Shipbucket

Looking at the diameters of these suckers, and the amount of power I want to push through them, I'm coming back around to the idea of just keeping the stupid deployable azimuth thruster.

It's almost like pretty much everybody uses the same approach for a reason

Can I ask the reasons for why the 155mm vertical and 76mm rather than a single 'normal' 5" ?
Or even just the 76mm if you are limited frigate ? After all it is a Perry replacement ?

(is the CIWS/AA ability of the 76mm and the better NGFS of the 155mm worth the extra cost and weight ?)

You could DEFINITELY make the argument I should just stick with 5"/62. The answer is that I ran into this paper on sub-based VGAS and found the capability vs. ship impact argument to be so compelling that, to a large extent, this entire drawing came about because I stumbled upon it. People have been trying to get me to shift to a simple AGS-L or whatever, and dang if they don't have a point, but the footprint of the proposed mini-VGAS is so damned tiny that I just can't help myself.

There's also a set of presumed follow-on drawings that will essentially phase 5/54/62 out entirely. I think you could make a persuasive argument that, were the USN able to clean-sheet everything, we'd be better off with the 155-76 mix rather than having any 5" in the fleet at all.

Obviously cost is almost no object any time I'm exploring stuff like this, but a VGAS like this would almost have to be super cheap compared to any rotating mount, and yet seemingly the entire combined world's navy is working on lowering the cost on Oto76 by volume.

It seems entirely possible this is the final iteration, although I've sure said THAT before.

Growth up to 8000 tons full load, in order to improve the disposition of the vertical-motor propulsor (shown in cartoon form, at best) and taking us up to 40 cells of Mk 57, half that of Zumwalt. The compact fusion module has been rotated athwartships, where it just barely fits, to improve compartmentalization. It also lifts out the top of the boat more easily for, well, whatever you ever need to lift it for. Seems plausible they need R&R.

I have acceded to the suggestion of Timothy and others and shifted to SPS-75 (TRS-3D/16) for the casualty radar set. Commonality is a good thing, and it's going to be a ton cheaper than a fifth face of AMDR-X.

The refiguring of the after radar has allowed a replacement of a limited-view 7' SHF satcom, which is really really nice to have.

We shifted to a 5x(3x25) liferaft layout, which IIRC allows for a maximum of 300 total crew. This seems like more than enough, even including helo crews and mission modules and SEALs and whatever else (a late Burke takes 370, Perry 225, DZP 230, LCS and Zumwalt a frankly ludicrous 100 and 150, respectively).

I think that's the extent of the latest and possibly final changes.


internal cartoon, emphasizing the "cartoon" nature of the VMP aft

It's a frigate, of fridtjof Nansen class size. And Nansen use only a crew of 140 (and thats the crew size for long range missions), mostly due to so much equipment today is automated. so frigate of you'r type, with helicopter should'n be so much bigger than 150-160 men with capacity to carry "X" amount of "passengers".

Never can leave well enough alone...

Slight reconfiguration of the mission bay and helo area feels like we finally bought a real improvement over a big Eurofrig with our 8200tFL. By changing the crane/loading setup, we have:

• Stiffened somewhat the helo hangar girder, or reduced its structural weight, or some combination thereof, by going from three large cutouts to two
• Added a nice little deployable accommodation ladder, the lack of which had been a persistent nagging annoyance to me
• Allowed a much more flexible usage of the overall space, with up to four (!) SH-60 or 16 (!) 20ft containers (4x4+2 spots, minus one for shifting-puzzle rotation, minus one for a containerized ~5m RHIB davit for plane rescue when the main boat is off on adventures)
• Maintained 2x AW-101/CH-148 + 8TEU notional loadout from before
• Maintained the two access points, one of which one might imagine to be kept for RMS or something while underway while the other side holds the secondary boat
• Generally improved crane disposition, with 10T access throughout the space without helo and 1T above any helo

The bay is now 35x12.5x6.8m, which is a pleasingly awesome size.

We only grew about 12' in length for this privilege, which is just fine by me.

Though I do not mean to cast aspersions on the efforts of the Norwegian navy or any other, classically USN ships are understood to undertake somewhat longer deployments with corresponding additional need for maintenance and other work. As such I'll continue to scale complement needs from Burke or similar.


fullsize
internal cartoon

It is not lost on me that this is basically a late-model Spruance in every conceivable sense. Growth is dumb. I might try starting MINIMAL (NO SERIOUSLY) BASELINE COMBATANT off of the USCG's latest cutters or something.

@Heuhen: Due to budgetary concerns and personell issues, the Royal Norwegian Navy operates its frigates on the "lean manning" principle, meaning that we don't really have redundancy in the event of damage or a mass casualty and have to chose between fighting the damages inflicted, or the ship (i.e. the enemy). To my understanding the US Navy operates on the principle of having enough bodies aboard to be able to both fight inflicted damages and the ship at the same time, having learned some lessons we conveniently chose to forget after WW2 and ignored after the Falklands War. Lean manning means that you can do one or the other, but not two things at once. Ideally, the FNAN class should have manning around 200+ people in order to be able to fight both damage and the ship, as well as not having to pull war watches...

Apologies for the slight digression from an outstanding design. BZ!

I'm aware of that, what I should perhaps wrote was that a more modern ship would use less crew than a older ship, equipment you used before where there was needed 10 men to operate it, today it's enough with 1 or 2 men. Just look at DDG Zumwalt this Notional frigate should be adjusted after that, and then add on some deck crew for the logistic purpose... so I would expect a crew of just 100 men strong + some logistics and helicopter crew...140.

We could look on the difference on the crew size between Oslo class and Nansen. Oslo have: 120 (max.129), while Nansen have: 120 (max. 146) (I believe they have 4 duty-shift). as my stepdad told me (and he was on of the bosses working on the frigate project, mainly radars. He reduced the crew in that section by 50%). Royal Norwegian Navy went for the latest in technology on there frigate for reducing the crew size, in the first drawings of the frigates had some more manual systems, that are now automate and back then they expected a crew size of 180 to 220.

It's also worth pointing out that the USN has a history of doing significantly longer deployments. It's only recently that the Scandinavian navies has begun sustained overseas deployments and it has been a struggle for them. Fx. the Absalon class crew increased by 30% and the RDN has had major issues with ensuring a proper crew rotation.

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