HMS Kent, a Type 23 Frigate, has undertaken gunnery exercises whilst in the North Sea as part of HMS Queen Elizabeth’s Carrier Strike Group.
Some great images of this were posted by the ship on Twitter, I’ve placed those images below.
4, 5, ENGAGE! KENT conducts Medium Range Gunnery as part of @STRIKFORNATO.
Maintaining Operational currency remains key for a high readiness task group escort.#UKCSG23 #StrongerTogether pic.twitter.com/zneAoGALtI
— HMS Kent (@hms_kent) November 6, 2023
Exercise Neptune Strike is a multi-domain exercise, organised and conducted by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO). The overall point is to test and highlight the natural evolution of NATO’s ability to integrate maritime warfare capabilities of a carrier strike group to support Allied defence.
KENT arrives! Delighted to be under the Command of@NATO (@STRIKFORNATO).
We are ready and primed to contribute to the execution of #NeptuneStrike 23-3. #UKCSG23 #StrongerTogether pic.twitter.com/CBLz7x3J1R
— HMS Kent (@hms_kent) November 5, 2023
Good to see Kent back at sea! She must be the last ship in the RN to be carrying Harpoon? No sign of Somerset yet with her NSMs. I understood more than one RN vessel would have NSM before the end of this year?
HMS Lancaster in the Gulf and HMS Duncan in the Med have them fitted also,Westminster briefly had them fitted for a SINKEX but now she is pending withdrawal.
Yes and rather sadly, she is a bit of a mess.
Don’t worry government is about to announce they already replaced harpoon with Penguin in 1972.
And then Sea Eagle came along in the 1990s so we don’t need an RN ship mounted anti ship missile. I mean a warship being able to cripple or sink another warship is ridiculous and never in a millions years a requirement.
Don’t worry mate…… we have a whole bunch of Rivers now….2000 tons of kick ass, bad ass, Armed to the teeth, “World Class, cutting edge” “state of the art”, ermmmm, where was I ?
Get your hat and I’ll join yer River class with a mk 8 sounds good but wouldn’t be able too see out the bridge windows
😆
Time for a pint 🍺
Well that’s very nice of you, don’t mind if I do. 😄
👍
Sea Eagle great on Buccaneer 👍
There is an article over on NL, that has Somerset over in Norway at the present, with the belief that she is getting NSM fitted direct from the factory prior to trials being conducted!
Wonder whether the £4+B air defence subcontract announced today by HMG between MBDA (UK) and PGZ (PL) to support acquisition of 1000+ CAMM-ER muscles and 100+ associated launchers, will ultimately facilitate acquisition of the same for RN surface fleet? Poland’s specific acquisition will become a component of Polish nationwide GBAD system. 🤔😳
Er…missiles…🙄
That’s a lot of money. I assume that’s on top of the £2bn deal last year for CAMM, and Lord knows how much they’ll be putting into CAMM-MR as well.
I wonder what the price difference will be between each of the three variants. Maybe some of the new T45 CAMM silos will have some CAMM-ER if this kind of quantity pushes the cost down.
It’s just a longer rocket motor so I suspect the prices will be almost identical. MR may be cheaper based on volume but if it’s heavier there maybe issues on cold gas ejection for warships.
The important thing with CAMM is its minimum engagement range. It’s short so can go at missiles as they get closer to the ship… basically CWIS range. Increasing the engagement range will also increase the min engagement range. It’s not an either-or sum… CAMM, ER and MR versions complement each other across a variety of engagement envelopes.
Future potential mixed model CAMM loadouts? Interesting, would induce ambiguity re capabilities by potential opponents. 🤔
Its a very good point that you make, although even whispers of UK PLC acquiring either ER or MR versions are non existent at the moment! Personally would like to see us go with all 3 versions in the not to distant future, both shore and at sea where re!event. Though we need to increase the number of CAMM batteries we currently have first. Then, would also like to see us invest in something like Arrow for our GBAD too. Unfortunately don’t think we are going to go anywhere near that yet, if ever. Our present masters seem to be… Read more »
HMG, apparently regardless of ruling party, have seemingly adopted an intriguing, post Cold War I, operational philosophy re defence matters. Rank order the priority of rectification of acknowledged capability gaps and (presumably) pray that each decision (particularly re GBAD) does not become fateful nor fatal. Very interesting method of running a proverbial railroad. Assume it would be cold comfort to Lizz Truss to be vindicated, after unpleasant reality intrudes, re her plan to increase defence expenditures to 3% of GDP.? Believe you Brits coined the term, “Penny wise, Pound foolish?” 🤔😳🤞🙏😱 And remember, this critique comes courtesy of a self-acknowledged… Read more »
No offence taken, particularly as I agree with you. Just had a thought, we are signed up to the European Sky Shield Initiative which is headed by Germany. Just wondering whether or not the UK if actually going to actively participate, might decide to swop out 2 of the 3 missile systems being proposed (IRIS-T SBM + Patriot) for CAMM ER/MR and then go with Arrow 3 as the ICBM missile? Of course that might collide with the RN attempts to install Astor NT on the T45’s? All very intriguing imo, but you would like to believe that someone somewhere… Read more »
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OT to an extent, but has/will HMS Kent receive(d) PGMU mod? Any update re which vessels in class that will actually receive mod (not simply those originally programmed to undergo mod)? Would presume those ships will remain in service for the longest period. Always deemed that reliable propulsion was rather important for both aircraft and ships. 🤔
Not heard anything, but Kent is expected to go on until 2033, so as you say, it would make a lot of sense. She’s expected to go into extended maintenance next year, so it could be done then. My guess is they’ll assess first and decide afterwards. I can’t even figure what went on with HMS Somerset (expected to be in service until 2031). Janes said it got the new MTU engines under PGMU, Navy Lookout said it got replacement engines but not PGMU. So did it get the new engines but keep the old generators, or did it get… Read more »
Thanks, interesting to learn that there is some ambiguity re actual implementation. Potential op security measure? 🤔😎
I do wonder what will happen with the 4.5 inch guns on the T45 after the T23s are retired…I honestly think we are going to be seeing the last of the T45 trotting around until the mid 2040s…but from 2035 they will be carrying the last few 4.5inch guns left..will the RN really want to keep a training and logistics pipeline open for a decade for what would be essentially a handful of guns….It would be interesting to see if at some point the 4.5inch on the T45 gets replaced with one of the other medium guns that would more… Read more »
Interesting post…. I often wonder the same to be honest. i’d like to see what happens at Lulworth ……
That said RN would have all the parts from the T23 guns to keep them running.
Only question is what the costs is for the support contract.
Obsolescence shouldn’t be that bad as they were all upgraded from hydraulic to servo a few years ago.
The issue with a 5” might well be space…..that said T45 was supposed to get the cancelled 155mm….
Also the 57mm would be a reasonably cheap alternative that is fine for a medium gun as long as your not doing NGFS, it would also up the T45s self protection from an AAW point of view and that’s the main threat the T45 is meant to be facing, after all your going to place it along the axis of any air threat to do it’s job…NGFS I question if we would be sending one of our few AAW destroyers off into the littoral to go and do that….although the counter is the RN will be running low on NGFS… Read more »
hmmmmn. as a gun collector of smaller stuff now, I often try to compare them in use and effectiveness….. The whole thing that gets in the way is Storage and effective usage…… 57mm stuff can be stored in way more numbers than 4.5 0r 5….. but is way less devastating in actual effect….. I have very much the same Dilemmas when it comes to .177 and .22 ……..
It’s also about what you want to do with it, the 4.5inch is good at NGFS, the 57mm would not, but the 4.5inch is far less effective as an anti air weapon as well as for engaging drone ( air and seaborne)…with the 57mm very much an anti air weapon…as well as engaging swarm targets…in regards to engaging other navel vessels with a gun,,it would be a bit either or…. if your being crude in 10 seconds the 57mm would put 16.5 Kgs of high explosive on target..( 40 shells) with the 4.5inch around 12kgs. ( 3-4 shells). finally what… Read more »
5″ gun is very pricey. The initial contract for 4 ran over £60m per gun. Once all the integration work had been done, the second batch came in at £36m per gun. With a different CMS and all the integration work to do again, I’m thinking T31 B2 guns would come in at the higher end. I’d be surprised at NGFS having that level of priority. We often follow the US on certain matters. At one point it was felt in the US that a 5″ gun wasn’t much use for NGFS, hence the 6″ Advanced Gun System on the… Read more »
You are possibly correct..and if you are not looking at NGFS the 57mm is the far better weapon by a long way and far cheaper…although the 5inch does look like it’s going to get some very interesting ASW options in the future.
It will be interesting to see the take of Aus and Canada with their T26 & AAW Fleet, all 5″ at the moment, as is also Korea and Japan. Europe seems to be going down the 76mm route, though Holland has a mix. You don’t want to under gun yourself in a hurry especially if you have limited missiles. Need to add in more subs.
And if you put new 5″ on the T45s you could always transfer them over to the T83s when they arrive.
Better yet, the 5” and 2 x Mk110s
I think a 57mm mk3 ( replacing the 4.5inch) and 2 40mm mk4s ( replacing the 30mms) would be idea….( I would also add the 40mm mk4 to T26 and the carriers) but especially for an AAW escort that is going to be siting down the threat axis..they tested a lot of gun and missile load outs for the T31 and picked 57/40/40 specifically because of how well it performed….not sure if you would find the margins and space on a T45 for a 5inch and 2 57mm especially after they have added 24 CAMM silos and 8 NSMs.
You probably never want to be in a position where your irreplaceable £1 billion + air warfare cruiser is close enough to a threat environment to make a 4.5 inch gun effective in Naval Gun Support. We only did missions like that in 82 because we had nothing else. The 57mm would be much more useful for T45.
Indeed agree, even more so because that at anyone time we are probably only going to have a pair operational and if they are sitting in the littoral undertaking NGFS they are not doing their primary job of co-ordinating the Air Defence…it is after all an air defence destroyer. But i suspect there is still a place for NGFS…it’s just in the future what platform will do it…the T26 is now just ASW and we will just have enough to do that, type 45 just enough to do the AAW role, type 31 is very focused on close in work… Read more »
The reason for the Mk110 over the Mk4 40, is that the manufacturers cannot make guided rounds for it, yet! Plus if MAD-FIRES does work as Raytheon have suggested. It’ll push the max effective range out past 8km, due to the rocket assisted sabot dart, This puts it in the same league as the Leonardo 76 firing the guided Dart ammunition. But, the Mk110 has a higher rate of fire. Meaning it can pump out more guided rounds. So theoretically be capable of engaging more targets. The Mk4 40 by contrast only doubles the Phalanx’s effect range, so around 4km.… Read more »
Bang bang goes krytrons head. I love big naval guns.
I always wondered how come the type 23 aren’t fitted with a CIWS?
All other ships have them. The batch 3 type 22 had goalkeeper so can’t just be a frigate thing.
Yes it did seem an odd one after the learning from the Falklands..although you have to remember where the T23 started it was mean to be an ultra cheap 3000ton second rate ASW towed array tug…with a gun, sensors and small ship flight as the older ASW frigate fleet was…..Maybe they just upgraded it as much as the treasury would take.
I put it down to post cold war budgetary thing. It did strike me as an oversight though -for sure.
It might just be down to the fact that there is nowhere obvious to put them.
A lot got added to T23 over the years and sea wolf was very good point defence weapon. CAMM even better.
What about the helo hanger? Plenty of space and a good arc of fire to boot.
Some Navies do place Phalanx on their Hangar Roofs, but as Gunbuster has stated before it seriously impedes Helicopter Ops, the debris from the Shell’s and an expensive Merlin don’t mix too well.
thank you for the explanation Paul.
T23 had a Tracker up there. A phalanx would have restricted Seawolf engagement arcs massively. As there was no weight margin left on a T23 it couldn’t be fitted anyway with Sea Wolf. I dont even want to think about the mutual interference issues from the radars …
The UK got Goalkeeper as a sweetener to the Dutch buying Spey engines for their FF/DD. A give and take deal. T23 with VLS SW and now CAMM has its own highly effective CIWS missile system…it doesn’t really need a gun-based CIWS. That said Goalkeeper was good. We always got simulated kills in tracking serials with it against targets on Bulwark and it always killed the target in shoots. However, in later years it suffered from obsolescence issues and its footprint onboard was huge. It had a massive electronic equipment room with a dedicated Chilled water plant. A large mount… Read more »
The BRRRRR makes it all worth while.
Why has our British war ship open fire in the north sea?
With all this talk of guns personally I’d be looking to put the 57mm on T26/T45 as a better anti-surface and anti-air system and the 127mm on the T31/T32 which will be far more suited to NGFS.
The former are far too precious to be risked close to shore and will work in close formation with the carriers in any shooting war.
Standardise on them and the 40mm as a CIWS ASAP!
4.5 had an anti air capability. It was removed from the system with the ER rounds coming into service. It could be reinstalled but it wouldn’t be cost effective. The gun bit is easy, its the tracker and predictor that is difficult. It would be nice to see some TTBs (Target Triggered Bursts) blackening up the sky again…
As for anti surface the 4.5 is very good. Radar fused rounds air bursting above or in front of a target will shred it.