Current & Future Escorts - General Discussion

[seaspear]

In the discussion of future escorts there seems little consideration of present weapon systems being developed e.g LRASM , laser type weapons and the requirement of extra power generation for their usage, if you cant keep up with development the ships may be redundant before float out

[donald_of_tokyo]

Laser shall be handled with care.
- The USN officer said it still needs more time.
- Laser to "kill" something will need large power (sensor-kill will be a bit easy).
- Also, as we see in many weapons historically, it will grow up very fast (much more power).
- It also needs good laser-generator system with very good optics.
In short, it shall be very very expensive. I do NOT think RN can buy them in number.

So, preparing for laser is good, but it shall be modest (maybe only aiming sensor-kill in T31). For example, I think making the propulsion system including "E" will be enough. For example, Khareef is CODOE propulsion (which is among the cheapest in life-cycle-cost, from the MTU doc). (I think the first vessel to get "kill" laser will be CVF. It has plenty of power and space, and it is HVU. )

For LRASM, you only need to "be able to carry Harpoon", which is anyway "must" in view of export. Not that difficult, I guess.

[seaspear]

Direct energy weapons certainly are not ready to deploy meaningfully , but the ship would need to be designed to be able to generate the extra power when they are ready ,the Daring class would not be expected to be able to deploy them even if they were ready next week

[Ron5]

With the extra generating power that will be available when the new diesel gensets are installed, that might not be true!!

[donald_of_tokyo]

All, you also need a good "power storage", which is one of the 2 key items in laser (the other is the laser+optics itself). With IEP, you just need to "slow down" the propulsion to charge the "storage", so it is not that difficult I guess. For smaller vessels, I am not sure... But anyway my concern is total cost/weight/size (including gen and store), and its difficulty in predictivity, i.e. how large it will be...

[ArmChairCivvy]

weight/size (including gen and store)

The cost argument will certainly be key, but for these two other POVs consider that unlike traditional weapons/ sensors that are pretty much topmost of all different ship's structures, these weighty and bulky components of laser weapons can be put deep down in the hulls?

[Dahedd]

Not sure about the T45 not getting future energy weapons. Any pictures I've seen of the Phalanx with Dragon Fire upgrade seem to be sat on the deck of a T45.

[LordJim]

For God's sake, the T-45 will be out of service before meaningful Direct Energy Weapons are available.

[seaspear]

In an interview last year Rear Admiral Manazir of the U.S.N stated they would be introducing directed energy weapons between now and 2020 ,the U.S.S. Ponce then deployed in the gulf had a thirty kilowatt device on which he describes as "working very well" the costs of using these weapons is of course significantly cheaper than missiles .

[Defiance]

Meaningful depends entirely on what you intend to do with it.

[LordJim]

Interesting to fee what this Death Ray aboard the USS Ponce actually did or was for. Does it act as a CIWS, engage small hostile craft or can it shoot down a cruise missile going Mach 2 at 30 miles? How often can it fire? How much or the ships energy management is taken up by feeding this device? I cannot see how a fully operational and effective Directed Energy Weapon can be mature enough for active deployment by 2020. Sure maybe a device that fulfils a very specific role but limited to that. Sure you can give the crew of a motor boat severe Sun Bun, but is that cheaper then a few dozen 7.62 rounds? I think the USN is really jumping the gun here, in a similar way the services pronounced any number of capabilities during the Star Wars programme. WE should have had a fully functional missile shield based on the ground, in the air and in space by now according to their forecasts back then.

[ArmChairCivvy]

How much or the ships energy management is taken up by feeding this device?

The future provision is for 20x the power (I am not saying they are planning to have one, but clearly are provisioning for it in speccing the FFG-X):
"intriguing detail is the instruction that all designs must reserve 26 tons of weight and 600 kilowatts of electrical power “for future Directed Energy and Active EA.” EA means electronic attack, i.e. jamming enemy radios and radars, a vital military specialty in which the US has lost ground compared to Russia and China. “Directed energy” means high-powered microwaves and lasers. The Navy has been keenly interested in defensive lasers, putting one on the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf to shoot down drones — but that’s only a 30-kilowatt weapon: the future frigate could fire a far more powerful laser."

How often can one fire? Well, someone can now calculate as most of the weight[bolded] must be for energy storage and the genertion of electricity is not much changed, if at all.

[Ron5]

Interesting to fee what this Death Ray aboard the USS Ponce actually did or was for. Does it act as a CIWS, engage small hostile craft or can it shoot down a cruise missile going Mach 2 at 30 miles? How often can it fire? How much or the ships energy management is taken up by feeding this device? I cannot see how a fully operational and effective Directed Energy Weapon can be mature enough for active deployment by 2020. Sure maybe a device that fulfils a very specific role but limited to that. Sure you can give the crew of a motor boat severe Sun Bun, but is that cheaper then a few dozen 7.62 rounds? I think the USN is really jumping the gun here, in a similar way the services pronounced any number of capabilities during the Star Wars programme. WE should have had a fully functional missile shield based on the ground, in the air and in space by now according to their forecasts back then.

What use is a baby?

[Ron5]

For God's sake, the T-45 will be out of service before meaningful Direct Energy Weapons are available.

FWIW: when announcing the contract for Dragonfire, the MoD estimated mid-2020's for an in service weapon.

[ArmChairCivvy]

for Dragonfire, the MoD estimated mid-2020's

but was beaten for the IOC by a name sake by a decade:
" (MoD) has awarded a four year contract to the UK-based survival equipment specialists, BCB International Ltd, for the supply of a new operational ration cooker and fuel."
- BCB’s ‘FireDragon’ fuel is consumed at a rate of about 3/4 million packs per year

[donald_of_tokyo]

One comment and one question.

- 600kW is small. River's main propulsion is 14MW. I think Khareef's CODOE, the "E" part, can easily handle it.
- 30kW laser needs how many power to input? = how efficient it is? I am not sure a requirement for 600kW gen directly means 20 times powerful laser than the 30kW one.

Do anybody know the actual number/estimation?

[ArmChairCivvy]

Let's pull some orders of magnitude from sub-sea applications:

" The
1.2MWh Lithium-ion battery, one of the world’s largest,
provides high energy storage for the Advanced SEAL
Delivery System (ASDS), and high power batteries have
been supplied to power electric torpedoes. Continuing
research and development efforts have been focused on
establishing the Next Generation chemistries and
designs to support further in
creases in capability. High
Energy systems have been
developed that deliver
>210Wh/kg at the cell level. High Power cells are
supporting 15C continuous discharge rates and
delivering >8000W/kg."

[Ron5]

If you assume a weapon would need at least 200KW and it's efficiency 15% (both realistic numbers I think), you would need 1.3 MW to sustain fire. Seeing that it's not possible to generate an additional MW in an instant, you'd also need enough power stored to fire for say a minute or two.

Then of course, you'd need to get rid of 1.1 MW of shipboard heat, produced as a side effect. Non-trivial exercise.

If these numbers depress you, calculating power requirements for rail guns will push you over the edge.

[LordJim]

Well we could just get a very large extension cable and run it out form the nearest friendly power station.

[abc123]

How about this future Japanese XASM-3 as replacement for Harpoons?

https://navyrecognition.com/images/stor ... apan_8.jpg

http://navyrecognition.com/index.php/ne ... aunch.html

https://navyrecognition.com/index.php/n ... arget.html

Mach 3, ramjet, 150+ km range, what's there not to like?

[ArmChairCivvy]

Mach 3, ramjet, 150+ km range, what's there not to like?

Old hat; I am sure you would like this better
Engine Scramjet
Operational range
290 km (180 mi)
Speed Mach 7 (8,575 km/h; 5,328 mph; 2,382.0 m/s)
Launch platform
Ship, submarine, aircraft and land-based mobile launcher

[cky7]

If ASMs like that become a reality the likes of the excellent aster will surely become redundant. How will we defend against such threats? Not convinced by laser yet (conversation above), I'm guessing countermeasures and EW?

[abc123]

Mach 3, ramjet, 150+ km range, what's there not to like?

Old hat; I am sure you would like this better
Engine Scramjet
Operational range
290 km (180 mi)
Speed Mach 7 (8,575 km/h; 5,328 mph; 2,382.0 m/s)
Launch platform
Ship, submarine, aircraft and land-based mobile launcher

Better to have XASM-3 in hand than a pigeon on the roof 10+ years from now...

[Spinflight]

It isn't all about warhead, range and speed.

How are they targeted, how well can they discriminate, how resistant to ew and ecm etc.

There is no way, from open source material, to judge.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

[ArmChairCivvy]

a pigeon on the roof 10+ years from now...

could turn out to be a hawk, and rather sooner.

Ainonline normally does proofing of the stuff they publish, so here goes:

"Amid growing concern in the West about the vulnerability of large warships to very fast sea-skimming missiles, Russian news agencies have reported a successful firing test of the long-range hypersonic Zircon weapon. [...]. With Russian help, India is developing a hypersonic Brahmos II version, which could be based on the Zircon."