I don't understand the fascination with festooning a small ship with loads of missiles, guns and sensors which would be dead weight for its primary missions. It adds top weight, increases cost, complexity, manning and maintenance which means less hulls in the water. It's not cost effective at all to send a 4,000 ton ship bristling with weaponry and the crew to man all those systems to sweep for mines, operate helos or hunt small subs.
If you want a ship to perform traditional frigate roles like blue-water ASW or limited air defense, build a frigate. But for LCS roles, the Bofors, a 16-pack of ESSM + SeaRAM and a few Bushmasters is perfectly adequate. If the JABMM missile becomes a reality, stick that in the space reserved for NetFires and you're set. For longer range duties against missile boats, you have the embarked helicopter and its missiles (like the Brits do with Lynx/Sea Skua). And LCS gives you the big mission bay which you don't find on a dedicated frigate.
There's some parallels with LCS and the early criticism of the Spruance class destroyers.
You have missed (or ignored) the point entirely. The 'primary mission' is the primary mission today. Tomorrow, the primary mission could be war with a major power. To have a vessel purpose-built only for today's mission that is incapable of adequately doing the traditional mission of smaller Navy warships is stupid and short-sighted.Originally Posted by Elbs
You're running into problems with that 127/54 OTO on your trimaran. The article in this thread states that the narrow hull doesn't even allow for the refit of the 76mm OTO, so I don't see any chance to use the 127/54 (btw, why not /64?) without massive modifications to the hull. Moreover, even the Navy guys prefer the 76 over the current 57. I'm with Elbs on this one, a 127mm gun is way too heavily armed for a LCS.
I am talking about a 2500-3000 ton frigate, not the 2100 ton Independence class LCS. A good example would be the 2500 ton Italian Lupo class frigate, which had a 5" gun. And sorry, I meant the 64 caliber barrel. Thanks for the correction on that point.
But the whole point of this program is that the Navy has nothing smaller than a Perry to do this stuff. It's filling a void so that they don't have to send Perrys or $2 billion destroyers. It frees up bigger ships to do the real fighting, and make the most use of those hulls. They are not supposed to be mutually exclusive. It's a bit like saying the Cylcone class is useless because they can't defend against a Chinese missile attack.
In a major war you're still going to need ships to do the jobs that the Navy wants LCS to do. You still need minesweepers, coastal ASW, etc. In case of a conflict against a near peer, the LCS ships would operate with support from other ships - read the LCS concept of operations posted at the Office of Naval Research.
In a perfect world, we'd see both LCS and a new frigate enter service, since each is better optimized for different tasks. But the reality is that the line between frigates and destroyers is becoming increasingly blurry these days. I think your concept for a light frigate is a sensible one and that the Navy might benefit from building some. I just don't see them being better for the LCS role.
Why not simply something like the turkish MILGEM class corvette?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgem_class_corvette
A conventional hull, 76mm, ASW torpedoes and Sonar, Helo capability, 8 Harpoons, RAM for self defense, a Mk 41 VLS for self defense is planned for a enlarged version.
This is simply a decent small allround warship.
I never understood the obsession of the USN with the high speed for the LCS.
There's no need for super high speed today, if you need to catch something real fast you have helos and RHIBs.
A high transit speed is nice but from what I hear most of the technical problems stem from propulsion and high speed.
The problem is the next step up from the LCS will be the Zumwalt destroyers. I think you understand how few of those there will be, and they will be protecting our carriers. That means our sole real combat capability would rest with those carrier battle groups, and that is all. There would be virtually no other real blue-water combat ships that could operate in anything other than a protected environment. Nothing for escort duties. Nothing for defending areas away from our carrier groups. Nothing that could face up to any modern enemy warship. How anyone can defend such a naval structure as logical is truly a mystery to me.
The ships I described could fill both the traditional frigate role and the LCS role. I think using the systems outlined, they could be built for much less than the very high cost of the LCSs. As an example, Singapore paid ~$350 million$ for their Formidable class frigates and Denmark paid ~$330 million$ for their Iver Huitfeldt class frigates. The LCSs are literally twice the cost of these large frigates. So why not build something far cheaper than the LCS that can take on both frigate and LCS roles?
As for piling on a lot of weapons on a smaller hull, take a look at the 2200 ton Steregushy class corvettes. They carry even more weapons than the larger 2500-3000 ton frigates I am talking about here.
Here's a good scenario
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs_Zz4CC7go
Interesting. I'd have proposed something like the La Fayette-class as an OHP-class replacement.
What happened to the Arleigh Burke-class DDGs?
Armchair Admirals like us always tend to design Pocket Battleships.
Something which can do something other ships can't.
Naval history however has shown that seakeeping abilities and reliability are often much more important than who has exactly what caliber of gun/missile.
How about the SIGMA concept? The customer can completely customize their needs and the product could range from a small patrol boat to a dstroyer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_class_corvette
http://www.damennaval.com/nl/company...gates-cmrm.htm
On the down side the US will be operating the same vessel as Vietnam, Morocco and Indonesia, with all 3 of those nations knowing the ins and outs of the design and they also have the knowledge and resources to produce them. A fourth nation, the Netherlands (the designers and builders of the class) also know everything about the vessel. Any of these 4 nations knows the weaknesses of the class, and can sell them on to other nations as well. I'm not sure if the US wants that
Not to forget that the US will need to clear dutch politics to obtain the design, a hard task with all those hippie stalinist lefties. Oh well, nothing a bit of good 'ol US pressure can't handle.
DSNS builds their SIGMA class corvette/frigate in 7m sections that can be configured to what the customer needs/wants.
And if you want a little more armour, use lower tensile steel in stead of high tensile steel, it will make for a thicker hull but at a lower cost.
And as mentioned it is about sensors, seakeeping, staying power and command&control. Don't worry about armament untill you are clear on the tasks to be performed, the armament will follow from that. You will probably end up with a design that excells at something while being able to do other tasks as well, just determine what you want done well for each vessel you build.
SIGMA is relatively similar to MEKO.
A scalable hull with standard weapons openings that accept all common NATO/European weapons.
The only difference is that Sigma AFAIK is constructed to civilian standards while MEKOs are warships.
Regarding weaknesses, everyone knows that a warship will sink if you make a hole in it
Yes but if you buy off the shelf you'll have other countries which know the exact data on the ship's weaknesses.SIGMA is relatively similar to MEKO.
Regarding weaknesses, everyone knows that a warship will sink if you make a hole in it
This is the case with the SIGMA design which has multiple sketchy non NATO nations like Vietnam (negotiating) and Indonesia that will operate the 'same' vessel as the US if they decide to buy the design.
This is what you don't want as naval power #1.
And dun foget 'bout Murican jobs!!1!
Cuz dey don wanna operate teh same ships as some socialist hippie european and middle easter ****ries now do dey?
You are aware that 'civilian standards' is a reference to standardisation and that there are provisions in the 'civilian standards' for ' military construction' making it possible to order parts to known dimensions from multiple suppliers in the desired strength?.SIGMA is relatively similar to MEKO.
A scalable hull with standard weapons openings that accept all common NATO/European weapons.
The only difference is that Sigma AFAIK is constructed to civilian standards while MEKOs are warships.
Regarding weaknesses, everyone knows that a warship will sink if you make a hole in it
Damage control and redundancy are more important to a ship's survival than the standards it was built to.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
