal and its speed does not matter at all. And: if an LCS has to run from a submarine torpedo and leave the area, the task of the submarine – defence of that area of the sea – was anyway already successful.

Getting the subtle hint that you arent a fan of the LCS Leon.

Yep the torpedo chases away the LCS and gives the submarine a temporary mission kill which maybe enough to achieve tactical aim. That comes at the price of revealing its presence if not its location though.

The missile point is a different issue…I’d have actually thought that a low-volume streaming attack, like that a submarine can generally manage, would be within the capabilities of seaRAM, 57mm and softkill to defeat. That I fear though would be the fullest extent of its capability in that regard and the defences would appear to be fairly easily saturated by a more deliberate attack.

Indeed not, modern subs have much better sonars than WW2 era subs, whilst LCS has no sonar at all unless it carries the ASW package, and even with that it won’t detect anything unless it slows down… 🙂

Well, really, the point was that the LCS offered something as a platform to build a frigate on and the MMC variant does define a mine avoidance/torpedo defence hull mount. Ignoring that though again the issue is virtual attrition and complicating the targeting solution. Is an opfor sub skipper necessarily going to know whether the LCS in front of him has a tail streamed if he’s 15,000yds off and there are no active pulses banging off his hull?. Would he be safe in assuming not?. 2087 has two components…one passive and one active and they can be streamed independently. If the ship is at 40knts then the sub can likely make an assumption, but, I cant see the LCS operational profile being ‘go everywhere at flank’. 2087 is designed to be operable at ‘normal cruising speed’ remembering that the active component isnt heavily affected by flow noise, and the array and handling gear can cope with at least a T23’s maximum design speed of 28-30knts.

Clearly if active pulses start banging off the sub skippers hull and he’s 15,000yds off he’s in a fathom of trouble anyway and firing a torpedo at that point would be more in hope and desperation than considered design…its certainly not going to catch the LCS by surprise and the ships speed is a known quantity is it worth the torpedo to get the LCS running or is the time better spent trying to get somewhere else at the rush and no setting up low-percentage torpedo shots?. At that point he’s likely to be fervently hoping the LCS isnt sharing data with a nearby VLA shooter or has its choppers in bits!. On a positive contact even if the chopper takes 10 minutes to get up the sub isnt going very far from its initial datum point and if its in shallow isothermal waters a pinger has most of the advantages!. The ship would be very likely trying to open the range as quickly as possible also so its not as cut and dried as you’d imagine.

What is this fairytale ? They have like a halve hull with no funds or expertise to to finish it.

Edit

oh, it’s hotdog.

Date check. Message ends

“Gayducks penetrate Russian forces from the rear” dodgy….very dodgy!!!

This I do not understand. The Floreal class was built exactly for the same purpose as the late 19th century gunboats. A ship with relatively low fighting value, but used for “policing” the empire. The Floreal class is used mainly for patrolling the French overseas departments.

The Floreal class is not an enabling platform. And I am not sure, if the LCS can be one – no serious AAW armament, no ASW armament (except if equipped with this module, if it is already available), very weak armament against bigger warships (even the anti-ship module of the LCS is aimed against small boats), perhaps useful (but very expensive!) as mine countermeasure ship… The LCS is more like a fast gunboat, which has to be defended by other forces if it is attacked by any serious military force – but which can be used to attack essentially non military (i.e. defenceless) targets, for showing the flag and for policing duties.

/edit: A comment on the risk of submarine, if it is attacking a LCS: the LCS has no means of attacking a submarine except of the helicopters. Why does the distance matter? The helicopter can also attack submarines, which have shot a torpedo at a bigger distance.

We have a differing idea of the definition of ‘gunboats’ then. In my view a powerful unit that was dispatched to stand off an opponents major trade port/capital and be an aide memoire as to the likely wrath that may descend upon them should they continue their differences of opinion. Your definition appears to be what I’ve always known as a colonial sloop…intended for constabulary duties and the maintenance of ‘presence’ at a modest cost. To use your terminology of gunboat then we are sort of on the same page I think.

I’m not suggesting Floreal is identical to LCS. I’m saying that the French concept of fregates de surveillance fits what the LCS is in actuality. This is why the lack of armament and sensors you list is no handicap. The LCS is an enabling platform as it offers the platform for capabilities to be built from it. Principally those capabilities will be in the ISTAR space in line with the fregate de surveillance cap that seems to so readily fit. ISTAR being suddenly deployable into places that would need significant assets tasked otherwise and useful for force protection in the wider fleet context. Other than that expeditionary-MCMW will be a considerably useful facet….if plain old LCS gets CAPTAS4, as in earlier commentry, it offers a lot of potential in the medium-range counter-SSK space as a sensor platform to cue in shooter-assets like DDG’s with VL-Asroc or tactical air. It doesnt actually have to have those weapons embarked to be crucial to their employment.

I didnt get your point about the LCS and a helicopter attacking submarines sorry Leon?. We weren’t talking about either?. Rii wanted to know how feasible running before a torpedo was. My contention was that it was very feasible. If a torpedo was fired farther away you give the surface ships sonar watch more time to hear it and begin their countermeasures. Firing a torpedo is much like firing an air-air missile…the idea is to have the target inside its No Escape Zone before firing so no matter what it does it cant evade. Ive seen contradictory comments on whether the LCS’s have hull/bow mount mine avoidance and torpedo defence set or not. Clearly if it does the ship has a decent chance…if not then likely not and you’d very much question the thought process of a designer endowing a hull with the speed to outrun a HWT but not the basic sensors fit to support the ability.