Royal Navy looking for Type 45 Destroyer engineering simulator

Yes MOD always understates performance in public statements. They will be 30 knot + vessels.

T23 can shift the electrical power around automatically to where its needed. If you have a high hotel load and then also need propulsion the “shedables” drop off so things like 240v power , 50% lighting can drop off until more generators come on line.

Excellent.

Rather as you would hope it would work in a rational design.

Like the human circulatory system the essentials get priority!

Although I would guess with LED lighting retrofitted (guess) that it would reduce the utility of a 50% lighting regime. I could also see how that would reduce the chilled water system loading too.

Yep that was in the era of Washington Naval treaty. They tried to fit too much into too little displacement.

Sorry I replied to you on the above thread!

My bad.

Dauntless isn’t out doing any trials she is still stuck in Cammels basin with very little activity going on. 

So what is going on?
It is know that the PIP was supposed to last 6 months and there is already more than a year.

When brewing up for a Cuppa the Kettle keeps tripping the electrics probably that’s my excuse and I’m sticking too it Alex

Yup, but in political speak “greater risk” = “courageous decision” = “don’t go there”

BAe are not stupid so they made it clear enough to get them off the contractual hook without preventing the minister from doing what he was always going to do.

LOL

Whatever happened to him ! Oh never mind no one cares. LOL

If I had a new car and it was faulty I would send it back, the RN was forced to accept into service the T45’s knowing they were faulty by the MoD.

The PIP program is proceeding at a snails pace this might be because they are taking out 2 diesel generators and putting back 3 so have to move other kit around as well so a simple fix ends up being yet anouther bodge-up.

Good luck sending a car back after it’s warranty period.
Nobody forced the RN to accept the T45 into service, it passed the trials. Had some politician tried to ‘force’ the RN then it would have been leaked all over the newspapers. So don’t add conspiracy theories to you your lack of knowledge.

The ‘snails pace’ will be completed around the middle of the decade. It’s the end if 2021 and there’s 6 ships to do, do the maths…

Whereas you plan to take the budget £250m T31s and bodge together a replacement air-defence ship using odds and ends would be around for at least another decade… and would still be far inferior to the £10bn T45s. 🤦‍♂️

The faulty engines were documented before HMS Daring was lunched (lead ship) and was seen to be even worse than suspected on her trials but the MoD insisted that the class would be completed with the faulty engines instead of rectifying the rest of the class while still on the slips and look for a remedy once the class was in service. We are now half way through the service life of the Batch 1s (Daring,Dauntless,Diamond) we have just witnessed the sterling performance of HMS Defender but on the flip side HMS Diamond was a big embarrassment for what should have been a showboat for the UK CSG. She has spent most of the deployment alongside (as have the rest of the class over there short history)

If the PIP is going to work that would be fine but there are doubts in the system also why wait so long as Daring was accepted into service in 2009 so we have been sending people to sea in ships we now have a good probability of braking down. I just hope we are not involved in a Maritime confrontation anytime soon as if it can go wrong it will go wrong and when you run out of power under fire you had better have a good supply of body bags.

Your right Tommo, and the governments favourite expressions are If, But and Maybe.

Like a School report “Could do Better” Steve

You goy it

👨‍🎓due too the PC brigade can’t find a Dunces cap emoji

I opted not to agree and can access it in full. I’ve done my best to sort out the paragraphs for you but it’s late!

14th April 2021
FEATURE

In this exclusive look behind the scenes of Britain’s new Future Combat Air System, Jon Lake gets under the skin of an aircraft due to enter service in just 14 years’ time, and yet its configuration is still undecided.

Tempest will be a ‘system of systems’ with a manned (or optionally manned) fighter aircraft at its heart – the final design, however, may differ substantially from the configuration featured in BAE Systems’ marketing effort

The Tempest name refers to a planned new fighter aircraft expected to sit at the heart of what will be a ‘system of systems’, consisting of crewed and uncrewed platforms, weapons, sensors and other force elements. That ‘system of systems’ is also called Tempest, and to add to the risk of confusion, the UK industry team working on this whole Future Combat Air System (FCAS) is known as Team Tempest.

The aerospace industry has long been somewhat platform-centric, based around the development and production of a particular aircraft type. In more recent times, those aircraft types have been ‘weapons systems’, and the sensors and fire control systems they carry have become progressively more important. Those systems are today at least as significant as the airframe and powerplant, but the aerospace industry has continued to focus on building individual platforms.

The product has always tended to be a standalone platform, albeit one equipped with important sensors, systems and weapons. By contrast, the new FCAS, rather than being a single standalone platform, will be a connected network of capabilities, hence a ‘system of systems’.

This new approach is required because air forces are facing a very complex and dangerous threat environment that is changing rapidly, and one that is proliferating around the world. Technology (and especially threat technology) is changing so rapidly that the framework of the new FCAS needs to be extremely adaptable, responsive and upgradable.

Leonardo’s director of major air programmes, Andrew Howard, told AIR International that “the future of air operations will not be about groups of individual aircraft flying individual missions in a warfighting posture. It will be about rapid and large-scale information exchange across a network of distributed capabilities, on an almost constant basis, within the air domain, and across all other domains, such as land, sea and space.

This ‘system of systems’ model underpins the Tempest concept and requires a completely new approach.”

Elements and categories
The core element is “likely to be a manned or optionally manned system but there will be a number of other systems or components that sit around it,” said Michael Christie, BAE Systems’ director of future combat air systems, and the company’s senior representative on Team Tempest. Christie defines these elements according to four broad categories. As well as the first, the core platform, there are what he calls adjuncts, a more generic term for the loyal wingman/remote carrier unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) that will also be developed.

 These could have a range of different capabilities, and could even fulfil different roles.

The third category refers to ‘effectors’, a term Team
Tempest prefers to ‘weapons’ because they may not deliver kinetic effects. The final category is command, control and communications.

A radical approach

The UK-led FCAS and the next-generation Tempest aircraft at its core are being developed in a radically new way, and this can make the programme difficult to understand and to follow. Judged by conventional metrics, the programme might appear to be lagging behind rival US and Franco-German-Spanish efforts to develop new-generation combat aircraft and combat air systems, for example, but to make that assumption would be a mistake.

Although Team Tempest is looking to produce a flexible, affordable combat aircraft that reaches the market in the 2030s, the team is in no rush to get an aircraft into the air or even to lock down the design.

Development of Tempest is proceeding apace, but there are few obvious milestones or markers of progress, since a key feature of the programme is that it is quite deliberately concentrating on developing and maturing the technologies and capabilities required. Platform development will be compressed and left until the last moment, thanks to extensive and indeed unparalleled use of model-based systems engineering and design.

Quite simply, this is because, as Andrew Kennedy, head of group strategy, BAE Systems Air, observed: “The sooner you lock down the design, the sooner it’s obsolete!”

Michael Christie acknowledged that this approach means that “some people are nervous – it feels like you’re not firming things up until later, and that’s partly true, but what you also get from it is much greater maturity, much greater understanding of the system and how it works, so that you don’t spend the period taking a requirement and translating it into a product, trying to work out what the requirement really means.”

Leonardo’s Andrew Howard gave more details: “Traditionally, the capabilities we could bring to the battlespace were restricted at an early stage by the decisions made in designing a platform. An aircraft would be designed and built, and then companies like Leonardo would work to equip it with useful technology. If you wanted a specific capability, but it wouldn’t fit on the aircraft, then straight away you’ve got a costly and time-consuming problem to solve. We, as Team Tempest, have recognised that this model is no longer fit for purpose.”

What this all means is that although the US NGAD programme already has a flying demonstrator, and while Dassault and Airbus aim to fly a fighter technology demonstrator by 2026, neither programme is necessarily any further ahead than Tempest.

Some would argue that this apparent ‘early lead’ may actually condemn these programmes to being far behind Tempest when they eventually produce an in-service aircraft. Essentially, these programmes are following a more traditional model – setting the requirement early, designing the solution, and then refining and testing it. And if the capabilities and characteristics of the core element are set in stone, then it follows that the design of the other elements will be less flexible and less adaptable.

By the time most aircraft programmes become public knowledge, a configuration has been chosen, and concept artwork usually bears a close resemblance to the eventual production aircraft. Michael Christie, however, has already cautioned that the fighter that emerges from the FCAS programme “may not look like the concept aircraft unveiled in 2018.”

Carrier implications

Adapting the core manned Tempest fighter for carrier operations would be a massive task, and one that would impose tight constraints on the design. The aircraft would need to be able to withstand the stresses and fatigue loads imposed by arrested carrier landings and catapult launches, which would increase structural weight, although overall mass would still need to be kept relatively low.

Quite apart from weight limits, the size of aircraft carrier deck elevators would restrict the aircraft’s overall length (and wingspan). Other design requirements would include a rugged, long-stroke carrier landing gear with associated additional internal volume and a suitable arrester hook, that would need to be fully retractable to preserve LO characteristics. Carrier operations would also demand enhanced corrosion protection, and potentially different LO treatments/ coatings.

Take-off performance and lowspeed handling and control authority would need to be adequate for catapult launch. The aircraft would need to be able to flya standard carrier approach, with the pilot getting a good view ‘over the nose’.

Although BAE produced full-scale models of a notional Tempest design, and displayed them at airshows at Farnborough, Fairford, Cosford and Duxford, and despite multiple computer-generated renderings and animations showing the same basic twin-finned, twin-engined tailless Delta design, the FCAS core element could look very different indeed.

“The future of air operations will be about rapid and large-scale information exchange”

– Iain Bancroft, director of major air programmes, Leonardo
When AIR International spoke with Michael Christie in March 2021, he said  “we’re still looking at multiple options for the configuration of the core, manned, or optionally manned platform. We’re looking at the balance between the various components and at how best to distribute capability across the overall system.

We will model various different sizes and shapes and the different capabilities and roles that each of the components carry out, trying to find the balance between the most effective and the most affordable.

So we will be keeping our options open for a while yet.”

What this means is that other elements of the ‘system of systems’ can be adapted to compensate for features that might be missing from the core platform, or vice versa. For example, if it is found to be more efficient and cheaper to leave penetrating reconnaissance to an adjunct, then that can be done.

The NGAD and SCAF teams, working in a more traditional way, will very soon have to determine exactly what level of LO will be required –a decision that will result in the design being frozen. Team Tempest can continue to mull that over, and to take account of changes to the threat, and of the performance and characteristics of different adjuncts and effectors.

Christie was unwilling to say how many configurations were being examined.

“We’re looking at many configurations. But I don’t really want to give a number because I don’t think it means that much. We have the ability to assess many more configurations than before,” he said.

“If I look back to the days when I was an aerodynamicist on Typhoon, we looked at a range of different configurations, the P110, P113, P120, etc. We had to go through a whole series of wind tunnel tests and gradually mature the product. I could never have depended on computational fluid dynamics in those days to do that.

“I can do that synthetically now an awful lot more quickly than I was able to do it back in the 1980s. We can rattle through these configurations at a great pace. We can do things in a matter of days that would literally have taken months and years. In some of the work we’ve done, we’ve been able to run 60 configurations through a high-performance computer, again in a matter of days.

A digital thread runs right through the Tempest programme, from concepting, through to design, manufacturing, sustainment and operation 

Ray Troll

“But I don’t necessarily want everybody continually looking at lots of configurations. We need to make a clear decision.”
One of the concepts that has been looked at is to treat the core fighter as a ‘minimum viable platform’, adding software and plug-and-play equipment modules to flex its role, rather than treating the aircraft as a multi-role platform in the traditional sense. The same airframe shape would perform different roles, according to what equipment was fitted, but the different aircraft would fundamentally share the same platform.

New design techniques

The Boeing/Saab T-7A programme demonstrated that by using advanced digital design and cutting edge manufacturing it was possible to produce a brand new, clean sheet of paper airframe more cheaply than simply buying an off-the-shelf trainer. Dr Will Roper, the Pentagon’s former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, exploited this capability when he outlined his new ‘Century Series’ concept for building future fighter aircraft.

Roper urged the development of a series of shorter-lived aircraft programmes that would share some common components and subassemblies. Roper’s vision saw new designs being rolled out on a predictable cycle, replacing older models in production – much like new versions of the iPhone. Roper wanted to see a rapid iteration of new designs, rewarding the “volume of design”, not production numbers.

 The core Tempest aircraft will be augmented by a host of adjuncts and effectors, including UAVs of various shapes and sizes, among them ‘loyal wingmen’ and attritable swarming drones

A similar approach to FCAS could theoretically see different operators procure different elements of the ‘system of systems’ – perhaps with a different core platform to suit different requirements – Sweden, for example, might want a lightweight fighter optimised for operation from austere road strips, while another operator might prefer a narrowly focused BVR system.

But while Christie admits that he “bought into some of the thinking of the century series,” he cautions against trying to design too many different platform types, “because there’s a non-recurring cost to doing that.”

 This view of the Tempest configuration shows to advantage some of the LO characteristics that will feature on whatever configuration is eventually chosen

The cynical observer might suspect that BAE Systems is unlikely to embrace small production runs of aircraft, having spent the last three decades becoming more and more adept at exploiting today’s combat aircraft business model, which rewards production longevity and numbers over dynamic design. The more aircraft a manufacturer builds, the longer that company will be able to earn money from sustainment and support revenues.

 Fixed jigs will be rare in BAE Systems’ ‘factory of the future’, but advanced robotics will be clearly in evidence

Carrier capability

There have been numerous suggestions that the Tempest programme could or should produce a carrier-capable version (see Carrier implications, page 24). When Labour peer Lord West of Spithead (the former First Sea Lord) asked about this in February 2019, Earl Howe, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, said that any new combat air system would “need to be interoperable with the Carrier Enabled Power Projection (CEPP) programme.” He added that carrier basing would be considered “for any unmanned force multipliers which may form part of the future combat air system,” while seeming to imply that there would be no requirement for a manned combat aircraft on the carrier beyond the F-35.

There is a significant ‘carrier lobby’ in the UK, and some still press for a carrier-based version of the core manned fighter. AIR International asked Michael Christie how dismayed he would be if someone told him that there was now a requirement to operate Tempest from a carrier.

“I’d be surprised, but I might not be dismayed. It will definitely be a challenge to do everything that we’re trying to do and also make it carrier suitable. If that’s a decision that is going to be made then it has to be made early, because it will have a profound effect on the configuration. Carrier capability would have to be built into the requirements. I don’t think it’s likely to be a requirement given that the UK already has a carrier capability.”

With so much still to be decided it will be some time before anyone sees anything approaching a final Tempest aircraft design, even though Team Tempest is aiming to achieve an IOC (Initial Operational Capability) in 2035, with FOC (Full Operational Capability) in 2040. To get hung up on the configuration would be to fundamentally misunderstand what the FCAS is all about.

Six major workstreams

When looking at Tempest, it is tempting to concentrate on some of the exotic technologies that the aircraft will or might incorporate. Much has been written about future ‘virtual cockpit’ technologies, haptics (technology that simulates what would be felt by a user interacting directly with physical objects) and wearable technologies, and even directs energy weapons.

But perhaps more significant than these individual technologies are the six major workstreams that make up the programme.
The first of these is concepting, which Christie describes as being “almost like the integrating workstream.”
The second workstream covers next-generation technologies, many of which cannot be talked about, but which include low observability.

The third includes both power and propulsion technologies, and the fourth covers sensing technologies, while the fifth is based around airframe technology.
 
The sixth workstream is built around enabling technologies, including manufacturing, model-based systems engineering, and the digital enterprise.

The key to success for the next generation of combat aircraft will be what is now called ‘dominance in the information space’. It is all about finding, disseminating and exploiting information, and this will place a huge emphasis on new technologies, including artificial intelligence and autonomy. To succeed in a rapidly changing threat environment, the system will have to be rapidly reconfigurable and upgradeable.

This will require open architectures in the FCAS but also in the design, development and manufacturing sphere, as well as very agile project management. Everything about Tempest will be quite different to the way that BAE Systems and its partners have managed and executed combat aircraft programmes in the past.

Those who value aesthetics in aircraft design may be reassured by the reminder that this, now very familiar twin-finned, pelican-nosed configuration – may not be the final Tempest design

“The sooner you lock down the design, the sooner it’s obsolete!”
– Andrew Kennedy, strategic campaigns director, BAE Systems Air
 BAE’s ‘factory of the future’ is emblematic of the new approach. A digital thread runs through the entire process, from concept work, through to the design process and into manufacturing.

This Tempest configuration appears futuristic and ‘stealthy’, and that’s probably why it was chosen to form the basis of full-scale models and press imagery. It looks as you’d expect a midcentury sixth-generation fighter to look – twinfinned, tailless, delta winged. However, the real thing could turn out very differently

The new factory will move away from fixed jigs as far as is possible, and will make unparalleled use of robotics and additive manufacturing (3D printing). Furthermore, it promises to reduce timescales, leveraging higher yields and a higher ‘right first time’ rate.

The future of air operations will entail a ‘system of systems’, with multiple assets exchanging information constantly within the air domain, and across land, sea, space and cyberspace

Programmatics

Getting to grips with the work of Team Tempest and the FCAS project means understanding that there are now effectively two related programmes running in parallel. One is a British national combat air acquisition process, while the other is a trilateral international technology programme.

The UK effort will move into its concept and assessment phase this summer, using funding allocated in the 2021 Defence Command Paper, ‘Defence in a Competitive Age’.

The national and international programmes have run in parallel, but the intent is for both to coincide at some point later in the year, moving to a joint statement of work and then joining together in a single organisational structure later in the programme. This has been laid out in the Trilateral MoU signed by the Swedish, Italian and UK governments at the end of last year.

After the concept and assessment phase, the next big milestone will be the alternate systems review, which is when the system will be defined, and when the formal requirement will start to firm up. There will be a much clearer idea of what the system will be, and what the elements of the system are.

The alternate systems review for the overall ‘system of systems’ is probably 18 months away from starting, while the core platform review is probably two years away.

The whole process will be far less sequential than traditional programmes, with much more work being conducted in parallel. In a traditional programme the customer issues a requirement, to which industry then responds. But for Tempest, there is a more iterative process between customer and industry, with dynamic operational analysis, and with system development proceeding simultaneously.

Partnership

“One of the core tenets of the Future Combat Air System programme is that it is definitely international by design,” Michael Christie says.

“On day two, as soon as we had unveiled the concept model, we started talking to our partners in Sweden and Italy. We’ve got a group of nations who have come together and who want to, and know how to, collaborate.”

Christie explained further: “We have a very good coverage of all the capabilities that are required to bring a complex combat aircraft system into play. We all understand how to compromise and come up with a solution that works for everybody. That in itself is as important as some of the technical skills. In this market if you know how to come together and work effectively as a team you’ve probably got a bit of a winning formula.”

As well as the three key nations of the UK, Italy and Sweden (each of which is capable of designing and manufacturing whole aircraft, and each of which has capabilities in sensing and weapons), the UK partners are determined to make the programme accessible to new partners joining later.

“All of the partners working together at the moment are experienced in the export market, and we’re experienced in how you gain export customers in this very complex sector,” Christie insisted.

“I know from my time working on Typhoon and Hawk exports that you don’t do exports these days without having some kind of share of the work going to your export partners.

“One of the lessons learned from previous programmes is that if it’s all too tightly ‘stitched up’ up-front, it becomes very challenging later in the programme. So this is a programme that has set out to be international by design.”

Those involved are also determined to ensure that any new Tempest partner will have some level of freedom of action in terms of both operational sovereignty and freedom of modification.

Industrial construct

One of the most important tasks over the next few months will be building the necessary governmental and industrial constructs. “Rather than starting with a structure, we’re starting with an outcome in mind, and this is that we want an efficient, competitive delivery construct,” explained Michael Christie.

Team Tempest is looking at a very wide range of alternative structures, and is hoping to learn from NETMA, Panavia and Eurofighter, as well as from other consortia and similarly complex programmes.

The team wants to avoid duplication in the delivery construct, and needs to move at a very rapid pace if it is to meet the ambitious target of an IOC of 2035.

It is still too early to say what the Tempest platform will look like, what adjuncts and effectors will form the other elements of the Future Combat Air System, or even exactly how the programme will be run. What is certain, however, is that the Tempest Team will shake up FCAS development once and for all.

Thank you, that’s very kind of you and much appreciated. Now to read it.