Phalanx is an expensive bit of kit and the RN/RFA are already short of them. And there's limited ammunition on the mount which takes an eternity to reload manually. So not good for swarm attacks. And there's the helicopter issue too.donald_of_tokyo wrote:If ever River B2 to be up-armed in reaction to current situation or in view of "dedicated for Persian Gulf", I think one powerful option is to make it "removable", so that the hull configuration can be brought back into EEZ patrol version easily in future.
So, here is the version with
- a 30mm gun with 5 LMM at bow (not shown)
- a 20mm CIWS in place of the crane (from the pooled units)
- and a few 12.7mm and 7.62mm guns
- with simple ESM/chaff/flare kits added (not shown)
How about two of them for Persian Gulf patrol, until T31e will ever be ready? (say, ~2024 at the earliest, and more later if my proposal to delay and even cancel T31e was chosen). If more fire power be needed, add two to four 3-tube LMM launcher operated by RM team, or even 6-8 more 7.62mm gatling guns, operated by RM detachment (plenty of room for them).
Crew served weapons also expose personnel to direct fire, have limited range and are inherently less accurate in unstabilised mounts.
If you have to be so unspeakably vulgar as to upgun the River B2s - and if you want them to go anywhere remotely dangerous you do - the way the Thai's have gone about it looks about right - add Martlet to the beam 30s and a medium-calibre gun of choice for reach. Loose the Harpoon.
But you'd also, as Caribbean said, need to add some serious ballistic protection, which is going to impose further weight penalties, and ESM, ECM etc. . You're probably going to have a very cramped ops room.
And not cheap. You'd need to be desperate but the RN doesn't have a whole bag of options.