Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Contains threads on Royal Navy equipment of the past, present and future.

What will be the result of the 'Lighter Frigate' programme?

Programme cancelled, RN down to 14 escorts
52
10%
Programme cancelled & replaced with GP T26
14
3%
A number of heavy OPVs spun as "frigates"
127
25%
An LCS-like modular ship
22
4%
A modernised Type 23
24
5%
A Type 26-lite
71
14%
Less than 5 hulls
22
4%
5 hulls
71
14%
More than 5 hulls
103
20%
 
Total votes: 506

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RichardIC
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by RichardIC »

xav wrote:I must have missed something. Are they saying otherwise ?
Save The Royal Navy are reporting 57/40 is a done deal. However as it's an unofficial source that's not attributing their information to a named person.

So seeking additional independent corroboration.

Ron5
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

Poiuytrewq wrote:
shark bait wrote:If Babcock do build a 'Frigate Factory'....
I was under the impression that the extra £250m in the T31 programme was partly to improve the infrastructure of the chosen yards to maximise efficiency of build.

If so, where is the other £200m going?
That 250 million is for updating MoD facilities for the new ships. For example, they may need that money to enlarge the frigate facility in Plymouth, currently it is too small for the T31's.

Babcock's 50 million pound shed at Rosyth will be financed out of the 1.25 billion T31 budget.

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by dmereifield »

Ron5 wrote:
Poiuytrewq wrote:
shark bait wrote:If Babcock do build a 'Frigate Factory'....
I was under the impression that the extra £250m in the T31 programme was partly to improve the infrastructure of the chosen yards to maximise efficiency of build.

If so, where is the other £200m going?
That 250 million is for updating MoD facilities for the new ships. For example, they may need that money to enlarge the frigate facility in Plymouth, currently it is too small for the T31's.

Babcock's 50 million pound shed at Rosyth will be financed out of the 1.25 billion T31 budget.
How can the larger T26 be based there but it be too small for the smaller T31?

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

dmereifield wrote:
Ron5 wrote:
Poiuytrewq wrote:
shark bait wrote:If Babcock do build a 'Frigate Factory'....
I was under the impression that the extra £250m in the T31 programme was partly to improve the infrastructure of the chosen yards to maximise efficiency of build.

If so, where is the other £200m going?
That 250 million is for updating MoD facilities for the new ships. For example, they may need that money to enlarge the frigate facility in Plymouth, currently it is too small for the T31's.

Babcock's 50 million pound shed at Rosyth will be financed out of the 1.25 billion T31 budget.
How can the larger T26 be based there but it be too small for the smaller T31?
T26 doesn't fit either.

To be clear, I am referring to the building that allows frigates to be maintained under cover. The T23 was built to fit the building.

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

the building that allows frigates to be maintained under cover.
Operated by Babcock, by any chance?
- perhaps synergies between building, fitting out and maintaining could be found, going forward?
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

Ron5
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

Thank you Xavier for the video.

I was impressed by the speakers, most of all by the guy that explained the advantages of TACTICOS so clearly.

On the subject of guns, I'd wager that there's a large number of RN folk that would like a 5". I can only assume that it is finance that's ruling that out for now.

Perhaps ITAR has an impact on the Bofors choice for CIWS.

And how about NS200 instead of NS100?

Anyhow, I doubt if final choices have been made on armament. In fact, a great deal of choices are left like where exactly are the blocks to be built? Every one of Babcock's build locations has gone tits up.

I personally doubt if Babcock's has the skilled personnel at Rosyth that can build all the blocks there, as opposed to joining up pre-built blocks, a far simpler task.

Still the MoD kindly gave Babcock's 2 extra years to get the job done. So much for a fixed price, fixed schedule contract. I wonder when the first cost overrun will be reported.

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

ArmChairCivvy wrote:
the building that allows frigates to be maintained under cover.
Operated by Babcock, by any chance?
- perhaps synergies between building, fitting out and maintaining could be found, going forward?
You sound like a brochure. Empty words that mean zilch.

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by S M H »

SKB wrote:4 boat bays is excessive.
Not if your plan is to deploy remote craft in the medium to long term. I having sat in the room when the prevailing thought was what can we do . But remember we have to get it past the Treasury. If we were to delete two boat bays only to pay twice the cost to put them in as a refit cost at a extra expense. The through cost planning on ships is now bearing well on ship procurement. This approach shows it cheaper to build in construction. The cost of integrating future weapons with growth space. Further more we have benefitted from Oceans procurement. Her fixed costs that came with her procurement caused maintenance problems. Adversely affecting her later running costs. With the present 31 procurement we should have a useful G P frigate that wont destroy the budget to add additional weaponry should the need arise.

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

Ron5 wrote: Empty words that mean zilch
There were three words in the list; did you spot which one was new, ie. not contributing (much, yet) to:
2018 Underlying performance highlights, continuing to grow its international naval support business.
- With unique owned and managed infrastructure[! ie. the bit that my comment was on... or, as SMH puts it
S M H wrote: The through cost planning on ships is now bearing well on ship procurement.
]
Revenue % of Group33%
Operating margin13.1%
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

dmereifield
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by dmereifield »

Ron5 wrote:
dmereifield wrote:
Ron5 wrote:
Poiuytrewq wrote:
shark bait wrote:If Babcock do build a 'Frigate Factory'....
I was under the impression that the extra £250m in the T31 programme was partly to improve the infrastructure of the chosen yards to maximise efficiency of build.

If so, where is the other £200m going?
That 250 million is for updating MoD facilities for the new ships. For example, they may need that money to enlarge the frigate facility in Plymouth, currently it is too small for the T31's.

Babcock's 50 million pound shed at Rosyth will be financed out of the 1.25 billion T31 budget.
How can the larger T26 be based there but it be too small for the smaller T31?
T26 doesn't fit either.

To be clear, I am referring to the building that allows frigates to be maintained under cover. The T23 was built to fit the building.
Thanks for info

S M H
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by S M H »

Ron5 wrote:To be clear, I am referring to the building that allows frigates to be maintained under cover. The T23 was built to fit the building.
When the frigate complex as extended the cost was initially proposed a larger extension to the extent of moving the road and demolishing some buildings. However it was only extended to fit the type22s . The scaling back of the original extension adversely effected the type 23 design procurement causing the limited top weight stability in it original weapons fit precluding fitting of C.I.W.S. If the money is purely for the frigate complex. Naval procurement has improved expediential from the prior practice. To the benefit of future maintenance costs.

Ron5
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

Pure speculation on my part that the money is earmarked for the frigate complex but I could think of worse ways to spend the money.

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

S M H wrote: However it was only extended to fit the type22s . The scaling back of the original extension adversely effected the type 23 design procurement causing the limited top weight stability in it original weapons fit precluding fitting of C.I.W.S.
Talk about the cart and the horse! Top weight stability problems came back to bite with later upgrades
- anyway, the derided "lego ships" won, and I read 'the benefit of future maintenance' as extending all the way to upgrading and changes in configuration
- more importantly, though, just like in the '70s when the F16 was designed to break cost curve of designing and building fast jet a/c this is exactly what is being done with T31 (not just the ship, but the process). Did anybody notice, btw, that the USAF has restarted the F16 exercise (I think I posted that piece on the Tempest thread)?
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

NickC
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by NickC »

The Type 31 Thales Nederland AESA radar referred to as NS110, though on Thales website only find NS100, googled -

The number of transmitter modules (building block modules of S-band GaN silicon solid state TRMs) in the radar antenna can be scaled to the customer's requirements. The NS100 has 10 modules, branded as the NS110, NS106 six modules and NS103 three modules. NS110 is aimed at frigates and corvettes, NS106 missile and other attack ships, and NS103 for smaller patrol and auxiliary vessels. Thales Nederland's opinion suggests that the antenna transmitter modules can be upgraded up to fifteen, NS150?, presume the larger NS200 contains 20 modules.

The larger the array antenna the narrower the beam width, radar sensitivity scales as a cube of the size of the radar aperture, as width is proportional to the wavelength and inversely to the antenna dimension along that axis.

PS Thales Nederland also offer the S-band Sea Master 400 with same modules?, a non-rotating, four faced array for maximum data rate, provides significantly higher detection and tracking performance with continuous 360° coverage in azimuth and 90° coverage in elevation. The new Damen ~6,000t class frigates due in service 2024 for the Dutch and Belgium Navies Thales Nederland supplying a full fat state of the art multi-band XS-suite radar, the Sea Master 400 S-band and the APAR Block 2 X-band with its new GaN silicon TRMs.

To exploit capabilities of the XS-Suite radar moving on from their older generation TACTICOS CMS to be installed on the Type 31 to the new AWWS CMS
"The development of AWWS has become necessary because above-water threats are growing exponentially in terms of complexity, coordination and speed. Missiles go up to three times faster than the speed of sound, and possibly even up to five times faster in 2020. Currently used technologies are insufficient to make use of all the new sensor and weapon systems to counter these threats in the future. This new system continuously generates the best solution to counter any incoming threats, whatever the environmental conditions or threat complexity. The system will support the operator in making the right decision at every decisive moment.
When faced with scenarios of several different threats arriving simultaneously and employing complex behaviours, such as very high speed, a human operator will no longer be able to schedule and plan the right defensive priorities effectively and efficiently"

NavalNews

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shark bait
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by shark bait »

Ron5 wrote:I personally doubt if Babcock's has the skilled personnel at Rosyth that can build all the blocks there, as opposed to joining up pre-built blocks, a far simpler task.
In a separate video one of the same guys said the bid Babcock submitted was for 100% build at Rosyth. He went on to say they would explore out sourcing some of the build, but didn't sound very interested in the idea.
NickC wrote:The Type 31 Thales Nederland AESA radar referred to as NS110, though on Thales website only find NS100, googled -
I'm glad you found an answer, I thought the same thing but couldn't find an answer. However are you sure the NS110 is GaN? I thought that was a feature of the NS200 only.

Interesting to note the T31 will have an AESA panel, and the T26 will have a PESA panel.
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Caribbean »

shark bait wrote:However are you sure the NS110 is GaN? I thought that was a feature of the NS200 only.
Yes - it's GaN
https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/defau ... 1568472091
shark bait wrote:T31 will have an AESA panel, and the T26 will have a PESA panel.
Artisan is AESA. It's based on Sampson, which itself is based on MESAR, the development AESA system and COMMANDER (in use by the RAF)
http://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/decca-le ... .php#10.12

"The year 1982 saw the launch of a joint ARE/Siemens Plessey development programme to demonstrate the principles behind ACTIVE ARRAY RADARS. Prior to 1982 Plessey Radar engineers had been working with colleagues at the company’s ‘Caswell Research Centre’ on the application of gallium arsenide (GaAs) technology. The result was a single face of 918 elements, each element being in itself a mini radar transmitter receiver."

"ARTISAN is the result of a 24-month development programme based on a new product MESAR/SAMPSON and COMMANDER proven technology"

Of course, a lot of the capability is in the software. My take at the moment is that there are features of Artisan that the RN prefer, but that the NS110 is the best they can get within the budget
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Digger22
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Digger22 »

Does this mean that Goliath is not for sale now?

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by xav »

NS family is GAN and replaces the SMART-S Mk2 which is not being marketed anymore.

Thales told me the NS100 series offers better overall performance (and on par range) to the older SMART-S despite the smaller size of NS100.

In addition, the NS familly can be fitted with an optional IR tracker (in the middle of the array!) for improved tracking accuracy (be then the array stops rotating for obvious reason... The magic with AESA however is that your can "steer the beam" so you don't lose your tracks even if you stop the rotation of the radar)

I Learned this during a factory visit:

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

xav wrote:The magic with AESA however is that your can "steer the beam" so you don't lose your tracks even if you stop the rotation of the radar)
Times are a-changing; from having to stop the radar (turning) on RN frigates to see if soft soft kill worked, and then - plenty quick - get it turning again, to launch SeaWolf (or did they have a Doppler FC, separately, as obviously at that stage the target would have been 'acquired' already?).
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by tomuk »

xav wrote:The magic with AESA however is that your can "steer the beam" so you don't lose your tracks even if you stop the rotation of the radar)
The NS100 series only has one array therefore like all planar array radars it can only scan the beams to a maximum of 60 degrees. Giving a field of view of about 120 degrees. So the radar can't see to the far left left, right and behind where it is pointing.

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by shark bait »

xav wrote:NS family is GAN and replaces the SMART-S Mk2 which is not being marketed anymore.
Good news, this is cutting edge stuff then, and I think this marks the first application of a Gallium radar in UK service.
Caribbean wrote:Artisan is AESA
Have you got a decent source that confirms it is? I have never managed to find one, which leads me to believe it isn't AESA. It isn't a single faced Sampson, so can't connect it Electronic Scanning that way.

From my reading I believe Artisan is a Solid State Pulse Doppler radar with a PESA antenna, and some clever processing.
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Caribbean »

shark bait wrote:Have you got a decent source that confirms it is?
I've posted this link before, back in the mists of time - as a whole it's a pretty decent history of radar development by Decca, so interesting in it's own right. You need to read forward from "The Active Array Revolution" to get to the stuff about Sampson and Artisan. Commander isn't covered in the article (well - book, really), but from what I can find online, the latest versions are probably AESA as well (they don't give much away). The implication is that it "almost" a single-faced Samson, but with fewer TR modules
http://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/decca-le ... .php#10.12

To quote the sales brochure on Commander

"The high-efficiency, air-cooled solid-state transmit receive integrated modules (TRIMS), mounted on the rear of the antenna, provide an extremely reliable RF power source with built-in redundancy"

Which sounds more AESA than PESA to me
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

But, all and every document on Artisan 3D carefully avoids calling it an AESA.

Even BAE brochure do not https://www.baesystems.com/en/download- ... 568826.pdf

It is clear the system is based on Sampson, AESA. So, it uses the solid-state antenna modules. Its waveform pattern is also digitally controlled (as noted in the link provided by Caribbean-san). But, I'm not sure its waveform pattern is SOFTWARE controlled, which is the definition of AESA.

There are digital technology not based on software = ASIC and FPGA. Even though these digital circuits lacks flexibility (other than "already built-in" flexibility, such as mode changing), its digital data handling performance is, in many cases, even better than using a software. So, in principle, a non-software controlled fully digital radar can exist, and its performance can be better than an AESA in some cases.

But, I do not know about Artisan 3D. Just guessing this is what they did, as an engineer. Just guess, though.

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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by Caribbean »

I would have thought that the real distiction is that, in the AESA system, "each element of the radar antenna now has its own transmitter, receiver and phase shifter", rather than each element manipulating a common signal feed (PESA).

That said, an FPGA sits on the boundary between ASIC and software, giving greater flexibility (i.e. reprogrammability) at the expense of speed compared to an ASIC (though faster than software based), so may be well-suited to controlling the individual elements of an array, while allowing for future upgradabilty. So the task controller software says "scan point X with beam type Y" and the FPGA/ ASIC controls the TR module

In the MESAR development section, it explicitly states "Linked to a powerful digital computer the MESAR planar phased array becomes active", which is a pretty good indicator that technologies based on MESAR are genuinely AESA
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shark bait
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Re: Type 31 General Purpose Frigate [News Only]

Post by shark bait »

The technologies are similar, the distinction is PESA has many steering elements manipulating single source, where as AESA has many steering elements generating their own source.

As for MESAR, I thought a planar array was by definition single source? The image below shows this.

Image
http://www.radartutorial.eu/06.antennas ... %20antenna.
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