Well Tim............I use to love all kinds of naval vessels. I even built the Bainbridge as a model when I was a kid. I guess because of what I do for a living, over time I have become more of a strategist and an economical thinker and all things military seem to keep me interested. Probably more so because in my mind I see them routinely make what I personally believe are critical errors in judgment based on what military planners seem to want the world to be like vs what it really is. Of coarse I could be full of caw caw to though. I generally have good access to current naval thinking, and for that matter in all services because I still have friends that joined various services when I did in 1976. I did 5 years, but some of those friends are just coming up on retirement and are now wearing Maple Leafs(Stars if you are American). Here are a few pass along points that as far as naval thinking goes, every navy globally is struggling with from what I am being told and added to that, research I do on my own.
* Every navy on the planet is facing dramatic, if not draconian cuts (except the Chinese and Indians and some Middle East countries).
* Because of recent embarrassing maneuvers and encounters with either European or Chinese SSK's in the last 6 years, everyone has had to take a serious look in the mirror and ask themselves " Are we properly equipping our forces for what lays ahead"?
* Most Larger navies are "very" concerned about the proliferation of these SSKs in all corners of the planet. They are scared sh*#@less of them and not sure how to counter their proliferation.
* The ones that belong to our friends Gotlands and type 212/214 have proven almost imposable to find., even if you know they are operating in the area.
* The Chinese have proven quite adept at acquiring virtually any of our (NATO) technologies, so you have to assume that it is just a matter of time before we are faced with our own capabilities in unfriendly hands.
There is currently a lot of discussion and papers being created that deals with conflicts of all types from SE Asia to the Arctic. There is always the usual debate on surface and subsurface warfare. Generally speaking both sides of the old cold war equation are for the most part happy with one another even though each side posses the capability to wipe one another off the face of the planet. It appears "Glasnost" works generally pretty dam good. Well.......there are a couple of folks out there that we either don't yet have a "Glasnost" relationship with, or worse, really hate our collective guts. The first are the Chinese. For now we really just seem indifferent to one another and for now the relationship appears directionless. At least they know where we are and we know where they are. For now, that is detente. The second group is the world of Islam. That relationship appears to be on bottom and for various reasons, to many to debate on, it won't be improving anytime soon. This one really gives the Western and European military planners the heeby geebies. The Arctic also presents a new problem.
So I guess Tim, over the years, I have become more of a realist. Because of the advanced capability weapons now in any and all navies hands, as much as I like those mid size cruisers you talk about, a modern day Frigate or Destroyer packs the same or more punch than any of those older platforms. In fact, when you look at older naval gun strategies vs a modern Corvette with Harpoons or other equivalent surface attack missiles.............dam. Things have changed a lot in the last 30 to 40 years. So much so that other than aircraft carriers and various sizes of helicopter assault carriers, I am not so sure I would support building any other type of surface vessel these days. Because of IEDs, you don't even want your troops landing in anything else but choppers and it's back to the good ol days of "aircav".
I guess what I am trying to say is I personally believe that navies have to start totally rethinking submarine strategies and capabilities. The US has already started down this pathway making subs that are capable of serving more tasks. Personally I struggle with the whole nuclear thing. Here is really my issues with nuke boats. Aside from the fact that they have really cool range, once two very capable forces start shooting at one another, there will be a mess of nuclear boats and aircraft carriers with lots of nuke warheads sitting at the bottom of all of our oceans. Even in a conventional high density conflict without releasing any nuclear weapons, this will still be the case. One nuclear power plant goes into distress in Japan and look at the mess left over that will have to be dealt with over the next number of decades. Chernobyl was another one. Currently there are only a handful of nuke boats sitting on the bottom, and those theoretically were all from operational accidents. they still have to maintain and check on sites to insure limited leakage but at some point in time will ultimately have to permanently deal with once corrosion makes matters worse.
Subsurface is where the capital needs to go. In my new world of navies, I see way more submarines of a number of types and they would have more broad range of capabilities. Surface attack from a submerged position is one of them. I am not talking about something adhock you launch from a torpedo tube either. Now here is where I go weird on you........maybe!! Again, simply as part of my spare time hobby I did a lot of work looking at a number of different weapons primarily out of various US, Canadian and European inventories. Essentially what I came up with is what I like to call a CRV15 LCPK........essentially a 155mm version of a CRV7 with a Kongsberg LCPK section that was modified for vertical launch. With a larger diameter 2 stage motor (launch/flight), dual mode IR/laser guidance seeker and 3P fuse selection, which is quite common these days. You now have a real game changer weapon with 20km range that can engage any smaller surface combatants that don't require or can't be hit by a heavy weight torpedo. This would include any fast patrol vessels and fast Littoral ship not to mention any low performance aircraft. That of coarse would include anti submarine helos and planes. There is nothing stopping you from engaging Frigates and Destroyers either because of being laser guided you could essentially pick out the part of the ship you think disables it the quickest. At 20km+/-, you are also out of range of many if not all surface or air launched ASW torpedoes. The US navy is to this day very big on their 5 inch guns. Well........this out guns them and with precision guidance as well. Gone are the days of carpet bombing as well as artillery barrages. Try over 90% hit probability with first shot with almost any PGMs these days. It used to be kind of fun to be a soldier. Now it just sucks.
The warhead is pretty simple......a 155mm artillery shell. It weighs just over 100 lbs and packs about 22 pounds of HE. That would make short work of any smaller vessel, and if one was not enough launch more of them. A sub with a 20/22 foot diameter (6.5/7 meters) hull and a 6/7 meter added plug into the hull could store between 80 to 100 rounds as well as room for auto loader system. That could also significantly increase your O2 storage for your AIP system as well in lower deck. You would additionally have about a 2 meter sail extension to house launch tube. They would be launched from a vertically extendable re-loadable launch tube containing sealed 4 round canisters. Diameter of the canisters is under 400mm. The additional cool thing is now you can stand off out of plain site and attack any visible shore targets. Even if they know you are there, what are they going to shoot at you with...........a tank, an RPG, artillery? Kongsberg also proposed a GPS guidance unit as well, but then you may want to eliminate solid fuel 2nd stage and go to expendable turbo jet for a stupid cheap 155mm cruise missile that could engage up to 100km. Any research I could do tells me the short range toy is about a $20k weapon and the long range one would be more in the $40/$50k range.
OK. That should get a lot more conversation going on here now. I will also add to this that you rethink how they operate and now run in pairs during any wartime combat missions. If you are the enemy and have detected one of them, you are already dead and just don't know it yet. At under 600 million a pair, I think that in reality they are the new world Corvettes, if not Frigates. In peace time doing coastal patrol, drug interdiction, fisheries patrol etc., they are also way cheaper than surface vessels to operate and far more effective. To date that has been the Canadian experience. In wartime, serving all these dam bushfire engagements we all seem to get into these days, I think they would add a whole new dimension to warfare from a littoral environment all the way to 100km inland.
Look forward to anybody's responses
Cheers
Mike
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