FFG7 class Anti- Surface Warfare Variant

[Scott Kenny]

No, it's sufficiently close to the center of the ship.

But I still think central cutouts in the superstructure are an ideal place for the launchers (reusing the plan by @Tzoli above), that allows to keep 2 helicopters and full ASW capability.

View attachment 796821

Or you can have 8 of them.

I don't believe that you'd be able to install more than 2x ABLs there, as those notches are where the ship's boats live.

Might be able to stick a Harpoon quad pack on each side there, but the second ABL doesn't fit. So 8x Tomahawks and up to 8+8x Harpoons. (8x amidships, 8x in the Mk13)

 

[blackstar]

No, it's sufficiently close to the center of the ship.

But I still think central cutouts in the superstructure are an ideal place for the launchers (reusing the plan by @Tzoli above), that allows to keep 2 helicopters and full ASW capability.

View attachment 796821

Or you can have 8 of them.

I don't see any inherent reason that you could not remove the launcher and magazine and replace it with a small number of VLS tubes with Tomahawk and Harpoon. My objection was really to the idea of adding box launchers above deck. But installing VLS is a bigger mod than putting box launchers on the deck.

 

[acelanceloet]

Fitting a VLS instead of the Mk 13 is also a refit that is far more involved then putting one ahead of the Mk 13. The Mk 13 GMLS is a tiny installation with a round footprint and the structure of the bow is build around it, putting a larger square or rectangular shape (just 8 cells is bigger then the round hole of the Mk 13) means rebuilding a lot of that bow.

Is it possible? likely. Is it worth it? unlikely.

 

[The Skipper]

At that time, I'm not sure the idea of a universal VLS was well established. Mk 41 was actually probably still too short for Tomahawk, so they likely intended to fit a specialized launcher. Same for VL Harpoon, which we see proposed in various forms over the years.



So, I realized that I really misread the article on my phone, thanks to some lousy table formatting. Here is the actual table from the PDF/Scribd version. They are talking about a 20-foot, 250-ton stretch. It's not 20 Tomahawk but rather 8 Tomahawk and a whopping 64 Harpoon. (This math does not work out. Even a very optimistic analysis suggests the missiles and launchers alone would weigh at least 100 tons, without accounting for the hull under them or the superstructure around them.)

View attachment 795987

This is very interesting. Do you have any more information re. the modular Tomahawk vertical launch system?

 

[funkychinaman]

Any thought to just removing the 3" gun and replacing with the Harpoon launchers? Eight Harpoons would be far more potent than one gun, and it'd probably be easier to squeeze in some 25mm mounts for close in protection.

 

[MadRat]

I like the more modern look of the sloped deck toppers. Zumwalt is a good example. LCS and HSwMS Visby are other good examples. Sloped shaping suggests stealthiness. Mostly hollow underneath the skin but provides an abundance of canopy from poor weather. The structure underneath is hidden from prying eyes. When you carry war ordnance, make them guess what is under the bonnet.