Type 31 and Variants - NEWS

TomS said:
I don't think Storm Shadow would fit in a Mk 41. If it did, the French would not have gone to the trouble of turning SCALP into MdCN to fit the similar-sized Sylver launchers.
Click to expand...
MdCN is sized for torpedo tube launch from submarines. That repackaging would have been done regardless of SCALP fitting or not fitting a VLS.
 
swerve said:
MdCN is sized for torpedo tube launch from submarines. That repackaging would have been done regardless of SCALP fitting or not fitting a VLS.
Click to expand...

Good point. I finally found a drawing that shows the fuselage width of Scalp/Storm Shadow as 48cm, which actually should fit in a 21-inch surface ship VLS cell (but as you say, not in a torpedo tube).
 
What has been said in the telegraph article is so true Grey Havoc, Britain must increase it's defence spending now to get out of the problems that it has found itself in ever since the 2010s. Ordering the new Ballistic missile submarines and the GCAP/Tempest fighter is a start but not enough as far as I am concerned.
 
Ambitions and needs must first be met by the fundamental requirement of having a large enough body of trained personnel.

Immediately that hits a priority gradient. How much of a population should the military employ?

Type 31 at least has the merit of being lean in crew numbers.
 
zen said:
Ambitions and needs must first be met by the fundamental requirement of having a large enough body of trained personnel.

Immediately that hits a priority gradient. How much of a population should the military employ?

Type 31 at least has the merit of being lean in crew numbers.
Click to expand...
With the general trend in birth rates, getting enough personnel to crew an enlarged fleet, a larger army, and a more powerful air force may require measures such as increases in military pay, at least after completion of recruit training.
 
1635yankee said:
With the general trend in birth rates, getting enough personnel to crew an enlarged fleet, a larger army, and a more powerful air force may require measures such as increases in military pay, at least after completion of recruit training.
Click to expand...
Demography is certainly going to have a profound effect as a driver of the increased use of automated and autonomous systems.

The Black Death upended the feudal agricultural system, making labour both more mobile and better paid. While comparison with a pandemic of that scale may seem hyperbolic (though we couldn't rule one out), developed countries - even China - are projecting demographic crises with sharply declining birth rates. Global population is projected to reach a peak of about 10 billion by the end of the century (it's 8 billion now) and thereafter decline with a far greater proportion of the elderly.

A number of political and military figures are talking about reintroducing conscription. Initially it's in reaction to the perceived 'post Cold War to pre-war' transition in Europe, but overall demographic trends are increasingly highlighted. It's not just 'kids these days' but 'there aren't enough kids.'

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZHo1Iv_Qz8


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBUAsoUeMk

In the Asia-Pacific:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Chi...n-threatens-its-industrial-and-military-might
https://www.asianstudies.org/public...-demographics-and-the-impact-on-its-military/
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/30/...rate-military-strength-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
So, put you investments in robots and automation. The RN is certainly aware of its manpower issues and expects them to continue. Type 31 requires a crew of about a hundred and even a reduction to half that in the Type 32.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Babcock's corporate affairs chief John Howie discussed how how they were looking at significantly reducing the number of crew onboard future warships like the Type 32, stating that “People talk about a Type 32 frigate – we like to refer to it as Type 31 batch two. We’re doing a crew of about 105 on Type 31, so realistically we should be aiming to half that number for batch two.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_32_frigate
Scroll down to "A radical solution for Type 83":

https://www.navylookout.com/options...r-dominance-system-and-the-type-83-destroyer/
Otherwise it's...

https://tvshows.how/show/dads-army
'Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Putin/Xi...?'
 
Last edited:
Scott Kenny said:
Steel is cheap. Steel is really cheap.

Build a ship with space and topweight reserves for upgrades, or you're stuck with something like the US Ticonderoga class, which were basically not upgradeable as soon as they were launched. Oh, you could add software, but anything that actually added weight needed something else taken off.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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...
 
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"
 
Hood said:
https://www.navylookout.com/the-dev...solution-for-the-royal-navys-type-31-frigate/
Click to expand...
Okay, that paper actually gave me a much better feeling about the RN being at least not-stupid about their levels of manning. When I first read "110 instead of 156" my thought was "great, overworked crew again" but not as bad as the LCS.

But it sounds like they really did sit down and say, "we need 27 blokes on watch at any one time just cruising around, and we need 4 watch sections to make the ship work." 3 watch sections for getting people off watch and time to do other things, and the 4th for either nonquals and/or training team.

And they really need to decide to dual crew ASAP, before the ships hit the water
 
 
Last edited:
Scott Kenny said:
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...
Click to expand...
For 4 centuries, royal navy was built for fleet strength over nice ways to spend money for inessential capability. There is no replacement to hull numbers.
Victory over treasury is flawless - but it resulted in a 3rd tier surface fleet.
 
Ainen said:
For 4 centuries, royal navy was built for fleet strength over nice ways to spend money for inessential capability. There is no replacement to hull numbers.
Victory over treasury is flawless - but it resulted in a 3rd tier surface fleet.
Click to expand...
Disagree.

Treasury forced entirely too many "fitted for but not with" moments.
 
BlackBat242 said:
That ended up "fitted for but NEVER with"!
Click to expand...
Oddly enough, no modern surface combatant has ever been lost, or nearly lost, because of the "fitted for but not with" economy measures. The Type 21s and 42s lost in the Falklands were full fitted out with equipment, as was the USS Stark and USS Cole. Moskva might not have been full operable in terms of her fitted systems or even watertight doors but that's a separate issue. ROKS Cheonan had a generously specified equipment fit for her era, all of which was fully operable when she was torpedoed.
 
TinWing said:
Oddly enough, no modern surface combatant has ever been lost, or nearly lost, because of the "fitted for but not with" economy measures. The Type 21s and 42s lost in the Falklands were full fitted out with equipment, as was the USS Stark and USS Cole.
Click to expand...

Lightweight SeaWolf on T42? What was the timeframe on that again?
 
Sintra said:
Seawolf light was only imagined after the Falklands, got ordered for T42 Batch III in the late eighties and canned in the nineties.

Cheers
Click to expand...

There was a two-round Seawolf launcher with automatic reloading at least as early as 1980. I don't know if they ever proposed putting this on the T42s — below deck space would be a problem.

Post in thread 'Sea Wolf and Sea Dart: Unbuilt Derivatives and Cancelled Applications' https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...ves-and-cancelled-applications.218/post-22045
 
TomS said:
There was a two-round Seawolf launcher with automatic reloading at least as early as 1980. I don't know if they ever proposed putting this on the T42s — below deck space would be a problem.

Post in thread 'Sea Wolf and Sea Dart: Unbuilt Derivatives and Cancelled Applications' https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...ves-and-cancelled-applications.218/post-22045
Click to expand...
Oh, THAT thread, thanks.

ps - In that thread there was this old chap, Mercurius Cantabrigensis, he wrote on a few aerospace forums, and dont know quite why but i always suspected that he was Roy Braybrook. Guess that´s something that i´ll never discover.

Cheers
 
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/02/occar-delivers-first-mmcm-system-to-the-united-kingdom/
OCCAR press release




OCCAR is proud to announce the delivery of the first MMCM System (Maritime Mine Counter Measures) to the UK.




The first milestone was reached in 2021 with the delivery of two prototypes/demonstrators to OCCAR Member States France and the UK shortly after its production launch. Industry, National Experts, Managers and OCCAR (Organisation for Joint Armament Co-operation) faced a number of challenges during the development of this cutting-edge technology, which will ultimately allow the rapid destruction of sea mines in a more cost effective and safer manner than in the past, successfully avoiding human intervention during dangerous operations.




The Royal Navy has been trained and is now ready to further develop this new concept, using this technology of drones remotely controlled from a Portable Operation Centre. This First Capability will allow the Royal Navy to conduct operations in complex environments including uncrewed sonar survey missions up to Sea State 4 to maintain precise mapping of the sea floor.




Capability to conduct identification and then training of mine neutralisation at sea is also provided with the delivery of the dedicated Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).




OCCAR delivered the first MMCM System to France in December 2024.


– End –
Click to expand...
 
Of note is that the port side only has one mission bay opening abreast the hanger the amidships one shown in the artwork has been omitted.

The ship has now been moved onto the barge today.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom