Sea Ceptor missile chosen for Poland’s new frigates

See, if we really were concentrating on AAW and ABM then it actually makes even more sense to fit the Mark-41 that the ships are already fit for.
Quad pack it all with CAMM and that leaves the entire Sylver VLS free to be used for Aster-30 Block1/NT and still have room for the NSM racks because the mushroom farm is to go into the space reserved for the Mark-41.
Fitting the mushroom farm (which is another VLS) will actually take more work because the fittings for it aren’t there and you will have to retrofit the Type-45 to fit it.

It all keeps coming back to penny pinching from what I can tell. In this case I genuinely believe that it really is the worse sort of false economy.
I mean, let us just consider HMS Diamond down in the Red Sea for a moment. If you were to ask her captain, PWO or any other member of the Ops room would you prefer 48 asters and 24 CAMM or 48 Asters and 64 CAMM right now with these missile and drone saturation attacks…I doubt that any of them would ask for the solution with 24 CAMM.

While the Type 45’s were designed and built with the ability to fit the MK41 in mind ,i doubt if they were in any way ‘pre fitted’ for them, they only have the space reserved for them if required.Id bet the 24 Sea Ceptor upgrade was chosen because it was the much cheaper easier option.

Ah if that is the case then the government have once again managed to pull yet another fast one with the whole ‘Fit For But Not With’ line. You are implying that it should be ‘designed for but never actually going to happen so we didn’t bother with the fit.’

Look up/Google MK41 Gym,you will see pics of the space.

This has been said before. Having a gym between a magazine and missile silo is absolutely nuts. And what a waste space. Good opportunity to bulk the T45s with 2 MK41s, with quad CAMM and others or 2*3*6🍄 CAMM down the sides and 4*4 NSMs, two FFBNW if that’s too much. Might need to re-ballast the ship a bit. Hopefully the MOD is getting on with this upgrade as its needed now.

The fact that the Gym occupies that space is purely accidental,the T45 wasn’t designed specifically to have a Gym there,when it was decided to FFBNW the MK41 it became a handy place to put it.

Possibly a weight consideration too.

Of course budget was central to this.

Also timeline.

We only had Mk41 on order for T26 and now we’re are ordering for T31 there is limited production capability. So that would have delayed something…..

The mushroom farm can be made domestically.

That will feed into the reasoning.

Also fitting Mk41 is much more complex than Sea Ceptor.

Helpful points; thx. As they say, every day is a school day 🙂

Why a mushroom farm. My understanding is that this was a retrofit for a previous air defence missile.

CAMM missiles are packaged more densely in sky sabre and a small just big enough 24 cell launcher might make a lot of sense. The OPVs ought to have 24 anyway and I doubt that there is room for a type 41 cell on them.

Plus a shorter fit for purpose 24 cell will leave more room in the hull for things relocated for the power upgrade and other possibilities.

OPVs desperately do not need missiles.

If you fit missiles they look like a warship and in wartime they will be told to be warship.

Max upgrade to the OPV’s is a 40mm cannon.

So only deployable within range of defence from air atack by other vessels or land based systems? This isn’t the type of use OPVs are envisaged for.

The potential threat has changed massively in the last two years. A gun might be able to track and hit a single slow flying drone. Hitting half a dozen operating with variable paths needs missiles capable of altering course to track the target.

40 mm cannon might be useful for some things but you need at least two to get 360 degree coverage.

A drone only needs a small amount of explosive to knock out a radar system after which a solo vessel becomes much less able to defend it’s self.

A competent design in 2018 is now basically obsolete in any area where there may be a threat. This now covers large sea areas near potentially hostile nations, or any largish vessel capable of launching half a dozen drones which are only a few tens of kg in weight.

The threat scape changed.

Hence T31 was ordered which deals with these issues. It looks exceptionally prescient that T31 has been ordered with a perfect load out, if you include NSM, for dealing with this.

I can see the Rivers being replaced by T32 or T31B2 for the reasons your outline above.

Rivers will have to go to crew T32 or T31B2.

Completely agree..don’t make the OPVs into some sort of budget patrol frigate or some idiot will send it into harms way. Also if you have CAMM you need the crew for the CAMM that eats into top weight range and cost per deployment..you end up with your cheap as chips long range constabulary vessel that cannot ever be deployed into harms way..becoming a less than cheap as chips, shorter range patrol frigate that may just be ( stupidly) sent into harms way.

I do think the modern threat environment means that even a low tec non state actor could throw a drone at an OPV so a 40mm mk 4 bofors is probably needed for that just incase of terror attack event. As well as some form of surveillance drone…

Once the T31s are out and about in the pacific and east of suez the returning rivers 2 should be fitted for sub surface infrastructure monitoring in the North Sea..they have decent cranes, space for containers as will as good size decks.

Also type 41 canisters are too heavy to reload at sea. A single CAMM missile is not a relatively simple hand operated and erected crane could relatively easily be reloaded at sea.

Better to start each threat period with 24 missiles than start with 64 but only have 10 left after a week. The Aster 15 can cover the CAMM reload time until personal can be cleared to fire CAMM possibly only a few minutes and with slower drones enough they me to not need Aster at all even during reloading.

Nelson won his fights partly by ensuring that his crews could reload their weapons.

Look up Steve A Wenham on X,he has some great RN Warship pics,late last year he had one of HMS Somerset loading up a CAAM Canister Dockside by Crane,theres no way you can do this at Sea ,even though they are Smaller than Aster.

Paul T you are looking at the existing solution for CAMM retrospectively fitted to replace an earlier missile. Given the weight and dimensions and my experience of putting long thin poles up in the electricity industry I’m pretty sure that a CAMM missile canister could be fitted at sea even in relatively rough weather with a well designed lifting system.

If you look around you can probably find street lights which are 5 meters tall which can be raised and lowered by hand to change the lamp.

A similar system could be used up to the same maximum sea state a lt which helicopters could be re armed or launched.

The issue is the pendulum effect of the missile hanging on a crane or gantry.

The USN solution involves a rigid canister that goes from flat to vertical and the lowers the missile into the tube. Have a look on Navy Lookout NaB has posted a photo of it.

And the USN gave up on that because they decided even that was to risky.

Apologies the picture was put up by Navy Lookout,but to compare a Street Lamp with a Missile is illogical ,when you are dealing with very sensitive Electronics and Explosives you can’t take any chances with the Loading method.I’ll put the pick on another link.

Hi Paul, I was making the point that street lamps can be fixed firmly in the ground and still lowered for maintenance and then raised again.

Doing the same to reload CAMM missiles on a vessel is quite feasible

I don’t believe that the electronics and explosives in a missile are very sensitive

Acceleration during launch is far higher than any experienced while the missile is in the launcher. A loading system fixed to the ship won’t apply any higher accelerations to the missile than that experienced while in the launcher, though they may be higher than a missile in the launcher due to being further from the centre of motion at a particular time.

Keeping within the agreed maximum limits just requires a limit on maximum sea state at which reloading is carried out. This will be limited in any case to sea states where water is not coming over the bow of the vessel. With large vessels like frigates being constructed by the UK it will probably be ok to reload with swells of at least three meters.

What seams illogical to me is trying to load a missile on the end of a rope on a crane. Especially if the crane is not fixed to the vessel and therefore there will be relative movement between the two. I’ve loaded and unloaded a few transformers and wood poles from small vessels using cranes and it’s much easier with a vessel mounted crane though this often just passes the issue of relative movement to the pier, which is better as there is more space to allow for horizontal movement.

Missiles explode…doing any complex evolution at sea is always risky..the ocean puts a load of dynamic forces on a vessel which means it moves randomly across multiple planes it has 6 different degrees of motion…if you suspend something above that deck..the deck itself can smash into the thing as it moves up and down (heaves), see sawing ( pitch ), swaying from to side ( pitch).. it will also move side ways ( sway)..suddenly shooting forward..(surge) statr twisting around ( yaw)…it will do all of these things at the same time completely randomly..depending on the dynamic forces of waves, wind etc…added to the six degrees of motion your ship will make randomly the thing being suspended will being to oscillate…..all in all your would have no hope of controlling the exploding thing and stopping it hitting something…the sea is deadly nasty…I’ve almost had my lights punched out by the deck on my own boat…the fact that the thing that was below you is suddenly to the side..front or rear of you ( in extreme cases above you) is never fun.

The only safe way you could really do it would be from a magazine below..but that’s a profound redesign and profoundly complex for a vertical launch system…but it’s essential how the mark 26 launcher on the old US AAW cruisers worked as well as sea dart.

I have many years experience working in the electricity industry and I did not suggest at any point suspending a missile above the deck.

It is however possible for a person to walk around on a vessel during most weather conditions though not all, by holding onto something.

It’s therefore possible to design a system where the container holding the missile is attached to the vessel at all times. A picture of an automated torpedo magazine was shown as part of a recent article I read I think on this site, if not it was a similar site. It is quite possible to do the same with carrying the canister the missile is held in, onto the deck and above the launch tube and then lowering it into the launch tube and closing it’s lid.

Much heavier systems managed to operate successfully in turrets of large calibre navel guns of the past.

The general principle in moving around on vessels which are at sea is to keep low, hold on and ensure the missile, canister and installation mechanism are locked in place before rising to the position to lower the canister and missile into the launch tube.

For a missile the size of CAMM the weight is low enough that it could be operated manually by only a couple of personnel. For type 41 cells where the missile and canister could easily be ten times the weight then I think it would have to be powered.

The limiting factor would be the need to avoid water ingress to the launch tube which would limit reloads to days where it wasn’t so rough that waves were breaking over the bow. Not ideal perhaps but much better than having to return to port to reload every time.

Reloading from below deck but from the side rather than below would not necessarily require a huge amount of extra space in terms of new build if the design was incorporated during initial construction.

As yet CAMM cannot be reloaded at sea it’s still a 3.2m long missile ( full of fuel etc) that would need to be dangled vertically over a very small hole in the deck in which both the deck and missile will be moving……there is a reason no one has bothered trying to reload vertical launchers…even with a little missile like sea Wolf, that in its sextuple deck launched form could be reloaded ( type 22 carried 88missiles in total ) where as the vertical sea Wolf launcher in the T23 could not…the US did try to sort sea reloading of of the MK 41 silos but after some brown trouser events abandoned the whole idea…

CAMM could possibly be loaded using the ‘lamp post’ method.

It is much lighter.

– If it was in a lightweight cylinder
– There were pivot points on the deck.
– Erector stays
– A hoist within the top of the cylinder

At 99kg it is a totally different proposition to reloading a Mk41.

In a Mk41 system the missiles are pre installed inside the inserts when loaded. So it is missile + insert. It weights a couple of tons all up. A full strike length package is long. So even if you were using the ‘lamp post’ method the forces exerted from the top of the’ lamp post’ on the bottom pivot would be huge in a mild swell.

Of course budget was central to this.

But also timeline.

We only had Mk41 on order for T26 and now we’re are ordering for T31 there is limited production capability. So that would have delayed something…..

This has to fit into insertion periods and those around PiP. Risk of perfection is that nothing ever happens. And T4( spends so long aside it does get regenerated in time to take strain as T23’s fall to bits.

The mushroom farm can be made domestically.

That will feed into the reasoning.

Also fitting Mk41 is much more complex than Sea Ceptor.

Sadly, yes it does. Even worse it would probably cost less than the cost overrun on those two ferries for CalMac that are almost a decade late.

The space for Mk41 was created – it is a gym.

No other work was done other than providing services to the area.

No point in doing wiring as it is simplifying with each iteration as it becomes more network centric.

I remember hearing that there had been grumbling amongst the crews about losing the gym when the change was announced.
If both solutions need completely wiring in then I am once again drawn to the question of why not the Mark-41. It isn’t as though we aren’t going to use the same missiles in both systems. Just more of them in the Mark-41 than the mushroom farm.
I wonder if someone has submitted an freedom of information request to be told the difference in price between fitting the mushroom farms and fitting the Mark-41 It would be interesting to know if the difference was more or less than the Downing Street Cheese and Wine bill during lockdown.

May be more to do with getting 19 ship sets of Mk41 VLS in the timeframe.

That is a lot of production.

Because the Mk41 space was full length VLS the gym can remain with Sea Ceptor insertion.

Although with the odd press releases that suggest quad packed (which may be typos or copy paste errors) on T31 it could be that something different is envisaged now.

Threat levels are ramping up rapidly.

The tank is tank my friend. T72 were only 1/3 of our inventory, rest was PT91 and Leopards.