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Isn't "laying in the harbour until you are needed" kind of a waste of resources? And not just the ship itself, but you have the crews sitting around rather than doing something productive. Wouldn't it be better to just have a higher number of normal patrol craft with high speed capability which can actually do something useful most of the time?
When I purchased an air conditioner, for example, I made sure to get one with reverse-cycle heating. Otherwise it would have been a useless piece of junk taking up space for the 3/4th of seasons which aren't summer.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of this AU scenario, but you should have patrol boats or warships within "interception range" of any suspicious vessels anyway. Especially if you have a dedicated coast guard agency which is responsible only for local waters.

I can be wrong, but I think you don't have much of an idea of what's actually involved in the mission profile of a patrol vessel.

Patrolling really means establishing a presence. This means you have to be present - as implied by the word "presence" itself. This usually means a single ship covering a lot of open water, because those are usually the resources on hand (even a resource rich nation like the United States has resource restrictions on how many boats it can put in the water, between funding other defense/police needs, funding domestic needs, and not wasting taxpayer's money). This means, as converse as it may seem, a slow cruising speed - you want to maximize your time out on patrol, and most importantly, not waste a lot of fuel.

Look at it this way - your local police, yes, speed to the scene of a response call, but when they're doing patrol work, they cruise around (this is why their cars are called -shocking! -cruisers) pretty slowly, driving around neighborhoods and other "beat" areas at a relative crawl, especially when a lack of traffic lets them get away with it. Not all of it is to save fuel either - you're establishing a visual presence; you're letting people around you know that you're obviously looking for any trouble and deal with it. That's what a large part of policing is about.

And it's no different for a patrol vessel, either. The vast majority of patrol vessels are looking out for civilian boats - anybody who might be a drug runner, smuggler, or even as seemingly banal as illegal fishing (this last part probably makes up at least 80% of all oceanic patrol targets). This is why its stupid to put anything bigger than at the very most 76mm automatics - what you're really looking for is to scare the crap out of some careless fisherman or poorly equipped smuggler with the threat of killing him and sinking his boat, so that he can listen to you and either turn around or surrender. If he's say, an actual military force arriving in a missile destroyer - well that's what your navy and your own destroyers are for!

Anyway, most of what a patrol vessel does is be visible - most fishermen are going to tend to their designated areas, and most smugglers aren't even going to think about doing their business as long as they know an armed presence is nearby. So you need a ship with deployable sustainability. If they decide to run - well, you can still have a high dash speed, but this is also why the USCG has Dassault Falcon 20s in their air fleet. It's hard a 50 knot or even 75 knot speedboat to outrace a bizjet flying at Mach .80.

Note that the USN retired the Pegasus class FACs into the USCG to give the USCG the exact type of fast response that an axe-bow cutter would be designed for. The USCG couldn't get rid of them fast enough. They lacked the staying power that the USCG really needed. Also, the USCG does have fast response interceptors. These are usually RHIB boats that can be deployed from larger vessels when needed.

thanks for the good explanation klagldsf, I didn't knew most of it. I will take that in account for the other coast guard vessels for utopia. but that describes exactly the role these axe bow ships don't have.

I might have to reconsider the use of these ships.... it might be better to use ships with good fuel economics at slow speed, but with capabilities for an high speed run. that way the ships can be used in both roles. well, back to my lpd designs then............

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Thing is, the only situations that calls for that kind of rapid shipborne response you're talking about is herding mercahntmen back into the seperation zones and in general playing highway patrol. The RDN uses the boat below for those duties.

The basic problem is that you're either going to need no weapons, or a whole lot of them. You won't spot the kind of problems these ships could potentially handle in time to make them useful.

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

http://acelanceloet.deviantart.com/#/d2zdusu
some of you might like this. it is the rebuild F-14F advanced tomcat. it is based on the aerodynamics of the F-14, together with vectored thrust, a little stealth and supercruise. this way you get something that could be nicknamed F14SE. this will be the main aircraft of the Camelot.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I will be starting to design for this AU again. in fact, I will redesign most ships. the fictional heroes class has set an new standard, which I will update the sir lancelot class to. after that, I will redo the camelot, wyvern and siren classes and begin on an LPD and JLOS. wish me luck on this it will take some time, but this AU will come out bigger and better.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I am starting again on this AU. I will completely rework it, only the fictional heroes class will be kept from the previous version.
the first new ship will be an version of the south korean Dokdo LPX. this version is slightly lengthened and has an different bridge, but other then that it isn't changed much from the original dokdo. this is only an WIP, so don't comment about pixel errors and so on.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

apart from some shading, this ship is finished. any comments?

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

finished. I don't expect anymore comments on things other then shading, because there were no reactions to the rest of the ship.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I like your F-14F. Pallamara is also fielding its own F-14F variant with some of the same technology including thrust vectoring--2D on the inititial models, and later a 3D version. Currently, they still using the F-14E Tomcat-21. The F version will be known as the Sabercat.

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