And thanks a million for the cost difference estimate in radars [honest, I've dug and dug and dug, and bought really expensive books and everything, with no joy at all]. If the cost difference is that big, then fair enough.

That just leaves the main problem that cheap and numerous is fine, where *both* of those aspects are satisfied – but that isn’t the ship’s fault.

Probably best to leave the ol’ Type 26 discussion here, now that there’s a new thread (which I’m really looking forward to reading, imminently), but just wanted to thank you for putting my mind at ease about it.

Regarding the Black Swan “Sloop-of-War”, I think I might need to call my lawyers they should be able top get me something in the way of royalties – it finally proves that you should never send a stoat to do a weasals work.

Lots of stuff is very good but the whole idea falls down on the inability of the MOD / RN / MIC to get away from the idea that cheap equals small and putting a quart into a pint pot is the way to go.

As for 18 knots and 4MW motive power that is a joke and a Flower class joke at that.

I fear they got it wrong from the start with all their talk about WW2 RN escort plans, strategies and raw material regarding hulls in the water. I fear they don’t understand the issues with RN escort plans from 33 onwards and they don’t understand the problems generated by a very poor implementation of those plans and the poor ships that were the result.

The history of the 2nd Escort Group tells you more than they were able to take in – it was down to design re-use, build efficiency specifically steam turbines and a rosy view of how the ASW campaign would turn out.

As I have said before, or at least alluded to, I think too much effort is made to answer very simple questions concerning escorts. And many make too much over subtleties and nuances.

- http://extranet.bmt.org/vessels/datasheet.aspx?v=9

I hear ya

I like the Black Swan as a concept and not married to the OPV hull in the study, so open to other platforms such as FSF, X-Bow, etc. Essentially vessels that offer OCS (Oceanic) variation on LCS (Littoral) theme, trading speed and stealth for cost and seaworthiness.

Big fan of SWATH btw, provides an outstanding helicopter platform. Tempted to tinker with the design to squeeze a hangar or lift in for satisfying organic Wildcat/Merlin fetishes…

But, but it is cheaper……..!

Well then these modules could be dumped onto anything so there is no need to tie up an actual warship (one of a small number) doing this job? So the idea fails once again.

I recon £ 65 million is a bargin in comparison to large OSV on the commercial market.

In terms of draft I agree it could be an issue but the designers are looking ta a future environment where the UUV will go into the shallow water.

As with LCS the devil is in the detail of making the moduals work at an affordable price.

I think the £65m is without “capability packages” that would need to bought separately. The cost/benefits discussion would follow along the same lines as StanFlex.

@Simon and @x

I imagine the procedure for MCMV with a Black Swan concept would be to stay outside the area of denial and send in the appopriate USV/UUV’s once delivered to the deck by Chinook.

I can see the scene in the Straight of Hormuz littoral: Swarms of manned light craft commanded from the land negotiating swarms of unmanned light craft commanded from the mother-ships. If events turned into a shooting war then imagery from a Peter F. Hamilton novel springs to mind.

There’s the collective name for the remote capability packages for you: Wasps!

Is this loaded? Any ideas what with?

I saw this morning that No.1 Squadron is to reform with Typhoon in September at RAF Leuchars. I am assuming that means No.43 Squadron has been pushed back to be the 5th and final Typhoon unit either next year or the year after.

martin,

Why would we need a larger gun than a 30mm? We only really need to repel a small threat and straff the coastline in a riverine system. For larger firepower just wheel out an L118 from the hangar.

Also, isn’t the draught a bit deep for MCMV?

Do we actually have the UAV rotorcraft yet?

To me, £65m seems a touch expensive for such a small and limited use ship. Especially if it’s built to commercial standards!

“For ASW is it possible to have UUV’s in this sphere of naval warfare?”

In the littoral yes. There were a few parties involved in the Spartan Scout programme back in the early 2000′s which had a FLASH dipping sonar mounted on an 11m RHIB based USV. That has since evolved into the US Fleet Class ASW-USV:

http://www.gdrs.com/about/profile/pdfs/UDTPacific2006_4A3_.pdf

“Such as deploying a sonar and could be controlled from the ship with a wider area than the helicopter. Then have an ARSOC capability and you could have an evolutionary ASW capability.”

Thats pretty much the concept yes. Higher persistence/lower ops cost sonar picket and mini sub-chaser backed by conventional LWT shooters.

@tsz

I wouldnt get too much hung up on the clutter environment thing. A fairly basic doppler filter in the seeker is going to pare away pretty much everything under a few hundred knots and it, the seeker, is going to be coming down the hill on top of the inbound. It is, therefore, going to be firing RF pulses at the sea surface in its attempt to capture the target…if the seeker can handle multipath reflection like that, as it would absolutely have to, clutter rejection should not be a great concern.

Onboard ECM and expendables may be an issue one day, but, we then get into the ECM/ECCM battle which is pointless talking about in an open forum as nothing will ever be verifiable!. Suffice it to make on point though that adding those features, like armour supposedly on the P-700, is all taking space, weight and power budget off the systems that go towards the missiles attacking power. So to get the measure of defence an antiship missile is either bigger, thus a bigger target needing more propulsive force etc, or its losing, range, performance or discrimination capability. Already a win for the defending missile!

As to the SARH vs ARH argument I’ve had this with a USN Hawkeye driver and several in their destroyer community. Phrases like ‘dinky little battery powered seeker’ are oft to be heard. The argument effectively ends with the introduction of SM-6 and its dinky little battery powered seeker!. ARH is the superior choice every day of the week. The USN had a bad experience with the early RAM systems when the missiles, after launch, would clear off and engage any target they felt like or, as in one of the NAVSEA test serials, all decide to engage the same inbound target leaving its partner blissfully unmolested. One day they’ll get over this.

Costs for radar systems are always difficult to identify as much of the contract value involves the complexities of integration, but, as a ballpark an ARTISAN class radar I would anticipate at, at-least, five or six times less than a true ESA MFR radar like Herakles or Sampson. i.e single digit millions for the former against tens of millions for the latter. A ‘proper’ MFR is a very expensive beast indeed…hence my point…not for a frigate!.

@TD,

A good piece of work and one with a happy ending!. A rare pleasure indeed.

@ACC

http://extranet.bmt.org/vessels/datasheet.aspx?v=9

As I said it would need a little work, but, I cant shake the conviction, despite the al construction, that there is the makings of a very capable multirole patrol hull there. Still something I’m toying with but if we can rationalise the machinery to CODAD fit, stretch it out 40-50ft or so to improve pitch response plus provide a bit more deck area for hangar/superstructure improvement and look at an appropriate organic sensor/weapon fit I think that many boxes would be ticked.

If I was to change one thing on it it would be the basic weapon’s fit. While ISO packed laser beams would be often they will be expensive and not on many vessel’s. If the proverbial does hot the fan it would be nice to have a bit of extra firepower installed. I think swapping out the forward 30mm for either a 54 mm or 76mm would give it a much better capability against small boats. Sticking on two DS 30 mk 2 turrets aft of the super structure would also give a big improvement providing all round protection from small boats.

Lol!

Very topical, as i have just finished the fifth book.

Thank you for that.

That (your old piece on MCM, as linked) was a super piece, and some of it should be brought over to the forthcoming T26 piece. I am thinking only from the point of view of the rationale for staggering T26 ASW & GP/ MHPC/retiring the Hunts.

My comment to the old piece, without any consideration of any potential for C2/C3 functional overlap, was:
“- I wonder if the recent announcement about Hunt class life extension is good news or bad news
- is it to stagger the arrival of the new vessels; or, is that programme itself and/or its funding slipping?

ArmChairCivvy says:
October 16, 2011 at 12:20
OK, your last link shows that the recent Hunt announcement was just a follow on to 2005 and 2007 decisions (removal of obsolete kit and successful design review of the new technology replacement)”

These smaller vessels don’t make the news much. Still unsure if the Hunts are being used as test beds and stop-gaps, or whether they are getting a full upgrade with the new kit?

USN seems to have dusted off the old lessons learnt docs; they bought Seafox in the last half year.

Have to look up that BMT FSF (even though I am for combining functions and the Black Swan seems to hit that sweet spot).

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2011/10/naval-mine-countermeasures/

However, it’s in USD rather than Euro ($1Bn before goodies added, as of ~2006).

- It’s always tricky thinking about the whole cost-effectiveness thing since many of these things have no publicly released costs (unlike Superhornets). Have you, or anyone else, got even a vague idea that could be stated about what the cost difference is between: Herakles + 8xAster 15s + 32xCAMM + beefed up CMS for Aster; and Artisan + 40xCAMM?

Just a rough estimate, so we know what we’re dealing with? Twice as much? More?

- I see how it’s all down to CAMM’s seeker (as with all ARHs), because one of the things that’s troubling me is a scenario where you’re in the busy littorals with lots of friendly, high RCS things around (ships, helos etc), and the AShM is a low RCS one (NSM of 2040).

The wide angle of the seeker is a liability here, because you don’t want it to see any higher-RCS objects than the target, so you need to guide your CAMM past that point where it’ll see any friendlies. (If it’s programmed in such a way as to avoid things like friendly boats and friendly helos [but not enemy ones], then substitute that the NSM 2040 has deployed chaff which you need to wait to disperse, or whatever.)

So you want the CAMM to go active at the last possible moment, but there’s only a 1.25 sec window between the seeker’s ‘cone’ passing the last friendly, and overshooting the NSM… which unfortunately begins just as your radar’s swept past, so it’ll be another two seconds before it gets back round again.

How does that work? I’m sure that they’ll have thought about things like this, though it does continue to be used as the best argument in favour of SARH (that I’ve come across, by USN folks who knew their stuff); and that was comparing SARH to ARH with MFRs with 1 sec update rates.

Dunno, I just can’t shake the feeling that halving your refresh/update rate (compared to your competitors’) will not turn out to be worth it, for anything less than your radar costing ~1/10 of theirs. But it won’t be that cheap, will it? It’ll probably turn out to be a difference of only 2-3 million or something, won’t it?

Room for the MoD on the mine discovery patrol?

http://www.defencemanagement.com/article.asp?id=228&content_name=Marine&article=6258

I thought this part noteworthy:

“An MOD report – entitled ‘Operations in Iraq: Lessons for the future’ – stated that the one-shot system was ‘vital to clearing the waterway leading to the port of Umm Qasr’, and that ‘it is estimated that the OSMDS reduced the time to neutralise a mine by a factor of four’. The Seafox system offered UK forces a simplified and quicker system, which required fewer operators.”

USVs, UUV’s and RHIBS supporting dive teams is where this is headed. In my view this has to deploy with the fleet so the sweep can go in before we try to operate in the other guys littoral.

For me that rules out the very basic, commercial sourced, hulls considered for the tasking. In my view the underpinnings of MHPC has already been designed by BMT in the Fast Sea Frame concept. FSF-1 needs some tweaking around weapons/sensors and could stand to lose the turbines as an economy measure. An 80m 1600ton corvette capable of embarking 12 TEU mission modules plus concurrent two chopper operation, plus ramp ops and 4000nm range at 20knts on diesel has to be attractive.

It was just a light skirmish this afternoon, a platoon of Redcoats and their “Indian Scouts” chasing the grey coated traitors through the streets of Westfield Heritage Village. Apparently the grey coats, I can’t remember the name of the u it, were Canadian born men who fought for the US!

Back on topic, why shouldn’t DfID pay for 4 x Son-of-Bay, with hanger and smaller well deck ? Anti-drug / people smuggling are surely “humanitarian” side of MSO?? plus as we have noted before, better to have a vessel packed with relief supplies and a big sickbay in the Caribbean?

The Black Swan design is very interesting; as Brian says a lot os similarities with TD’s SIMMS concept, but also strikes me as an evolution of Brown’s VLR Corvette concept, expanded to carry different mission packages/modules.

The idea of “mission packages” created from different ISO container modules also appeared in my A Ship for all Seasons post.