Umm the RN needs something like this to supplement its sub launched tomahawks and storm shadows..

Germany has the right idea, what can you bring to the table fast that can hurt Russia.. because pain is the only deterrent.

I like this flexibility. i wonder if sometimes will not be good to have just a weapons carrier ship with maybe a bridge and essential sensors and nothing else, Stanflex to the ultimate consequence, a large free level platform like an aircraft carrier flight deck, where varied weapons can be deployed by truck/ crane and attached to the platform by operational needs.

The Israelis congratulating Germany on being the first to develop a ballistic missile is not something I was expecting, somehow.

If only the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had this capability in 1941

Now everyone had a good giggle at the dip about a deck launched long range missile for the carriers.. Germany now has a deck launched ballistic missile..that’s in a shipping container.. how many shipping container could you stash on a Uk carrier and still keep up flying opps for sea control CAPS.

The containerize approach is the right way to go with threats and counter threats constantly evolving and ship design, construction and refitting taking years and being very costly, IMO a ship should have atleast 60% of available deck open for modular add-ons such as direct energy weapons, long strike capabilities, additional air defense etc. having specialized vessels is a luxury

Russia knew about this launch before the ship put to sea.

It is posturing by Germany and brings nothing to the table a bit like the Astutes – all tied up alongside.

Russians understand death – so just enable the ability to stop Russians breath oxygen and then they will take the threat seriously.

The only good Russian is a dead Russian.

This type of capability is another reason why the RN should not entirely ditch the idea of ‘big ships’.

Long range strike, and the ability to counter such weapons, seems to be the way things are going. Some of these systems will be cheap easy to manufacture whilst others will be more capable and expensive but regardless of whether they are cheap or exquisite they will be big so a big platform will likely be needed if sufficient depth of fires is to be carried. Another argument for a big platform will possibly be around stability. These systems may well need a reasonably stable firing platform which will be a challenge in the North Atlantic especially in the autumn and winter months. I can’t see these big systems being easy to launch from a 1500 to 2500 drone in a North Atlantic storm.

So while I think that the hybrid navy is generally a good idea, I just hope that it doesn’t exclude consideration of bigger hulls should it prove to be a reasonable solution to a potential problem. I do have a concern that in breaking the current orthodoxy there is risk of simply creating new orthodoxy that becomes obsolete rather more quickly than many might expect, i.e. small ‘cheap’ drones are the answer to all our problems. I suspect that will prove not to be the case.

We should also be aware that the flexibility of containerised systems, be they drone systems on escorts, missiles or C2 nodes, comes with a cost, namely, the container structure itself which takes up room and weight. This will mean that a containerised system will not be as efficient in payload terms as a conventional missile farm or specialised drone hanger, for example.

So I can still see the need for ‘big ships’ as well as some advantages. This seems to fly in the face of the current (developing?) orthodoxy that big is expensive, but if the ships were built as a container ‘carrier’ most of the ship would be empty space and “steel is cheap and space is free”. This would greatly reduce the cost of the ship, allowing the payloads to be procured as separate programs which in turn could potentially reduce the costs of those systems by allowing the same system to be carried by a wider range of platforms, from special amphibious vessels to general purpose container carriers. The container carrier if designed as an ‘escort’ variant would need to be built to warship standards e.g. survivability, speed and maneuverability, so it will be more expensive than a conventional container ship or the current emerging mothership concepts, but given most of the expensive systems would be procured separately the actual cost of the ship would be greatly reduced compared to the current generation of escorts. The reduced cost of the ship would be further ‘politically’ entrenched because the cost of the systems to be carried would vary from ship to ship, mission to mission meaning that the mission systems would more correctly sit in a separate cost center.

Separating out mission systems into separate cost centers and procurement programs could give rise to further cost savings as there would be the potential for systems to be procured more quickly and in greater numbers as in effect the same system would be deployed across a greater number of vessels. It might also great reduce refit and upgrade costs.

However, the biggest potential saving would be with regards to integration. Plug and play is obviously implied in this approach, which to be fair is simply taking the RN’s POD concept to it’s ultimate level, i.e. a standard set of escort / patrol hulls capable of accepting any POD. The key element would be the digital framework into which every POD system and hull would need to fit. Hopefully the RN is working on this and the MoD is ensuring that these efforts are Joint in nature i.e. all 3 services participate and adhere to the same digital standards.

There are potential complexities, for example, the implications for a completely standard hull when considering the differing requirements between an acoustically quiet ASW platform and GP/AAW ships that would normally accept a lower standard of acoustic isolation, but the choices are pretty straight forward a) full ASW acoustic standards across the fleet, b) mixed acoustic standards, c) lower acoustic standards across the fleet. Each option has their own implications and potential mitigations that could be dealt with either with more money in the case of option a), (unlikely) or by putting the high risk elements of ASW off onto drones in the case of c) and giving the container carrier/escort a reasonable level of acoustic isolation sufficient to provide the ship with a good chance to effectively defend itself.

None of the above would remove the need for the smaller T9x drone concepts. However, big ships going all in POD carriers would provide maximum flexibility whilst allowing the costs of hulls and systems to be separated out and thus properly recognise where the costs truly lie, hopefully, allowing for the better control of said costs. Also by physically decoupling much (but not all) of the ship and system development and build cycles should help with the shortening the time it takes to bring new systems capabilities into service and ship and system refits and upgrades could be separated as well potentially increasing ship availability.

PODS could in effect enable big ships to remain part of the escort fleet allowing big radar masts (and hence big radar horizons) to remain a feature/capability.

Cheers CR

The prerequisite for German reunification was not to remilitarize. Another promise NATO broke.

Proof shot….They’ll need to move these elsewhere to not block their helo pad.

Containerised missiles – and the Batch 2 are singing ”All I want for Christmas is you!!!”

Still an OPV but load a container on it and hey presto, good things come from little packages.