Posted on 08/31/2011 10:50:54 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
BAE SYSTEMS : Enter the Dragon As The Fourth Type 45 Arrives In Portsmouth
31 Aug 2011 | Ref. 159/2011
Portsmouth, United Kingdom: DRAGON, the fourth Type 45 anti-air warfare destroyer built by BAE Systems for the Royal Navy, has arrived in Portsmouth Naval Base, where she will be handed over to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) at a ceremony today.
Members of the ship’s company will raise the white ensign for the first time onboard DRAGON, as the Head of Destroyers, Commodore Stephen Braham, formally accepts the destroyer on behalf of the MOD in Portsmouth, where she joins her sister ships HMS DARING, HMS DAUNTLESS and HMS DIAMOND.
Paul Rafferty, Type 45 Programme Director at BAE Systems’ Surface Ships business, said: “DRAGON is the most advanced Type 45 destroyer delivered to date. Working in partnership with the MOD and the Royal Navy, we have incorporated lessons learned from the earlier build and in-service support of her sister ships. She is the first of the batch two destroyers, which include upgrades to systems onboard in line with technological developments, as we continue to deliver cutting-edge naval equipment to the Royal Navy.”
Head of Destroyers Commodore Stephen Braham, said: “Today’s event is an exceptionally significant milestone and today’s acceptance off contract is representative of the remarkable progress made to date on the Type 45 Programme. Combining an all-electric power and propulsion systems and a world class weapons system, the capabilities of HMS DRAGON, like those of her in-service sister ships HMS DARING, HMS DAUNTLESS, and HMS DIAMOND, represent a step-change for air defence in the UK, and will ensure that the Royal Navy remains one of the most powerful maritime forces in the world. Hoffwn i groesawi HMS DRAGON i Portsmouth - pob lwc i hi a’i chwmni (I would like to welcome HMS DRAGON to Portsmouth - good luck to her and her crew).”
First steel was cut on DRAGON in December 2005 and she was launched at the company’s Govan yard in November 2008. After undergoing an extensive sea trials programme, DRAGON left the Clyde with a combined BAE Systems and Royal Navy crew for the final time on Saturday 27 August, arriving alongside at her new home port of Portsmouth at 09.15 today.
As Class Output Manager for the fleet, BAE Systems also provides in-service support to the Type 45 destroyers, with the company’s engineers coordinating all aspects of repair, maintenance and support to improve ship availability and reduce through life support costs.
The Type 45s will provide the backbone of the UK’s naval air defences for the next 30 years and beyond. The destroyers will be capable of carrying out a wide range of operations, including anti-piracy and anti-smuggling activities, disaster relief work and surveillance operations as well as high intensity war fighting.
Each destroyer will be able to engage a large number of targets simultaneously, and defend aircraft carriers or groups of ships, such as an amphibious landing force, against the strongest future threats from the air. The vessels will contribute a specialist air warfare capability to worldwide maritime and joint operations. For further information, please contact:
Kristina Crowe, BAE Systems
Can’t say for sure, of course, but that gun on the bow looks like ancient technology.
Would guess it’s Swedish made and state of the art.
British built 114 mm gun.
It still looks like an ithyphallic Aegis.
Shells are (much) cheaper than missiles and helicopters. Best way of killing low-lives in littoral waters.
I thought it might be from Bofors.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Isn't a £1 billion ship overkill for this kind of thing? Seriously? You could probably pay for a dozen or more ships more suited to this kind of job for the money it cost to build each of these 'superdestroyers', and they could be in more than one place at once. Better yet, a couple of floating helipads that could cover more area and be cheaper to boot.
as well as high intensity war fighting. lol
Each destroyer will be able to engage a large number of targets simultaneously, and defend aircraft carriers or groups of ships, such as an amphibious landing force, against the strongest future threats from the air. The vessels will contribute a specialist air warfare capability to worldwide maritime and joint operations. For further information, please contact:
A carrier's own air group can do all of that better than what this white elephant can do. Even its 'highly sophisticate' radar is useless compared to an AEW Hawkeye plane whose radar can actually see over the horizon, and detect threats in time for something to be actually done about them.
The capex and operational costs are still way lower than a proper carrier of course - and if the idea is to (cheaply) beat the cr*p out of any Argentinian plane that flies near the Falklands then the Type 45s may fit a niche role vs. an anticipated threat.
But I don't like it. There's way too much lard in UK defense procurement. And don't get me started on the Eurofighter. It would have been cheaper to buy space-shuttles and fit sidewinders to them.
Procurement is hampered by the fact that BAe Systems has a virtual monopoly on supplying the British Armed Forces, and the lack of real competition means they can supply our forces with overpriced crap that is more expensive and less capable than off-the-shelf foreign stuff (particularly American). If we really had to go down the destroyer route, we could have ordered some Arleigh-Burkes off the Americans. They wouldn’t have been British, but frankly the money saved could have been spent on a British space program to showcase British engineering excellence if the preservation of a technical knowledge base is one of the main considerations in supporting a British defence industry that simply cannot compete with American funding and its economy of scale efficiencies.
If the goal is to protect the Falklands, then Land based AEW aircraft flying from RAF Mount Pleasant and ground-based SAM batteries could have done that job more effectively (and cheaply).
The obsession with high-tech (yet still outclassed and inadequate) equipment speaks volumes about the priorities that ministers and perhaps senior officers in the armed forces have, considering that we have more Eurofighters than we will ever need, yet our logistical capabilities are woefully neglected, because boring old transport helicopters, heavy strategic airlifters and Amphibious Ships just aren’t as cool as fighter planes and ‘superdestroyers’...
I would say that a carrier would be a greater white elephant than the Type 45. There are very few nations that can afford even one AC (and it is easy to see that the UK is having issues when it comes to that, with serious concerns that it may have to share its future AC capability with France, or even sell one of the proposed new ones to India). Only the US has had the funds to have many ACs, and only the US and France have modern nuclear-powered CATOBAR carriers (and France only has one).
Considering the origin of the term white elephant, of how the kings of Siam would give one to a person (usually proud and rich) that they wanted to destroy (destroy because that 'free gift' was terribly expensive, because being sacred animals the rare white elephants had to be taken care of at high cost, and would usually put their new owner into financial difficulty), I would say that for ALL countries (apart from the US), a real AC capability is a true white elephant. That AC would require a support group that would require several of the same 'super destroyers' you are against. And not just several of those destroyers, but also other support ships (and even a submarine or two) just to protect that one AC.
Which is why for most countries that have a lot of money, but not enough money to get aircraft carriers galore, they usually focus on capable destroyers with phased radar arrays (e.g. AEGIS variants, or the PAAMS the T-45 uses). It is expensive, but far cheaper than an AC.
If we are talking about white elephants, the only country that an aircraft carrier would not be a white elephant is the US (and to a lesser extent France for its one carrier ..the jury is still out for the new Chinese and Indian carriers, although the one old Indian carrier has been a cost burden ....ofcourse the UK had a big advantage in the Falklands with its AC, but recent financial difficulties has made its AC future cloudy). For most other countries that have carriers (e.g. Brazil, Thailand, Spain, etc), the cost of the system has been quite interesting when compared to the capability brought by it, and against a real threat they simply couldn't use their carriers because they couldn't afford all the support ships needed to protect that carrier.
A super-destroyer may be a white elephant, but it is a far darker white elephant than what an aircraft carrier would be. Every AC would require several such destroyers to start with if it wanted to be anything more than a symbol of national pride (read_ capable of action in hostile waters), and the cost/material requirements would only go up from there if one looks at the ships that accompany just one US AC.
“Shells are (much) cheaper than missiles and helicopters.”
True, they have their uses.
“Best way of killing low-lives in littoral waters.”
In my experience, that depends on a number of things.
If the waters are fairly uncrowded and you can get a shot at a reasonable distance, the gun might be your first choice.
If you’re in a fairly restricted channel on a black, black night, and it’s crowded with about a hundred decillion civilian craft, mostly fishing boats, none of whom are keeping a proper watch or showing the proper running lights—and you’re creeping along at five knots to keep from running over any of them—or letting them run up under your bow on purpose to get Uncle Sugar to buy them a new boat...
Under those circumstances, the bad guys are going to wait until you’re close, fire up their engine, swing out from behind some fishing boats, and be too close before you can fire that gun.
That’s when you need something like the Browning M-2—although I suppose they have something they like better now.
If they had a gatling gun firing depleted uranium rounds that you could unlimber as quickly as the M-2 and depress as far as the M-2, that would be good, too.
You say that you would need several of these destroyers to ‘protect’ and aircraft carrier, but how useful are they for this really? They cannot detect incoming threats like a AEW Hawkeye could, so their super-radar is pretty pointless. They can’t shoot planes down as well as a carrier’s air-group can, nor can they defend from surface threats like a helicopter or jet can, nor from a submarine (helicopters are again better suited to this task). As for shore support, again, that puny gun is nothing compared what an air-group can do.
So basically, when it comes down to ‘intensive warfare’ the only surface warships that really matter are aircraft carriers, whether large fleet ones or helicopter-carrying amphibious assault type ships. The only other warship that is really worth its cost is a submarine, preferably a nuclear one.
Britain could well afford 3 or 4 useful fleet carriers if it just ditched all the marginally useful frigates and destroyers and just focused its efforts on air and helicarriers, plus fleet support vessels, alongside minesweepers and patrol boats for non-battle fleet tasks (anti-piracy, drug smuggling etc, although I do question the usefulness to Britain of battling the drugs trade in the Caribbean)...
Where to start? Yes, that is what I am saying ...that an AC needs several of those destroyers to protect it. More importantly though, what I am 'saying' is actual fact in modern naval combat. Looking at the US Navy, for example, a typical Carrier Strike Group has:
- the aircraft carrier itself;
- one or two Ticos;
- two or three Burkes;
- a Logistic support ship;
- one to two LA/Virginia submarines.
Note that, when it comes to 'super destroyers' that single CSG can have up to 5 (2 Ticos and 3 Burkes), and their role is to use their AEGIS systems to protect the carrier. That's not 'me saying it' - that is how it actually is.
Hence my comment about the irony whole white elephant aspect you brought up ...a real/true Aircraft Carrier, with its resultant support group and personnel (one USN CSG has 7,500 men ...one of them) is something that can only be afforded by the US. It is a tad ludicrous to expect the UK to field the same when they are being forced to cut back on even basic military aspects (aircraft like the Harrier shutdown, training on their new Eurofighters limited to cut costs, the future of their two new carriers, the Queen Elizabeth class, hanging in the air as to their exact use, etc).
Even if one looks at the ACs of other countries, even they have serious support. For instance the French AC has one nuclear submarine, up two anti-air destroyers, two anti-sub destroyers, one frigate, and a supply ship. If you look at the Chinese, even as they refurbished their ex-Soviet carrier, they were busy constructing AEGIS-esque destroyers (with phased radar arrays, vertical launch, etc) to protect the carrier. It is not me 'saying' it, it is simple fact.
You have also brought up the AEW Hawkeye several times. Yes, it is quite a nice aircraft to have. My question is, where will you base it? However, what are you going to launch it from? E-2s are only launched from two places ....CATOBAR style aircraft carriers (of which only the US and France operates the Hawkeye ...Brazil has an old CATOBAR carrier it bought from France, but doesn't have the Hawkeye), and land bases (the other operators of the hawkeye do it that way). The only problem is launching from an AC many miles at sea gives a big range advantage that launching from land does not, thus it would mean that he countries that are getting all these 'useless destroyers' and need to get an aircraft carrier would have to get CATOBAR style carriers (and not STOBAR or STOVL carriers) to use the Hawkeye. I wonder how many of them can afford a real CATOBAR. Not many.
There is also a reason why all of the major navies are spending money on highly capable destroyers with phased arrays (e.g. the South Koreans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Russians are revamping, and the US has proceeded with new build improved Arleighs) ...I am sure they cannot all be throwing good money after bad.
As for the survivability of a carrier under 'intense warfare,' some studies during the cold war were quite interesting in their survivability estimates of such ships if the cold war ever got hot. Some very interesting estimates.
Looking at the picture below, that is a lot of 'useless' destroyers for an aircraft carrier that can allegedly take care of itself completely.
The Royal Navy doesn’t use AEGIS, it uses PAAMS, which is basically anti-aircraft, something an airgroup with proper AEW can do much better.
I can understand that frigates are cheaper, and are better than nothing for littoral navies that cannot afford aircraft carriers, but Britain could afford proper aircraft carriers, and she could afford this if she got rid of the frigates and Type-45s (or rather didn’t build them in the first place).
As for the use of AEW with an airwing, it is very difficult to get competent AEW (eg the E2 Hawkeye) on an AC unless you have CATOBAR carriers, which only the US and the French have (+ the Brazillians, although theirs doesn't have an E2). All other navies have to chose helicopters for the AEW role, which is not the same as a Hawkeye. Hence the reliance on highly capable phased radars on anti-air destroyers and frigates that use either AEGIS or similar/analogous systems like PAAMs and the Russian/Chinese analogues. And those systems are VERY effective ...I doubt many people would attempt a hostile close-in towards an Arleigh Burke with it's standard missiles, or a Type 45 with it's Aster 15s and 30s spouting forth from it's VLS ...or for that matter one of the new Chinese Aegis-esque destroyers with their naval HQ-9/S-300 missiles. Survival against such a system would be very low. That is not opinion ...that is fact. The only chance would be to use advanced missiles that are either very fast, very stealthy, or antiship ballistic - and even then it is not a given.
Anyways, I reiterate that looking at the realities of modern naval combat, only two countries currently have well equiped ACs (and one of those two, France, only has one), yet all nations with serious navies all have competent-to-formidable destroyers. That is not a coincidence. In terms of cost effectiveness, personnel, viability of use, etc a modern advanced destroyer is far better bang for the buck (especially when you consider it not only has the advanced radar and antiaircraft missiles, but also antiship as well as land attack cruise missiles). Furthermore, you can have more of the destroyers than you can have ACs (another reason why the US has more carriers than the rest of the world combined), and they can be in more places and also not risk all your eggs in one basket. Finally, only the US can afford more than one supercarrier (and you would need one to operate assets like the Hawkeye you mentioned several times, or to have a serious airwing and not just some Harriers ....or waiting for the F-35 to get it's act together). Especially once you consider that, in actual reality, each AC ends up requiring several destroyers to act as it's escort anyways. Looking at any country building up future AC capability, the best examples being India and China, the first thing they do is create elements of it's strike/support group. In particular destroyers. Same thing with the USN and French navy. Otherwise all you will have is one huge target waiting for cruise missiles.
Btw - one quick thing on a comment you made about the capability of systems such as PAAMs. On the capability of the phased radar systems, please compare them with any naval AEW system like the Hawkeye all the way to fighter radars. The PAAMs can detect an object with the RCS of a cricket ball travelling at Mach 3 (basically a stealthy airframe travelling at Blackbird+ speeds). That is not an ineffective system. The only advantage the Hawkeye would have is it can see over the horizon, but in terms of resolution it is a different game. You also mentioned that the carrier’s airwing would be better at shooting down incoming threats. Please check the real world pKs (probability of kill) for the Amraam missile, arguably the best a2a missile in current use. I have the Rand figures, and they are surprising (and not in a good way). Then compare that with the pK of an advanced shipborne phased array radar that can cordinate several radar tracks and can ripple launch missiles like the Standard and the Aster30. I would rather fly against a wing of F/A-18s carrying Amraams and quarterbacked by a Hawkeye than try toget close to an Arleigh Burke (or similar) that just got a lock on me with it’s PAR. In both I would probably die, but with one it is guaranteed. Check the pKs. A number of sources with that.
Britain is in the process of building two 65,000 ton carriers capable of CATOBAR operations, which will be able to operate Hawkeyes. Without wasting money on these superdestroyers, we may have been able to afford 3 or 4, plus a dozen or so floating helipads built to commercial standards like HMS Ocean.
And say what you want about helicopter AEW, it can at least see over the horizon from thousands of feet up, unlike that fancy radar mounted a couple of hundred feet up on the T-45s.
Again, helicopter launched ASuW missiles are more effective than surface-launched harpoons and exocets, making Air-Heli carriers more effective in this role.
If you really need a floating missile battery for vertical launch cruise missiles, I’m sure it could be done for less than £1 billion a ship. Just build a few ships to commercial standards and fill ‘em full of tubes.
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