This is just a quick note on the Think Defence Proposal for a reduced but high end FSC, i.e. collapsing C1 and C2 into a slightly smaller number of C1.
It is recognised that this increases risk should one of them have an unforseen accident for example. It also means that there is an increased risk of a hull not being available at the right time in the right place.
In an ideal world we would have 12 Type 45′s and in excess of 26 frigates but the funding is simply not there so the reality of cooperative working with other nations has to be embraced fully.
Those ships that remain must be flexible, able to do more and operate alone. This is the thinking that has driven our concept of a very capable C1 but no C2′s. The C1 would need to be large to support this.
Type 45 will finally provide the RN with a credible area air defence and a powerful, large, sustainable and flexible C1 will provide a perfect compliment, maybe something even more ambitious than our proposal.
Well I think there are indeed two options for moving forward, the one you describe above with no C2, or mine as I described it the previous article.
I think a highly affordable and flexible C2 with a heavy emphasis on ‘full scale war role’ ASW can provide a fleet which is not too skewed towards either high end war fighting or low end constabulary roles. As such my C3 would be ‘lower end’ (my thinking having evolved since I wrote the C3 article I sent you) with its ‘high end war fighting’ roles confined to MCM and security.
Also, if we did go down the Coast Guard route, I would ensure that the Coast Guards ‘war time’ road would be “home land security” – but I suppose that would not preclude U.S.C.G. style deployments in peace time.
What about replacing the 26 frigates with 26 corvettes? It was ships of this size which won the Battle of the Atlantic so the argument they aren’t flexible enough falls flat. A single logistics mothership would also increase the range, endurance, and deployability of such craft.
Like America, Britain already builds 1500 ton corvettes for other navies. Is the corvette option really such a bad one, when the alternative is extinction?
Hello, Mike nice to see you commenting as I enjoy your blog when I get a chance to read it although I’m a lurker rather than a commenter.
Smaller combatants do have a purpose although so do the larger frigates and destroyers which are in some ways more relevant or useful to the Royal Navy generally but I don’t see them as mutually exclusive. Most of the current RN deployments are currently East of Suez and requires an asset to transit thousands of miles to get on station which is easier to do with a larger platform. Coupled with limited resources this pushes the RN towards even larger and even more expensive platforms as they must be equipped to handle the full range of threats. Smaller platforms still have to be capable of a range of threats and I can’t see a smaller vessel having capabilities similar to a larger platform although for specific functions yes. Everything is ultimately driven by cost and smaller platforms are not necessarily cheaper as I’m sure you know ship size does not dictate cost design features and factors do. A good example of this is the Danish Absalon class which I’m a massive fan of as it’s a capable platform across a range of roles a jack of all trades but of course not a master of any but in my opinion good enough. The design has many good features and sensible decisions incorporated into it and the planned Ivar Huitfeldt class further shows this to be somewhat correct. Although from an outside perspective it maybe would have been sensible to build 3 or possibly 4 more Absalon class vs 3 AAW destroyers.
I believe any serious navy needs to have a core of high capability assets such as the Type 45 destroyer or the Arleigh Burke class alongside in some cases carriers or amphibious assault ships. These vessels naturally emphasise technology, capability, survivability and specialisation over factors such as cost, supportability and producibility when built in small numbers by highly specialised shipyards and with purpose designed equipment. Then complementing these exquisite expensive platforms should be a larger array of smaller more numerous vessels emphasising affordability, supportability and producibility over specialisation, capability etc. These smaller vessels of course should still be capable but should lean towards presence operations where humans are the end effectors of the naval machine rather than missiles. One thing I always note about Americans is the tendency to always want to make something better than it needs to be capability creep, seems to go haywire. I don’t intend to tar all Americans with the same brush but it does seem to be quite common. Not that this is a bad thing it means for example the US military is a highly capable force and could most likely take on a good few of the current top 10 armed forces and win without much of a problem.
Mike – I have said this all before on your Small Wars blogs, but here we go again;
1. Nomenclature – what is a Corvette ? What does it mean to the RN which calls AAW focused ships Destroyers and ASW focused ships Frigates ?
2. I think from reading your output that Corvette = small (1500 tonnes), I seem to recall you like the Visby a lot. So if Politicians decide we need a ‘coast guard’ type Navy, capable of sailing for a week or two mostly in the North Sea, Western Approaches and North Atlantic, with NO RFA in support – then a ‘corvette’ navy is fine. However they have not yet made that decision and expect the RN to deploy all over the globe. Unfortunately right now that is the answer to your question about whit is good enough for other navies, but not ours.
3. Small is not necessarily cheap – hull steel can be pretty cheap – Absalon is NO corvette, but relatively cheap. I have provided Admin an article on how I would use the Absalon as the basis for a C2 ‘Frigate’ for the RN – so keep coming back until he posts it
4. Under the current FSC program the low end C3 type is seen as an long legged “ocean patrol” and deployable MCM vessel – is this a 3000 tonne (max) Corvette ?
Warning, bad idea, Warning
How about 8 T45′s with full bells and whistles, Sea Viper and CIWS, Sonar, Torpedo Tubes, Harpoon, Tomahawk Merlins in hangers ect.
These are our proper war fighting fleet
But then a flotilla of 2000t Corvettes, which have the same full spectrum of capabilities, but use Rapier instead of Sea Viper, diesel engines instead of gas, and are openly built to a budget.
Dominic, Rapier is on its way out, optimised for land use and was never that good anyway.
CAMM is the great white hope and anti aircraft missiles, a derivative of the RAF’s ASRAAM, modified for use on ships and land. its still in development and only time will tell if its any good but the theory of a anti common(ish) short range anti air missile is great and about the most common sense programme to come out of the MoD for years
However
That its on its way out just means we have some going spare, ok, not designed for naval use, but how big a deal is that, and its not very good, but doesn’t have to be.
It also doesn’t have to be Rapier, it was just an example of something cheap that could provide credible threat to anything coming to close.
If memory serves Rapier needed to land rovers to be portable, a non portable version should fit in a 20ft ISO
Hi Dominic, with complex weapons that have to defend against complex threats you need the very best or don;t bother with the hassle of fitting. Cast offs would just be a waste of money in manpower, maintenance and training terms. Ships have to defend against very fast missiles at very low height. Rapier is just not suitable for the engagement envelope needed. The maritime environment is very very harsh and the exposed missiles would be dangerous and vulnerable to small arms.
Sorry, its a non starter
The low end extreme short range last ditch air defence is something I’ve always thought could be accomplished by something like the Thales Thor system which uses the Starstreak missile, commonality and all that. The system I believe could be integrated into an automatic self defence suite comprising of both hard and soft kill measures although it’s not going to be top of the range it should still stand a chance against a pop-up land launched missile. Such a system would couple Radar, ESM and the electro optical sensors to monitor an area around the ship and when on an automatic mode attack targets that fit set criteria. I would also be interested to see if the weapons mount could be changed to include a larger missile load preferably up to 8 missiles rather than the current 4. The ability to fire the lightweight Multi-role Missile alongside the Starstreak would be a good feature to have as it would offer a more cost effective and possibly more capable defence against small boats.
This would ideally be a minimum fit aboard anything that would be a target for an anti-ship missile in other words anything over 1,500t. Although smaller platforms could and if possible should also be outfitted with such a system just in case it is needed and if built in a large number and to a good design should be cheap enough to support. The system should be small enough and light enough not to make fitment a major problem aboard either large or small vessels as it fits in the back of a Pinzgauer vector with enough room for operators. I admittedly have no idea how much such a system would cost although as Thales has already largely developed the launcher the main risk would be in the combined ship protection system. Through life cost should be lowered by the fact that the Starstreak missile is in use by the Armed forces and has already evolved into an improved version, the LMM missile will also be carried by RN helicopters so the missiles will already be supported and well known.
Failing that the SIGMA system could be adopted which is a development of the current DS-30B but with 2 Starstreak missiles bolted onto the mount crude but affordable and possibly effective. This could be a better choice as the vessels will no doubt be carrying medium calibre guns although probably up-gunned to the 40mm CTA weapon. Such a system would share the weapon mount as well as the sensors although would have limited ability as it would possibly only be able to engage a single target at a time either surface or air. The cost vs survivability argument comes into play if the dual weapon mount is damaged or malfunctions you’re a sitting duck although it is cheaper than having a separate system. A separate system costs more but has better survivability and allows engagement of both air and surface targets simultaneously.
That’s a few of my thoughts on what Dominic and Admin were discussing. I would prefer the first of my two options but hey that’s me and I’m no shipboard weapons specialist.
I suppose I’m thinking, a proper two tier fleet would be Cruisers and Corvettes to Replace Destroyers and Frigates
Cruisers could be the full 12 T45 order as they were supposed to be, with everything state of the art, and everything meaning Air, Surface and SubSea.
These would then be backed up by larger force of smaller vesels that are still capable of actions across the spectrum, but to a much reduced standard, fair point, probably better than Rapier.
I had however forgotten that installed weapons need to be maintained…
I’ve never understood, why the RN did not simply instate a one-build-per-year contract on the Type 23. This design is surely no cold-war-relic.
Improvements could be added in an evolutionary manner:
- add some stealth cosmetics
- add electric drive
- add Artisan (whoops, already planned)
- add CAMM (whoops, already planned)
- add Sylver VLS
- add space for C3-modules (which should have matured in service on C3-ships)
- develop mothership capabilities.
And if a major design change is needed, you have enough time to plan without crippling the escort fleet.
If these ships are built to a 30 years lifespan, you get 30 + 6 (T45) escorts with virtually no effort, and it keeps the yards steadily busy.
Do you guys think, that an annular sum of ~ £200 million is available? I do.
Trust me when I say you’re not likely to be the only one that seen or sees that as a reasonable way to do things I kind of agree with that. Sadly however we are dealing with defence issues here and with the politicians we have then dream on what makes sense will more or less never happen for variable reasons. The reality is we will now be looking for a new ship incorporating all the modern tech and lessons learned from the Type 23’s and hopefully we might get something half decent. Ideally I would like to have seen a few more built or simply those built kept in service rather than sold overseas when they were young. Anyhow the Type 23 design could only have been buggered around with to a point before it would just become plain stupidity and we would need a clean design.
For a proper sized escort fleet e.g. the 32 escorts we are supposed to have then>> There were 16 type 23 frigates built 3 have been sold but if we kept them in and had them in service with the 4 block 3 type 22’s we would have a frigate force of 20 not all that bad. If you want more frigates you could have built a few more type 23’s after HMS St Albans maybe even exported a few new ones. Add to that a full run of 12 Type 45 Destroyers the escort force would have met its target of 32 which IIRC is what was laid out in the SDR so that was the plan, a bloody simple one but still a plan. However that was before Gordon the Great really managed to finish moving in and started to get to work buggering things up as the head bean counter
“lessons learned from the Type 23’s”
Basically, this should be something like:
- 4k ts are enough to get a long-range multi-mission frigate
- Sylver VLS would be better for commonality and flexibility
- Artisan and CAMM (which, btw, I’m pretty sure will fall under the budget-axe) can be added.
- Electric drive will or will not show its value; at SOME SPECIFIC POINT, but surely not yet.
“Lessons” I don’t see are:
- put a big 6-inch-gun on the forecastle to provide non-relevant heavier NGFS, instead loosing the Mk8s Air-Defense-capabilities
- repeat the error to build a Type-21-esque C2 “stabilisation” combatant.
“Anyhow the Type 23 design could only have been buggered around with to a point before it would just become plain stupidity and we would need a clean design.”
I completely agree. As I stated, at one specific point, you can change the platform. If – and only if – the replacement design is an improvement, ready and affordable.
The problem I see is generally, that a completely new platform allows the contractor to add some hidden cost-drivers (you won’t believe, how easy this is accomplished). The MoD and defence politicians are neither capable nor willing to detect these “additional cost”, because shipbuilding is a black-box to them (how many shipwrights are employed at the MoD?).
This way, I bet, the Type 26 will not come in under £400 million.
Furthermore, by changing the platform you add “something to discuss” into the equation, an invitation to beancounter-politicians to “save cost” by building fewer ships or fitted-for-but-not-with or both. I know enough politicians and have been myself for too long to know, that under a politicians conception something only happens, if some other politician changes something.
“Add to that a full run of 12 Type 45 Destroyers the escort force would have met its target of 32 which IIRC is what was laid out in the SDR so that was the plan, a bloody simple one but still a plan.”
A plan costing more than five times more than simply keeping the Type-23-line open. This barely qualifies for an additional degree of simplicity.
Fitted For Not With.
I’m a little unsure about how FFNW works.
Lets say, CIWS, a lot of our ships are fitted for not with Phalanx.
Does that mean that Phalanax was fitted, tested, but then unplugged and sent to storage, saving maintenance costs.
Or does it mean that a chalk box was drawn on the deck so that in the future, at some point, during a dry dock refit, theres space to fit it?
“”Fitted for but not with – Does that mean that Phalanax was fitted, tested, but then unplugged and sent to storage, saving maintenance costs.”
Yes – sort of. It means the kit has been tested on a vessel of the class, and that electrical, data and cooling water etc have been fitted, but that the kit (e.g. Phalanx) has not been installed. Is it in a warehouse somewhere to save wear and maintenance costs – Maybe – often it has not even been bought