Spinflight wrote:It is not however the complete redesign that Lloyd's warship standards would require, merely OPV +
Precisely. The changes are clearly quite major, but they seem to have been both extremely costly and to have achieved little of military value. Perhaps more will happen in the future that justifies the expenditure - we shall see.
PapaGolf wrote:During the Falklands war the Royal Navy assembled an armada of small ships to operate in "admin" roles
The Castles and Heclas were used in totally non-combat missions in the Falklands (despatch and casualty transport, respectively), where they were kept well out of harm's way (the Hecla's were painted in Red Cross livery). The trawlers weren't chosen at random either. They were 1400 tonne deep-sea trawlers with 7600nm range, earmarked and kept in readiness for conversion to minesweepers under a cold-war plan for sweeping the North Sea of Russian mines. They were not intended to operate in an active war zone as the expectation was that the Argentinians would have surrendered by the time that they arrived (oops!). They proved useful as (expendable) utility transports (and you can launch a SF Gemini down the net chute, apparently!), but did very little minesweeping prior to the Argentine surrender, as it was simply too risky.
Digger22 wrote:When does an OPV Become a Frigate, light or otherwise?
Arguably, if you build an OPV to full military standards, it becomes a corvette. And the RN doesn't do corvettes (which may be a mistake when you have so few hulls)
Digger22 wrote:an OPV Will always be just that by definition
Agreed
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill