With 6 T31s, it has been estimated 2 could be forwarded based (one in the Gulf and one in South Atlantic), 1 available for FRE duties, and 1 available 50% of the time for Caribbean duties. This assumes major refits occur in the UK around once every 6 years for each ship.Repulse wrote:Apologies a small off topic question: how many Frigates would it take to keep two forward based deployments going? Assuming a 3yr forward deployment and 18 months tranversing to and from the U.K. and a refit - I’d see the minimum as 3 ships.
Of course just because a ship is forward based, does not mean it is 100% available during this period. It just means the normal periods of unavailability (maintenance, training) will occur while the ship is in its forward base.
People are confusing 'forward based' as being the same as deployed on a operation. It is not. It alters the ships pattern of working a lot.
Typically a ship would go through a long period of low readiness/refit, followed by a long period of work-up and training, before being deployed operationally for a long period (6 - 9 months).
For forward based ships, they will have many short periods of operations,and many short periods of maintenance and training, all while at their forward base.