Shipbucket

Ro-Po Max has very kindly allowed me to create a rendition of the planned Hunter-Class frigate using his excellent Type 26 drawing. I've attempted to employ some of the same methods of shading that they've used so as to make the modifications appear as seamless as possible. The exercise has been carried out through the use of the careful examination of the limited sources available on the vessel, but some of it has fallen to speculation. Whilst not pin-point accurate, it is as close a rendition as I felt possible within the amount of information I could find and my own drawing skills.

HUNTER-CLASS FRIGATE

On 28 June 2018, (then) Australian Prime-Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that BAe's Type 26 as the winning bid for the SEA5000 Future Frigate Program, beating out Navantia and Fincantieri's offers of modified F100 and FREMM vessels respectively. Nine ships are planned to be built, with the first three named HMAS Hunter, HMAS Flinders, and HMAS Tasman. Construction at the ASC Shipbuilding yards in Osborne, South Australia, is expected to begin in 2020. ASC Shipbuilding will become a subsidiary of BAe Systems during their manufacture. The first vessel is planned to enter service in the mid-late 2020s.

The ships will be fitted with an Australian CEAFAR 2 Phased-Array Radar, necessitating the design of an entirely new mast. Other systems will include Sonar 2087 Towed Array, Type 2150 Bow Sonar, Sharpeye and SCANTER 6000 Navigation radar. Armament will consist of a 5-inch gun; 2 x CIWS, 2 x 30mm cannon, 32 x Mk41 VLS, an unspecified 'Advanced Anti-Ship Missile', and MU90 Torpedoes. Each frigate will embark an MH-60R helicopter, with space being available in the flexible mission bay for a second helicopter if required.

Very nice work!

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

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This is very, very attractive. Do the latest renderings show the L-band phased array at the same scale as the S-band? This is new to me.

There's numerous conflicting renderings that show them at the same scale to each other, others with the L-Band as significantly larger and takes up a large area of the mast faces, and yet more that show them as smaller faces with more minor differences in size. I've actually used some artistic licence here, as I've gone for the same scale for the two arrays (as seen in some of the promotional videos I found on youtube), but used slightly larger array faces. I'll be upfront and admit its a little bit of laziness as well playing at hand, as I already had these array faces drawn up with my attempt at the GCS-A last year. They seemed a better fit at my first few attempts at following the low-res profile image I found, matching the angle of mast faces a bit better, so I just went with them. You might recognise them in my frigates I drew up for my Westralian AU.

Hmm... I got a feel that bow is too short, it will take too much water on the deck when moving through bigger waves.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

Ro-po has drawn the base Type 26 to a high level of accuracy, and so when I scaled the only official profile image I could find of the Hunter class specifically it actually matched to near perfection including the bow. According to that, and the fact that the real-world designers probably know what they're doing, its probably okay. I can see what you mean, but I guess sometimes things may not look right even if they are.

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More here:viewtopic.php?f=14&t=8292

Thanks, of course you can combine it into the one topic with the CSC, after all, most of the drawing is yours. It's only fair

For sure I'm not question the accuracy of drawing. Maybe there is a good reason for such short bow... but still, you know. This need to swim through North Atlantic and that is hell of a ride, going straight in to huge waves will be day like everyday. Such short bow I would call a design flaw if that was a fictional ship, but maybe I just don't have enough knowledge to see that it will not be a problem?

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

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More here:viewtopic.php?f=14&t=8292