FREMM cannot be considered as a 1-1 replacement for T23 as it doesnt offer anything in the way of a capability improvement over a 23!. We’d do just as well SLEPing the 23’s!. C2 would be a new platform, not to replace T22B3 and the non-2087 Dukes as they are both true escorts in their own right, but to develop an economical platform for forward littoral presence in the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ model. to suggest that they would directly replace the last 22’s and the remaining 23’s would be to set an expectation for the class which would be wildly inaccurate.

The issue of a life extension for the Type 23s has been discussed before, the consensus being that the Type 23 was not design and built to a standard sufficient for 30 years of service. Type 23 was meant to be a cheap 1:1 Leander class replacement, with a limited service life meant to bridge the peak of a Cold War that ended rather abruptly. The Type 23 was a North Atlantic focused class, lacking a CIWS, and sized for a 20 year service life without a major update.

The reality is that the RN has effectively demoted the 5 remaining unmodernized Type 23s to what is effectively a patrol role, a mission that will be filled by the C2. The 8 modernized Type 23s represent the future ASW force that will transition to the C1 as the hulls age.

…and this is your fundamental mistake. ASW was pretty much defensive in the Cold War. Our cueing systems were almost entirely passive and relied on them (Sov SSNs, SSGNs etc) coming to us. Now, when we are obliged to put ourselves in threat littorals, and the opposition has home waters advantage, sitting back and letting them come to us is extremely, extremely dangerous – especially if the threat is from modern discrete SSK’s operating under their ideal conditions. Now the new paradigm is the need to sweep and actively sanitise areas of littoral battlespace to make sure no nasty suprises lurk as reliance on the old passive warning systems offers little guarantee of safety.

That is precisely why 8 Type 23s have been modernized.

Absolutely no chance. FLynx is for force protection, MIOPS, modest ASuW and light ASW duties. Merlin is acknowledged in the RN as our prime ASW asset and that crown is unassailable. The Jungly Sea Kings are likely to be retired without replacement and some attempt undertaken to use conventional transport Merlins from the joint Helicopter force to gap fill. A few airframes for MASC are not going to cause all the HM1’s to be stripped out – its more likely that a handful will be poached from the current 42 in inventory while a decision on long-term fleet AWACS/ISTAR (ie MALE/HALE UAV) requirements is undertaken.

The ASW mission looks very dated in the current context, where the demand is for transport helicopters for land-based and amphibious operations. To preserve the current RN Merlins for the dedicated ASW role, there needs to be a Sea King HC4 replacement, preferably a Merlin order. The RAF’s Merlin inventory is too small to be called upon to replace the HC.4, and in any case, land-based SAR is of greater benefit to the general public than searching for imaginary submarines.

The Merlin HM.1 fleet is too tempting a target. Think of the personnel and support cost that might be saved by simply stripping out the ASW mission systems – a beancounters dream!

Again no chance. The RN needs a platform capable of deploying 3 Merlins and supporting them for an extended period. If we envisage a class of 8 vessels the 4-5 that would be deployable would require 12-15 Merlin HM1’s at maximum surge which we can accomodate from the 22 aircraft ready pool we currently maintain. In peacetime one or two Merlin plus rotary UAV’s would be more likely.

The operating economics of a platform large enough for 3 Merlins will kill the C1 on financial grounds. If you try to replace 8 Type 23s on a 1:1 basis with cruiser sized platforms, the program will never get funded – which should be a lesson we’ve already learned from the FSC. You’re talking about going from 8 ships operating single Merlins to 8 ships operating 3 Merlins each. Aside from platform costs, the cost associated with tripling the size of the ship’s flight will outweight any savings from reducing manning in the ship itself.

Littoral ASW is now the game of the autonomous hunting chopper. The days of sending plucky little frigates in to try and get a sonar hit and blast off an ASROC (or MILAS) on a contact are well over. That, now, is a great way to lose escorts to pop-up AShM threats or very smart 40knt HWTs!.

It is doubtful that the RN will invest in an expensive, inflexible single purpose missile such as ASROC or MILAS. In any case, the employment of stand-off ship based ASW weapons would created an argument against a large ASW helicopter such as the Merlin.

FREMM is not a good fit for the RN unfortunately. Essentially its too small for the power projection ASW mission and it will be too expensive in operational terms to be much more economical in the patrol mission than the current Duke class boats.

FREMM is not the sort of “gold plated” platform that the RN typically specifies, but would seem to be more than adequate for the C1 mission. I too question the economy of the FREMM in the patrol mission, something that a GoWind sized combatant is better suit to, but that mission has been devolved upon the poorly defined C2. The FREMM might be considered as a 1:1 replacement for the 8 modernized Type 23s for the C1, while the C2 would seem to replace the unmodernized Type 23s and Type 22 Batch 3s, although it isn’t clear is any of those units will survive cutbacks.

In any case, the “ASW mission” is meant to support “power projection,” not the other way around. ASW is typically defensive, outside of very peculiar, obsolete cold war definitions.

Effectively the C1 ASW capability needs to be a platform capable, at minimum, of operating a pair of Merlins because no-one, in their right mind, is going to want to send an expensive frigate into the shallows to dig out SSK’s. Also there is a vaguely defined class size of 8 hulls for C1 through the likelihood that the new C1 will inherit the 2087 towed arrays from the 8 upgraded Type 23’s. 8 FREMM will nowhere near offer the kind of capability we’ll need to exist in an SSK contested littoral.

Without a follow-on order, I fear that the current Merlin fleet will lose the ASW mission to the Future Lynx. The “Commando” variant of the Sea King requires replacement, and MASC, if it survives, will require newer airframes, even if current avionics are reused. It would be far cheaper to “strip out” the current Merlins for transport, SAR, VERTREP, and COD roles than to engage in a futile battle to fund a follow up order. The reality is that the Lynx is better suited to the smaller ships in S2C2, and it no longer makes sense to maintain two separate helicopter types for use aboard the greatly reduce surface combatant fleet.

For C1, the RN doesn’t need a platform for a pair of ASW Merlins, but a hangar for a Future Lynx, or two, not to mention VTOL UAVs.

You do have to wonder if the stillborn MLF concept didn’t guide Soviet Naval thinking. So many early classes of Soviet SSN and SSGN were entirely ill equipped to be used against NATO SSBNs, but seemed to be entirely focused on anti-surface capabilities. Perhaps the Soviets payed a little too much attention to the MLF concept, which would go a long way toward explaining some of the shortcomings of their submarines as ASW platforms.

In the end, MLF was bad concept, both in practical and political terms. Italy had started talking about their own SSBNs and had actually worked on developing a missile equivalent in size and performance to the early Polaris. MLF might have cause greater nuclear proliferation, with countries such as Italy and West Germany following the lead of France and the UK in creating independent deterrents, which inevitably would have raised tensions with the Soviets.

The refit’s main focus will be on the entire ‘propulsion package’, including refurbishment of the carrier’s boilers, apart from upgrade of its ‘sensor suite’, weapon systems and central air-conditioning system. This will be followed by the “underwater repair package” at Kochi.

This sounds like a fairly elaborate process, with the odd twist of the hull repairs being performed last of all – very peculiar.

The “underwater repair package” would seem to indicate that corrosion has become a major issue for the warbuilt ex-Hermes. It would be interesting to know just how thin the hull plates really have really become

Stupid comment, one election does not remove an issue forever. Utterly ridiculous notion that shows a gross lack of understanding.

You obviously don’t appreciate the politics of Taiwan, or the conflicted process that has brought the KMT full circle from the days of Chiang to the current pro-Chinese position.

Any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would require an operations of similar if not larger scale to Overlord, there is zero evidence of anything being prepared for such an operation. What there is is a powerful detterent force.

What need is there for a “deterrent” in the face of a friendly governments seeking closer economic ties, potentially culminating in some sort of symbolic reunification. Chiang Kai-shek is just as dead as Mao, in both a literal and figurative political sense. Whether or not a red flag flies over Taipei doesn’t matter in terms of economics, but access to Chinese markets and labor matters a great deal more.

A political settlement with Taiwan would add greatly to Chinese prestige, but any sort of hostilities, however minor, would undermine economic expansion, not to mention the current social and economic stability that keeps the Chinese Communist party secure. China doesn’t want to the invade Taiwan, if only because a conquered Taiwan would be worthless in comparison to the loss of global trade, exports and employment that hostilities of any sort would entail.

Judging that the transitions in Hong Kong and Macao occurred peacefully despite no capacity for serious resistance by either colonial power, deals which were negotiated when China was poorer and the leadership was more dogmatic, the negotiations with Taiwan will be on far more liberal terms. Symbolism is all that is left to argue over now that capitalism has swept away all of the real differences. Someday, politicians on both sides of the Taiwan straits will shake hands, sign a piece of paper and make congratulatory speeches.

I think they’re a few years too late. The big overspending has already been done. Cancelling it now would mean buying something else, and –

A MRA4 cancellation might spell the end of any combat maritime patrol capability for the RAF. Pulling the plug on the MRA4 would be the end of the MR2/R2 fleet, because after the 2006 MR2 crash, only the prospect of the eventual service entry of the MRA4 justified the continued operation of the patently unsafe Nimrod fleet.

After a MRA4 cancellation, the only short term potential Nimrod replacement would be a a converted business jet fleet, tasked solely with maritime and electronic surveillance and no combat capability. A Global Express or G550 can detect potential targets but can’t engage them, and in the absence of a combat mission, there is no justification for RAF crews. Think commercial crews in leased business jets – with modular, commercial sensors fitted.

Any purchase which didn’t use the MRA4 systems would mean throwing away some already-paid-for expensive kit, & integrating the MRA4 systems into a different airframe (e.g. P-3) would save neither time nor money.

MRA4 cancellation would mean scrapping some very expensive kit, because there is absolutely no export market for the MRA4 – or its systems. In any case, we were talking about as a few as 8 airframe for the MRA4 program, making it absurd to spend a fortune on integrating British systems into the P-8, or even an absurdly hypothetical A320 maritime patrol variant when as few as 8 airframes are to be procured.

The P-8 & A319/A320 MPA couldn’t be delivered until well after the MRA4s, which would mean huge problems (the current Nimrods are now disasters waiting to happen), & would probably cost at least as much as building the planned fleet of MRA4s, now the development has been paid for.

But is there any assurance that the MRA4 will be any less problematic in service than it has been in development?

It goes without saying that the MR2 fleet simply cannot go on flying until the middle – or the end – of the next decade. The 8 year delay in the MRA4 has already cost lives, and keeping the MR2 in the air until a bespoke British-spec P-8 could be developed and produced just isn’t viable.

We could probably buy & upgrade used P-3s quicker & cheaper, assuming an off-the-shelf upgrade (e.g. the EADS-CASA FITS system, as in the Spanish upgrade), but at the cost of a significant degradation in capability. And still unlikely to be deliverable as quickly as carrying on with the MRA4.

There isn’t any great surplus of sound P-3C airframes because of the corrosion issue which lead to the early adoption of the 737 based P-8.

It is interesting to see that the USN is setting the trend on braking the mold of this silly frigate/destroyer business with the LCS – Littoral Combat Ship. Certainly that is a more appropriate designation than the traditional Frigate considering what this class of ships is expected to do for a living.

Do you really think that the general public understands the mean of the word “Littoral?” This term is not in general usage, and while it’s a clear as can be in military circles, hardly any civilian will understand it.

Why not use a designation such as “Corvette,” which at least would indicate the relative speed of the LCS to the American taxpayers, or “Gunboat,” which at least would be descriptive, despite the non-politically correct connotation.

The ugly truth is that unfamiliar words tend to anger laymen. If a designation forces taxpayers and even lawmakers to reach for a dictionary, it is high time to find a simpler designation.

The debate on who actually sunk the Bismarck still rages even though the Germans claim to have scuttled her but the wreck has sufficent underwater torpedo damage to go either way.

Even the Germans didn’t have the audacity to concoct a ridiculous reports of a 3rd party country’s submarine to explain an embarrassing loss.

The point i am making is that until the wrecks have been examined nothing is ‘certain’, not that i am calling anyone there incorrect but out of 700 survivors of RMS Titanic only 9 reported her breaking in 2 on the surface and they were scorned for decades until the wreck was found.

It was only in the last decade that it was discovered that the Titanic might have survived the collision with the iceberg if substandard quality iron rivets hadn’t been employed in here construction. Of course, this doesn’t alter the fact that the Titanic hit a very large iceberg – and investigation of the Sydney will not alter the fact all accounts indicate that she was lost due to negligence of her commander.

So lets just wait and see and remember those who died on both ships and leave this to the experts.

The “experts” in the wartime RAN were the ones who needlessly obfuscated the entire matter, allowing a well documented loss to become a supposed “maritime mystery,” when there was absolutely no mystery about the loss of HMAS Sydney with all hands.