It's a successful design by British standard's, and Bangladesh are an existing operator of RN kit, so it seems plausible. I know where they might be able to find three second hand rivers, one careful owner! That would be a good a ending for the mid life rivers, sell them and use the proceeds to fund...

Or probably just a nail in the coffin for the Type 45 to not "need" new silos if it can deck mount them. ;) Needs both VLS and a new gun when it comes to a midlife refit, but that seems a long shot. That is huge for keeping the design cost down. Slight reduction in build costs, increase i...

Better yet, LRASM in VLS on the T45, T26 and FLF and then deck launched on legacy T23. Even better if it has a capable land attack mode!

sounds like a tough job. Does it still throw 1 out of every 10 aircraft into the sea?

it would be good to build another..... providing the monarchy pays for it. Queeny makes a profit each year so she could afford it.

How about this idea? Not as good as the T26 mission space. A folded Merlin is 6m wide, I imagine you need close to double that to have a workable hanger, perhaps someone could elaborate for me. The DDH is an interesting concept, has the RN ever taken this seriously? It could see a renewal as a moth...

Should a light frigate be built with the ability to operate more than one helicopter at a time if needed mission specific It certainly should. Helicopters are the best way to add a mission module to any frigate, easily extending the range and capabilities of the vessel well beyond its design. For t...

The manning, equipment and R+D costs would still be the same. Precisely. A ship that launches 50 F35's does not use five times more resources than a ship that launches 10 F35's. The CVF is the correct size for the Royal Navy. Any bigger and we would require new shore facilities, and likely need to ...

Now, you have 2 CVFs. They are good at power projection, sure. But, I feel they are too much so. @Donald, that post isn’t going to be very popular :) Whist I completely disagree the CVFs aren’t right for the royal navy, I do wonder if it is time to revisit the ASW Helicopter carriers operations lik...

I think you read this page? http://intercepts.defensenews.com/2014/ ... t-frigate/ I have not read that page before, and it was and interesting read, presenting some of the concepts that made such and affordable design. As I say perhaps this is the kind of model we should follow. Major hull compone...

But could containerised towed array system be used on an as needed or leave High end ASW to the T26? I suspect that is a step too far for a blot on container. Attaching a highly sensitive sonar to a noisy vibrating ship will severely limit performance. That is compared the the highly optimised and ...

Such a terrible mode of operations, it takes the worse characteristics from CATOBAR and STOVL.

Why would you say that? The Americans are very good at upgrading and supporting there kit for a long time. We can piggy back on that and expect a long life out of them

If Stansted is too far away I Don't see the townies straying out to Suffolk.

Is there any need to keep it? No aircraft to put there, very close to a busy RAF Lakenheath, also close to RAF Marham, and we already have enough empty runways.

Do you think the US Air Force would accept my low cost solution?

To realize it, the light(er) frigate must be cheap. (That is why I am proposing ANZAC+, not ++). What are you going to cut from your requirement to make it cheap? You are right, it is not actually a light frigate that we need, it is a cheaper frigate. It just so happens a lower displacement is usua...

Common modular systems are the way forward. It's what makes the mission bay on the T26 so important, and why it is critical we see the same appearing on this lighter frigate. The system's will become platform agnostic, allowing them to be rerolled between different classes to optimise for each deplo...

- First rate Destroyer (combining the T45 and T26 roles) - Second rate Frigate (fast / smaller presence and escort vessel) - Sloop (OPV), simple vessel similar to the original envisaged MHPC Sounds a lot like the old C1, C2, C3 concept, and it looks increasingly like we're heading down that route y...

the first is that we replace the original number of 16 Type 23s on a one for one basis with a force of 8 Type 26 and 8 FLF. An increase of three hulls up to 22 escorts total. I think this is the most reasonable option, and could be affordable for the navy, both in cash and manpower. It's certainly ...

How do you read this? I'm sure you shall be much better than me in reading parliament logs... Thank you for that, I've not seen that qoute before. It does sound like he is talking about something less capable than the T23 I agree. I hope he is referring to the anti submarine capabilities, which are...

donald_of_tokyo wrote:What I know is that your MOD minister said "he" was imaging about something "less than T23".

When did he say that? I'm pretty sure it was said to be less than the T26, which could still be a very big frigate.

problem is we now have a government/civil service system that doesn't look any longer than the 5 year election cycle An easy gripe to make, and indeed is true a lot of the time. However things like the CVF and Sucsessor, they require planning over 50 years and they still happened / happening so som...

But, I think it does not mean you can have an MCHC fleet "cheaper". I wouldn't be so sure. One of the main driving factors is the adoption of commercially available ROV, into a military role, to lower costs. Adopting commercially available equipment should keep the system affordable. I th...

and if the rhetoric coming from the Government lately is anything to go by, that's likely in the cards once HMS Queen Elizabeth is in commission I very much hope that is true. I didn't know of any detachment in Singapore, that is news to me. Sounds like a reasonable place to start to build a presen...