British warships getting missile upgrade

Spot on weakness now will be disaster tomorrow, Russia still thinks we have no stomach any addition to that notion and they will think they can take bigger bites and a revenge fuelled mad one might well seem winnable to Putin and once started as with Ukraine he can’t afford to reign it in and WW3 begins through each sides miscalculation. Shapps can say what he likes but there still seems little sign he and his Govt conpatriots are giving it anything but verbal approval. What worries me most is that they talk big because they can rely on our US Mates safety net but we have no idea if that’s on solid ground or quicksand and that offers up all manner of potential miscalculations all round.

Yes in the US pacific missile range.

I think, but could be wrong, that was tracking short range ballistic missiles at launch / climb stage. Stand to be corrected but I don’t think Sampson looks directly up ( cant see an incoming BM in terminal phase)

Wouldnt hitting the missile when it’s directly above the ship likely cause damage to the ship as the debris from the 2 missiles land on it?

If you’re the target not much choice

You should have. Ballistic is by definition a curve, so as long as your defensive missies have long enough range they should be able to take it out as it curve into the ship rather than at the last minute when its almost verticle.

Will be function of range and target identification. Sampson limited to 400km

400km is pretty long though, that’s around a 1/3rd of the range of a chinese anti-ship ballistic missile, which would be still near the top of its arc where it would be a significant distance away from the ship.

the challange taking them out in the past was the speed they travel and the commutational power needed to get accurate target data for something traveling that fast. However Ukraine war has shown that clearly patriot can do it.

The apogee of even a short range ballistic missile is very high so chances of getting blatted by debris would be low.

It is possible to add a third top plate to SAMPSON.

But it is possible that the ABM radar might be the very powerful Thales set that is already on T45. There is a known upgrade pathway for that.

My *guess* is that it is more to do with how the two radars are used together.

It could be that both radars are getting the upgrades.

It is also perfectly possible that the existing radars and missiles are perfectly good enough to deal with the primitive weapons being used in theatre.

Upgrading the radars is distinct from upgrading the missiles. I don’t *believe* that upgrading one is necessitated by the other. So the missile upgrades would just be done as the missiles are taken off during routine destoring sent back to the maintenance facility and upgraded, then rotated out onto the next ship being stored at the ammunition jetty.

I also *believe* that none of this is related to PiP. Except that this ushers the radar heads are craned off for overhaul.

Given heightened tensions we won’t get a running commentary until RN say ‘operational’.

Now Mr Hunt / Sunak ££££££ for defence please like yesterday.

Indeed…refit everything that can be now..and plow a ton of cash into recruitment and retention…the one area a lot of “money now”could make a difference is retention recruitment and bring the old lost workforce back into the fold…personally I think it’s time to shift the paradigm and tell the public defence spending needs to be back at Cold War levels…5-6%…be honest…actually tell the, china is up arming to the point it can to toe toe with the USN now ( let alone on 5 years)..tell them china is say it will be going to war by 2027..Iran is potentially able to prosecute a war in the gulf..cutting our shipping lanes to the indo pacific region…Russia and china and Iran as well as North Korea are now allies and my all take part together in a world war…people need to be shit scared and ready…

Is that the Thales SMART L MM ?

Yes, I believe the Dutch used it to guide SM-3 from an AB onto a target a few years back, showing that it could track and target the missile, just the ship couldn’t launch the missiles itself.

indeed. not easy. my own view…if you can upgrade now for what is likely to be a more effective operational threat in 10 years do it as part of impending yard work.

Sampson can see to the edge of space but it’s long been proposed to add a third plate facing upwards above the other two to give it much enhanced coverage, accuracy, tracking and thus anti ballistic capability. Don’t know mind whether that would need to be on a new platform or capable of retro fitting to T-45 in its existing or modified location. A third panel fitted separately is an interesting idea though one presumes not trivial considering the present set ups cooling set up.

As for Steve’s concern below the idea would be to take out the missile at considerable height but also realistically though the third panel would face up it would give wide coverage and thus the missile would not likely be directly above the ship when intercepted, ballistic missiles still come down at a relative angle to the target.

Cheers

on third plate. Was wondering if fitted separately it could be fitted lower down and therefore water-cooling issues may be easier managed.

“The Burkes don’t have an up word looking antenna either”

And they seem to consistently intercept ballistic missiles in test and operationally which makes me think the need for an upward facing antenna is another internet lore and not based in reality.

Bingo!!

Yes, no idea who came up what the idea of an upward facing antenna to intercept a ballistic missile. The antenna plates on the Burke and the T45 are all sloped backwards and the AESA beam can electronically steer at a significant angle off its pointed direction. I think it’s about 60 degrees or so. Ballistic missiles are tracked and intercepted before coming near the warship and the missile itself does not drop straight down on top of a target its comes in at an angle which is relative to the angle it was launched at. Actually coming straight down on top of a target is almost impossible for a ballistic missile it would have to bleed off the lateral energy it’s carrying some how.

An early proposal for Sampson was 4 panels, so no need to revolve. One of the 4 would have pointed straight up. Remember even WW2 V1 flew in a straight line until its primitive guidance thought it was over target, then it nosed straight down. I think the fear was that modern hostile missiles, might do something similar. Hypersonic glide vehicles launched by ballistic missiles, may be able to do that.

Sampson is an over the horizon angled radar when dealing with balistic missiles it can track too it’s zenith of attack and its downward trajectory like you said coming straight down would not be possible and on target these missiles fired by the Houthies are angled launched not like the old v2s straight up were they land no body knows kind of deal captured missiles alast week from a Dowleshowed that the build is not very complicated off the shelf electronics with a 50pound warhead with Fxxxing Ball bearings

Unless its a booster throwing up a FOB system then it just drops re-entry vehicles on your head.

Re entry vehicles don’t come straight down, they follow a ballistic arch, steep angle sure but not vertical.

Well Bae offered up the concept, it’s just never been taken up or financed. I think an upward facing plate broadens and enhances its anti BM capabilities but certainly is not a necessity for it as you say.

For sure an upward facing antenna would be useful, just not essential. Actually an upward facing AESA array would be very useful for jamming an incoming weapons radar guidance.

Hi Netking,

More than just lore I think…

Quote from Navy Lookout article:

“SAMPSON is by no means a development dead-end and BAES considered multi-face versions with three, four and even five arrays, including a zenith array looking straight up for BMD use. A simplified, reduced-cost vision with a single array called SPECTAR was also being offered for export. At least the more affordable medium-range ARTISAN 3D (Advanced Radar Target Indication Situational Awareness and Navigation) which replaced the Type 996 in RN service was developed rapidly using some of the technology derived from SAMPSON.”

In Focus – The Royal Navy’s Sampson Radar, Navy Lookout, May 15, 2020.

Cheers CR

Hi CR,

So it really is a thing. To my untrained eyes, it seems that a missile on a ballistic arc would have to come over the horizon at some point which would put it in the range of radar a pointed in a given direction. Very interesting stuff.

Hi Netking,

Ballistics are not my area so the following may be a bit off. However, from what I have read picking up BM’s as they come over the horizon is only really possible with shorter range weapons Intermediate range and shorter, I believe. This is because longer range weapons are at a very significant height before they come over the horizon, so out of range to anything other than very big radars e.g. Fylingdales.

So the 400mile range of SAMPSON at the horizon isn’t that far for detecting ballistic missiles I believe. Strategic missiles can get up to about 2,800miles on their sub-orbital flight just to illustrate the issue. Speed also matters, but hopefully someone else will chip in…

Cheers CR

The issue with longer ranged ballistic missiles is their higher velocity. I am assuming that the ABMs appearing in the Red Sea are not terminally guided. If they are it is much scarier.

It’s also their apogee…I don’t think most shipped based systems can detect an object 750miles up.

That is true. However the radar may be able to spot it and track it. But the missile may be traveling above your SAMs altitude envelop. So you will have to wait for it to tip over and dive on your ship. Waiting until the missile crosses into your SAMs envelop.

This is the premise of why hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) are supposed to be invulnerable. Which is a lie. Basically they cruise above 150,000ft. Which at the time put them above all endoatmospheric SAMs. SM3 is purely an exoatmospheric missile, so HGVs cruise well below SM3’s engagement window. However, both THAAD and SM6 are being improved specifically to intercept HGVs.

Even so at some point HGVs, steep diving anti-ship cruise missiles and ballistic missiles will pass into your ship’s SAM envelop. So if your radar can keep track of the threat and your CMS can keep up and work out the intercept. Your SAMs should stand a chance of intercepting the threat.

I think also the problem with hypersonic glide vehicles is they should be able to manoeuvre so working out an intercept point becomes harder as you don’t know where it’s going to be. If it takes 180 seconds for your long range Sam to reach the target and the target changes direction every 60 seconds there is a problem. Mid course corrections may help.
I’m no expert as to what is and isn’t possible. Hitting 4000+mph objects that move must be tricky.

As a point of reference SM3 is intercepting targets that are travelling faster than Mach 10. But as they are exoatmospheric, their flight paths are predictably straight, which makes interception easier.

THAAD in particular has been used to intercept very high altitude ballistic missiles fired from Yemen at the UAE in 2022. These were at an altitude over 90,000ft.

In both cases the targets were not manoeuvring either mid-course or during the terminal phase. Even when travelling at hypersonic speeds, this makes the interception far easier. Though it has taken over 20 years to get to a point today where SM3, THAAD and SM6 have a greater than 75% chance of a successful interception.

Hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) were specifically designed to fly above SAM systems such as SM6, THAAD and Arrow, but below SM3’s engagement window. After release from the rocket, they fly unpowered, porpoising in a series of manoeuvres to remain on a quasi-ballistic flight path towards the target. As it does so it will slow down a bit after each manoeuvre. What remains to be seen is if the HGVs carry sensors that warn them, an interceptor is closing? Which may cause them to erraticly manoeuvre, to try and shake off the SAM. However, by doing so they will slow down even more. Do it enough times the HGV will only be supersonic.

I have a feeling that the HGVs aren’t that clever. Relying on its speed and porpoising to throw off the radar tracking and approaching SAM. At the moment companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin can only model the intercept. As they don’t “publicly” have a HGV target drone to physically test against. But they are taking the threat seriously, hence the major upgrades the Companies are doing to SM6 and THAAD. Pretty certain Israel have also examined the HGV threat and how Arrow can counter it.

THAAD in particular has the added advantage of using a X-band AN/TPY-2 radar to do its searching and tracking. Compared to an Arliegh Burke’s S-band SPY-1D. Although the THAAD radar will use an enormous amount of energy to generate its search beam. It can track the threat with much greater resolution, so it might be able follow and predict when the HGV porpoises. Also the photons making up the radar beam will be travelling at the speed of light (in the perfect atmosphere). If the HGV is 400km away, the photons will take 0.001334 seconds to reach the HGV and a further 0.001334 seconds to return to the radar. At no point will the radar fail to follow the target.

Which will help with the interception calculations. The “Kill Vehicle” uses a passive infrared sensor to track the target. So the HGV probably won’t know its approaching, unless it has an optical missile warning system, which seems highly doubtful. At the expected altitudes the interception is likely to happen, the surface to air missile will be connected via a data-link. Course corrections will likely be done constantly throughout the engagement. I fully expect a system such as THAAD to be capable of handling HGVs..

“Do it enough times the HGV will only be supersonic.”

My understanding is that the HGV is also maneuvering laterally as well to make the prediction of an interception point even more difficult. Yes it is trading speed for maneuverability but so is the missile trying to intercept it and its likely the HGV has a lot more energy than the interceptor.

Countering a hypersonic cruise missile like the US HACM(if they can get it to work) is a different level all together as it’s flying much lower in the atmosphere, theoretically below the radar horizon giving the defender mere seconds to detect, track and intercept it.

That’s true but you can increase coverage and definition of what you are seeing with more panels I presume.

Realistically low flying and non stealthy anti ship cruise missiles are a much bigger threat to a warship than a ballistic missile so the concept behind mast mounting SAMPSON is still valid. If anything SPY 1 and SPY 6 are looking dated.

A low flying cruise missile can select where to hit a ship taking out sensors etc or hitting the ship on the water line. Striking the ship side also gives a much greater chance of detonating the war head.

Any ballistic missile striking a warship at hypersonic speed is likely to face the same issue as Tallboy used against Tirpitz.

Good chance the warhead goes straight through the ship and in to the water leaving a small easily fillable hole.

There is a reason why the west had not developed anti ballistic missile for anti ship work or super and hypersonic anti ship missiles.

I do think the US Navy has goosed their choice of how SPY-6 is to be fitted to the Arliegh Burkes. Combining both a S-band and an X-band into a single panel array sounds good. But sill faces the same problems they had with the legacy SPY-1D. In that the X-band radar is placed fairly low on the superstructure and therefore constrains the radar horizon. Where it should be placed as high as possible.

The Australian CEEFAR tries to solve this by putting the S-band panels low on the mast and the X-band panels higher on the mast. But again, I feel they have also goosed the installation.

The T45’s Sampson and S1850M combination is a much better installation. Where the L-band S1850M is fitted fairly low, whilst the S-band Sampson is placed as high as possible.

The reasoning is quite simple. You want the biggest surface area antenna/array for volume search. Thereby giving you the best antenna gain for high output and receiver sensitivity to increase your detection range. Ad antenna arrays are pretty heavy, it will have to be kept fairly low to maintain the ship’s balance as per the SPY-1D. Volume search radars operating in the L-band are terrible at surface searches and extrapolating a target from the clutter generated by the sea. But it doesn’t matter, as the radar is trying to hoover up as much information from the sky as possible.

Whereas you want a S-band or preferable a X-band radar to search the sea from the ship to the horizon. As the X-band in particular has very high clutter rejection against sea clutter. Where an S-band will require more signal processing to match it. Therefore as the X-band antenna array can be significantly smaller and lighter than a L-band. It can be placed as high as possible. Which extends the ship’s radar horizon.

In an ideal World you would want to have the updated S1805M, the SMART-L MM. But installed as 4 panels to cover 360 degrees, for your very long range volume searches. Plus Sampson as 4 fixed panels or 3 mechanically rotating panels arranged in a triangle for your horizon searches, fitted as high as possible. Plus a single fixed SMART-L MM and Sampson panel looking straight up, to fill in the radar dead zone above the ship.

The ballistic missiles that the Houthis are firing at ships. Apart from the SA-2 conversion, they are all “copies” of Iranian missiles, ranging from very short ranged ballistic missiles to the 500km tactical range ones. Most of these have a passive infrared seeker. I don’t believe any have a two-way data-link, though SA-2 is still radio command guided if within visual range. It seems the seekers thankfully don’t have a good resolution, else more ships would have been hit. It is telling that a massive container ship and a bulk carrier are the only ones so far hit by Houthis ballistic missiles. If these missile had better seekers along with a two-way data-link, then they would represent a significantly greater threat.

“I do think the US Navy has goosed their choice of how SPY-6 is to be fitted to the Arliegh Burkes.”

It’s interesting that the latest PRC destroyers have gone with a similar setup to the ABs which makes me think there are confident in it’s ability despite the layout and there is capability there that is not disclosed publicly.

Sadly not quite true. Electronically steered arrays be they PESA or AESA have a field of view in azimuth of +/-60 degrees and in the vertical +/-45 degrees. This is the reason why the flat panels are angled to lean back. Otherwise they would only look up 45 degrees

Admittedly it is possible for the beam to be steered past these limits. However steering the beam gets less precise, as well as less powerful. It will also introduce a lot of interference. This is to do with how the beam is formed by positive and negative interference. As the beam reaches the antenna array’s limits. There are less modules forming the beam, so the beam gets weaker. You can use very expensive processing to filter out some of the issues. But the further you go the less diminishing returns you get.

Arliegh Burke ships with the massive SPY-1D PESA. Their panels lean back around 20 degrees. It’s similar with the T45’s Sampson and S1850M. Which also lean back about 20 to 30 degrees. Which means the directed radar beam can only look up 65 to 75 degrees. You can’t lean the panel too far back, else you can’t cover the area from horizon to the ship.

For the T45s there are a number of options. The easiest is to fit a fixed third panel to look straight up. Another are to fit gimbals to the two existing arrays. That sweep vertically up and down, as the antenna rotate.

There are very few if any ships, that have long range radar that look directly up. Which means pretty much all ships have a radar dead zone directly above the the ship. This includes the Arliegh Burkes.

That is beautifully explained.

Thanks DaveyB great explanation as ever.

Indeed, and enough for billions in tax cuts as a pre election bribe.
They’ve lost my vote….and as for Labour, well, they’ve never had it for the similar reasons.

At this rate, there will be nobody left to vote for mate! 🤣🤣

That’s the problem! There isn’t a 3rd established centrist party. Lib Dems no thank you.

Perhaps we need to start a new party, UKDJ and go on a ticket of Britain Defence first!! Can’t be any worse than the rest of them. 😆

What a great idea. If nothing else it would create publicity for defence. You and GB the obvious naval spokesmen.

Hi DM – Might you be up for MOD shadow minister?😉

Definitely! 😳🤪

niceeeee! 🙏

The do you actually realise we are heading for a war party…I’m not sure we would get any votes..people hate bad news even if it’s correct.

Try and find an independent to vote for..or if you have to spoil you ballot..just make sure you use your obligation to put the paper into the box.

I agree mate, let that be in no doubt. Too many have died for that right.

Agree strongly with every word
The political classes of not only here but the US and Europe are making me continually shake my head in disbelief.

Cashflow.

Only in the sense that they are not prepared to prioritise defence above other issues I suspect.
The cutting taxes gag prior to a GE tells you that money is available, just look at where the govt spent it’s money in 2023. By numbers, Defence was 6th on the list. The other five all had in excess of £100+ billion spent on them. Debt payments came in just under at £97 billion.
It’s all about how we spend it.

Well china has very specifically said it’s going to war by 2027…it’s told it’s own population it is..when you enemy rearms at a profound level ( the US department of defence estimates that chinas spending on it’s military is actually around 10times what it says it is…China official says it spent 290billion on defence..or 1.7% of its GDP..the U.S. suspects its actual spend is way way above that..17%?..which would make sense as even if you just look at its navel build you need to have dropped at ton of cash if in 3 years you have commissioned a balistic missile nuclear sub, a 80,000ton carrier, a 90,000+ ton carrier, three 40,000 ton helicopter landing docks, two to three 25,000 ton amphibious docks, five 3600 ton AIP attack subs, ten 13,000 ton cruisers, around seventeen 7500 ton destroyers, five 4500 ton frigates, twenty five 1500 ton corvettes, that is a lot of monies worth of ship building…that’s about 700,000 tons of warships in 3 years..or almost twice the tonnage of the RN launched/commissioned in a three year period…its scary scary stuff….then you get into its nuclear forces..it’s built around 1500 ICBM silos..and now has around 500 warheads which it plans to have doubled by the late 2020s.

Yes, think that we in the West have been caught on the hop and out-thought over this. Other than increase stocks of various munitions rapidly, get as many/much high end stuff through maintenance/back into service pdq, not really to sure what else we can do? The next few years might just be a tad fraught.

No because we need to keep ships active, cant dock the whole fleet for upto a year for this.

Agree we can’t just dock the entire class at once. We currently have 2 T45s in maintenance in Pompey, not sure why some/all the work can’t be done now. It is not beyond our capabilities to sort out all 6 ships in the next 3-4 years.
If we were in a shooting match it would be done as soon as a ship came back into port would you not think?

Sure but were not in a war, and the T45s are having to make up for the aging frigates rn. Also PIP is more of a priority than this, so rather than adding more work we need Daring and Dragon out so Diamond and Duncan can go in for a full PIP/CAMM, cause then all the destroyers will have PIP out of the way

No, we are not at war, but Im sure that we would rather have this capability before any shooting starts, not afterwards. If the assessed threat is within the next five years, then that is surely your time frame for the upgrade?
PIP is a priority task, but so is this, and has been for a decade or more if you read whats been said in the article.
CAMM also requires the Sea Viper system to be upgraded, if all the blocks are in place, there is no reason why CAMM/ASTOR Blk 1 upgrades cannot be implemented at the same time. Half of this work is on the missiles themselves, and that will happen in the armaments depot in Gosport where they are stored.

Indeed, there are a few points to consider.

1) china thinks of war differently to the west..to china the political war is even more important than the economic war and kinetic war..china is already attacking the west..in the political warfare sphere….an area it considers vitally importing in winning its concept of the long war…if you can overcome your enemy before he deploys his army..that is the greatest victory….
2) The only way to prevent a war is to convince china we will fight the long war…that means showing intent…everything we do or don’t do will go into the mix of kinetic war or not..

Even by throwing the kitchen sink at this and getting the T45s upgraded by 2027..we show will…one European nations showing will helps…even if we throw another 100billion into defence over the next 4 years…if it helps deter china going kinetic and a world war…it’s a fraction of what it will cost our nation in blood and treasure if china and the US go kinetic.

If there’s money there’s always an option to build two A140/T31 AAW types to bulk out the fleet and complement the upgraded T45s, especially litorally, and all prior to T83.

This option would only work out, if this type of vessel is fitted out with the same missile system as a T45, Aster 30s, and CAMM. With a compatible radar to go with it like a FREMM AAW frigate.
Iver Huitfeldt frigates have got X-Band radar, which the RN don’t use.

I’m not sure the Chinese agree with you, we are not yet in a kinetic war…the Chinese believe in the concept of the long war…the political war, economic war, preparations for kinetic war, preparation of your population etc these are all war activities recognised in Chinese strategic think on what war is….and anyone who has studied Chinese strategic thinking knows we are already at war.

China has supposedly adapting its economy to be less vulnerable to outside problems. I say supposedly as I’ve only heard it once and not looked into it.
What I heard was chinas government thought it wise to take a hit on growth by making its economy more domestically focused or something like that.
By no means would that make economic suffering not happen just less is the thinking.
I’m still not sure apart from Taiwan what or who China would want to be at war with? Taiwan is on its own really. When the PLA attack they will surround the island. Nothing in or out without a fight. They will want to end it quickly and with as little damage as possible.

in regards to china prepping its economy for war you have to read the Babbage papers ( it costs £30 to access unfortunately) as this is the major academic work with all the references and evidence around changes in the Chinese economy..

in regards to Taiwan…if the U.S. turned around and said we will not defend Taiwan then it would be as you say..china would envelop and would very likely obliterate its ability to fight and overthrow the government with a coupe of weeks. It would be a problem but not a catastrophe.

The issue is that the US has made the definitive statement that it considers an attack on Taiwan an act of war..( it has now confirmed this a number of times) and that it would defend Taiwan.

This means that china must consider how it can defeat the U.S. in a war..as it has to assume the US will attack it…and everyone agrees that once a war has started between the US and china neither side will be able to back down and neither side could be reduced in less than years ( we are talking about to superpowers with vast resources with the losser losing pretty much everything).

so china has been developing and practicing how it would defeat the US…it’s not even hiding this..it wants the US to know this as it’s part of its political war to try and get the US to back away from Taiwan ( chinas best victory would be if the U.S. did not fight..but they have made it clear they expect the US to fight and are planning for this).

So it knows that to take and hold Taiwan it has to crush the US will to fight…it knows that it may loss a number of campaigns as it knows the power the US can push into a set piece campaigns..but it also thinks it knows it’s own strengths and the US/western weakness..and that is the willingness to suffer a long war…china thinks it can hold together during a catastrophic years long conflict..it thinks the U.S. and wester will to fight would shatter…

so if china thinks the US will attack it if it attacks Taiwan then clearly it will consider a first attack on the US as part of strategic surprise..and Taiwan will tell anyone that will listen that china will attack it using strategic surprise china every year practices this.it’s practicing destroying and striking US bases and western pacific military power..after all if it can kill the USN in the western pacific ( which it vastly overmatches)..the USN would have lost around 30% of the power it would use to crack chinas attack on Taiwan..it would take around 2-3 weeks for the USN to develop some type of intervention force that would be significantly weaker than if china just let the US build its forces…so yes if the U.S. keeps its present position the if china attacks Taiwan it will also attack the USN..it has to.

Moving on from those initial blood baths in the western pacific..no matter who came out on top both nations navies would be shattered ..china and the US would move into a long war..they would being to attack each other’s economies and try to bring in their Allies..as china would need to impact on the U.S. economy, industrial output and populations will to fight it will strike at the continental US..using terror attacks, cyber etc…the U.S. would then trigger article 5 and WW3 would then take place.

As for economic impact, the wests economies would be utterly shattered from a pacific war between china and the U.S. even if it only stayed in the pacific ( which it will not)….nations will be asked to pick sides the flow of raw materials and basic goods would stop both the US and china as well as their allies would move to wartime economies…The war in Ukraine caused massive shock waves and let’s be honest that was a war between to small economies with little impact..the U.S. and china between them represent around 40% of the global economic wealth creation in the world..if just these two nations moved to wartime economies it will shatter the worlds economy….both world war 1 and world 2 two shattered and completely changed the worlds economies how would a U.S. China war not do the same ?

Well if no one has managed to do it that means your ‘since 2014’ a bit suspect then 😔

Type 45 uses sylver VLS.

Yes I know, but its physically the same size. Internal width is 560mm, CAMM ER diameter is 190mm, CAMM is 166mm. I’m sure quad packing is possible, we (our government) just chose not to pursue it.

And I’m sure the bean counters will also favour the test program if Naval Group cooperate.

The T23 frigate, does Not have the hull depth for Mk. 41.

I think the only work done was to measure that they do fit. It would take more work to actually get that into service.
While it is interesting a Mk41,sylver are hot launch launchers while CAAM is cold launch. Be aswell having a cheaper cell launcher for CAAM that can fit the missiles in perfectly making best use of the space. Could even consider double stacking to get more missiles. Place them down the side of the hull of new ships as they are slightly armoured and blow out can occur outwards.
As usual it’s all money and that’s one thing that’s in short supply.
We see it repeatedly with projects, slowed down to spread costs over different year budgets due to not enough money to do it in one go.

Not enough depth in Hull for Mk. 41 on a T23. T23 designed before Mk. 41 came into existence.

Not worth it. Use the money to speed up T26 and get T83 #1 into build at the end of the decade. In my head, I put T83 alongside Tempest in terms of timeline along with SSN-AUKUS. All three would be worth spending more on rather than scrabbling for short-term capability.
I’d rather have 8 T83 cruisers in 2035 than 2 T45s in 2030 and 4 T83s in 2040.

Even their hull is odd. It looks like the Italians still remember the Battle of Lissa and so have fitted a ram bow to their new patrol vessels…

The missiles certainly don’t
SM3 seems to be purely for exoatmospheric targets with SM2 and SM6 for endoatmospheric missiles and jets. So they have to decide beforehand how many ABM missiles they want to carry, while the T45 is supposed to be using the same missile for both.

Handy to have the breakdown, thanks