Don’t be silly. Vietnam doesn’t have any waters. The entire South China Sea is Chinese territorial waters, & therefore any Vietnamese naval weaponry can only be intended for aggression against China.

Of course…..so obvious now you explain it Swerve….thanks very much 😉

Its a decent load, but what are they going to use for the anti ship mission?

Spearfish!. If its not a high value target then FASGW(H) from the embarked chopper or the main gun (especially if we end up with the OTO127LW) if the tactical environment allows.

It makes little difference. Your average ’80s FF had very modest air defence capabilities, Sea Sparrows at best. They would be, and were, sitting ducks against almost any kind of air attack.

Dont try to shift the goalposts. We were talking about a very specific threat….chopper deployed light AShM’s. RIM-7M would have forced the Lynxes (and an equivalent AS15TT shooter) to be VERY careful about their attack geometry. Remember Skua is a semi-active weapon that needed illumination from the Seaspray set aboard the shooter and, so, had to unmask for the missile flight duration. Breda 40’s or OTO76’s not really a problem….a 10-15nm PDMS is something quite different though.

Only meaningful advantage over FAC would be somewhat better seaworthiness, enabling employing weapons in rougher seas, apparently that was one reason why Iraqi craft were so quickly sunk.

Platform stability, higher sensor placement/increased battlespace awareness and control, endurance, weapons system diversity etc , etc. There is no contest between the two.

Depends from the mission – those four TNC-45’s have around two to four times offensive firepower compared to one light frigate. As both craft are essentially hors de combat from single hits, it is not given that a frigate has a better defensive power.

Frigate can deploy organic air to self-designate OTH. FAC, unless specially developed and compromised elsewhere, can not. Defensive power comes from the ability to develop and maintain the surface, sub-surface and air picture around the ship. There is no contest in the ability of a frigate to surveil its environment compared to that of a missile boat. In defensive firepower terms look at the Meko/TNC comparison. RIM-7M and 360 degree Sea Zenith coverage compared to 200 or so degrees of optronically directed 40mm Breda!.

Except of course they did not do that, and can’t as they have to identify the targets first and the escort might maneuver themselves to screen the attacks, by self-sacrifice if nothing else. Of course that is not very cost-effective way in the long run, highlighting the simple fact that FAC does not make a good escort.

Identifying from 15nm?. Big slow contacts compared to smaller nimble, faster ones darting around the formation?. Dont thinks its beyond the average Observer to differentiate the Polochny’s from the TNC45’s to be honest. Your last sentence is the important one…when you are willing to accept why the FAC(M) isnt a good choice for escort tasks you’ll start to see the real-world limitations of the platform.

Shalav,

Here is something that came to mind when reading through it. It seems to me most posters are assuming FACs with 80 – 100 km ranged missiles. What if the FAC is similar to the PLAN Type 22 with lets say 4 C803

The issue, as you may be aware, is that outfitting a ship like the Houbei’s with 250km ranged missiles doesnt give you a weapon system with 250km of reach. All you have is a ship that can fire 250km ranged missiles at a target that is detected, identified and tracked by an offboard source. Otherwise its a ship thats firing 250km missiles at targets that come over the radar horizon from the boats surface search set at maybe 20kms or so!.

The problem is that a likely aggressor may well choose to initiate combat from farther out than 250kms as well. You now have weapons like NSM that can be helicopter launched so, soon, any state able to sortie a basic LPH or LHD and a frigate screen will be able to put down precision land attack missile fire 400km or more from the fleet. Its little comfort of course to have your missile boats ready to sortie if they get clobbered alongside the pier!.

Where do you plan to get this “small frigate group”?

Irrelevant….the question is to the value of the FACs under operational conditions. By your metric the exchange rate is 4 FACs to 1 FF – which forces the allies to task more firepower to dispatching those transports 12 TNC FACs or 3 MEKO FF’s?. That takes the cost element out of the equation.

At cost of acquiring and crewing one MEKO 200 you could buy four TNC-45 type craft which is what they had (lets ignore that those were not bought but captured from Kuwaiti).

Indeed, but, the TNC’s in however many numbers would not have given the capability of the frigate to counter the light weapons used to, ultimately, massacre them. In a simple cost/benefit analysis in no way do the 4 TNC’s come close to the value of the frigate. Which is the whole question under contention.

Of course one could just as well say that if Iraqi had dozen FAC’s instead of 3-4 escorting the landing ships, they would have gone through – suffering losses, but mission could have been accomplished.

No it wouldn’t as there was nothing stopping the the landing ships being targeted first. The Lynxes could have picked off the HVU’s and left the FACs to recover survivors they were that ineffectual.

It’s things like better awareness and threat detection, defensive tactics and employing countermeasures etc. Iraqi boats apparently tried to shoot at the missiles, but failed to hit. And very simply, assessing the threat beforehand.

Yep its known, in the trade, as a threat reduction exercise. Those are all the things that a skilled crew would do…reporting for sick call being the first one!. The only element in what you have written there that could have made one shred of difference would be the employment of countermeasures. Shooting at a small high speed air target with a manually-laid light automatic mount from a small ship is an exercise in faith more than a practical antimissile tactic and threat detection amounts to what when you have no ability to counter the threat or run from it?.

Defensive tactics work when you have an ability to defend against threat systems either actively, with countering systems, or passively by staying behind a rock or out of the opposing threat envelope. The nature of the vessels denied the former and the tasking, and environment, denied the latter for the Iraqi’s.

Offensive tactics could have been employed to use the greater numbers of FACs in two groups…one to attack coalition surface units and try to occupy their light AShM shooters while the second group shepherded the transports through. The next problem of the FAC is highlighted there though….they need a lot of coordination and offboard support to be employed effectively. Their ability to act, and react, organically is very, very limited. Without that skilled coordination they are ducks on the range…as proven.

Jonesy, excelent text, but is it me or you´ve just described the LCS program including the capability creep and the costs escalation?! 😀

Thank you. After a fashion I suppose I have you’re right. Then again though I always thought the LCS’s problems were more in execution than concept. To me there’s always been a significant crossover with the US ships, what we wanted to do with the C2 stabilisation combatant and the idea that brought der Marine to the F125!.

Perhaps a Sea Fighter ‘swarm’ was the way they should have gone in the first place!. Who knew!? 😀

Can a swarm of fast attack craft replace large escorts?. I’d say the answer is yes they can, but, its entirely contingent on your definition of what makes a Fast Attack Craft and what you class as a swarm.

All the problems have been well covered on the thread already….such as self-deployment…FAC’s traditionally dont do too well anywhere above Sea State 4….open ocean transit is right out. UK rules dictate 90m minimum hull length for tolerable pitch response in oceanic waters. Then there are the problems of weapons or sensors but not both in the hull and rotary air, the invaluable asset for looking OTH, is right out. Then you have endurance, habitability and even things like durability. Small hulls tend to suffer from pounding effects more heavily than larger hulls so you have increased shock loads on electronics, missiles, nerves etc!.

There is a way around this though…..that would be semi-SWATH and the Fast Sea Frame. The US’s FSF-1 Sea Fighter. Even modified (as per diagram below) you have a hull thats at most tipping in at ballpark $180mn if built in numbers. Seeing that a major fleet unit like a Flight IIA Burke averages about $1.8bn according to the US Congress you are looking, rule-of-thumb, at a 10-1 ratio of Sea Fighters to Burkes. I’m not sure is 10 is exactly a swarm, but, you would likely deploy more than a single Burke at a time so, if you were deploying three Burkes, that makes 30 Sea Fighters!. Much more swarm-like!.

It is stretching things calling a 79m hull a fast attack craft I suppose but if modified similar to this:

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5545/fsf1x.png

…its definitely got the potential to take the sensor and weapon fits required. The diagram there has it with a very limited modification moving the bridge superstructure forwards to add a raised VLS deckhouse. New kit is a pair of Millennium guns forward, 4 self-defence length VLS modules and a pair of Hitrole-G turrets on the aft quarters. A new 3D TI radar and directors for the guns would be spotted otherwise its the same as the experimental hull on trial now.

Dependent on role the missile decks either side of the VLS deckhouse could take angled SSM launchers or IAI Jumper or MBDA Sea Spear missile packs etc. Plus you have the mission bay to garage a pair of 11m USV’s or even, perhaps, a pair of Finnish NEMO mortar LCP’s and still have room for couple of radar-carrying MQ-8B’s.

With 10 hulls in your per-Burke flotilla you could have 2 with an ASW fit with a 2087 type towed array containerised deploying out of the bay door with operator vans in the bay itself. Maybe this mission role has an RN Bay style aircraft shelter and supports an organic Merlin class helicopter. You have 2 configured for surface action with two or four quad SSM mounts, a pair of 11m USV’s and a pair of MQ-8B’s in the bay, plus another 2 configured for anti-swarm with 4 6-pack Sea Spear launchers in place of the SSM’s on each beam. Then the final 4 in the flotilla embarking the mortar LCP’s plus 4 Jumper missile packs per side in place of the SSMs.

There is not much chance of doing area air defence without the kind of radar array that these size hulls wont support. What these hulls can embark though is an Artisan class 3D TI radar and FLAADS or a point weapon like VL MICA/Umkhonto. FLAADS offering quadpack and horizon range coverage, but, even VL MICA is going to put 32×10 active SAMs in the immediate region of the flotilla. Thats going to soak up a lot of antiship missile fire.

With FLAADS, conceivably, thats 128 missiles per ship and, over the 10 Sea Fighters replacing the one Burke, means that you are deploying 1200+ horizon range SAMs instead of 80 or so SM-2’s. Long range area air defence perhaps a bit irrelevant?.

So you have, instead of your Burke, a self-deploying 4000nm-ranged flotilla of vessels capable of deploying a pair of large ASW choppers, at least 8 radar-equipped MQ-8Bs for persistent theatre surveillance, 8 11m USV’s, 8 NEMO-LCP’s, up to 32 medium SSMs, 96 short range SSMs, 250+ short range land attack missiles and, at least, 300 potentially over 1000 short range SAMs plus 20 Millennium guns and another 20 50cal gatlings. Team all that up with an UNREP vessel with a decent sized flight deck and hangar for 3 or 4 more large helo’s and I think there is an interesting expeditionary capability there!.

Thats a flight crew winning a bet…..has to be!. Someones shot their mouth off that they can set it down and lift off the dinky little strip down the road and they’ve been called on it. This crew will be looking to collect, if they survive the disciplinary!.