Draws a line under the whole Brunei mess as well so I’m sure there is a BAE exec or two relieved this ones going to go away. Its a good deal for the Indonesians as, from what I’ve read, it includes a license deal to allow them to build F2000’s themselves. Clearly BAE dont expect to be exporting any more built in UK.

Would be interesting to know if the license deal allowed the Indonesians to export locally built units. F2000 may not have been wonderfully fashionable or novel like, say, the Meko A’s. It is though a solid basic hull design. Take away VLSW and you can land the directors and make the vessel even simpler and cheaper to operate…and more attractive to those states looking for a cheap light frigate hull to supplant/replace ageing smaller missile boat/corvette fleets.

Could be a big bargain for Indonesia!!!

Spudman

When would that have been?

Certainly well into the 90’s that I know of personally!. Whether it was RAF Nimrods miss-ID’ing merchies as Argentine aircraft carriers, USN Outlaw Hunter TASM shots targetting USN RAS vessels accidentally, Russian Far East marpat being led a merry dance around the Sea of Japan etc, etc its all the same.

Lots of specialised anti-ship planes with highly trained, professional, crews and they couldnt find coal in snow!. You’ll forgive me if I dont think a one-man fighter with a few clever IR imagers is going to do a job!.

EOTS is passive and does not need a cue to look at a target, it finds them on it’s own (the “S” in IRST).

No. It detects a thermal gradient on its own. That is all the S & T parts do. If you want to relate those to something of interest you need to know which particular contacts to close for higher resolution imagery.

I’ve seen the Sniper XR demos…F16’s identifiable from 15 miles or thereabouts nothing really special?. Can you provide some provenance for target ident through Sniper or EOTS at 150km?

If you want cueing, that can come from ESM and SAR.

ESM see earlier comment of ‘doing something dumb’ or deliberate. If you are reliant on the other side telling you where he is dont be surprised if he lies to you.

It’s a virtual certainty that a F-35 will ID & launch against a ship LONG before the ship even knows the F-35 was there. You just can’t get away from the 50km/150km FLIR range detection difference.

Nope. This goes…

(1) plane tries to find ship by ESM and gets nowhere…
(2) plane uses optronics and shuffles back and forth trying to pick out the ship he wants from those he doesnt…
(3) plane goes back to base for more fuel and a spot of crew rest because it has no real persistence…you need a ship for that!
(4) another plane comes out and repeats step two because all the boats have moved when no-one was watching.
(5) the ship notices an aircraft flying a non-commercial profile on nav radar or IRSTS and evaluates as a potential hostile.

There is a reason the planes hunt ships and not the other way around. 🙂

There is also a reason why, even quite recently, they’ve not always been very good at it!. 🙂

Sanem,

Another photo to illustrate:

This is a 1m resolution image of Manhattan from Ikonos. At 1m resolution you get a strip depth of 11km. There are 6 ships underway in the image and at least 3 alongside. I can identify…if I was using this image to target off…maybe 4 vessels. The others I cant classify one way or the other with assuredness to fire on. Adding automation of the type you are theorizing about suggests someone would be foolish enough to let a computer select targets for engagement. Not going to happen.

Its one thing to have a computer reject an image that doesnt match that shown in a high resolution terminal seeker FoV….its quite another to rely on a computer tell you which are the targets you can shoot at and which not.

Sintra

Just thinking aloud, but in such a constricted area (the Persian Gulf) a mix of high tech (the combat jets) and simplicity might just do the trick. Several dozen chaps in small phishing boats equiped with a commercial grade radio and binoculars would (probably) be efective in IDing target´s.

Tattletales. Yep its a very, very old technique. Can be done on various levels from ‘spy trawlers’ to merchies with intelligence officers embarked to dear old Uncle Ahmed on his dhow with a cellphone. They can be effective in the right circumstances, but, there are very well evolved force protection measures to keep them at bay that pretty much everyone, who has enough navy to form a task group, practices. Ultimately these ‘local eyes’ usually have very little view of the strategic picture so, in the extreme case, they even can be used to ‘authenticate’ decoy ops by a sneaky task group commander.

Edit: I did catch ‘phishing boat’ as a term….very clever!

OK the photo was a bit of fun but it does show what real ‘stealth’ means in the naval arena. The comparison between aircraft and ships is not so simple, in operational terms, as ‘which has the largest signature’.

Another photo to illustrate:

This showing an ordinary day in a well trafficed maritime environment. This is only showing the vessels on AIS so you’d expect maybe 3 more contacts for every vessel shown here…which a surface search set would detect and track. Getting a detection on a ship and knowing what that ship is are two very different things.

This is where signature attenuation steps in in the naval world. If I can make my 140m escort look like, on a search scope, a 90m tramp steamer and keep it down to 12knts or so then the wolf can be made to look a lot like a sheep!.

Covering a wide area searching for a ship just using passive means is going to take a stealth aircraft a very long time if the target doesnt emit on a militarily recognisable radar!. If, to cover the territory, the aircraft emits on a search set, and is above the radar horizon, odds are a ships warfare team will have target ident first.

Fair play ZAK for some reason I had it that the Aussie OHP’s had the TACTAS tails and the ‘Anzac+Hobart’ would be leaving a huge ASW gap. Clearly not the case on either score!.

ZAK

The remaining OHP (FFG7) class are being replaced by the new, now in building, Hobart class AWDs. The RAN tend to go with CODAG propulsion for range; the RN?

The AWD’s are replacements for the Perths arent they?. I thought the Adelaides got an upgrade to bridge the gap between Perth and Hobart class ships?.

Arent the Adelaides the RANs principle ASW platforms and the Anzacs patrol frigates…albeit powerful ones when they come out of ASMD?. Now, assuming that a Hobart will be needed for consort on one of their through-decks pretty much permanently, its going to leave ASW and patrol tasks on 8 frigates….thats a tall order!.

The 26’s are set to be CODLOG. 4 diesels driving electric motors for cruise/creep and an RR MT30 turbine geared separately for sprints. Apparently cheaper than a full IEP setup….dont know if I believe that whole-life to be honest….but thats what its suggested and it provides a good balance of range and performance.