Type 31 GPFF

The Australian Institute reported that delays to starting Hunter build have mainly centred around the additional top weight of the CEAFAR AESA various radar band antennas, though significantly superior to the old gen Artisan S-band radar of the Type 26. The Australian developed CEAFAR was specified as the RAN wanted a much better anti-air warfare capability for its prime ASW ship, the additional topweight led to the beam having to be increased by 0.6m over the Type 26 plus a major increase in cooling capacity and crew numbers etc., even small changes to the dimensions of a ship involve significant recalculation and work for the naval architects which can see replicated with the Constellation where the hull dimensions were changed and the originally claimed 85% commonality to the parent Italian FREMM frigate now said to be under 15%, in effect a new ship, leading to a three year program delay, hopefully the max delay though as detail design still less than 80% complete time for some possible nasty surprises.
 
timmymagic said:
The RN is very familiar with this, its why the Type 45, Type 26, QE Class, River Batch II and Type 31 are larger than they really need to be. They all have spare accommodation and empty areas that can be used over time, plus the spare hotel services etc to cope.

The RN got massively stung with the Leanders, T21 and T42. Great ships, but as a result of the Treasury insistence on smaller sized vessels to 'save money' they were built with little margin for extra kit or developments in service life. The T21 were retired partly because of this. Leander refits were curtailed followingt he epic costs involved. T23 got some margin, but they had to wait for T45 before they could really go full bore on better accommodation and really leaving space, power generation, chilled water etc in abundance.

Hopefully neither the Navy or Treasury will forget that lesson as institutional memory fades...so far so good.
Click to expand...
As long as someone keeps beating Treasury over the head about needing the space for upgrades and refits over the 20+year life of the ship...
 
Cordy said:
The Australian Institute reported that delays to starting Hunter build have mainly centred around the additional top weight of the CEAFAR AESA various radar band antennas, though significantly superior to the old gen Artisan S-band radar of the Type 26. The Australian developed CEAFAR was specified as the RAN wanted a much better anti-air warfare capability for its prime ASW ship, the additional topweight led to the beam having to be increased by 0.6m over the Type 26 plus a major increase in cooling capacity and crew numbers etc., even small changes to the dimensions of a ship involve significant recalculation and work for the naval architects which can see replicated with the Constellation where the hull dimensions were changed and the originally claimed 85% commonality to the parent Italian FREMM frigate now said to be under 15%, in effect a new ship, leading to a three year program delay, hopefully the max delay though as detail design still less than 80% complete time for some possible nasty surprises.
Click to expand...
My understanding is that CEAFAR, while highly effective, is a particularly massive system. The Canadian implementation, using SPY-7 has been able to maintain the same beam as the baseline Type 26.
 
zen said:
Just get Treasury mandarins to fix something on a ship at sea at 03:00 in a violent storm and they will soon appreciate the need for elbow room.
;)
Click to expand...
Not sure that the RN swabbies would ever forgive you for being in the same compartment as a Treasury Mandarin, though...
 
zen said:
Just get Treasury mandarins to fix something on a ship at sea at 03:00 in a violent storm and they will soon appreciate the need for elbow room.
;)
Click to expand...
Try and get a matelot to do that these days and you will soon get to know what an elbow in the face feels like ;-)

To be fair to the treasury, I’ve found them very good, they see right through the self licking lollipop BS fhe MoD spouts in desperate attempts to square its own circles.

They seem mostly interested in long term benefits and genuinely cost effective plans. That they push back and reject stuff reflects that most of what goes to them is short term thinking (to paper over the consequences of the previous round of short term decisions) and that the MoD cannot judge cost benefits because it is inherantly outcome biased, ie. a cheap war lost is terrible, an expensive war won is awesome. It only really wants to win. Yet ironically it is self defeating because to try and get there against the context of massive overwhelming uncertainty which pushes it to try and do as much of everything as possible, it is obsessed about being cheap and sadly that hasnt led to us winning much recently. Hopefully that makes some sense!
 
Purpletrouble said:
Try and get a matelot to do that these days and you will soon get to know what an elbow in the face feels like ;-)
Click to expand...
I have found that my arms don't bend like an octopus nor hands grip like one and they definitely don't have the strength of 20 oxen.

They certainly don't have eyes that see in near perfect darkness either....if you could fit eyes through a gap that requires a cephelopod's flexibility......

Yet oddly ship designers and builders can in the name if 'saving money' build and install systems on ships....or indeed my car....or my house....that requires just such arms....

Obviously I charge extra for the Hindu god level maintenance ability and this seems to come as a surprise to designers, builders and financial people.

Though there be worse occasions when my responce is something equivalent to "not even Shiva, on a good day, could fix that...it's done buy a new one"
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom