UK Defence Forum

As said a nice idea and good to see the thinking is going the right way maybe 4 or so of these could take over TAPS freeing up a pair of type 26's and with that range could deploy straight from Faslane

First Sea Lord says the RN is getting 30m UUV with 3,000 km range. So little faith. Go stand in the corner with Jim..

And the Chief of the Air Staff still states the RAF is to get 130+ F-35s. Until a production contract is signed and the purchase fully funded all the faith in the world means very little. It maybe more accurate to say the RN aspires to putting an number 30m UUVs with a 3000km range into service. Or is he willing to say scrap the Albions to find the necessary funding.

Lord Jim wrote:Or is he willing to say scrap the Albions to find the necessary funding.

Or the T31e programme. Scrapping the Albions (which are amongst the most flexible ships in the fleet) is madness. Complete blue sky, but illustrates a point - what if the Albions were modified to have a permanent hangar for 3-4 ASW Merlins, the deck cranes removed and the well deck adapted to host 4 ASW XUUVs, plus another 4 smaller ASW UUVs. Could be one of the strongest (global) ASW platforms there is.

Lord Jim wrote:And the Chief of the Air Staff still states the RAF is to get 130+ F-35s. Until a production contract is signed and the purchase fully funded all the faith in the world means very little. It maybe more accurate to say the RN aspires to putting an number 30m UUVs with a 3000km range into service. Or is he willing to say scrap the Albions to find the necessary funding.

Pulling pessimism out of your ass isn't particularly clever or original.

By the way, it's not the Chief of the Air Staff that says 138 F-35's, it's official UK government policy.

Repulse wrote:

Lord Jim wrote:Or is he willing to say scrap the Albions to find the necessary funding.

Or the T31e programme. Scrapping the Albions (which are amongst the most flexible ships in the fleet) is madness. Complete blue sky, but illustrates a point - what if the Albions were modified to have a permanent hangar for 3-4 ASW Merlins, the deck cranes removed and the well deck adapted to host 4 ASW XUUVs, plus another 4 smaller ASW UUVs. Could be one of the strongest (global) ASW platforms there is.

That escalated quickly

Lord Jim wrote:I wouldn't call it Major news at the moment. Yes a £1m contract has been let but that is barely seed money. For anything to actually be delivered is going to cost substantially more and we already know how many MoD procurement programmes have zero funding even though that are listed as being a priority. Nowadays until a full production contract is let and funded, nothing is anything more than a good idea with possibilities.

Yeeeep. 1 m. will buy just about that nice picture we have allready seen.
30 m long, that's say 1/3 of Astute. So let's say 1/3 of the cost, and the cost is 1,4-1,5 bln. pounds. Ok, unmanned and conventional propulsion, so let's cut 1/3 of that. OTOH, it needs sensors and weapons same like any other sub, so let's add that 1/3 back plus...
A very crude calculus, I agree, but I wanted to show what 1 m will buy.

All that under assumption that the basic idea of unmanned sub works at all, and that's a big assumption, at least IMHO.

HMS Albion acting as a USV mothership

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-l ... sts-arctic

Repulse wrote:HMS Albion acting as a USV mothership

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-l ... sts-arctic

Interesting.

One thing that caught my eye was "remotely-piloted air system Puma". It looks like the RN has quietly kept on with it's trials after dropping the ScanEagle. It's even been trialled off a River OPV
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-l ... 00205-puma
In one of the images, it looks like they may be using it off the aft deck of a BF cutter

Caribbean wrote:In one of the images, it looks like they may be using it off the aft deck of a BF cutter

The picture was taken on a Falmouth based Air support craft on which the first set of sea trials were conducted.

That XLUUV maybe 30 feet, rather than metres...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/25m- ... evelopment

do we think a 10 meter unit can conducted a 3000 nautical mile deployment

Tempest414 wrote:do we think a 10 meter unit can conducted a 3000 nautical mile deployment

It gets weirder.

They've added this to their site in the last couple of days:

https://msubs.com/unmanned-submersibles/xluuv/

Named the XLUUV/Manta/201 it measures 8.9m and it claims a top speed of 12kts submerged. In one photo there is a cargo bay and the below shows seating for four passengers:



Either something's confused (they also show their 25m Moray) or this XLUUV is modular and quite impressive for the size. The manned 201 looks like the ultimate boy's toy:



Would the boat davits on the Type 26/31 be capable of lifting nine tonnes of mini sub?

The T26 Mission Bay Handling System is supposedly able to handle up to 15 tonnes.

https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/the-ty ... velopment/

As a side note both the River B1 and B2 have the space and cranes that can lift 16 tons plus so if we take the base line there of 10 meters long 8.9 tons and 48 hours submerged means a B2 river can carry 2 one on each waist point and a B1 River could carry 1 on its working deck and as said before the space under the working deck on a B1 ( which at this time is a gym) could be a ops room

More details on the UUV contract in Janes. Confirms that it's the 9m S201 (or a variant thereof) that will be leased, initially for 12 months, for trials, with a possible two-year extension. Presumably they will be trying to squeeze as much range , speed and endurance out of it as they can.

https://www.janes.com/article/94753/uk- ... -for-msubs

Tempest414 wrote:As a side note both the River B1 and B2 have the space and cranes that can lift 16 tons plus so if we take the base line there of 10 meters long 8.9 tons and 48 hours submerged means a B2 river can carry 2 one on each waist point and a B1 River could carry 1 on its working deck and as said before the space under the working deck on a B1 ( which at this time is a gym) could be a ops room

Good point and having a number of assets capable of operating these types of kit is a game changer.

It is clear that having a range of armed and reconnaissance UAVs/USVs/UUVs is fast becoming as if not more important than traditional numbers of warships (or platforms to operate from). The Platform (in addition to supporting assets) dictate the threat level / period that can be operated in.

Is it just me or is it just a shame the RN missed the opportunity to implement the MHPC concept. A unified AAW & ASW platform (perhaps an evolved T26) and Venator style MHPC sloop (rather than the current T31 and replacing the OPVs, MCMs and Echos) combination would have given affordable scale across threat levels.

Repulse wrote:It is clear that having a range of armed and reconnaissance UAVs/USVs/UUVs is fast becoming as if not more important than traditional numbers of warships (or platforms to operate from). The Platform (in addition to supporting assets) dictate the threat level / period that can be operated in.

Who would of thunk it......

What have we lost?
Do this (aft), http://www.navyrecognition.com/images/s ... avy_10.jpg
stick the T26 mission bay in the middle, and you still have loads of aviation* and locations for defensive weapons

~~~~~~~~
* or use also that deck (with a deck crane)

It’s platforms like this and other unmanned systems that make me think Absalon would of been a better choice for T31 than IH

ArmChairCivvy wrote:What have we lost?
Do this (aft), http://www.navyrecognition.com/images/s ... avy_10.jpg
stick the T26 mission bay in the middle, and you still have loads of aviation* and locations for defensive weapons

~~~~~~~~
* or use also that deck (with a deck crane)

Probably £100mn per unit cost, before adding a T26 mission bay. Don’t get me wrong, the T31 could become a high end MHPC, but currently with its traditional boat bays and focus on “being a Frigate” it’s not the direction of discussion nor is it the most suitable design.

SW1 wrote:Who would of thunk it......

True, but it needs to be at the front of mind when choosing platform designs - feels like we forgot it when choosing the T31 design and discussing the option to remove LPDs.

Repulse wrote:

ArmChairCivvy wrote:What have we lost?
Do this (aft), http://www.navyrecognition.com/images/s ... avy_10.jpg
stick the T26 mission bay in the middle, and you still have loads of aviation* and locations for defensive weapons

~~~~~~~~
* or use also that deck (with a deck crane)

Probably £100mn per unit cost, before adding a T26 mission bay. Don’t get me wrong, the T31 could become a high end MHPC, but currently with its traditional boat bays and focus on “being a Frigate” it’s not the direction of discussion nor is it the most suitable design.

Repulse wrote:

SW1 wrote:Who would of thunk it......

True, but it needs to be at the front of mind when choosing platform designs - feels like we forgot it when choosing the T31 design and discussing the option to remove LPDs.

This is why Absalon would of been a better choice they could still of claimed them as “frigates” while being much for flexible foe unmanned systems.

Well we had a long long discuss quite a while ago about how how you could re role the bays and Albions to a fwd deployed presence vessel using them as motherships to patrol craft, helicopters and unmanned systems. The bays have to an extent been doing this in the Caribbean and gulf as has fort Victoria in the India ocean. The bmt Ellda concept made sense in this context. Now we see an experiment with Albion.

Would of course mean reducing traditional frigate numbers, marine numbers, mcm vessels to invest in the payload systems because in a finite budget choices have to be made, there was as per usual outrage because we only talk about change provided nothing changes.

Caribbean wrote:More details on the UUV contract in Janes. Confirms that it's the 9m S201 (or a variant thereof) that will be leased, initially for 12 months, for trials, with a possible two-year extension. Presumably they will be trying to squeeze as much range , speed and endurance out of it as they can.

https://www.janes.com/article/94753/uk- ... -for-msubs

Quite reasonable judging from 1M GBP budget.

Interesting is, RN is aiming at 30m-long 3000nm range version, rather than the small one. It is intended to deploy in singleton, not using surface vessels. Reasonable if with 3000nm range. It can be used as TAPS of combined with P-8A. It can be used like cold-war SURTASS ships or SOSUS sonar system.

This kind of UUV is much more reasonable to be used in RN than any kind of SSK. Imagine 6 such systems in rotation, 2 always on-station. One used as active pinger (with passive detection, as well), and the other used as passive sneaker. Or both as active pingers with one SSN sneaking there with passive mode.

Anyway, test and try using small asset is very critical. So this step is very reasonable.