Type 26

[chocolate_frog]

Are there any designs we can just buy COTS? Or even the actual ship?

The Germans are currently producing the F125 meko, which looks tasty, on the flip side the Danes operate the Thetis, which is also ice capable (bearing in mind we hve no Endurance anymore, and we may have to operate in the polar regions).
Ta
Slightly bigger hulls with the ability to put a few more helos on the back. Takes the strain of the carrier (if we ever get one).

 

[Dunservin]

Are there any designs we can just buy COTS? Or even the actual ship?

The Germans are currently producing the F125 meko, which looks tasty, on the flip side the Danes operate the Thetis, which is also ice capable (bearing in mind we hve no Endurance anymore, and we may have to operate in the polar regions).
Ta
Slightly bigger hulls with the ability to put a few more helos on the back. Takes the strain of the carrier (if we ever get one).

The requirement:

Type 26:Britain’s New Frigate
​

The MOD has signed a contract for the Assessment Phase of the Royal Navy’s next generation of warships – the Type 26 combat ship.

A team led by BAE Systems Surface Ships, working with the MOD, will consider design proposals for the Type 26 combat ship, named in recognition of its planned multiple roles.

The Type 26 will replace the Type 22 and 23 frigates, which are to begin leaving service at the end of the decade. The ship will provide support for land operations as well as undertaking other key tasks such as anti-submarine warfare…

The key design aims for the Type 26 are for a ship that is:

• Versatile – able to undertake a number of roles;
• Flexible – to adapt to the changing needs of defence;
• Affordable – both in build and support through its service life;
• Exportable – designed with the international market in mind.
​

Not the solution:

F125 Meko​

Weapons

The ship is equipped for defence against air attack and also for land attack...

Sensors

The frigates have no conventional on-board sonar but instead have a diver and swimmer detection sonar to counter terrorist and special forces threats...

Thetis could be in the frame although any foreign purchase will be the kiss of death for much of the UK's remaining shipbuilding and high-end warship system technology R&D.

 

[Mattb]

On another note, a Daring weighs in at around 8000 tonnes, if we need cruiser size hulls why don't we just build them and call a spade a spade?

For the same reason as when we last built an aircraft carrier, we called that a cruiser.

Aircraft carrier sounds more expensive than cruiser
Cruiser sounds more expensive than destroyer
And so on...

 

[Dunservin]

...On another note, a Daring weighs in at around 8000 tonnes, if we need cruiser size hulls why don't we just build them and call a spade a spade?

For the same reason as when we last built an aircraft carrier, we called that a cruiser.

Aircraft carrier sounds more expensive than cruiser
Cruiser sounds more expensive than destroyer
And so on...

Horizon, the French and Italian version of the UK's Type 45 destroyer is designated a 'frigate'.

UK withdrawal

On 26 April 1999 the UK announced that it was withdrawing from the CNGF project to pursue its own national design. The Financial Times summarised the main disagreements between the partner countries; the UK wanted a large destroyer which could patrol large areas such as the Atlantic, compared to France's desire for smaller aircraft carrier escorts and Italy's intention to use them in the Mediterranean; Secondly the UK wanted the ships with a wide-area defence capability, able to protect large numbers of ships rather than just protection from missiles targeted in the frigate's general direction; Finally the UK's desire to see Marconi appointed as prime contractor was accepted by France, but only in return for DCN being given the role as prime contractor for the combat management system. The UK, which wished to see a BAE-led consortium given this role, would not accept this.[3]

Summing up the changes from the original specification the UK's Chief of Defence Procurement is reported to have said "it's not common and it's not a frigate!". The resulting Type 45 destroyer is armed with the PAAMS missile system and has benefited from investment in the Horizon project.

 

[Mattb]

In fairness, the decision to leave the CNGF project in favour of T45 was actually quite a sensible one, using the bits that we wanted but not trying to get them into a ship that was too small for what we wanted.


Now, if we could only get around to fitting some missiles to them...

 

[northern-matelot]

Not sure what the current 45's have got but the 42's weren't purely AWW. seeing as they had Sonar spaces and carried WS(Under Water) ratings onboard, they did have some sub protection. As for the 23's being purely ASW- originally this was going to be the case but the falkland wars taught us better and they were beefed up with Harpoon and Sea-Wolf. Originally they were going to need a Fort Victoria class AOR to protect them- due to beefing up the 23's we went from needing 4 fort vics to 2. Still everything done these days is done to costs- as mentioned 1 ship today can probably do the job of 6 ships 50 years ago- but still it can only be in one place at anyone time. We my have an all singing navy by 2020 but we need to decide where our priorities are going to lie- bluer or brown waters? This year my ship did dct before going on Op Cougar with the task group, then Libya, for 4 months, we had 2 weeks rnr and then went to Scotland for 2 month to do Ex Joint Warrior, then london for a high profile visit, Portsmouth for affiliates, 2 month operational sea training and then another 7 month deployment- where's the let up?

 

[northern-matelot]

Are there any designs we can just buy COTS? Or even the actual ship?

The Germans are currently producing the F125 meko, which looks tasty, on the flip side the Danes operate the Thetis, which is also ice capable (bearing in mind we hve no Endurance anymore, and we may have to operate in the polar regions).

MV Polarbjorn (HMS Protector)

 

[Dunservin]

God bless the White Rose and all who sail in her.

 

[Idrach]

Type 26 won't have lots of weight at lots of height, so would be excessively stiff if built on the same hull (plus the 45 hull is a bit too noisy for playing hide and seek with submarines).

Well it will have if sunno gets his way and we fit the radar necessary to make use of a(ny) long range AAW system.

Metacentric height: much more interesting than galvanic corrosion.

Isn't there something similar to the "Lts / tactics; Cols / strategy; Generals / logistics" meme to do with senior naval officers and stability?

 

[sunnoficarus]

What do you mean by that?

For the Type 26 could we use the 45 hull? Existing design, cheaper? Obviously without the Samson, but the tower could still be there. Maybe put a matelot up there with some binos (his own of course).

Allegedly intelligent people exactly 100 years ago also obsessed with speed and built a whole class of fatally flawed ships. Speed comes with a price and in the case of Battle Cruisers, their much vaunted speed meant diddly when people chucked Mach 2 one ton bricks at them.

 

[sunnoficarus]

Well it will have if sunno gets his way and we fit the radar necessary to make use of a(ny) long range AAW system.



Isn't there something similar to the "Lts / tactics; Cols / strategy; Generals / logistics" meme to do with senior naval officers and stability?

Talking out of your arse there as usual matey. You don't need a big radar like Sampson to to use an area SAM. Artisan, which T23 is getting anyway and T26 will get is perfectly capable of doing the job.

Next fallacy you wish to post?

 

[sunnoficarus]

The type 45 is powered by a system called Integrated electric propulsion that is very new, very expensive, very unproven and generally needing a very different setup in machinery spaces. We dont want to use it in the 26's.

The Type 45's also have a large number of other cutting edge systems as well that neither we nor others can afford in larger numbers. (other than sea viper).

Type 26 is meant to be using cheaper mature technology so it isnt a risk and (hopefully) wont be going over budget.

Designing a hull and building it is cheap as chips in comparison to many other things that a warship needs.

Main issue using T45 hull and IEP plant for a follow on FFG design, (I've asked grown ups, they did consider it as there were potentially good savings to be made in having one basic ship design), is the noise of the plant makes them unsuitable for high end ASW work.

 

[riksavage]

The current T45 electric propulsion is too noisy for a T26, which need to run quiet to be a successful AsW platform. Plus the most important feature of an AsW vessel is the helo equipped with dipping sonar and torpedo's. With Wildcat coming in with lot's of Gucci kit (light and heavy anti-surface missiles) plus Merlin (dedicated AsW) we need a vessel big enough to host at least two helo's + what ever UAV they plan to stick aboard.

The ship has to be big enough to carry a troop of RM and have the flexibility to bring aboard a limited MCM capability, probably in the form of a underwater unmanned vehicle (UUV).

FLAADS M is cheap and cheerful and should allow for plenty of missiles to be carried to shoot down the arrow if not the bowmen. Leave T45 for area defence and QE protection.Add a 127mm main gun and you tick all the boxes. Seawolf has a range of approx 10km (latest), FLAADS M (CAMM) will have a range of around 30km - more than enough for self defence against nasty sea-skimmers.

CAMM, Artisan, Phalanx will be moved across from the T23 fleet allowing for a smooth running down of one and the commisioning of another.

Current European designs don't offer the flexibility needed to tick all of the above and many examples mentioned in this thread are simply too small tonnage wise for incremental growth.

 

[brighton hippy]

if we are only building a dozen or so war canones they really need to be able to do everything as their going end up in the middle of nowhere evecuating
british civillians for some shit hole.
when aftab the kilo sub captain fancies making his name or similar johnny in a 2nd hand mig or brand new rafale decides to try shooting them up.

 

[sunnoficarus]

Yes but an Abdiel was capable of close to 6000 miles range at 15 knots. A Daring has a range of around 7000 miles at economic speed and thats with a 70 year technology gap.
I'm not arguing that we need warships capable of 40 plus knots, I'm simply arguing that its technically not that difficult to build one.

On another note, a Daring weighs in at around 8000 tonnes, if we need cruiser size hulls why don't we just build them and call a spade a spade?

For the same installed power, Abdiels were very lightly armed compared with a Cruiser - you don't get things for free. By putting a Cruiser power plant in a small ship like Abdiels, they were very limited in space. Technically, you could build an 80kt wave piercing DDG if you wanted, but while it would be very fast, the design would be so compromised as to be worthless as a stand up warship as you'd need to turn over nearly all the internal space for engines and fuel tanks and you end up like LCS, nothing left in the design to allow you to carry weapons worth a damn.

Speed stopped being a critical design issue for warships when they invented anti ship missiles. Back in the days of guns, you needed lots of speed to close down your vulnerability gap in ship to ship gu engagements, now, you can fire a near supersonic anti ship missile while parked up and it doesn't make a fig of difference how fast the other bloke 70 miles away is going. All you need now is a descent cruising speed with a bit of a dash in top. FWIW, most modern warships would be hard pushed to catch a modern fast merchantman, matters not, that's what you have the helicopter for.

Frigates? Destroyers? Cruisers? Names are pretty moot and nowadays more reflect the expected usage of the ship rather than size. USN Tico's and and Arleigh Burkes are based on the same hull and do much the same, Tico's are basically 'Cruisers' as they are also expected to be command ships and carry the necessary for that task.

 

[jagman]

Allegedly intelligent people exactly 100 years ago also obsessed with speed and built a whole class of fatally flawed ships. Speed comes with a price and in the case of Battle Cruisers, their much vaunted speed meant diddly when people chucked Mach 2 one ton bricks at them.

That argument could be countered by pointing out how many of the slower battleships were ineffective simply because they couldn't catch their intended prey.
The RN of the First World War era had a choice, they could either build fast or build heavily armoured big gun ships. They built both.
The limitations of both were well known and at the outbreak of the Second World War the same problem existed (because many of the RN's capital ships were the same units they had at the end of the First War)
The King George V's went quite some way to addressing that but the necessities of war meant that Repulse, Renown and Hood were still obliged to do their bit.
Hood's loss is well documented and accredited to being under-armoured. Renown survived the war relatively unscathed and whilst Repulse was lost to air attack the Prince of Wales was lost alongside her (and didn't suffer from the same under armouring issues) and its difficult to see how any other capital ship would have survived 5 torpedo hits.

The Battlecruiser losses at Jutland are another well documented case but it depends on whether you place the blame on poor armour or ammunition handling issues and lack of flash protection within ammunition handling areas.

I would suggest that the "weakness" of the Battlecruiser concept is overstated in history. (There are occasions like the Battle of the Falklands where their speed was a huge factor in victory)

Anyway, I digress, speed isn't the asset it was once. As you point out, missiles and helicopters negate the advantages to a fair degree.
The only real necessity for high speed now is created by the small quantities of ships available to the RN. Being required to cover a larger area because of a lack of ships would make higher transit speeds useful. But I suppose thats always going to be a problem given that the RN has to cover the same areas it did a decade ago with an ever decreasing pool of ships to do it with.

 

[John Civie]

so i know the RN is quite proud of its sub hunting ability but who these days has a massive fleet of subs that arn't turning to radioactive rust, the USN?
I'm inclined to agree with BH both the ASW and GP T26 are going to spend their days as modern day gunboats either pulling brits out of collapsing shitholes or reminding Somali 'Fishermen' of their human rights east of suez and playing wargames with nato rather than hunting red october. so perhaps we'd be better of with less ASW focus after all most the types who try to steal our iPods don't have the red banner fleet they either have jets with missiles or speedboats with missiles as their much cheaper than subs and easier to operate by 3rd world conscripts. so maybe better local air defence along with a nice selection of antiship and cruise missiles would be good for T26 to remind the near do wells to behave. along with space for 2 merlins or wildcats so they can hunt subs, boats and libyans ect

 

[sunnoficarus]

FLAADS M is cheap and cheerful and should allow for plenty of missiles to be carried to shoot down the arrow if not the bowmen..

Therein lies one of my main criticisms of CAMM, the main programme driver is 'cheap and cheerful', not capability. It's basically ASRAAM with a VLS booster and offers us nothing much over what the already extant and in service RAM, (Based on Sidewinder), (See trials on HMS York many moons ago), gives us except some more range. Yet again we re-invent the wheel. The fact their fitting Phalanx AND a UK designed equivalent of RAM, (and RAM is replacing Phalanx in other navies), both PDWS to T26 doesn't exactly fill me with confidence in CAMM.

 

[John Civie]

or for the real cheapskate seaRAM built off the plalanx platform and offering a promising point defence system on ships without radar such as RFA's ect. suppose you could even bolt it on to a truck / tank for the army like planax is for kandahar. but that wouldn't create jobs for the boys here in the uk so we'll take that alternate wheel with its besboke systems and little export potential and pay you millions for it and thank you for the service

 

[Mattb]

I'd say that more range is a pretty big "except"... ASRAAM is a top-notch weapon, so with decent range should make for a decent self defence weapon.


Phalanx (and RAM) are very much last-ditch weapons; RAM doesn't even have a third of the range of CAMM. Phalanx is also rather handy for shooting up speedboats, which may well prove handy in the future.