Royal Navy

[cabeça de martelo]

[Fab-Wan]

https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/more-d ... te-emerge/

Parace que a RN vai de Bofors 40mm tbm...

[cabeça de martelo]

Era uma excelente Fragata para a Marinha Portuguesa e Brasileira, desde que com outros sistemas e armamento.

[FCarvalho]

Se estes navios custarem mesmo as 250 milhões de libras que dizem vão custar, são realmente uma boa solução para MB e marinha portuguesa.
Agora é esperar para ver se eles se provam a que vieram, tal como na propaganda.

abs

[P44]

Daqui a 50 anos a marinha portuguesa compra

[FCarvalho]

Conhecendo os laços que a MB nutre com a RN não ficaria admirado se a partir de 2030 esses navios aparecerem por aqui.
Claro, se os custos permanecerem mais ou menos os mesmos.

abs

[LM]

Faz-me confusão a diferença de custo (e dizerem que são mais apropriadas para "constabulary operations rather than high-end offensive warfare") face às Type 26, mesmo considerando os canhões e a menor capacidade de Sea Ceptor (e não ter Mk 41 VLS)... mas talvez as diferenças sejam muito mais consideráveis e "grão a grão...".

[Túlio]

Daqui a 50 anos a marinha portuguesa compra

Ei, sem concorrência predatória para com as colómnias, que nós chegamos primeiro à feira. Até lá já vão estar a descarregaire algumas FREMM mesmo, fiquem com elas, POWS!!!

[P44]

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[P44]

https://www.facebook.com/188183478204/p ... 5/?app=fbl

[P44]

[P44]

[cabeça de martelo]

UK’s naval balancing act: getting the Type-31 frigate right
The new Type-31 frigate could help the Royal Navy rebuild its warship numbers, but it will still be a difficult balancing act between capability and cost, writes Nick Childs. Can the design meet its other goal of finding an export market?



On 12 September, the United Kingdom government confirmed that it had selected the Babcock-led consortium with its Arrowhead 140 design as the preferred bidder to build the Royal Navy’s new Type-31 general-purpose frigate. But, in some ways, the story really starts now, as Babcock will face a tight timeline and an even tighter price-cap per ship to deliver what the navy wants. Arguments are also likely to continue over whether the navy itself has got the balance right between affordability and capability in its Type-31 concept.

The Arrowhead 140, based on the Danish Navy’s Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate, was significantly bigger at some 6,000-tonnes displacement than the other two contenders. The aim is to finalise a contract by the end of 2019, cut steel for the first time in 2021 and have a first ship ‘in the water’ by 2023 – about the time the first of the ageing Type-23 frigates is due to decommission.

There have been hints that the original overall budget ceiling of £1.25 billion (US$1.62bn) for five ships has been loosened slightly. But those connected with the programme still insist that the aim is for the ‘average production cost’ for each ship to be £250 million (US$324m).

Frigate or corvette?

The genus of the Type-31 programme was the UK’s 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), when it was concluded that the Royal Navy would not be able to afford enough of the planned high-end Type-26 frigates to replace the 13 Type-23s on a one-for-one basis. The idea was for a more affordable, and potentially exportable, general-purpose design. The Type-31 would fulfil the navy’s requirement for lower-end forward presence and patrolling missions, leaving a smaller number of the Type-26s to concentrate on carrier task-force missions and supporting and protecting the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

The tension between capability and quantity is an enduring and universal one. In recent decades, the Royal Navy leadership has focused very much on maintaining a high-end force. The 2015 SDSR was essentially an enforced shift in that approach.

Since then, the argument has continued over whether the Type-31s will be real frigates or ‘glorified corvettes’. The French Navy, facing the same dilemma of not being to afford all of the FREMM frigates it originally wanted, has also opted for a new medium design: the Frégate de taille intermédiaire (FTI). However, it has struck a different balance. The FTI budget is essentially double that of the Type-31, but for the same number of hulls.

Royal Navy officers insist that the Type-31s will be proper frigates ‘fit for purpose’. Those connected with the programme remain tight-lipped on what the weapons fit will be, but the prevailing suggestion is that it will comprise a single 57 mm medium gun and two single 40 mm guns, as well as up to 24 MBDA Sea Ceptor local-area air-defence missiles.

Such a range of capabilities would certainly suit the vessel regarding the kind of maritime-security threats it is designed to address, including those akin to recent challenges in and around the Strait of Hormuz. The gun armament in particular appears well-chosen in terms of countering swarming fast inshore attack-craft threat, as potentially does Sea Ceptor against such craft and any short-range anti-ship-missile threat they might pose. But the vessels look potentially very lightly armed for their size.

The glaring apparent omission is an anti-ship-missile capability, just at a time when such weapons are proliferating in regions where Type-31s could be forward based. Indeed, the first of the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships to be fitted with Naval Strike Missiles has just deployed.

Room for growth

The Royal Navy has just issued a requirement for an interim surface-to-surface weapon to fill a capability gap until the arrival of the Anglo-French Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon in the 2030s. Either could find its way onto the Type-31.

Clearly, the navy was attracted by the relatively large size of the Arrowhead 140 design because it provides space for future weapons growth and the ability to carry a significant embarked combat force, although similar ‘spiral development’ ambitions for the Type-45s have so far borne little fruit due to a lack of funding. The Type-31 design also has a large flight deck and hangar, plus flexible mission bays amidships (for boats) and below the flight deck. Significantly, these appear to make the Arrowhead 140 suited to hosting future remote systems; this may in the end be the key to the ship’s future capability potential. The Royal Navy has significant ambitions in remote systems, but again will need to balance priorities and funding between capabilities and platform numbers.

Of course, the Type-31 is also meant to be exportable, as a way of sustaining and even re-growing the UK’s shipbuilding capacity, and Babcock emphasises the modularity and adaptability of the Arrowhead design. The international frigate market is certainly vibrant, not least in the Indo-Pacific region, but while the Pacific is a big ocean, what the appetite for a 6,000-tonne design with global endurance might be is another matter. Furthermore, the kinds of states that might be in the market for frigates of this scale are those who would most likely want to build the ships themselves.

The other potential growth area, and opportunity for UK shipbuilding, is in Royal Navy destroyer and frigate numbers. That ambition was explicitly stated from the outset in the SDSR. However, unless something changes, there seems little chance of hull numbers (currently standing at 19) increasing until the late 2020s. They may even dip lower before that. Nevertheless, there is a possibility – and indeed the ambition – to continue building beyond five Type-31 hulls, perhaps with a force goal of, say, 25 destroyers and frigates in total sometime in 2030s. But that really would require a careful balancing of priorities and budgets.

https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military-bal ... -programme

[Frederico Vitor]

"Rule, Britannia!"