Photos and videos show HMS Glasgow in build

Are they not looking at putting some kind of anti sub weapon in the VLS ??

I’ll believe it when I see it…

Ever heard of VECTAC or MATCH?
When you are in a TG with other units or there is an ASW aircraft overhead you would use them to drop on your contact.
Failing that other units land on, bomb up and fly off.

I was about to invoke your name XD

😂😂

Agree with every word. 👍

I really enjoy your posts but, may I take issue with Glasgow or any of her sisters deploying with 2 Merlins?

We simply do not have enough aviation assets for use across the fleet.

FAA has 30 x Mk2 ‘Sub Hunters’. Is that not enough? The whole fleet is never going to sail together. Might be 2 or 3 frigates in a CSG, plus some Mk2s on the carrier. 20 should be enough.

Hi Graham I don’t think David is off the mark, not sure what cab availability is with the MK2 merlins, but if you say 10 available for deployment with four needed for radar work as well as a couple more for ASW on the carrier that give you 4 for small flight work. But wildcat can still drop torpedoes If paired with something that can vector it to a contact ( T23/26).

But we have effectively lost the equivalent of 12 cabs to keep up the AEW ( always having four deployed will take 12) so we should be looking to replace those with something else ( I think we should just have 12 wildcats with dipping sonar).

Hi Barry

i don’t disagree small flight availability can be an issue, but they could also have a merlin, wildcat or wildcat wildcat mix. And although wildcats cannot detect, they can drop after vectoring by the T26.

But agree small flights need to be looked at. Maybe providing some wildcats with a dipping sonar and shifting over the army wildcats to the RN. Then just lovebomb the army with a lovely new medium rotor to make up for it.

Yes, it’s thoughtful combination especially if we could snaffle from rotors from the ROKs.

Okeedokee unless she embarks the Seabourne Cavalry (marines) why a Chinook ? Or are they just stating that the size of deck could handle a Chinook MR

It seams every escort now needs to be able to land a chinook. All the best escorts love a chinook.

Is not due to the ‘new’ role the Royal are taking on with littoral raiding?

Not sure there are enough Royal or T26 platforms available 😉 , but, hey ho.

She doesn’t have the dual cannon like we had in the old days though. 😉 Always loved the twin 4.5″.

Dec 10th 1981 HMS London fired all four from A and B turrets In what may have been the Navy’s last Broadside Single barrel only good for smoke rings Lusty

Oh yes. If I remember the quote…
“Billiards again tonight” (something like that) – 1982.

When the Type 31’s come online with 3 guns they might just manage a small broadside.

Yes they are going to be nasty for small boats ( Iranian small boat swarms would not work so well with a T31 gun armament, it’s one of the reasons I really warmed to the concept, it really looked thought through when you get down to it).

when i was on the old blake and she fired the 6 inch gun the whole ship shuddered….brilliant.

Lol… HMS Boris! 😁

😄

Numerically largest class of British light cruiser in WW2 seems to have been the Dido class… displacement 5,450 BRT.

That’s a very good point, not all that much heavier than a Type 22

Historically Cruisers had 6 inch guns, and Heavy Cruisers had 8 inch. As mentioned the Dido’s were 5500 tons. Destroyers were 2000 tons with 4 or 5 inch guns.
Today Frigates are ASW, Destroyers are AAW and the gun size is not the distinction. I think all warships should have a bit of everything or be easily configurable as you don’t always know what ships will be available.

No. In the Inter-war period and WW2 they had 6 inch guns. “Heavy Cruisers” where not even a thing until the Washington Naval Treaty. Don’t fall into the trap of using a narrow 28 year period to base your view of history on. As I said, it’s arbitrary.

Same goes for Destroyers:
Fleet escort destroyers of the 2nd World War where around 2,000 tonnes. Yes, but again this is a narrow definition. “Historically” a lot of destroyers came in under 1,000t displacement, some as small as 300t. (Oh and btw in WW2 Frigates were also ASW, the RN divided it’s escorts into ASW focused Corvettes and Frigates and Surface action focused Destroyers, the US did the same thing but classed them Destroyer Escorts and Destroyers instead).

You can disappear up your own arse on the nomenclature, its pretty irrelevant. The roles and capabilities of modern ships compared to their forebears has vastly changed. Using the metre of the old named classes is pointless, you could use the metre of how many aircraft they carry so pretty much everything from an OPV upwards would be a small aircraft carrier.

They have to call them ‘something’ so have stuck with the old names for classes of vessels but none of them are much like their predecessors. Even aircraft carriers (the proper ones with gazillions of planes as opposed to my pretendy example) have so much more capability (and capacity) than their older equivalents.

I mean yeah, that’s pretty much my point. Just with the angle that even in WW2 (which people fixate on as some kind of standard for what ships classes are) the roles and capabilites had vastly changed from their fore bearers.

The Darings with their 6 x4.5″ guns were the epitomy of classic destroyers in RN. Even then people were muttering about them being cruisers. 2750 tons or thereabouts.

Agreed, but I’m probably thinking of a different Daring class…😃

It was an auto correct, but it made me laugh so much I kept it in.

It’s everywhere mate, the skill it’s finding a way to get them all sort of lined up and arguing about the same thing at least.

I also work in construction SB and the other big factor in access issues is the truly stupid designs that some architects come up with(some of my best friends are, however architects 😃) It is as though their brief is to make the building almost impossible to access for maintenance!
On subject, HMS Glasgow is really starting to look like a warship! Will be great to get a proper look when they strip the scaffold

I’ll have you know that pamerstons Follies have stood the test of time Great VFM have stood up longer than The TRICORN if your from Portsmouth your know and also so many holiday makers to Southsea beach want too know about the 3 forts in the solent are and do people live on them Our Victorian Ancestors knew a thing or two about building to Last shame the French didn’t have a go oh well at least a lot of Brickies had jobs

Agree Maus super tank anyone? Or Thor the monster mortars or Schwer Gustav. Ludicrous expenditure of resources and industrial output/ man power. So much for German efficiency. Would have been better building nothing by Panthers in their thousands and FW fighter bombers. Stick to a few weapons that work.
Translated to modern day Britain that means Boxer, Eurofighter, F35B, Type 26/31/83 in adequate numbers and a follow on batch of astute class subs.

I don’t think it is rose tinted. If you think the police, education and NHS are good value for money then we definitely disagree. I think the MoD overall is actually one of the more efficient areas of government compared to the rest. We really need to focus more on value for money metrics rather than some of the other metrics people are using.

Millions died in India and Ireland because of famine exasperated by the decision of Victorian governments. It was also the era that oversaw the Crimean War that exposed the structural issues in the army, the great stink in London where members of parliament almost feinted and the sinking of HMS Captain which demonstrated that even at the height of Britain’s sea power the Navy could make some monumental mistakes. But apart from the above and the outbreaks of cholera and the high infant mortality rate the Victorian era was fantastic!

Yes and we have the shutdown of the whole economy for something that had the mortality figures of a common cold….We also had vast swathes of the NHS sitting on their backsides…and I say this as someones cousin who was in the NHS that didn’t work because she was fat and smoked but was proud to have the jab before other more worthy elderly (I feel personally ashamed she did this)…We can all be selective about things but the Victorians invented the modern world. You talk about cholera but it was the Victorian’s that worked out why it was caused (Jon Snow the father of epidemiology). High infant mortality was common around the world…higher in places like Indian who used to (and still do) kill infant girls (see the ratio of males to females in India for evidence of this fact). The Victorian’s brought us modern medicine, science, engineering the list goes on. As for famines it was a potato blight that did it for the Irish but they blame the English…there were reasons for the corn laws at the time but quite rightly they were removed once the extent of the famine was known. Ever wondered why the Irish are often called “MOPE” – most oppressed people ever – because they want that folk lore around them to see better than the British but it rings hollow in terms of the good that Britain tried to do at that time. In India famines were (and still are common) and the British bore little responsibility given the power rested with the local Ragah’s and Nabob’s. How do you think those glittering palaces got paid for? The British brought modern communications i.e. the Imperial telegraph to Indian in the late 1840s and early 1850s…trains, modern education….the list goes on and on…plus the administration side for both military and the Imperial administration were a fraction of those that now run arms of the UK government like the NHS and MoD…Yes things were different then but efficiency was there in Victorian England. I also had a look at the kind of education that children received towards the end of the Victorian period – in both mathematics and English. I can tell you that if you were lucky to be in the middle classes the quality of education was extremely good. Yes the working classes had life hard but they also had skils that many of young today lack. Much progress has been made but one does wonder if some elements of their ethics, applied today, would do wonders for many of our staid and corrupt institutions.

First, you are spreading untrue information about COVID mortality being comparable to the comman cold. Please provide some peer reviewed journal articles that support your opinion.

I’m not denying the contribution the Victorians made to the modern world which was immense. What I was disagreeing with was the implication arising from your statement ‘if only the Victorians could see is now’. I instead disagree with your pessimistic view and believe we have progressed considerably across so many metrics. Take infant mortality which now is four per thousand deaths but in 1900 was 228.08 per thousand, or 57 times worse. I think our ancestors would be proud by the progress we have made to keep our children alive. in 1850 in England and Wales life expectancy at birth was 42, albeit that is skewed by infant mortality rates. For those who survived infancy they could expect to live to 57, however by 2019 that had increased dramatically to 81. How can that not be seen as progress? You complain about the skills of modern youth but the education opportunities they have now plus their levels of attainment now is vastly improved. Literacy levels (which stood at around 60-65% for a basic level in 1850 compared to nearly universal levels now), as well as secondary and tertiary education graduation rates are vastly different. Plus to address your point about the skills gap Victorians employed vast numbers of people in menial or repetitive roles that have either been automated or no longer required. When was the last time you saw and advert for a scullery maid? Could a Victorian do the coding for this website, build a Typhoon or even work a smart phone? While I admit that more could be down to increase maths and English attainment levels, and I think it’s a shame that subjects such as Latin are not taught to the same extent as in previous generations, the breath and depth of topics and knowledge available to people now is staggering .

In terms of your points about famine, what do you think the modern population would think if a million people in the UK died from it today? Obviously it was the potato blight that was the proximate cause however the ultimate reason for the death rate was the the government of the era could have intervened and chose not to. They did (largely) learn their lesson when blight hit the Highlands but it was too late for those already perished or who emigrated form Ireland.

I think overall your argument about the superiority of the Victorian era over the present day would be strengthened if you could evidence your claims including through the use quantitive data and a wider selection of metrics.

If you look at the rates of “deaths involving” flu/Pneumonia and those associated with covid-19 they are broadly similar. Check our the ONS statistics and the table below

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/mortalityratesinvolvingfludeathsandcovid19deathsin2021

Yes I note the differences in “death involving” and “deaths due”. However, both diseases require that the host has some underlying disease which means they are more vulnerable than the normal population and pre-existing issues that may pre-dispose them to increase mortality. Therefore, one expect that the deaths involving will be broadly comparable. Now given that covid-19 patients experience more severe symptoms this has probably significantly skewed the “deaths due”. Analysing whether something is due or involves is highly complex and very likely the deaths due have been significantly overestimated as many experts have already claimed. No one is seriously arguining against the “deaths involving” which are pretty much the same (so supports my argument). The key argument is the “deaths due” where many experts differ.

Therefore, in terms of “deaths involving” may statement is 100% correct. However, in terms of “deaths due” the figures support your argument but with the caveat that many experts suggest that the proportion and absolute values of “deaths due” has been significantly overestimated. For instance you may want to read about studies performed by Professor Carl Heneghan, epidemiologist and director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, and an author of the new report on trying to understand whether covid-19 deaths due are really attributable to ciovid-19 (absolute numbers). On the proportion aspect the number of asymptomatic cases was vastly underestimated as well:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/we-could-be-vastly-overestimating-the-death-rate-for-covid-19-heres-why/

The flu numbers are much more reliable as there has been reliable statistics for flu for a very long period of time. However, with covid-19 some deaths were actually attributed to covid-19 via video.

If you don’t think there was rampant corruption and abuse of working people in the “good old days” I don’t think you’ve met too many people. People don’t change in the short term. Systems do.

Hi Something Different

Many Victorians thought they were living at the pinnacle of human achievement – where science and engineering could solve all their problems. They definitely had the self-confidence (or hubris!) to embrace big, ambitious infrastructure projects. We’re still using some of it today!

Central government though was small, believed in laissez-faire economics, and localism. Indeed men such as Charles Trevelyan argued that problems like famine were the responsibility of local civic-society – not Whitehall.

Interestingly, the Highlands of Scotland were also affected by the same potato-blight, but the relief measures more successful. (Maybe more reading needed on that one to discover why!)

Agreed, there was high infant mortality, but significantly – the death-rate was falling during the Victorian era.

Albeit, with some dramatic peaks and troughs, it was an era of progress.

I’m not denying the progress made during the Victorian era but the only reason that the Highlands did not succumb to wide spread famine was because the government stepped away from their laissez-faire dogma because of the lessons learned from a million dead Irish people.

Agreed. laissez-faire is great if you’re at the top of the pile….

Hi Alan

The famine was a very interesting case and not many people actually understand the route causes. The Irish tend to blame the English, but they actually blame them for the wrong crime.

The reason the potato famine was so devastating in Ireland goes all the way back to the 1703 Property act. Now this is a piece of legislation that would today becalmed pure ethnic cleansing.

It basically creates different inheritance rules for catholic and Protestant. The Protestant could leave all his land to the elders son so farms could stay whole and productive. Catholic’s had to divide up all land equally to all sons. This lead over a couple of generations to the destruction of Irish farming in the sense that land ended in smaller and smaller packets, the only way to get the mass of calories from these small packets of land to feed a family was to grow potatoes, to the entire food output of most of western Ireland was potatoes. This was the root cause of the single crop dependency that led to the famine.

As for the relieve efforts, it was not a task that could be undertaken by even the most powerful nation on Earth at that time…We forget that populations were dependent on the food grown witching cart and horse distance and the mass movement of bulk staple foods from one county to another to feed 6.5 million people was a physical impossibility for a wind and horse powered culture.

The other key issues were:

1) The roads to and from the western counties at that time could not support the mass movement of bulk foods.
2)There were no major ports on the west coast.
3) the west coast was the death of sailing ships, and was effectively one county long lee shore that would trap and kill a ship trying to make a food delivery.
4) there were almost no mills in Western Ireland so even if any corn grown was kept or millet and Corn Imported it could not be processed and the people could do very little with it.

So although everyone blame the U.K. for not giving aid in the famine, the simple truth is it was not within the power of any nation at that time to feed the western counties, but the U.K. was to blame for Ireland being dependent on potatoes.

One other interesting fact, most Western Europe countries had just started the potatoeification ( I made that word up) of their food production ( cheap way to feed the masses) but luckily had only just started. If the potato famine had Happens a decade or two later the whole of Europe would have starved.

In fairness to the senior service HMS Captain was not a Navy mistake, it was designed by a private citizen and the navy attempted to reject it because they KNEW it was unstable. Basically parliament had taken Cole’s side (the guy who designed and built it) over the Navy’s, and the Navy has to toe the line. After it’s sinking the Navy used the even to say “NO!” to any private individual designing a ship for them.

People only focus on the defence procurement cock-ups, not on the majority of the projects that go well.

Well I would agree we don’t have nearly sufficient numbers for policing purposes but what do you define as value for money? The problems I found were insufficient numbers for patrol purposes (hence the overuse of “single crewing”) and a top heavy command structure….. (i could go on….) but I will say that the vast majority of patrol officers are doing their best with what they’re given. I suspect it is the same in the NHS and the armed forces as regards the front line staff.

Beware of greenfly?

But it does look like all that Russian money coincides with decades of nonsensical defence decisions. We can pat ourselves on the backj that Russia isn’t the terror we feared in terms of operational & technical ability, but we need to wake up before they correct their errors. So far our conventuional deterrent has failed.
China is coming-fast, hence the far east arms race & a PLAN fleet build program to directly challange the USN. Funny how austerity, cuts & efficiency savings never hit MPs pay.

Looks strange not having HMS Glasgow on a slipway. If anything goes wrong shifting her about & onto a barge she could ruin herself before even being launched. But then again I’m no engineer or shipwright.

The Far East arms race is definitely a real thing. The like of Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan, Australia etc are spending massive amounts of money & on really high end gear. None of them can match China on quantity & quantity matters. So does quality. If you can’t do one, do the other.

Coherent, long term & value for money should not be in the same political sentence as they are not compatible with vote grubbing.

The electorate is complicit in allowing itself to be deceived.

Agreed!

It’s how public finance works its all based on in year balancing and not long term sustainability or efficiency. Most in year savings cost a packet later but they just don’t care.

starve social services now cost billions on the nhs later. Don’t fund public health, created an overweight diabetic population that costs the budget of a small country for the next 40 years…

don’t build any nuclear power stations….pay out the noise for fossil fuels a decade later.

Dont have the money but want it now, pay on tick and spend a decade paying of interest.

Its the ultimate driver and Symptom of the now now now, don’t think deeply about tomorrow culture.

I don’t buy it, the liberal set in Europe are having kittens about the electorial prospects in France and slinging as much mud as possible to derail her prospects…

There’s certainly more ‘Putin’ in the Liberal pro EU organisations that would attempt to ensure a totally legal democratic process is subverted in France.

Always the way of things, liberal values are only ‘liberal’ if you fully agree with them, if you don’t, you get cancelled …. Just look at the shocking way certain forces joined in an attempt to derail Brexit, a solid democratic, voted for mandate.

Le Pen’s party appears to have received large amounts of cash from Russia and her immediate predecessor in her party is a holocaust denier.

Perhaps so, but at least she doesn’t wear a cheap syrup like Macron …. Never trust a man who wears a syrup, they always have something to hide, the hairpiece is probably paid for by the EU too…..

In all seriousness, the pro European brigade are absolutely having kittens as she looks like she’s getting within reach of power…. Certainly closer than she’s got before…..

Her policies are decidedly center left to be honest, but that doesn’t play to the hysteria Macrons lot want, so it’s all Putin slurrs and implied Fascist sympathy….

Same old, same old ….

derail Brexit, a solid democratic, voted for mandate.

Could we at least agree on the need for more T26?

Absolutely David, 12 would be sensible….

Not to mention a new Trump or Trump apologist Govt across the pond. Left and right are pretty much indistinguishable apart from whether they wear red shirts and blue shorts or blue shirts and red shirts, it’s democratic v extremist that’s the difference these days and even that isn’t always clear sadly.

SD I don’t wish no know about his Bedroom antics ,sorry I Realise hes returned too the back benches and will no longer make a laughing stock of the Labour Party at weds PM question time with his great introduction of “I have an Email from Mrs C” everyweek. And across the Channel Le Penn is just a carbon copy of her Father but unfortunately France have 2 choices at this present time Of which neither has shown a outright show of French flare on issues that is affecting European cohesion With the crisis in the East they are both out for themselves Le Penn thinks she’s her father Macron thinks his a later day Napoleon But as I’m out side
of continental Europe and the EU I don’t really give a toss let them eat bread

Well said.

I pray every day Corbin will just sort of fuck off and shut up. He makes a traditional workers party labour man like me cringe in despair.

I’ll have you know I’m quite partial too a generous mug of Ki , As I have just received an email from Mr C of Islington who asks Can he have his Whip back

Quit frankly at this point my main political ambitions for this country are for Boris and the rest of the ministers of state to find some Small shred of honour and decency and all sod off stage left. I would like to see a senior Tory with integrity ( Hunt ect) get a cabinet that at least has a grasp of the moral fibre to govern.

For me it’s Boris, he absolutely has to go, he’s crossed the line and become a liability, as they all eventually do, Thatcher, Blair etc….

That said, Boris had his use, he put his shoulder into Brexit and got it sorted, May was a wet weekend and just capitulated….

Boris probably handled the worst of Covid and organised a world leading vacation campaign very well.

I don’t buy blaming him for the lack of PPE, after all he had just come into power, blame that one on Cameron’s dangerous cuts…

Completely agree on the PPE, that was Cameron and Osbourne all the way. What was sad is it was the cuts that cost us so much as we needed to panic buy PPE as the strategic pandemic stocks had been left to rot.

One of the very good decisions of the last labour government was a full review of how the nation could manage a pandemic ( it was a 25 on the national risk registering and has been since swine flue. 25 means: 5 for likelihood, it’s going to happen soon and 5 for outcome, it’s going to be catastrophic, economic and or human). So the Blair government had a plan and set up the pandemic PPE stocks. But it needed to be managed and rotated out to the nhs every few years to be used and then replaced. The only cost would have been running the rotation programmes as the NHS would have had to buy the PPE anyway so it could have been cross charges….but no for the saving of not running a stock rotation they lets warehouse of PPE rot and care/nursing staff had to use bin bags as PPE ( I know this to be true as I was managing an incident room).

The issue with Borris is that he was promoted beyond his competency. After all they had to sack him as a minister for incompetence. He’s just not a senior leader.

Can’t argue with that Jonathan….

One of my main bugbears with that odious man Blair was his Champaign glass self congratulations on ‘saving the NHS’ , in reality it was mainly smoke and mirrors, Hospitals built with PPI money, that were a perfect storm of financial trouble coming down the road!

And Labour blames the Tories for ‘ privatisation of the NHS’ talk about people in glass houses…

Worst of the lot was Cameron, his cuts were wildly dangerous and reckless in so many areas, his defence cuts, crisis management cuts ( PPE, mothballed decontamination units in fire stations etc, etc) and he seems to have walked away utterly unscarred from it all, the man’s one very slimey snake!

😄

40/60s

Yes and no. It is a cheap way of providing a wall of lead (tungsten in this case), that the threat has to pass through. The problem is that if the threat makes erratic manoeuvres designed to counter radar tracking etc. You will expend a shed load of ammunition trying to predict where the threat will be. Therefore you will need a very large magazine for the higher number of shells needed.

A better but more expensive option are guided rounds, that incorporate an impact and proximity fuse. Less rounds are needed to home in on to the threat. Such rounds as Leonardo’s DART and Raytheon’s MAD-FIRES use a continuous wave radar to illuminate the target. That either uses command guidance to intercept the target or in MAD-FIRES case, contains a radar receiver to home in on to the reflection given off by the target, using the same principle as semi active radar homing (SARH) that missiles, such as the earlier versions of SM2 use.

The issue with guided rounds is that the smallest calibre so far is 57mm. Which means the weapon system to handle the larger recoil etc, will weigh much more than a 40mm system. But it does mean less rounds are used for any given target. The RN have said that the T31’s 57mm gun will be using the MAD-FIRES round.

…Why would you mount it coaxially to a main gun? In a land platform a chaingun is mounted but that’s because a land platform has a lot more limited space and it’s main gun has a 360 field of fire. It would also be controlled very differently to the 4.5/5in (remember in a MBT/IFV the gunner sits right next to the gun, while in a ship it’s controlled from the CIC). Much simpler (and cheaper) for such a basic capability to be mounted on a rail and use the sighting system already installed on it.

I would certainly bot mount an MG next to the main gun. My point was more to do with getting the most out of the sailors manning the unstablised GPMGs and Minigus on these ships. If they were in independent turrets with 30, 40 or 57mm armed and stabilised cannon with a coaxially mounted GPMG or chain guns you would get more capability out of that sailor. More cost yes, better capability definitely. It just seems a waste to give them a MG.

Still doesn’t really solve the issues. GPMG’s and Miniguns don’t really need stabilisation as they are for very niche roles (basically supporting boarding actions or policing duties as). First of all you’ll need to change the mounts out to allow greater depression on the 30’s (on a 57mm on a Type 31 which is the main gun, no mount alteration will enable depression to engage a small craft alongside).

Next the Sailors manning the GPMG’s aren’t permanently assigned to it, in fact most of the time it’ll be in the ships armoury, only brought out on deck when the situation calls for it. So it’s not like that sailor is just sitting around waiting to use the GPMG. (Again see it’s use being niche).

Now for the advantage: More capability out of the sailor: Because it’s mounted onto a remote weapons station the GPMG will now be exposed to the elements, as opposed to being in a locker in the armoury, which means more maintenance, which means that while a Sailor won’t be assigned to it (eeeehhh, I mean someone in the CIC will be controlling it rather than aiming down the sights, but I’ll concede the point) during the instances where the GPMG will be needed, it’s now a constant maintenance nightmare, and you can’t just unmount and remount it when needed because it’ll now have to be ballistically matched to the 30mm mount each time you do it.

So in the final analysis, you’ll have spent a lot of money, for very little gain in a very specific mission set, and increased the maintenance burden on the crew.

Got it, thank you for taking the time to explain. I am very aware of the maintenance needed for GPMGs (and cannons) and I am sure sea air does not help the issue. I note the T31 will receive a mixture of medium calibre guns and it is these sort of systems I would expect to see more of. That said more guns means more maintenance and a larger crew. I would just hate to see a warship of size and cost go down through any lack of defensive armaments. I’m sure those that sail on her will do there upmost to ensure that never happens. Thanks again