Royal Navy Type 45 Alternative VLS Discussion

[CordyB]

Taking down single drones isn't that drones as a threat are about. In this case they're more of very simple practice targets.

I'd take more cue from loss of Ivanovets in black sea - when it literally expended all 30mm ammo available and was lost because of that. There were still more drones, which now could avoid main gun and sink the ship.

For CIWS ability to waste ammo is a positive - ship will be sunk long before CIWS will get a chance to use up its ammo, so ciws should fire as much as possible, as fast as possible, preventing first hits at all costs. C-UAS gun should conserve ammo as much as possible, take out of action different targets(surface, big air, smal air) with minimum amount of shots, as far as possible, and different(selectable) ammo.
It needs to have cleanest arcs possible, including negative firing angles. Single accurate shot capability is at premium.

Main gun in this sense is indeed more valuable than Phalanx, as it has far more engagements/mount, using minimum amounts of shells.

Would note Burkes are way under gunned with CIWS, Flight IIA only fitted one Phalanx per ship, in WWII the larger ships fitted with 10 or more quadruple 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm Oerlikons plus their DP 5" with proximity fused shells.

Also note in 2017 Raytheon changed the Phalanx to electric power to allow firing at varying rates for efficient use of ammunition.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...eapon-system-passes-first-test-300434415.html

 

[Sintra]

Actually I think the UK would have had the largest stockpile of Aster missiles of any operator...

When it comes to complex weapons, particularly in that era, the UK always bought far more than the likes of France of Italy...usually multiple times more...

Hmmm, never seen anything that supports the notion that the UK MOD bought "multiple times" more pgm's than its French counterpart.
Just a couple of examples, according to whats publicly available the RAF bought one third more Storm Shadows than Adla/MN (a bit over 900 vs 600), the MN bought a lot more MdNC's than the RN bought TacTom's.
Looking at the huge number of Aster launch platforms that the French and the Italians have by comparison with the RN i would be nothing short of astounded if the UK had a larger ASTER stockpile than its counterparts (the French alone, between SAMP/T batteries and MN ships fields something like four times more Aster launch systems than the UK MOD).

 

[timmymagic]

MN bought a lot more MdNC's than the RN bought TacTom's.

UK and France purchases of Tomahawk and MdCN are very similar c200 in total.

UK has purchased 194 Tomahawk over the years, all are at least Block IV standard, with around 60 under contract at present for upgrade to Block V (with more to come). UK has fired off at least 50 in combat and tests. No more can be purchased as all of the existing TTL have been purchased by RN and are no longer in production (and that is a problem long term, particularly as Stratus LO will not fit in 21 inch TT's).

France has reportedly purchased 200 MdCN (thats up from the revised order of 150). At least 5 have been fired in combat and trials (would have been another 6 but failures onboard 2 FREMM off Syria prevented them launching.).

The key difference is that all of the UK's Tomahawk are for SSN only....MN missiles were 150 for FREMM and 50 for SSN.

 

[timmymagic]

Classic gun CIWS appear a success in the Red Sea which would appear to contradict your statement.

French also used 76mm, and RN used 30mm ASCG.

 

[Martes]

FWIW here is a little more accurate (very crude, never mind the slight offset of the middle row) comparison of the missile space with Mk.41:

​

They appear to be very slightly larger than the Aster cells and 72 of them go there like a charm in three rows, and that's not including the forward space shared with gun magazine.

 

[Martes]

Concerning the land attack variant:



and referring to @RP1 posts above

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...-alternative-vls-discussion.51307/post-869717

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...-alternative-vls-discussion.51307/post-880504

Was it prudent to insert the launchers between the communications mast and the aft radar (which is kinda implied in the description), or a real implementation could have had the mast and the launcher exchanging places? It's an official BAe proposal, so they must have thought about this one way or another.