Why is South Africa Building A "Stealth Navy"?

Ports & Ships ^ | 5/31/2004 | P&S

[Tallguy]

Thanks for the Littoral Combat Ship link. If all goes well the USN might field it's first LCS in FY-07. Believe it when I see it.

[longtermmemmory]

History channel had a documentary on stealth. It is a matter of angling the surfaces.

I don't see this as a biggie. If you were buying a battleship, why not order stealthy angles?

[sukhoi-30mki]

Though the present versions in service with the French navy don't have vls-ive read reports that the ships may be upgraded with the Aster-15 sam(same class as the Nato ESSM)&the Thales arabel phased array radar.The missiles will be launched from a 16cell VLS.
Morever the 'Al Sawari' air defence variant of the Lafayette ships built for Saudi Arabia are built with the 16 cell aster-15 vls(will be upgraded to 32 cells)&arabel radar combo.The Singapore navy which has ordered the most advanced variant of the this type-the Formidable class ,have a 32 cell vls &also a radically new Multi functional radar.

[sukhoi-30mki]

Actually these ships are rather of a disappointment-it is essentially a state of the art platform with pretty stale weaponry&sensors.The Germans designed this class (the Meko 200B class of air defence frigates) to be equipped with German-Dutch Apar radar system or the US Aegis system &to operate the Sm-2&RAM missiles(probably the ESSM as well) from a 24 Mk-41 vls.The South Africans though opted for a conventional 3d radar&an indegnious SAM with a range of 10-12kms,though their requirements are different.The worst part was to lift 76 mm guns from 30yr old ex navy corvettes to form the gun armament instead of new versions.
So essentially u can compare it to a B-2 bomber armed not with the JDAM or JASSM ,but with pure dumb bombs.