I was reading Bayou Renaissance Man's Blog and Peter made a statement that stopped me in my tracks....
I like the Israeli approach, which crams lots of hitting power into even small hulls (see, for example, its Sa'ar 5 class corvettes, which as far as I know are the most heavily armed ships of their size [just over 1,000 tons] anywhere in the world, and on an armament-per-ton or tons-per-weapon basis might be the most heavily armed warships since the age of the dreadnought).The Sa'ar 5 is the most heavily armed vessel pound for pound in the world? Being the skeptic that I am I immediately started looking for ships that are as small but have even more firepower.
I couldn't find one.
More disturbing I found a whole host of larger ships that had less firepower...I'm talking about Frigates and Destroyers from high tech nations.
The LCS is an abomination. Want our allies and potential enemies to sit up and take notice? Dump the LCS and build Sa'ar 5 with US weapons.
Sidenote: Check out this weapons load for a 1000 ton ship....via Wikipedia...
| Armament: |
Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I'd replace LCS with the Sa'ar 5. The latter is designed for Mediterranean environments, where seakeeping in very rough weather is seldom an issue, as is long range, co-operation with other warships in something like a carrier task group, etc.
Instead, if I were designing the next US Navy escort and wanted it to be as economical as possible while remaining effective, I'd look at the Sa'ar 5 as an excellent example of how to pack the maximum possible punch into every cubic inch of space. I'd also look at some of the new Russian designs, like their Steregushchy class corvette or its latest incarnation, the Gremyashchy class corvette, both of which are twice the size of the Israeli Sa'ar 5 with better seakeeping (but not as heavy a weapon load, pound for pound).
I'd then apply those lessons to a hull big enough to carry the fuel, supplies and crew required for all the US Navy's operational commitments, particularly the Pacific with its vast distances. I'd probably end up with something not much smaller than an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate, but with twice the armament. (That would be helped by the fact that modern weapons have gotten much 'smarter' and, at the same time, smaller compared to their Cold War counterparts.) I think it should be entirely possible to produce an escort with two to three times the firepower of a Sa'ar 5 corvette, plus three to four times its operating endurance. I note, too, that the Sa'ar 5 does not have a cannon at all - only a Phalanx close-in weapons system for defense against incoming missiles. Israel doesn't have a huge need for naval bombardment of shore installations. I daresay a serious cannon on an escort vessel isn't truly necessary, although I'd prefer to see a larger CIWS in the 30mm. range (or perhaps something combined with missiles, like the Russian Kashtan system.
However, given the almost armament-free abomination that is the LCS, I daresay my ideas are nothing but pipe-dreams . . .
:-(
thats pretty darn interesting. what you're proposing would probably tip the scales at around 4 or 4.5k tons. would have great endurance and could stay in the fight. additionally i missed the lack of cannon but with the advances we're seeing in the field, especially with electromagnetc cannons coming soon, we can't leave that out.
Deletegreat ideas but i would bet that surface navy doesn't have the courage to admit the mistake with the LCS so changing course will be hard until you can acknowledge the reality of the situation.
Israel thought about a Sa'ar-5-II with 2.800 tons. That program stalled in 2003 and two special LCS were expected through US military aid. In 2009 Israel stoped the LCS and today Israel's Navy looks at two MEKO-100 ships.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedah-class_offshore_patrol_vessel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunschweig_class_corvette
This type of ships comes with a gun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otobreda_76_mm
I am actually amazed by the weapon stats of this ship, or should i say a Pimped out Boat.
ReplyDeleteWith those many Number of Anti-Air Missiles, i dare say any aircraft will think twice about making a run for any fleet protected with this boat. Especially when those missiles are aided with that much radar and processing power in the boat itself, let alone awacs and other surveilance assets.
ReplyDeleteVisby might pack more of a punch per pound ,its half the weight of the Sa'ar 5 ,Visby is still mising the vertical lauch SAM ,but that is up to the customer , i went trough the Visby brochures and was looking for Helicopter capability and its described as Visby can ither have a hangar for Augusta 109 below deck or fit vertical launch SAM tubes in the same space. Visby Export (650 tons) would have a top side hangar for helicopter.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand if you are looking for most firepower per pound ratio you should probably look at Hamina Class boats that are at 250 tons pack
1 × Bofors 57 mm/70 SAK Mk3
2 × 12.7 mm machine guns (NSV)
8 × Umkhonto-IR SAM (Denel)
4 × RBS-15 Mk3 SSM (Saab)
1 × rail for depth charges or mines (Sea Mine 2000)
The Hamina class are pretty well outfitted, and are very close to the Sa'ar 5 on a weapons-per-ton basis:
Delete- Hamina class patrol boats: 16 weapons/launchers, 250 tons = 15.625 tons per weapon.
- Sa'ar 5 class corvettes: 79 weapons/launchers, 1,227 tons at full load = 15.532 tons per weapon.
The Sa'ar 5 is ahead, but only by a whisker. However, it's not really fair to compare a missile boat to a corvette or frigate. The former are designed for short-endurance coastal missions, whereas the latter are ocean-going escorts. In missile boats the Israeli Sa'ar 4.5 class (specifically the later Hetz variant) is head and shoulders above everything else. It has 46 weapons/launchers, and displaces 488 tons at full load to give 10.61 tons per weapon. That's pretty amazing to pack so much firepower into so tiny a hull.
I do not quite understand why Sa'ar packs that many SAMs if you look at the rest for the more offensive firepower its in class of missle boat minus the gun. Plus Barak 1 is a short range Sam while Barak 8 is a much larger SAM so if the Barak1 is replaced by Barak 8 it will not be near 1:1 ratio more like 3-4:1 so much more likely to pack 15-20 Barak 8 ,plus where is an AESA radar to go with Barak 8
DeleteI think Israel must be thinking.....what if in a worst case scenario the Egyptian Air Force takes a seaward route to Israel. Then a flotilla of these light platforms (I say light caue they are light and i am sure economical to maintail in decen numbers) would be a great buffer zone extending out to the sea. Their Mobility and availability would really allow you to create choke points and shift them around. Thats one logic for the high number of SAMs there.
DeleteWhat about a frigate based on the designs and lessons from the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigate, Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate, Álvaro de Bazán-class frigate, Sachsen-class frigate and the FREMM multipurpose frigate. I would think the a US Navy frigate would have to have room to carry a 2 squad of Marines as well
ReplyDeleteThe Spanish Álvaro de Bazán-class are essentially miniature Burkes, with a price-tag of 1 billion USD.
DeleteWhat about the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigate, Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate and the FREMM multipurpose frigate
Delete6,500 tons, 9000nm, CODAD, 28kts with hangar space for 2 Sea Hawks.
ReplyDeleteSteve, the problem is that at that size, the ships would be too expensive to buy in the quantities we need. The new escort's got to be small enough to be affordable. Frankly, that may mean equipping it with at least some non-US weapons as well. For example, the Israeli Barak 8 (approx. 50 mile range, capable of intercepting aircraft, missiles and UAV's, even low-altitude ballistic missiles) costs $24 million for a complete system - an 8-cell missile launcher, fire control system, and installation. You couldn't buy any US equivalent system for even ten times that amount, so I wouldn't even try. However, US manufacturers would scream blue murder at losing orders to Israel, so that may not be politically possible . . .
DeleteIf you want a OHP replacement that's what you are looking at. LCS costs what $460 million per copy? The Danes built the Iver Huitfeldt for $332 million. Admittedly they had the hull built in Lithuania for lower labour costs. It would leave you $100 million for weapons and sensors. Now I admit that isn't much of a budget but it depends on what the US want from the ship; a gun, ESSM, a reasonable sonar. The only thing I suggested was changing the hanger arrangement as we all know the helicopter is king in littoral warfare. The IH has a crew of 101, 75 less than OHP. You need ships that work now, not high end concepts later. Cut the LCS buy and build some proper ships.
DeleteSteve, the Danish shipyard that build their Navy went bankrupt 3 years ago and hasn't produced s ship since.
DeleteAs for labor costs, there is NO WAY ANY Congressman would allow the USN to buy a ship built even partially in a foreign nation.
This means U.S. labor costs no matter what.
The ship will also have to handle both Atlantic and Pacific rough weather and carry at least 1 Sea-hawk helicopter.
The USN will also want a buttload of unnecessary high tech crap, but a locked set of requirements should stop that.
My dream frigates is as follows:
1 76mm gun
12 full size M.41 VLS cells, with 4 reserved for quad packed ESSMs, 4 for the Lockheed VLS ASM,and 4 for VLS ASROCs
trainable 3 tube torpedoes launchers on each side of the ship
1 or 2 Phalanx CIWS systems,
hull mounted sonar
1 Seahawk with hangar
CODAG propulsion, maximum speed of 28+ knots
and a displacement of no more than 4,500 tons, with a crew of no more than 175.
Oh, and the LCS buy is unlikely to be more than 24 ships, with a maximum of 32
I know the yard went out of business but I don't think the price was uncompetitive.
DeleteA crew of 175 really? What are you doing saving fuel by rowing?
A gas turbine and you want to save costs?
Trainable torpedoes? Anti-torpedo system would be a better buy.
Phalanx? Against the likes of BrahMos I don't think so.
Why do you need to fit Mk41, you have carriers and lots of submarines for strike, you have aircraft for area air defence. If you want ASROC fire it from boxes.
I can now see how you guys came up with the Zumwalt and LCS you have lost the plot.
I think will bow out here before you lot start specify fusion engines and phasers for a buck twenty.
well electromagnetic cannons and lasers are the wave of the future. the US Navy is already testing lasers at sea and we all saw the video of the cannon being fired.
Deleteonce those systems are ready,you're going to see a revolution at sea that will have greater impact than switching from sail to steam.
at the moment those systems come online then every anti-ship missile in the world becomes null and void. onshore bombardment from beyond the horizon and greater becomes real.
oh and amphibious assault by surface means become a helluva lot easier. what will take a kick in the ass with all this? aircraft! lasers big enough to knock down an airplane will immediately fry a pilot in his seat. that will be the end of the manned fighter....and the rise of the UCAV.
revolution is coming, just not in the way the planners of airpower are hoping.
It isn't the question that new technology is on its way. What LCS is about is delivering effects in the littoral. For the most part that is still about delivering HE and bullets. The trouble is that you naval planners didn't quite understand that a PGM shell delivered from 75nm out and helicopters in decent numbers are better than shoal draught fast multihulls. Scrapping a third of the LCS buy would allow the US to buy a sensible ship with one or even two 5in guns and two helicopters with a sensible sized crew.
Deleteyou first have to know the unauthorized history of the LCS.
Delete1. it came out of Rumsfeld's transformation. he sold the military on the idea that the war on terror would be generational. with that idea in mind he started pushing the services to develop eequipment that would be useful in that environment.
2. the Navy came up with its reason for being for the LCS to combat terrorist and Iranian small boat swarms. a high caliber cannon that was quick firing, a helicopter for general duties and finally room for SEALs or other troops with modules that would allow it to clear mines, be an anti-air asset. etc...
3. Obama came in and the war in terror is off. now its off to the Pacific and the LCS is having to shift missions again. in the light of operating in the Pacific and not in the Persian Gulf you find high speed, a lack of distance etc...are achilles heel and not a benefit.
4. now comes the new CNO. he's a payloads over platforms type guy. he wants ships that can switch out modules etc...the LCS does that, so it lives and continues to get Navy support. it doesn't matter that its not perfect to them because its the first of a wave of ships that will change how the Navy operates.
what screwed everything up is the fact that bloggers took notice and started saying a collective what the fuck. so did many in the surface navy.
Not really. The LCS origin goes back to the Streetfighter concept, which was designed from the start to fight in extremely high lethality littorals against peer, or near peer, opponents. In other words what we would now call an A2AD environment.
DeleteStreetfighter's concept of small, networked, expendable boats that could kill big boats and expensive submarines was anathema to the mainstream navy but in the modern pentagon the idea is always to build something, no matter what, so they took all of the missions that the "real" Navy didn't want and stuffed them into one hull: mine sweeping, littoral ASW, and fighting swarms of speedboats full of idiots. Then they added a bunch of buzzwords and lied about the costs to get the program past congress.
The LCS was designed more to be politically acceptable in the USN than anything else and all of the design decisions we bitch about make perfect sense when you look at it this way.
@steve and @David McSpadden
DeleteHave a look at these ships:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsen-class_frigate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn-class_frigate (very similar)
CODAG
Sachsen-class frigate:
- 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otobreda_76_mm
De Zeven Provinciën-class:
- 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otobreda_127/54_Compact
Sachsen-class frigate:
- 2 MLG27 CIWS
- 1 MK. 41 VLS with 32 cells
- 2 RAM launchers
- 2 Harpoon launchers
- 2 torpedo launchers
- 2 helicopters
draft: 6 m (19 ft 8 in)
Lad's I have something smaller and with also serious punch, Ambassador MK III Missile Boat.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing, first time I saw that boat here on main page and start searching it because it look cool.
Shas, a missile boat is not an escort. Consider:
Delete- It's far too small to handle the worst weather conditions on a long-term basis (I watched the South African Sa'ar 4 missile boats get hammered and deteriorate rapidly under the impact of Atlantic weather over only a few years).
- It doesn't have long range - it's basically a coastal or littoral patrol craft with short endurance.
- It doesn't have a large crew or long-range sensors or any real anti-submarine capability. It's a patrol platform with a significant one-off anti-ship capability.
- It doesn't carry enough supplies (let alone fuel) for extended patrols. It can be at sea for a week to ten days max before it needs to be back in harbor undergoing routine maintenance and resupply.
An escort's minimum size today would be in the corvette range (1,000 tons and upward). Most serious escorts are bigger than that - 1,800 tons minimum, rising to Arleigh Burke size for carrier group escorts. Trouble with the latter is, they're enormously capable, but most of the group's defensive eggs are in one or two baskets. Exhaust their missile magazines or take them out in a first, unexpected strike, and the carrier itself is toast.
For littoral combat, much of the escort's weaponry and sensors are not necessary: but in a budget-limited navy, no-one's yet been able to satisfactorily answer the question of how one affords a bunch of dedicated littoral assets AND a bunch of escorts. Effectively, we can't. That means we have to build a single hull that can handle both aspects of naval operations, and then have two 'flights' of it: one optimized for the escort role, and one for the littoral role. The latter can be assisted by ancillary vessels such as missile boats (as the US Navy is doing right now in the Gulf - see the Cyclone class patrol boats), hovercraft, helicopters, Marine aviation, etc., all of which can carry weapons suitable for that task. The escorts will have weaons and sensors that are less 'littoral' and more 'maritime'.
If the two 'flights' can be made modular, to enable rapid conversion from one mission to the other, that will be a bonus; but frankly I don't see that as being practicable under combat conditions. If I were, for example, China, one of my first strikes (by aircraft or missiles) would be on the facility where the mission modules were stored. When the ships came in to swap modules, they'd be looking at a heap of scrap metal. So much for modularity . . .
I still think something the size of an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate with greatly updated weapons fit is what's needed. Other designs have been mentioned by other commenters. If something smaller and cheaper than a Perry is dictated by budgetary realities, we could do a whole lot worse than consider the Russian Steregushchy or Gremyashchy class corvettes. I'm very impressed by their design (although not so much by their over-hyped weapons and systems). Take that basic hull size and design, put more capable weapons and sensors on it, and you'd have a very capable little warship indeed - the Sa'ar 5 on steroids, if you will. I'd surely hate to have to face a flotilla of them in a littoral environment, or to be a submarine trying to penetrate a screen of three or four of them, each with a capable helicopter.
All true, I know lad... I show Ambassador III as example of other ship with heavy armament per pound in the world.
DeleteSolomon_ "...More disturbing I found a whole host of larger ships that had less firepower...I'm talking about Frigates and Destroyers from high tech nations..."
ReplyDeleteWith that due respect sir. In my humble opinion compare a corvette with frigates and destroyers is like compare a submachinegun with carbines and assault rifles.
The key word here is "range":
Sa'ar 5
Barack 1 weigth 98 kg. range 12 km.
Barack 8 weigth 275 kg.
Euro Frigate or american destroyer
SM-2 707 kg. range 167 km.
SM-6 weight 15000 kg. range 240 km
Bayou Renaissance Man: "...and on an armament-per-ton or tons-per-weapon basis might be the most heavily armed warships since the age of the dreadnought)..."
I am going to be a little rude, I find very weird that someone can compare a cheap small ship with lots of small weapons with very expensive big ships with big weapons based on a "weapons-per-ton" idea.
Sorry forgot to ad the range of the Barak 8: 70 km
DeleteWhile there are good corvette and frigate designs, not all of those liste above are in the right ballpark. The USN can and should IMHO buy a good existing design, and modify it for use as the SSC baseline. That work would be done here and construction in a US shipyard (IOW do NOT assume a foreign design must be built foreign).
ReplyDeleteI believe most of the above is being considered by the SSC-TF. Using existing ship designs is a premise of the process. For more details, go read the SSC RFI at this link:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=4672fccc30bde30cb8c1cff475c95cf5&tab=core&_cview=1
i wondered when you would comment on this. quite honestly i expected fireworks. i'll give that badboy a read and see what gives.
Delete