On 17 February 2010 began the era of system Strales / DAVIDE on OTO 76mm/62 for DART ammo onboard ITS Capt. Foscari . The first tests were conducted off the coast of the interforce polygon of Salto di Quirra (PISQ) in Sardinia.

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The latest reports indicate that the first ships to receive the system will be the other 3 OPV Fulgosi (Foscari systers), followed by Cavour and Horizon/Doria.

does anybody know, if they will use dual ammunition feeding for the new strales mounts?

http://www.marina.difesa.it/unita/portaerei.asp

It’s what the hangar accommodates. And that hanger may also be allocated to non-aviation uses depending on role (e.g. vehicle deck)

i think this is not the maximal hangar accommodation capacity. the same website quotes the hangar size to be 134 x 21 m. this might be a typical peacetime loadout but if i match this to the footprints of the f-35 and eh-101 i’m pretty sure the hangar can hold more than 8 f-35 or 12 eh-101. (of course we hae to keep in mind that the forward lift eats up some hangar space.)

for comparison: the hangar of the ins vikramaditya is quoted to be 130 х 23 m.

ok, so the second (e/o) tracker is a lirod-8. i’ve tried to figure this out but failed.

ok i’ll try the twin fortys:

5) meko 140 (espora class)
6) drummond class
7) daring class destroyer (peru)
8) aligator class (lst, capana/venezuela)

indeed it says “air surveillance and/or fire control radar” but this doesn’t help us much because a s-band mfr for example can do fire control for vl-mica or aster (missiles with active seekers). so in general the statement is right. but if we need a x-band fire control radar for target illumination we will need another radar for volume search.

x-band itself isn’t suitable for a primary volume search radar. the range is limited and a hemispherical coverage will eat up the beam/power/time-budget like nothing.

do you know a single ship with an x-band radar used as primary volume search radar? there are good reasons thales call it limited volume search. It’s not only limited in range but also in “volume” and apar is a radar with a topweight of 10t. a x-band radar for an i-mast 400 most probably will be smaller.

However, 4 of these Dutch ships cost of around € 600 million total. They could be easily refitted with ESSM, as their Thales integrated mast already includes all the necessary radar equipment.

sure? from my understanding the integrated mast module consists of an sea master 400 (s-band air and surface surveillance) and an sea watcher 100 (x-band surface surveillance). afaik no radar for fire control/illumination.

Lastly what where the conditions of the transit….was the boat on a deliberate endurance run or was it tactical on the voyage?. Changing depth frequently, tactical manoeuvering, pumping tanks, driving the periscope etc all takes battery charge – if they weren’t running exercise serials its hardly representative.

AIP shouldnt be considered as anything more than a fairly modest strength battery-charger. It would wrong to think that it confers anything like SSN mobility even for just a period of 60-odd hours..

afaik they didn’t post any details about this transit and the transit route nor did they quote if/how many hydrogen was left when they arrived at rota.

i think nobody here thinks that a ssk with aip is comparable to a ssn but a ssk with aip has huge advantages compared to a ssk without aip. from my point of view patroling in an operation area with 5 kn for 2 weeks without snorkling is an advantage compared to conventional ssk’s.

Some Maths

Distance to Horizon.
d=sqrt(13h)

Assumptions are missile is 50M above sea level, radar is 10, so h = 60metres.

distance to horizon =27.9km
50 metres = 166.67 feet
Notice the listed max operational range of Aster 15 is 30km?

Target has to be detected and classified as hostile before the missiles fires, so……

i think your calculation is wrong. adding observation high and target high is the wrong way. the real visual range for this values is 36,8 km and the radar range is a little bit bigger (42,2 km)