Possibly more effective to put on a public display of support by moving ground troops to Guyana by air (not neccessarily British - there are other regional Commonwealth countries, like Jamaica, who could contribute). There are British forces in Belize & US Marines in a number of Central American...

The costs of building OPVs is not comparable with building credible Frigates. Some years ago I tried to figure out approximate costs for building OPVs vs frigates by looking at as many published costs as I could find My rough estimate was around £26,000 per tonne for a basic OPV and £66,000 per ton...

I think my personal idea of a balanced fleet would be more like 18 Carrier escorts 8 x AAW Destroyers 10 x ASW Frigates 6 General escorts 6 x GP frigates for higher-threat patrol areas, or general escort duties 10 Offshore Patrol 5 x larger Offshore Patrol Ships (outside reach of shore-based UK heli...

If we are going to build a new class of small vessels then as a minimum and benchmark they would need to have all the capabilities that the Dutch Holland class has for the roles we need them to undertake. Anything less than that is simply wasting our time. The Hollands replaced 4 Karel Doorman frig...

Poiuytrewq wrote: ↑17 Nov 2023, 11:48 Impressive.

Now it needs to do it again fully loaded and at night to confirm but a 200m LPH looks like more than enough to handle that.

As expected the game just changed.

Possibly less, if a lightweight catapult/ arrestor gear was installed as has been hinted at.

The simplest option would be to license another VARD design (using the the VARD 7/100 as an example), just like the Irish did. I based my costs on the Irish vessels, upgraded for additional displacement & complexity plus an additional percentage for inflation. BAM? Apples & oranges comparison.

new guy wrote: ↑16 Nov 2023, 19:19 I think with RB2 at commercial standards, it only has 3 bulkheads, compared to 9-10 for a similarly lengthed escort?

I believe it's based on length. Under 100m, only 3 zones are required. Over 100m, one waterproof bulkhead every 6m (20ft)

Batch 2s were only "£130m each" (actually more than that, I think) because of TOBA
The Irish OPVs built at Appledore were EUR 71.9m each. A River B3 would probably be around 2500t and £90-95m, allowing for recent inflation

Pte. James Frazer wrote: ↑14 Nov 2023, 09:56 The Army has procured this for the moment:

https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events ... %20weapons.

225? What's that? One per platoon?

SW1 wrote: ↑13 Nov 2023, 21:10 Do we think countering cheap commercial drones is going to be the preserve of specialist units?

I have a feeling it will need to be much more ubiquitous than that.

This is where systems like the 30mm Venom could come into their own. Relatively cheap & mountable on pretty much any vehicle

Where could AI make a difference to ASW? I think the answer to that lies in the fact that we aren't actually seeing anything that exhibits genuine AI yet. What we see today really falls under the mantle of Machine Learning, which itself is just advanced pattern recognition, using massive libraries o...

What about this: https://aei-systems.com/venom_lr_30mm_gun/ The Venom is probably better suited to light vehicles, as a drop-in replacment for 12.7mm, where more firepower is needed For heavier vehicles, I think full-fat 30 x 173 would be more desirable (and could also be mounted in a RWS) My perso...

I don't think they removed the towed array to save topweight, more likely to save money, along with all the other ASW "detuning"

To support 4 carriers then 4 to,support 2 carriers and ended at 1 a lesson there. The lesson being that we didn't have enough money for 4 large carriers Apologies - tried to edit my original post to include this, but too slow Each deployed carrier would have had 4 T82 as outer defence & 4 T12i ...

SW1 wrote: ↑08 Nov 2023, 21:11 When type 82 was to be built to support the cva-01 carriers it was to be a class of 4 vessels, why would that change now.

It was originally a class of 8

Each deployed carrier would have had 4 T82 as outer defence & 4 T12i Leander as the inner defence (all ASW capable)

Good photo - easy to see the similarities with Commander SL that was one of the systems that it was based on

Re: the clock sync issue - I phrased that poorly, the issue was the software clock drifting out of sync with the real-time (hardware) clock. Not by much, but sufficient for the software to miscalculate trajectories & intercept points by as much as many metres. The issue only became apparent (IIR...

That happened with a Patriot during the Gulf War. Fired too late & it tracked the incoming Scud into the ground was the official line IIRC. They were having problems with the real-time clock drifting out of sync as well, which was causing problems with calculating the optimum intercept point acc...

How about this? The Osumi class/ enlarged San Giorgio is very much what I was thinking of. A hull of approx. 160m x 25m & displacement in region of 12,000/14,000t light Add a Merlin capable lift (deck edge?) from flight deck to a shared hangar/ vehicle deck and a steel beach to allow large LCAC...

as ( A there is no budget for MRSS ) and ( B No clear design rote ) There are, however, uncommitted funds of around £0.8-1.2b in future years, on which a certain amount of speculation can be based. Until the requirements have been framed, neither of those will happen. So, let's not get ahead of our...

1 Escort @ £900m every 18 months approx £600m pa (£c.£33.3m/month) 1 large ship @ £600m every 24 months approx. £300m pa (c. £25m/month) 1 minor vessel @ £150m every 6 months approx. £300m pa (would also allow for 1 tier 2 escort at £450m every 18 months). c. £25m/month Edit: Over a 24-year cycle th...

I think ORYX stopped because he needed to "get a life" - there was just too much work involved. He regularly asked people NOT to send him money & donated anything he was sent to Ukrainian causes. I think several others have now stepped in to help, but they work to a slower tempo. As yo...

T32 is just a placeholder for "more ships". I think most of us understand that and are speculating what form they could take, at what cost and is there any benefit to yet another class of frigate. The basis of my comment (not particularly original, I admit) was simply to build more of the ...

If you removed the word frigate and said long term escort force you would have it about right add 6 vessels for the mcm role you would satisfy the c3 requirement too. Yes - I agree - I should have said "escorts". Maybe with a longer term increase from 6 to 8 DD (probably at the cost of re...

It doesn't free up any budget because the Type 32 has literally never had a budget. Absolutely nothing. Hmmm. Not sure my question warranted a snarky reply.. You might note the use of the phrase "If there were" (i.e positing a potential case, that does not currently exist) & "est...