Shipbucket

Call me old fashioned if you like, but I can't see the logic of having a warship without the capability of dealing with another warship at a range of more than a 6" gun.When you add to the fact that we ain't got no aircraft at sea to keep the bogies away and only a hand full of SSNs it looks to me like we would struggle to defend the Isle of White. Do the idiots who run this country not watch the news.

What logical conventional threat is there likely to be short of a single Udaloy or Sovremenny that the Russians stoke up every now and again?

As RP-1 mentions, a VL AShM such as LRASM or Perseus (if and when MBDA finish development) is a good enough solution IF we need to ship them in the first place. As it stands I made my point clear on the types of threat we're likely to encounter and the wastefulness and unsuitability of a heavyweight AShM against them.

_________________
AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

Well roughly every 30 years or so we need the navy. If history has taught us one thing an international crisis can happen with very little warning. Has the cold war actually finished, or was the years 1989- 2014 just a quiet period ? Do you really trust to luck and that nice little bald guy in the Kremlin ?
And you wouldn't even need an odd Udaloy or Sovremenny cos half a dozen 60's era Osa's would do the trick.
It just strikes me as ludicrous to spend all that money on building a ship and then junking a large proportion of it's capabilty. As I say I might be old fashioned sorry for the rant.

True enough though luck and stupidity (or cleverness, whichever way you look at it) has gotten us this far without any major escalations (discounting Korea and Vietnam)

There stands my point, you aren't going to waste a Harpoon on an Osa now. Gunfire or cheaper, shorter ranged AShMs would suffice just as well for those sorts of threats.

_________________
AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

The Wildcat though will have ASMs, so there is some degree of anti-surface punch, though against an enemy with long-range SAM systems its a different story.

Times change I guess, but I see Bombhead's point. While Harpoons against most threats these days is an overkill most expanding navies are still building destroyers and frigates bristling with SAM and long-range ASM batteries. There should be some differentiation between a frigate and an OPV in my opinion. I wouldn't be bothered by old Osas with SS-N-2s aboard, I'm sure modern ECM and ESM techniques have more than gotten the measure of anything the Soviets had in use before 1992 and the whole point of arming helicopters with ASMs was to counter the FAC threat.

_________________
Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

I agree with Bombhead, the fleet mix should be able to deal with all threats or we will get caught with our pants down, as in the Falklands. Who would have imagined the RN would have lost so many front line ships in a conflict down there?

what if your type 26 is carrying a merlin and not a wildcat? Merlin isn't getting ASM capability which I feel is very short sighted. The reasons is service politics give merlin ASM and frigate captains would prefer merlins capability and flexibility to wildcat.

_________________
"There was nothing wrong with Titanic when she left the Shipyard" Tim McGarry Belfast Comedian