Future Surface Combatant

[DeFiBkIlLeR]

Originally Posted by AXISPAW

Even if we did I can't imagine the work not being done in rosyth or the Clyde.

Sorry, but the idea of the single biggest surface warship contract for the next 20yrs, going to non UK yards, just as Scotland leaves the union, with thousands of jobs going in English yards, would be a complete non starter, as much for political reasons as defence.

Scotland cant have it's cake and eat it on this issue, Salmond and his cronies would love Westminster to do the dirty work for them and close a Scottish yard before 2014, as that would mean they wouldn't have to, afterall, announcing thousands of job losses, just after leaving the UK, is hardly the ideal start to the new 'promised land', is it.

[uk2030]

A final design for the global combat ship:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19312378





Interestingly, they've abandoned the "mission bay" idea at the back of the ship, and have 24 missile silos for self-defence and have 24 silos for cruise missiles, or anti ship.

[gothicform]

and only 13 ships planned. so no doubt we'll end up with 7.

[JackSwan]

i wonder how much these things will end up costing. with a projected upper unit cost of only £350m, i think it's inevitable this figure will rise. and rise again, until lambs become lions.

poor film. 5.8/10.

[DeFiBkIlLeR]

BAE systems....that'll be 3yrs late and 50% over budget then.

[uk2030]

Construction of these would need to commence this year if they are to enter service in 2021 like the are meant to. And also i think the MoD should speed up investment in the Perseus missile, to truly make these vessels effective

[Splish]

I'm afraid I can only echo what everyone else has been saying

I'd be extremely surprised if the amount of units we ended up with were in double figures.

I'm sure at BAE HQ they already have a plan as to how they can lube us up even more.

"It is designed to be adaptable and easily upgraded"

The dreaded words hath been spoken

[trekie]

Originally Posted by JackSwan

i wonder how much these things will end up costing. with a projected upper unit cost of only £350m, i think it's inevitable this figure will rise. and rise again, until lambs become lions.

poor film. 5.8/10.

Unbelievable, any modern frigate for £350m is impossible, unthinkable and undoable. Unless they plan something on line of scaled down Absilon class, which isn't really a frigate but a tactical support warship.

Typically modern frigates cost in the region of 570-585€m, De Zaven, FREMM, Sachsen class, F100 Class, F125 Class (650-750€m) and cheapest of the bunch Fridtjof Nansen class frigate came at 420€m, but this is because ship has only few weapon systems, Norwegians felt that offensive capability isn't important at this juncture and they forgo any major capability, this policy will change at time of war.

If this is how RN plans to go about, not sure we need RN to start with, lets just use tugboats and arm them with man portable short range air defence missiles and for offensive capability we can put few javelins.

[eXSBass]

I must admit it doesn't look very beefy. Where are its big, fuck-off shiny guns?

[WatcherZero]

Any one else think the front looks like a Channel ferry? She appears to have put on weight. The Mission module for unmanned boats/aircraft has been moved to the side of the hangers so presumablly cranes vehicles down from her sides now. I think this has been done to reduce complexity and height.

[Core Rising]

Figures based on best estimates. Should give a decent idea of the capability upgrade from the Type 23, and compared to the French equivalent Frigate.

The short range anti-air capability will be around twice that of the type 23, both in range and number of missiles carried. (potentially even better than the current type 45 at short range)

The Type 26 will be able to take out three times as many surface targets, twice as far away as the Type 23.

The Perseus missiles will also give the Type 26 anti-ground target capability which the Type 23 currently lacks completely. That's a significant improvement.

The main naval gun is also a slight improvement over the Type 23.

Whilst the Type 26 doesn't increase hanger space to allow more than one operational helicopter, there will be dedicated space for UAVs, including submersible and surface UAVs which increases the frigates all round capabilities including anti-piracy and anti-submarine warfare.

Lastly the modern stealth features should make it harder to detect.

The Type 26 seems like an all-round improvement on the 23, at least on paper. The only areas the Type 23 really has an advantage is range and fighting off a pirates of the Caribbean style boarding party. I’m not all together sure what everyone was expecting with announcement and why you are all so down about it's capabilities. What were you wanting, railguns?

[Splish]

It's not the capabilities we're worried about, it's the amount of actual hulls that will end up in the water.

[Core Rising]

Well if we do get 13, that’s two more than the French have. Granted they have light frigates as well to make up the hull numbers, but I’m still holding out for a decent number of 3000 tonne corvettes. These would be equivalent to the 3000 tonne light frigates the French currently have.

[southseasteve]

The T23 actually does have stealth features. Having served on one I can confirm that a lot of the upper deck is sloping at varying degrees and not at right angles, along with some less obvious classified stealth features.
Not withstanding that, I'm sure the T26 will be stealthier.

[Core Rising]

Originally Posted by southseasteve

The T23 actually does have stealth features. Having served on one I can confirm that a lot of the upper deck is sloping at varying degrees and not at right angles, along with some less obvious classified stealth features.
Not withstanding that, I'm sure the T26 will be stealthier.

I certainly wouldn't doubt it, especially coming from someone who has served on one! It's quite hard to quantify "stealth" into an amount for Excel consumption. I should have just gone with my gut and used "Modern stealth features" rather than just "stealth features".

[Hoskins]

I'd be quite happy with a RN fleet consisting of:

6x Type 45 destroyers
10x Type 26 frigates
12x 'Black Swan' corvettes

We can but hope. I can see the metaphorical can being kicked down the road on both Type 26 (the frigate replacement programme has been supposedly "on" for well over a decade already) and a corvette class. Decision on both classes will be made in the 2015 review... they'll probably split up the order and only order 6 of each or so at first. A bit like how the "up to 12 Type 45s" went...

But the RN does need a more balanced future fleet. Ridiculous having 5400 tonne, half-a-billion pounds worth frigates chasing pirates in 10 tonne wooden boats. Indeed I await photos one day of a Type 45 at full speed chasing down two blokes in a glorified bathtub.

[chchdesign]

Lets all just have a little perspective on this. These are new Frigates, not Destroyers, so comparing them to Destroyers seems a little pointless and disingenuous. The 4 x F125 class, 4 x De Zeven Provinciën class and the 5 x Alvaro de Bazan class (F100) may be called "frigates" by their respective navies, however they are all classed as "Air-defence" frigates. That is their equivalent of a Destroyer as none of those navies call any of their ships Destroyers. The Alvaro de Bazan class (F100) for instance will be the Hobart class Destroyer in the Royal Australian Navy.
On the other hand the Japanese call all of their escort ships "destroyers" despite many being what most would simply consider "frigates".
Also the Royal Navy have more Type 45 destroyers alone than the Dutch, Germans, French or Spanish have of their equivalent "Air-defence" frigates (destroyers), and of course on top of that you will have 13 Type 26's, thats 19 heavily armed warships with 4 large patrol ships in the fleet. A lot more than the other european Navies.

The Type 23 frigates are 4,900 tonnes, 133m by 16.1m with main armament of a 4.5in Mk8 gun, 8 Harpoon SSM (range 124km) and 32 VLS Sea Wolf SAM (range 13km), 2× twin 12.75 in tubes for Stingray ASW torpedoes plus a Lynx or Merlin.

If all goes to plan then, the Type 26 will be a far more stealthy 5,400 tonnes, 148m by 19m with main armament of a 127mm Medium calibre gun, 24 VLS CVS401 Perseus anti ship & land attack supersonic cruise missiles (range 300km) and 64 Sea Ceptor SAM (range 25km), 2 Phalanx CIWS, a currently undefined torpedo launching system for Stingray ASW torpedoes plus a Wildcat or Merlin and a capacity for unmanned air, sea or water vehicles.



So how exactly is that not "beefy" enough? They should be a massive improvement over the Type 23 and more on a scale usually seen in destroyers.

As for the cost, well the reason the Dutch, Germans or Spanish ships might be more expensive is because, first they are in reality "destroyers" so the Type 45 is a better comparison and they only built 4 or 5 each. Surely you know that if your getting 3 x more ships, the cost per ship drops. Plus we all know that costs rise and even if the £350 million "only" goes up by 15% or so (which I think we all know will be the case), then thats still at least £400 million (or USD $630 million or €510 million + per ship).

Oh and as for the numbers, I personally think it will not only stay at 13 ships, but I think the RN will most likely get more multi role "light frigates" of sorts to replace the full time MCM ships. Maybe I'm wrong but thats my thoughts.

The reality is that with the constant increase in costs for modern warships, all navies including the US have had big cutbacks in ship numbers.
And lets keep it real, the Royal Navy will still be very near the top of the Navy totem pole in the 2020's.
Based purely on what has already been announced, built or is currently building, the Royal Navy will consist of at least -

4 - Vanguard class SSBN's
7 - Astute class SSN's
2 - QE Class Large Carriers routinely equipped with 40+ aircraft (12 F35B) during peace time.
2 - Albion class Assault ships
3 - Bay class Landing ships (RFA)
6 - Type 45 Destroyers
13 - Type 26 GCS
4 - River class Large Patrol ships
15 - MCMV (or their replacements)
+ 41 other patrol, survey, medical and support ships including those in the RFA.
And in the FAA
67 - Merlin Helicopters (mix of HM1 HM2 and ASaC equipped)
28 - Wildcat Helicopters
plus
48 - F-35B (initial order only) shared between RAF and FAA
67 - Army Apache attack helicopters used to support marines etc from the carriers

That still seems pretty decent to me.

[AXISPAW]

Lets get some perspective here. Most if not all future wars will be fought as part of a coalition and western governments know it hence why all current and future hardware has been designed with such integration in mind. Regardless, the new frigates are a pretty big step up from the T23s. Their air defence is as capable as the T45s (at least close range anyway), we now have another ship capable of hitting land targets (along with the subs). Plus her systems will be overall much more capable. Lets have an example. We send a carrier group consisting of 1 QE carrier with 12-40 F35s, Merlins and Lynx's. 2 T45s (with aircraft), 2 T26s (with aircraft and possibly UAV) an astute and all the supply ships etc that go with it. Tell me really how many nations in the world could go toe to toe with that? Especially if that were part of a US carrier group.

[uk2030]

I agree, these highly sophisticated ships and the Government would not get away with cutting the number of them from 13.

However, they are inevitably going to go over-budget, but hopefully not delayed

[uk2030]

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