UK Defence Forum

Complete waste of time and money. What happens after the 5 ships are all built? It then becomes an empty shed like the one in Portsmouth (and other dockyards) with no more orders, and repurposed to repair old RN minehunters. Perhaps the future empty shed could be used to store Rosyth's growing flot...

I agree but it all depends on what level of input they expected to have, as we saw with the F35 project some times too many partners can cause problems of its own. Personal I think I aim should be to have 4-5 core partners that will be looking to order at the end, but it must be made clear from the...

I suppose it partly depends on what the other countries have to offer. If they can produce parts and small sub assemblies at a cheaper price that has to be take into account. Like all things it is a balance of manufacturing in country and getting value for money by contracting elsewhere. This is wh...

Simply put we all know that equipment across the board in a lot of cases is not up to what we’d all want or what is really needed but you have to work with in the budget we’ve got. I’d love to see HMG turn around tomorrow and as we’re upping the budget to 3%+ plus that’s not realistic. I'm not talk...

Yes you can put any missiles on any ship as long as it fits and works but the point is no one in the RN is going to logically look at it and go you know what let’s put a longer range AAW missile on the T26 than is on the T45. You're missing what I'm saying. Unless you're going to add Sylver silos, ...

Are people seriously suggesting here that T26 with its 48 CAMM and Artisan is not able to provide AAW coverage for itself and close consorts? Even if the range is somewhat limited, 48 munitions vs as few as 16-24 for many other first tier escorts (outside of the US, China and Russia, at least)... Y...

My vote is for - currently 48 CAMM, - and in (near) future, with ExLS go for 196 CAMM+SPEAR3 ASM is becoming more and more long-range, so even with 120 km range ASTER30, killing the "mother" (fighter, bomber, or patrol) will be impossible. CAMM is not intended to kill the mother, but to k...

SM-6 has double the operational range than Aster 30 240km vs 120km. Why would we put that on a vessel that isn’t designed for AAW ? I can get onboard with replacing the front mushrooms with extra Mk41s but not for sm-6, IMO replacing the mid ship mushrooms with 15 ExcL and fit them with 30 CAMM plu...

SM-6 has double the operational range than Aster 30 240km vs 120km. Why would we put that on a vessel that isn’t designed for AAW ? Well for one thing, SM-6 would be a good option for the follow on to the T-45, and if the T-26 also carried it and we have installed CEC on both classes it would incre...

Should we be looking at introducing CAMM-ER on all 3 T class as the minimum to complement CAMM then ? ( replacing aster 15 on T45s ) Even CAMM-ER would be too small. The ideal situation is replacing the CAMM on the fore of T26 with additional Mk41 for SM-6. 1: French "9 escorts" with long...

I think the broad meaning is that regardless of whether it's 25km or 60km, it's a tiny patch of nothing when most major escorts in navies these days are rolling around with 120km (and commonly much higher) range SAMs at the minimum to protect themselves. Yes, T45 exists, but in too few numbers to a...

Drumbeat is a horrendous way to make ships though. All it means is you get less ships, for more cost, over a longer period. It completely erases the efficiency gained from subsequent builds. That is the British drumbeat. Drumbeat makes perfect sense, if you set it to a timeline that makes sense. Ut...

I can see easily the argument for a small tranche 4 typhoon order The German order will give a similar effect, even though assembly will be on their own line - will be interesting to see if they can be tempted to include any subsystems that Tempest (the prgrm) is working on But, yes, which larger U...

I still think T31 program must be canceled, in favor of much more Floreal-like Less does not equal more. The RN just bought five 'Floreal-like' ships it never wanted,... Sorry, River B2 and Floreal capability differs by factors. - Floreal is a 3000t large OPV hull, with twice the range of River B2,...

I thought the talk of hypersonic was around missiles to be developed for use on tempest no the plane itself.

IMO if tempest could hit Mach 3 odd while keeping good movability and decent range and payload would be an out come

Why is everyone assuming they are CAMM? Canada already uses ESSM. It's far more likely they'll just pack that in instead. Altogether an impressive ship. Wish the City class could take some lessons from it... Iv said it before not only are we ordering the smallest number of our own design but also a...

With both the T-26 and T-31 we need the hulls in the water before we start thinking of upgrades. I would love to see the remaining T-26 built to an improved design, leveraging some of the ideas that have come out of the Australian and Canadian competitions but not at the cost in numbers. The Navy h...

Here's the other view .. So only half the SeaCepter load out of the Royal Navy City Class, but with the addition of an extra 8-cell Mk41 VLS module, for a total of 32 Mk41 cells. I wonder what they’re going to put in all of them? Do any of you more knowledgable people know if the Canadians still ha...

Now that we seem to be going to spend 400m per frigate , is the type31 now our future frigate in further batches ? I hope not in the sense that I hope we don’t stop improving and evolving the T26 design as it has far more to offer in the tier one bracket but the T31 could evolved in to a good tier ...

the latest versions are likely to be significantly longer legged I am led to believe. From value to cost: A study presented to US Congress, The Cost of Replacing Today’s Air Force Fleet , attempted to calculate how much government would have to put aside for the Penetrating Counter Air project. The...

The problem is before 2010 we had what 150 odd typhoons, 70 odd tornadoes and 70 odd harriers in service No we didn’t. Admitingly I may have got my individual aircraft numbers wrong but in 2007 the RAF had around 210 fighters made up of around 75% tornados, add to this the fact the the UK 70 odd ha...

The problem is before 2010 we had what 150 odd typhoons, 70 odd tornadoes and 70 odd harriers in service No we didn’t. Admitingly I may have got my individual aircraft numbers wrong but in 2007 the RAF had around 210 fighters made up of around 75% tornados, add to this the fact the the UK 70 odd ha...

The problem is before 2010 we had what 150 odd typhoons, 70 odd tornadoes and 70 odd harriers in service to do all the RAF tasks and fill 3 carrier with a 20 odd air craft capacity each. We are now looking at having 150 odd typhoons and 50 odd F35Bs in service to do all the same RAF tasks if not mor...

To me this shows how perfectly sad our situation is, for a nation that is aspiring to global influence and a 2 super carrier force to only have 50 aircraft suitable for this role is down right abysmal. 50 Stealth fighters that are deployable, without gutting home defence forces would put us in the ...

We will probably purchase additional F-35s down the line but these will not increase the number in service but rather replace older versions maintaining a pool of available airframes at around 50. To me this shows how perfectly sad our situation is, for a nation that is aspiring to global influence...