BAE SYSTEMS
An infographic giving a basic overview of the Type 26 for the Royal Navy and its performance and capabilities.
Posted on 05/31/2019 8:12:22 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
BAE SYSTEMS
An infographic giving a basic overview of the Type 26 for the Royal Navy and its performance and capabilities.
More pix, video at link
In the cost world, Carriers > Cruisers > Destroyers > Frigates. 15 years ago or so, a new destroyer was about $1B a I recall so $800M for a frigate seems almost like "why bother, just build some destroyers." But I suppose the cost for a destroyer is much higher now too.
Keep in mind that literally all the FFG(X) competitors are much larger than the Fletcher class destroyers that devoured the Japanese Navy - and the current DD-1000 destroyer class is actually larger than some *battleships* that fought in WW2.
Also keep in mind that any surface combatant at a minimum has to be able to fight in datalink with its peers or in conjunction with a CBG if it wants to survive in a modern peer or near-peer fight - that requires a lot of capability.
Maybe buying a US-designed, US-built ship is more important than shopping for one on the international market?
The US Navy has long suffered from the NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrome that leads to the rejection of foreign innovations and designs. The Type 26 is an excellent vessel that could well win the competition.
It feels to me like the Navy would be well suited to cut the Littoral Combat Ships off, build more destroyers and frigates so we always have lots of missile platforms available to deploy to places where we will likely be needing to take lots of shots to knock out these newer threats.
But I'm probably wrong. Like I said, I'm an engineer, not a military strategist.
We don’t have time to wait for a fresh frigate design. We bet on the LCS and they turned out to be a massive failure in that respect. We need replacement ships NOW - that’s why the requirements include “already in service elsewhere”. Off the shelf, ready to go is what we need now. They will be built in the US, no matter who designed them.
We need the ships *now*, not in 10-15 years. And with LCS, we screwed up and killed off all the frigate development programs. There is *no* ready-to-go US frigate design - the Navy made sure of that with LCS.
“$800M for a frigate. Wow.”
A lot of money for a ship that among other things, is intended to take torpedoes to save carriers.
Just kidding, I’m old, and I’m sure roles have changed.
The Navy is already curtailing the LCS and has all but admitted they were a failure. This FFG(X) program is the Navy running a crash program to get frigates. The destroyer part of the fleet is a much larger problem because all destroyer development resources went into the Zumwalts, and those at this point are more than a little failure. Again, we don’t have a different design ready to go and we can’t afford more Zumwalts (not just in terms of money either).
Technically, that’s what the decoys they carry are supposed to do. They were *also* supposed to be carrying anti-torpedo torpedoes but that program was abruptly cancelled a couple months ago.
The US and UK have historically enjoyed great success collaborating on weapons of war.
For instance: the Sherman Firefly, the Mustang, automated decrypt of Lorentz and Enigma, and of course Radar.
That ease of collaboration is now recognised as one of the starkest differences between Allies and Axis in WWII.
Collaborating on a frigate might be another good example. The Type 26 is a fine vessel, but I think a US conversion to ship more multi-role missile slots is the way to go.
Some of the components will be built in Austrailia, Canada and the UK, and many of the components in these country’s Type 26 are already built in the US, including the Mk45 5 inch naval gun. There is also an economy of scale that will bring the price down because 32 are already being built. This is to be encouraged. All 4 countries are close allies and not even the US has an unlimited budget so closer cooperation on the design and manufacture of weapons systems to deal with threats such as the rise of China is to be encouraged, everybody will benefit from this and it will be the best anti-sub ship on the market, bar none. Anti submarine warfare has been the Royal Navy’s speciality since the cold war and our ship designers and sonar manufacturers know what they’re doing.
If a US order brings the cost per unit down due to the obvious economy of scale it might even pursuade our parsimonious MoD to order more than 8 of them. They’re already talking about raising the defence budget beyond the NATO minimum so this would be a great way of stimulating the growth of the Royal Navy back to a sustainable level.
“Technically, that’s what the decoys they carry are supposed to do.”
I’m old school enlisted, rode a cruiser and a destroyer. When push comes to shove, all ships in the battle group are torpedo catchers if it means saving a carrier. But I’m absolutely sure that’s not the intended purpose for any modern vessel.
Lorentz ??
Anything to do with this guy - Hendrik Lorentz?
Don’t understand!
The Type 26 isn’t in service yet. And there’s another good reason to not buy a British design that’s not yet in service - they STILL haven’t gotten the overheating and propulsion problems out of the Type 45 yet!
The requirement that whatever is proposed already be in service elsewhere is a good one. We’ve dumped enough money down unproven designs to the point where we need the FFG(X) to fix the huge capability gap we induced in our own Navy. We do not need someone else’s boondoggle and we don’t have time to be someone else’s beta tester.
I believe this ship is designed to be flexible. The RN version is designed with 72 missile cells, 24 of which will be full length designed to take Tomohawks. This could be expanded with more VLS for American tastes.
Especially as modern vessels don’t carry much armor as modern missiles and torps render those pretty much useless.
It’s amazing that a ship costs close to billion and the politically correct crews are ill trained.
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