The Royal Navy of 2030 – How will it look?

Very interesting article about the recent US Navy Valiant Shield Exercise in which the Navy sunk a decommissioned frigate with an SM-6 missile, along with other US anti-ship missiles. It seems that the SM-6 is being developed into a true anti-ship missile that should be of interest to Australia and the UK. The article also gives an excellent summary of where the US is developing anti-ship missile capability.
SM-6 Missile Used To Strike Frigate During Massive Sinking Exercise In Pacific (thedrive.com)

Yes I read that article too.

The SM-6 missile has been on the procurement list here in Oz for a few years now.

My understanding is that the RAN Hobart DDGs and future Hunter FFGs will have the Mk41 VLS loaded with SM-2 and SM-6, ESSM Blk 2 and potentially LRASM.

https://adbr.com.au/adf-to-commit-to-maritime-missile-programs/

No shortage of options, plus future hypersonic weapons too.

They were also testing the new “quicksink” free fall bombs against in this case a small tanker that had its back broken with just one bomb, the draw back is that the aircraft has to get quite close so it is well within the Anti Air Missile range of most modern ships but would be effective against the logistical support vessels and lightly defended naval units that stray out of the protection of the main fleet.

The small ‘bomb’ might have been a warhead test?

What is to say that it couldn’t be put on the front of a Harpoon style missile set to do a rise’n’dive (under momentum profile.

OK the problem with the dive bit is the unbelievable stress it puts on the missile but maybe the warhead releases and that bit alone dives down?

Quicksink is a new strap-on system for a 2000lb bomb so it can track it target then the bomb will not explode until it is under the hull of the target so explodes braking the back of the vessel. The draw back is that it is not powered so it is limited to a gravitational glide path. There are moves afoot to give it a winged system to extend that glide path to up to 60 miles but still within Russian and Chinese anti aircraft missile systems so the delivery aircraft/drone is still in danger of being shot down.

I wouldn’t describe 2000lb bomb as small in any context.

Having looked at the video what is pictured isn’t a 2000lb bomb: it isn’t big enough to be that.

Absolutely no reason why you could not have something like that on the front of a heavy weight missile and use the missile to toss the warhead onto a glide path.

The problem is that when the ‘bomb’ enters the water at speed the deceleration is savage. So the ‘bomb’ must detach from the missile otherwise it will crumple. Also the water guide fins will either need an aerodynamic fairing over them or need to pop out. The fairing on explosive bolts would be easier to engineer.

Enough fantasy weapons engineering for a sunny morning!

I read an interview with the people behind the quicksink idea. This weapon is designed as an affordable way to attack lightly defended ships that lack long range air defence weapons. Think PLA maritime militia which reported numbers in the tens thousands of vessels.

I get the idea. Which is sound.

Thing is that it can be scaled for a bigger effect against combatants.

I read an interview with the people behind the quicksink idea. This weapon is designed as an affordable way to attack lightly defended ships that lack long range air defence weapons. Think PLA maritime militia which reported numbers in the tens thousands of vessels.

Yes it looks as though it is going to work (all the tests to date have been positive) but as you rightly say it will only be of use against lightly defended targets but still worth having on board the carriers for the F35’s so that they can take out a lightly armed target without the fleet having to use expensive and limited number of ASM’s

Surely another good enough reason to put 2 MK41s on the T45s where the original slots are and CAMMs down the side or else where? If FC/ASW is ever late there’s the TLAM, SM6, NSM options and even a mix of these.

And LSRAM.

As I’ve previously speculated the reason for not putting the Mk41 onto T45 *might* be the desire to reserve some space for hypersonics which *might* need bigger launch tubes.

You *might* be right and if that’s the case then that could also be so for T31/32/26/83. Here’s hoping always for the best for the RN. At 1£bn + warship you don’t want to be underdone.

Hypersonics would probably need the more sophisticated radar suite on T45.

I cannot see the point if putting Gen#1 hypersonics on a T31.

Gen#2 hypersonic will likely be more compact and go into Mk41 VLS.

At 5m USD a pop though.

The great thing that you have in Oz is that defence seems to be treated as important by all politicians, so that when a need arises it is actioned. The problem we have here is that the politicos are more interested in their second jobs and whose back they can stab next. Add to that that the MOD procurement process is labyrinthine and every layer of it says no because they don’t want to be seen to have made a mistake. So even when a decision is reached on how to satisfy a need the Treasury then says no, mostly just to prove to everyone else that they are in charge.
This is how we wind up with capability gaps, which now seem to be the default setting throughout Whitehall. So we have no MPA for years, a 10 year gap for carrier strike, no modernisation of large parts of the army, a navy described by the House of Commons itself as like a porcupine ( a well defended herbivore, for those who have not read the report) and much rhetoric about how we need to expand the forces because, surprisingly those nice Russians are suddenly not so cuddly and are trying to recreate the Soviet Union! What appears to be lacking is any sort of forward planning as to what threats we might face and how to go about shooting at them.

I would phrase that a bit differently.

The general process is labarynthine in nature. So it does run out in the sands of time. Politicans by their very nature have an attention span that moves from crisis to crisis.

It might well have been that the former 1SL could have convinced everyone that Mk41 on T31 was essential and that an NSM buy was important.

But by the time that

• he has moved to a new post
• news cycle has moved on
• new priorities arrive in the politicians in trays

All that is swept away.

And as you say the dead hand of Treasury is always there to be a bit cynical and have a lot of semi-clever sounding pre-canned answers that all mean NO!

Mate, can you explain something for me?

Here on UKDJ I’ve often seen reference to the UK Treasury being a problem for Defence spending, why?

Is UK Treasury independent of UK Government spending/budget decisions? Or does it operate under direction from the UK Government?

Here in Australia, Treasury doesn’t have a say in what the Government can or can’t spend on Defence.

The Government sets the annual national budget expenditure for the various departments of Government, including Defence.

I had assumed the Australian and UK Treasury systems worked the same?

Thanks,

As I understand it big purchasing decisions get a yes or no from HMT.

And why else is T26 drip fed slowing things down. MoD must realise it’s an inefficient and costly way of doing things.

HMT is the greatest enemy HM forces have after general political indifference and ineptitude.

Thanks Daniele,

That just seems to be a very bizarre set up to me.

It’s sounds like the saying about the ‘tail wagging the dog’.

In effect are you saying UK Treasury has more power than UK Government over Government policy?

Or is it a useful tool by the UK Government ‘to pass the buck’ and blame Treasury?

Here in Oz, yes Treasury can provide advice to Government, but it has no power to say yes or no.

Anyway, what a bizarre way to run your nations finances and spending.

Cheers,

Governments come and go but the treasury remains. If you go back to the 1920’s and 30’s you will see the treasury doing the exact same thing it does today. Making defence decisions based on costs. The treasury are the ones who were behind the Washington Naval treaty, the treasury are the reason the navy does have have any strike length VLS on surface ships. The navy had to call the invincible class throw deck cruisers so the treasury did not think they were aircraft carriers.

It’s not so much the treasury as the chancellor of the exchequer who is the minister of state for the treasury. But the treasury is the most senior government department and what the chancellor says goes in regards to tax and the budget allocations for all other departments.

Na, HM Treasury takes their orders from the PM/parliment just like in any country. Its just treasury is more powerful than the MOD, as the MOD has to request budget from treasury. In theory the treasury could say no and the PM overrule them, in practice it would get that far as treasury would sound out the PM ahead of any major decisions.

There is often friction between the PM and treasury, but that is PR designed to get the PM of the day off the hook for unpopular decisions.

I think the problem is that many laypeople on this site don’t understand how their government works and then support all sorts of conspiracy theories, often involving various government departments, like the Treasury.
The MOD are given a budget, within this budget they have projects to manage. The budget is one of the largest defence budgets on the planet earth. But many on this site are convinced that it is a small budget and that we are paupers and always trying to save money. In this alt universe, the MOD is always penny pinching and having unsuccessful projects and all the other armed services have lots of money and successful projects. Obviously, this alt universe doesn’t exist except in the minds of UKDJ commentators, but there you go. The truth is the MOD is relatively well funded, the government, quite rightly, expects projects to be on time and on budget, the MOD often fails in this regard, but no more than other similarly sized armed services and probably less than the majority. However, certainly they are substantially less accident prone than the US armed services, who many on this site seem to view as an exemplar.

You’re using logic. Rookie mistake.

The treasury problem is a problem of lack of debate at election time. It’s the practice of politicos to avoid debate on military funding as they know they will look incompetent. No civil servant is put in control of a project so there is no accountability for failures and large overspend. Blame can be spread around and you cannot sack a civil servant! Plus the funding is always drip feed, this gives the manufacturers the opportunity to inflate costs drawing out the time to build com pounded by inflation. I’ve just wrote the history of Tempest, you will see unless it’s cancelled, which Labour will do.

Morning Stc treasury, whitehall Civil service ,When I was in the Navy 70ts 80ts 90ts Cold war NI troubles Falklands, gulf ,Fmr yougoslavia we on the front line amounted too around 90,000 personnel and for every 1 personnel there was apparently 4 Civil servants on a hell of a better wage than us the frontline doesn’t waste the budget its the Civil service wasting the frontline

See my previous reply, as someone that has researched this particular issue I would welcome any evidence that you have in regard to Treasury’s interference with major defence projects. Having read many of the relevant reports I am at a loss to understand where this urban folklore has come from.

If only that was totally true.

Treasury do have their fingers in the pie of larger contracts.

Yes, MOD and contractors, are mostly the problem with often jokerishly unrealistic budget expectations. These are made much worse by Treasury aggressively enforcing a lack of flexibility.

The fear is give and inch take a mile.

Departments start ‘running a tan’ borrowing gets out of control. That dates mostly from Thatchers corner shop approach to accounting. She didn’t think big but books had to balance.

Historically Treasury is the most powerful department and has created a lot of political problems for Major (black Wednesday) and the Brown-Blair fights most obviously. Thatcher had her problems too.

Very hard to sack a chancellor.

SB, appreciate the folklore perspective, but do you have any evidence of this? My research into large government contracts, as part of my MSc in Risk Management, albeit many moons ago found no such evidence. Whilst I appreciate it is nice to have a bogey man to point the blame at, the reality is that the MOD and their Ministers are the people that make the decisions.

Treasury are physically in meetings where major projects are discussed and budgeted. I’ve been there.

I was usually trusted by them as I was honest about what I thought costs were likely to be.

The biggest problem was always getting big fat projects cancelled because of the sunk costs fallacy and many were employment schemes even though they had failure written all over them.

This is why I have a high degree of sympathy for the MRA4 decision – even though it left a terrible capability gap that has only just been backfilled with P8 in the Nick of time. That project could have carried on burning money for years.

The point being if there were big early sacrifices then other projects could be accelerated for maximum cost effectiveness. Nobody ever wanted to bite that bullet.

SB, nobody is saying that Treasury don’t have a watching brief over major projects, it would be weird if they did not, especially with the MODs track record. However, the responsibility for major projects lies squarely with the sponsoring service, the MOD and the departmental minister, in that order. These are the people who determine the success or failure of projects, not some bogeyman at the treasury, as half the commentators on this site seem to think. If you have any examples to the contrary, I and many other professionals would welcome the education.

The reason for MOD projects being regularly over time and budget is the trend to build world leading systems at the cutting edge. It’s not like in France, where they are content with having second-class SSNs, for example.

What the RN at least seem to have understood is the fact, that you need a hi/lo mix to get back to numbers.

We can debate, if the JSMDF or Italian Navy get this right by building lean-manned, high-tech Mogami or PPA classes, while the RN bets on T31.

I’m afraid that you are sadly misinformed if you believe that the French have a better record on major projects than the MOD, the grass is always greener, as they say.

There is nothing more expensive than HM Treasury saving money, with a genius idea that falls flat in the real world.

Essentially the chancellor and the treasury set the other department’s budgets. The departments such as the MOD etc make requests but the treasury sets the spending limits and rules. So at the moment we have all the public sector pay awards coming up, each department can set it’s own limits but the treasury has put in a rule that no pay increase will be funded so it all has to come out of department budget savings (cuts). The relationship between a chancellor and Primeminster are very interesting in the U.K. as although in theory the Chancellor works for the PM, they have complete control of the tax intake and expenditure, so a PM can sack them but cannot force them to do anything and a PM that falls out badly with the chancellor can find themselves at the wrong end of who ends up losing their jobs.

Mate, our politicians here in Oz are pretty useless too, and rarely agree on anything.

But the exception has been Defence policy and funding, whilst they might disagree around the edges of Defence a bit (and criticise the other side for political purposes occasionally), in general it is bipartisan from both major political parties.

Something that confuses me a bit, I’ve often seen it reported that UK Treasury gets in the way of Defence spending, is the UK Treasury ‘independent’ of Government decisions?

Here in Oz, Treasury is under control and directed by the Government of the day, Oz Treasury doesn’t tell Government what it can, or can’t, spend on Defence.

Cheers,

Hi JN.
I think that the problem is our system has too many checks and balances in it. The wish list is always greater than the cash available, and unlike the US system, where the departments ask for X but also put in an unfunded wish list, in effect “nice to have” we seem to run each programme on its own merits and to its own timescale. For instance the new SSBN programme is scheduled to cost £x bn, but this is spread over many years. It doesn’t stop any armchair commentators pointing out that that sum could buy an awful lot of something else, which as you can imagine is an entirely specious argument, although it gets reported verbatim in the cheap press.
So you get to a point where there is £x available for spend in a particular year, spread across all programmes, but the perceived need is greater. There is then a call for “savings” and the Treasury will not sign off until the spend matches the amount in the pot. This is how you get to the point where the Carrier programme was slowed down to match the funding, even though this added to the overall cost of the build. A saving by doing something quicker is not a saving to the money men because you cannot quantify it in this years budget, and therefore it doesn’t exist.
Another illustration is the gap in building the Astute SSN’s to follow the T class, there was a need but no money so a gap in orders and therefore work at Barrow. This led to a huge skills loss which has only now being made up at immense cost. This was pointed out loudly at the time, and the costs were apparent to everyone, but it was not a current problem, and by the time it became obvious all those who had caused the cock up had moved on, probably promoted!
I suppose that is a rather cack handed way of saying that the final arbiter on any spend on new equipment is the dead hand of the Treasury. And they didn’t get to where they are today by taking any kind of risk, which includes being wrong. To illustrate this again, look at the benighted Ajax debacle, they could have stopped paying GD years ago when it was all getting behind schedule, but didn’t, and if anyone gets fired it surely won’t be any of the purse holders.
Sorry that’s a rather long winded answer, I expect that someone will be able to give a much more succinct explanation if they have got this far, I do hope so.
PS. The official title of our wonderful Prime Minister is First Lord of the Treasury. He is very good at spending it on wallpaper.

Nick,

Thanks for the detailed explanation, much appreciated.

Defence, or non Defence, projects here in Australia can be sped up or slowed down, more funding, or less funding, so no difference there.

But those are decisions of the elected Government of the day, not Treasury, and yes there are checks and balances too.

In other words, those decisions fall squarely at the feet of Government to continue a spending decision or not, to continue with a policy decision or not.

Again, here it’s not the tail wagging the dog as appears to be the case in the UK.

Cheers,

I don’t think there is any difference between the UK and Aus as regards the role of the Treasury. When posters on here lament the UK Treasury what they are really doing is criticising the Government of the day who set the spending agenda. It is just the Treasury’s role to facilitate and manage it that’s all. Yes the Chancellor has real say on Government department budgets, but ultimately it is a political decision and led by their own party in Government.

I am puzzled by why the RN the NSM buy was cancelled.

But I doubt it was solely about money. There has to be another, deeper, reason allied to that.

It might have been integration costs? Which is probably why T31 has TACTICOS, so the BAE CMS can be forced into open architecture, to prevent that kind of cost leveraging?

Mate, I struggle to see that integration of NSM in place of Harpoon is a major problem.

There is a growing list of nations operating, and soon to operate NSM.

I don’t either.

But BAE CMS in unique to T45 and T23 with a newer open architecture on T26 and that may go to T45.

I remember at the point of scrapping the defence secretary and first sea lord agreed that £250 million for 5 ship sets of 4-8 missiles was not a good use of governmental resources. Yet spending £3.4 billion so far on Ajax is?
At least NSM would work and can deliver a capability we are in danger of losing.
I would have thought an interim purchase of 10 ship sets for £500 million would have been money well spent.

That’s another thing that got me annoyed, why only 5 sets!?Spend a bit more, maybe go for 10 plus some for reserves. £250m is peanuts. Anyway let’s hope FC/ASW ticks all the boxes and arrives on time if not a bit earlier. And if it’s range is too short for ship based land attack there’s always TLAM!

Might need to give some Harpoons to NZ as well but I’m not sure if their frigates are fitted for any AShMs?

They have Ceptor on the new Anzac fit

Yes, a 20 CAMM 2×6+2×4 configuration. Shows what can be squeezed into a mk41 space. Their Seasprite helos carry Penguins AShMs which is not too bad but I don’t think their frigates have even FFBNW deck based AShMs, maybe they to don’t think they don’t need them too? Hope the huge Chinese fleet doesn’t come down their way anytime soon.

I have worked on Aussie Anzacs. They have harpoon in front of the bridge. ESSM is up by the funnel.
Interestingly the Aussies have Seahawk Helos but the ship needs 2 different types of torpedo. One for the STWS tubes (its a European one, cannot remember which one) and the Mk 54 for the Helo. Not ideal needing two torps for two systems. The joys of buying American aircraft that are only integrated with American weapons to make you only buy from them (sounds familiar! )
The Kiwi Anzacs don’t have Harpoon. As they don’t come out to play in this part of the world I doubt I will get to work on a Kiwi boat.

Mu90

The beauty of NSM is that unlike Harpoon you can use it in congested waters. The imaging infrared sensor allows it to recognize the target it searching for. Harpoon cannot do this. It’s radar is too basic for proper target discrimination. It will latch onto the largest reflection it finds. The latest block 2+ Harpoon with the data-link, allows it to be retargeted. But the operator has to to be able to see the target to do this. Or be given up to date information from a third party.

It’s your dumb ass idea to do that 🤷🏻‍♂️

Far better to keep the ship well out of range and send a helicopter or armed drone to take out the enemy vessel. But for some bizarre reason you don’t think that’s good enough 🤦🏻‍♂️

ps: you either have ridiculously big hands or can’t count if you think 32 is a “handful”
😆

??

You’re the one who claimed that we have an ASuW capability in Sea Ceptor and I pointed out it’s almost entirely worthless unless you’re being swarmed by speedboats because it requires you to get suicidally close and wastes your only real defensive weapons. And yes, a helicopter or drone is absolutely not good enough. Against PCGFs or other small lightly armed vessels perhaps, but certainly not anything corvette-sized or larger. Also 32 missiles is woefully small compared to contemporaries, especially for such short range missiles. A modern warship equipped with Mk41 and ESSMs could fit that inside of 8 of their likely dozens of VLS cells.

Short range?
Seawolf at a massive 5-10km was short ranged and CLOS guided.
Ceptor has a decent range on it for local area defence, active homing so no trackers required, its engagement capabilities are very very good and very varied. You need to get the thing to the predicted target point and then let it do its stuff.
In addition having all of them in the air going at different targets is a massive step up.

I’m aware of how Sea Ceptor works and what a step up it is over Sea Wolf and its 911 directors, and have never claimed that it’s inadequate at its specific role. But with that being said, fitting our shrinking fleet of frontline frigates with only canister-launched local area defence weapons, which are taking up space that could be occupied by a more flexible VLS, in what seem to be rather limited quantities going by global trends, shows a remarkable level of penny-pinching and lack of foresight.

Sea Ceptor being the primary armament of a Type 31/32 is fine, although not in the dangerously low quantities it appears they’ll be getting. But being the only armament of a ship like the Type 26 is concerning. Any major surface combatant should be capable of 2-tier local/medium-range air defence, with dedicated AAW ships like the Type 45 expanding that out to a third tier with long-range/terminal ABM capabilities. The lack of standardisation on launching systems, multi-tiered air defences for anything other than T45s, and depth of magazines on RN ships compared to contemporaries is something I feel is right to be concerned about. And whilst I think the RAN and RCAN are overdoing theirs a bit, especially with SPY-7 and adoption of both Ceptor and ESSM blk II on the CSCs, the RN seem to be underdoing it on theirs in regards to air defence.

Except it isn’t the only armament of Type 26? Type 26 has a VLS farm for Sea Ceptor and a Mk41 for FCASW and whatever else is desired…. so…. maybe a bit of honesty in the argument?

What was I dishonest about? Sea Ceptor is the only notable weapon system the ship has apart from a vague promise that FC/ASW, if it ever materialises in a useful form, will also be fitted. But either way those Mk41s will be filled with nothing but cobwebs for years and the MoD will never fork out the money to get anything else in there such as a MR-SAM or VL-ASROC.

Doubling down on your dishonesty doesn’t make it any better.

Claiming I’m being dishonest doesn’t make it true. In fact I’m not even sure which part of my statement you’re claiming is dishonest. If you could, please enlighten me then to this wide range of weapons carried by the Type 26 outside of Ceptor and FC/ASW in some form, probably years after the ship is in service, if at all. And not some fantasy weapon fit of ‘oh we could put ASROC, TLAM, LRASM etc in there’ because we both know there’s almost zero chance of the MoD integrating anything else. Frankly we’ll be lucky to get FC/ASW.

Yeah, see you say that, but then you spent the entire reply trying to justify your dishonesty. As I said, doubling down on it doesn’t make it any better. You know exactly what you’re being dishonesty because you are getting defensive about it.

But thank you for admitting that we are putting FCASW on Type 26, and showing the contradiction between your initial lies and the truth,

I never once claimed FC\ASW wasn’t going on it? Even though I am skeptical of it ever becoming a reality, and very skeptical of its projected ISD likely leaving those VLS cells empty for years. In my initial reply to GB I was discussing the AAW capability of the Type 26, and FC/ASW is not a part of that equation. You’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick and assumed I was talking about overall weapons fit and accused me of being dishonest.

What was he dishonest about? His points were clear and well made

What’s needed is a mass of martlet systems to be deployed wherever possible, be it in a defensive role, aggressive one in combating swarm attacks with hopefully an ASW version designed and. Deployed it’s cheaper and more flexible than current systems in their conventional roles

You clearly don’t understand the difference between a defence armament and an offensive one. 🤦🏻‍♂️

So you’d rather close distance with an enemy combatant, which puts you in range of their systems, rather than send a helicopter or drone to launch something at them. Any particular reason why you want to needless endanger the lives of your crew?

I think you’ve completely misunderstood what I’ve said. You refuted the claim that we lack an effective ASuW capability by claiming Sea Ceptor has a secondary surface attack mode. I pointed out that using your small, short range, limited number of SAMs, which are also you’re only defence against air attack to attack an enemy ship is suicidal. As is using a helicopter to launch lightweight missiles at anything bigger than a corvette because it’d almost certainly be swatted out of the sky before getting into range. What I want is for RN surface combatants to be universally fitted with a long-range ASuW missile along the lines of LRASM or FC/ASW, but at this point I’d even settle for Harpoon or an SM-6 Blk Ib equivalent.

LSRAM, SM-6? A tad pricey, and I suspect FC/ASW will be too. If you want a universally installed SSM it needs to be far cheaper. I think we’ve messed up by going in with the French on a top-tier solution without backing it up with a second tier one.

We could just place orders for NSM or Sea Serpent, etc, or we could go to MBDA and say, we want an anti-ship/surface missile with a maximum unit price of £500K, export potential, to be in production within three years. You’ve a white sheet of paper and we won’t interfere. What’s the best spec you can achieve?

I don’t know what they’d come up with, I’m not a missile designer. Nor are the wonks at the MoD, and nor are the Admirals.

Of course there would be a host of reasons not to do that — all spurious. It would be claimed that having any second tier system would send the wrong signals to the French. The money could be better spent elsewhere. That’s not how the Complex Weapons Programme works. The Navy must dictate the spec. FC/ASW will be operational next week, so why bother?

DE&S seem far better at coming up with reasons not to spend the money they are tasked with spending than actually doing their job. We’ll see what the Sheldon report has to say, but I doubt it will fare better than the 2009 Gray Report (which was supposed to address the MoD’s “culture of delay”).

Agree – some of these commentators have somehow been brainwashed into believing a lack of armaments a good thing, and that jam tomorrow will happen. They’re naive, and would doubt any would be happy going to a conflict zone on a warship without hygiene capabilities.

Which is why putting ASM on our jets beats putting them on escorts. Our escorts should be nowhere near enemy vessels as they don’t need to be.

And yet that’s not how it works. Our escorts are constantly near enemy vessels, whether escorting Russian ships through the Channel, conducting freedom of passage in the South China Seas or putting themselves between Iranian ships and civilian vessels in Hormuz. You may think they don’t need to be, but the navy thinks differently, and the missile load out needs to reflect what is.

I agree we need stand-off anti-ship missiles on planes (was Cap 4 ever supposed to handle that?), but we need them on the escorts too.

I may think they don’t need to be because in war they won’t be.

All those are peace time, not peer on peer war. If you’re in visual range the find and track chain is meaningless.

And then you have a gun, and you have Martlet, and you have Sea Venom.

Posters here are imagining two fleets of battleships lobbing missiles at each other on the high seas.
You have to find them first.

The obvious peer enemies, Russia, China. Where in the Atlantic will their ships be? Russia is bottled up by geography. In war they hide in their bastions and use submarines. Any Russian vessel loose in the Atlantic or med when hostilities start is on big trouble and it won’t be our ships sinking them.

How long would your Russian ships in the channel last in wartime, and what would they be doing there? And why use a ship to attack them?

South China Sea, again we would not use our ships for attacking theirs. And what would their vessels with ASM need to do to find track and engage ours before themselves being attacked by USN air power.

ASM on a ship is a nice to have if money no object, not a necessity. However, I think an ASM on a fast jet is a necessity.

It’s all a case of balance with a limited budget and where that money’s best spent, not simply because other navies have them on their escorts and the RN is somehow missing out.

Our conventional forces should have a deterrent effect, and it’s arguable that if NATO had been spending 3% of GDP on its military, Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine in the first place. Not having the ability to attack enemy warships larger than a corvette puts our warships in the category of ignoreable. This is not deterrence.

If we were engaged with a peer adversary, rest assured, others would launch grey-zone attacks against us. We are not universally loved. Iran might well use proxy irregulars to attack our ships, probably from land. Anti-surface missiles on our surface fleet being a “nice to have”, and land batteries outranging our ships guns, we are left wide open to shoot and scoot.

“and it’s arguable that if NATO had been spending 3% of GDP on its military, Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine in the first place.”

On that I’m in full agreement Jon.

On the T31s, would they be on station or redeployed to where the war is? The UK cannot arm every vessel to the teeth for every eventuality and I would suggest the US cannot do that with every asset either.

Or, lets try another route. What goes to pay for the ASM on the ships? You are DS now to make that choice with the funds you have.

Proxy Irregulars are the sort of target the T31s guns, its Martlet, CAMM and Sea Venom are able to engage.

As you posted above.
“putting themselves between Iranian ships and civilian vessels in Hormuz. You may think they don’t need to be, but the navy thinks differently, and the missile load out needs to reflect what is.”

Indeed, that is what T31 is idea for.

Posters also forget there are other means to hit back at grey zone attackers beyond a warship lobbing an ASM back like a tennis match.

As for the rest of my points further up I await your replies to each. 👍

I’ll hit the juiciest question first. What goes to pay for the ASM on the ships?

Delay replacements of nuclear warheads for ten to fifteen years; they may need renewing, they may even need replacing eventually, but they don’t need “improving”. Also stop disassembly and reassembly of warheads every time the polititians decide to virtue signal by changing the cap. That’s a few billion. Audit the requirement allocated to CDAS infrastructure last year, because I don’t believe that the billions going there were warranted either, despite the excellent article in Navy Lookout a couple of weeks ago. That’s probably about £5 billion from nuclear (less than half what was added to this year’s plan alone).

Shut down Ajax immediately and take a few years before starting a new programme for 40 ton class tracked vehicles with a new competition for far fewer vehicles. Like many people on here I think we need to concentrate on Boxer. Another two billion saved, plus whatever the lawyers can retrieve from GD. (Half of it should go on increased “lethality” for Boxers anyway.)

Restructure the Type 26 second batch to get better value for money. We lost billions on the first batch of three ships trying to eke out payment. I have a horrible feeling we are about the repeat the mistake.

That’s enough to buy as many SSGM missiles as I fancy (about £1bn to kit 16 ships with 10-12 missile sets, T45/T31/T32) along with Mk41 and ExLS silos (for CAMM) for all the escorts (half a billion). It’ll pay for 3 FSSS (about £1.5bn), more Boxer variants (£1bn) and maybe even 12 Blk 4 Typhoons with Spear 3 integration to boot (~£2bn+ incl maintenence).

It’s a shame the DS doesn’t get to cancel the National Flagship. But… I have a great use for it. Those SSGMs won’t test themselves.

I’m not 100% on this, but I believe reassembly and disassembly of warheads is a prerry regular event, not at a politicians whim. Otherwise Burghfeld would be sitting empty and the gravel gerties abandoned.

Nuclear infrastructure, who can say? I’ve not seen the article, will have a look. And I’m not a SME on the precision needed to create and maintain the deterrent to judge what is and not needed. I know new facilities at AWE sites have been under way for many years. You could say not spending now is just costing even more later as plenty of infrastructure at AWE was pretty poor, to the delight of the Guardian, Observer, CND, Greenpeace, and all the rest who highlight it.

Agreed with T26 and stretching to save.
I still maintain hope for Ajax.
With all that money spare, if what you say is even feasible, I’d be buying other things like Merlin and the FSS.
I agree with the idea of a NFS and think it would pay for itself quite quickly, so no target practice necessary.

I’m not talking about warhead maintenance overhauls. As I understand it, significant disassembly of warheads to put them out of use followed the Cameron’s 2010 decision to reduce the cap. It takes a long time and is very expensive. The process was still under way more than a decade later when Boris announced an increase on the cap (or so I’ve read). Is it a regular thing? I believe so. Is it a necessary thing? I doubt it.

We’ve needed more infrastructure for the Vanguards not least because we only have three working boats. Fingers crossed for HMS Vanguard’s immanent return. And yes we need renewal at AWE after the screw ups. I’m just arguing that adding £12bn extra to Nuclear Enterprise [£14bn extra to DNO overall] was significant overkill. I might be wrong, but I want an independent review, because I don’t trust DE&S who have a habit of throwing good money after bad.

Talking of which, it’s possible the extra £11bn going into Army equipment is needed, but I suspect there are significant savings to be had there too, or at least redirected to better programmes (artillery and munitions, perhaps).

You might notice that I agree with you on the FSSS and included them in my urgent picks. While I’m still DefSec, I’d also initiate a UK NIFC-CA (direct cost, peanuts). I would replace and release the Crowsnest Merlins for ASW rather than buying more. I’d be looking at the unmanned rotary programme (Proteus) to bulk out.

We’ll agree to disagree on the National Flagship. If you want to expand on why you think we need a dedicated Royal Navy ship to flog British industry, I’m all ears. Surely if it’s justification is international trade, it should be built and staffed by the Department for International Trade and not be a constant drain on the MoD.

Right, understood, that is not something I was aware was still ongoing.

The extra 14 billion, is that headroom uncomitted contingency money or committed money for certain items?

I must get round to reading this to form a better view, but we know when posters ask where does our money go the deterrent is the huge elephant in the room.

Army, as you may have read I favour a RA first policy, so I agree there.

I’ll take the easy opt out and won’t get OT on the NFS as it’s been done to death here before, what I will say is that I too, while seeing the positives in such a vessel, think it’s costs should be bourne by, as you say, DTI or Central gov as a whole.

In fact, I believe nuke renewal should also be bourne by central gov ( apart from daily ops costs ) which I’ve read was one of Osbornes 2010 fiddles, as they are a political weapon.

A fine conversation Jon. 👍

According to the NAO, warhead disassembly was supposed to continue until “the mid 2020s”. That’s now the same timeframe announced for the reassembly to return numbers back to 260, last seen in 2005. I doubt that’s realistic.

Of the extra money the government committed last year to the next ten years of defence, £46.7bn went into equipment. The big winners are DNO £14.3bn, Special Projects £10bn (I’d guess much of it’s Tempest related), and Army £8.6bn (of which £11.1bn is procurement uncommitted).

The £14.3bn increase for DNO breaks down as follows
Procurement committed: -£600m
Procurement uncommitted: £5.9 bn
Support committed: £7.2bn
Support uncommitted: £1.8bn.

This is the change in planned spend since the previous year’s plan. The DNO equipment ten year planned spend is £44bn, about a quarter of total defence equipment spending. As you say, a pretty big elephant.

Great info this, thanks. Yes, nukes are the greatest elephant in the room. And I support the deterrent.

Special projects. Yes, possibly, and very much a catch all that could encompass several areas.
I also believe some “Special Projects” teams in DE&S are DSF procurement related.
Lots of uncommitted billions for the army there. So we can expect some goodies.
Posters ask where the money goes. Here’s the answer, alongside high-tech 5 eyes stuff and R&D.

The top level budgets are confusing as hell. I called it Special Projects, but I meant Strategic Programmes, sorry. Same difference. It includes things like the Type 45 upgrades, and directed energy weapons. Special Forces comes under Strategic Command, a different TLB. This stuff is labyrinthine. For example, SSN procurement is DNO, but SSN support is Navy Command.

If anyone wants to start getting into it there are three documents I’d recommend:

UK defence equipment plan 2021 (Aspirational verbage)
UK defence equipment plan 2021 Supplementary data tables (numbers that don’t always match the aspirations)
NAO report: The Equipment Plan 2021 to 2031. (Achievability — ignoring value for money)

Ok. Yes, there is a Strat Prog area.

Strategic Command has most “purple” areas of MoD, so yes DSF falls there. Though not necessarily procurement activities, but training and operations.

DNO oversees the defence nuclear enterprise, which encompasses most nuclear related stuff. There was/is also a SSE Strategic Systems Executive but these things get rebranded or moved so often it is very hard to keep track! So join the club! 🙄😆

T31/T32s don’t need to be armed to the teeth, but they do need to have the ability to undertake other roles than surface patrols. In particular I’d want them to be able to handle escorting littoral response groups, so a decent hull-mounted sonar if only for mine detection and a selection of missiles appropriate to the role, including the anti-surface ones, and dedicated helicopters/large-UAVs. We’ll have between 6 and 10 GP frigates and I wouldn’t waste them doing a job that the Batch 2 Rivers are perfectly capable of, and more cheaply too. Yes, Hormuz is too much for the B2s, but they are ideal for the Falklands, W Indies and swanning around the Indo-Pacific, flying the flag. So most of the GP frigates don’t need to do that.

Remember that I’m all for avoiding war by deterrence, not fighting it, and I’d arm accordingly. If we have to fight, we’ve already had our first failure. At least three TLAMs or FC/ASW on each escort. Not enough to rain hell, but enough to make people think twice about ships 1000 miles away. Forward basing then becomes a little more meaningful.

Where T31/32 would go surely depends on the war in question. It’s you who postulate a peer conflict, but you don’t say which one or what type of conflict. It’s just as likely to be a non-peer war we’ll get into next. I’d be trying to give the admiralty options.

Spot on

Your jets can’t be everywhere.
What are you going to do, give every forward deployed warships its own carrier to defend it?

Neither can an enemies assets. But lets move from peer on peer which has been the basis for this subject to wider engagements with all and sundry the world over shant we, for which every RN asset must be armed to the teeth to respond to, there and then? 🙃

I suggest you read up on full spectrum warfare, ISTAR, and how wars start and the build up leading to those wars and the moves that take place behind the scenes.

If an aircraft was decided as the best solution to use, If necessary an RAF flight could deploy from Mt Pleasant to Akrotiri to the Middle East within a day to reply to attacks in kind, that’s if our cyber has not already turned them off.

A reply need not be instant. If a nation without warning lobs an ASM in a ships direction there would be a response. Assuming their ASM even found our ship, which is unlikely.

You’re on a wind up mate.

Agreed. The idea of declaring FOC for “Carrier Enabled Power Projection” and a pivot of some kind to the Indo-Pacific, home of the fastest growing non-allied navy in the world, without having an ASM that can be delivered by the carrier’s primary strike platform is crazy. USN and MN both have air delivered medium or heavy weight AShMs for their carrier aircraft, I believe that the Aussies are planning something similar for their F-35B. Iranian, Russian and Chinese maritime aircraft have them, as does India. We are basically putting ourselves at a range disadvantage of hundreds of miles compared to our friends, frenemies and potential enemies.
I’ve heard all about the idea of using Spear 3 before, but I’m not convinced- anything smaller than Sea Venom in terms of warhead is not an AShM in my opinion. 

I agree Joe. The ASM on escorts is a red herring IMO. It’s aircraft they are needed for, never mind the issues of finding the target. Risk your jet, not a ship.

If F-35 sensor fusion and L/O capabilities are half of what new operators seem to be claiming, finding the enemy may very well not be too much of a problem. The “spotter” and launching aircraft could easily be different aircraft- one further forward than the other and running dark. 

Which is where Drones will come in. Still wish LM would get a move on with BIV.

If we had to choose one or the other, I’d choose jets too, but given the size and role of the RN, there’s nothing aside from penny-pinching stopping us from having both for redundancy. There also hasn’t ever, as far as I’m aware, been any plans to fit FC/ASW to the F-35. So if by chance that program does produce a capable ASuW strike capability, we’ve basically got to hope a Type 26 is nearby and has a couple loaded, or that a squadron of Typhoons happens to be nearby with them in inventory.

Reliance on jets for protection is risky, especially in far flung places. Also need constant presence which means AAR. ASuW is a basic requirement for any major surface combatant, without it it’s a liability to its crew and other surface vessels.

but our fleet isnt in a carrier strike configeration all or most of the time. our escourts will generally be isolated in any encounter. since we dont have many of them, it’s sensible to make them cross spectrum capable imo.

The SAM rings will likely not let your helicopter anywhere near, whilst warhead too small.

Bollocks

With an uneducated response like that your credibility is nil. If you can’t be civil don’t post.

Well if you talk bollocks, expect it in return.
It’s one of Newtons Laws.

Clueless pal. You’ve clearly never flown in a helicopter, let alone tested the RWR at different heights or angles against the acquisition or tracking radars. If you have then let’s compare notes and experiences. A Wildcat won’t get safely within range of most destroyer SAM rings to deliver its 3kg or 30kg warhead missile- which itself will achieve sweet fa.

Drones are used as targets in naval exercises and are usually easily shot down so Stealth technology will become a need for these craft in the future.

Hand full? You have big hands to hold 32 of them.

The range is a fair bit longer than 15 miles as well.

Consider this. Without OHT what is the effective range of Harpoon? Its the surface search radar horizon.

Hi Klonkie, China will probably want to “slide” in even more into the region under pretexts like providing so called “security training” (what a load of BS), rebuild their airports, roads and seaports (how jolly covenient that will be for the CCP and PLA army/navy/airforce), plus set up the telecommunications, businesses, have more frequent naval visits, start overfishing other nations seas, not to mention putting in listening posts/cables to monitor allied sub and coastal movements and cable traffic in strategic spots. The West maybe has been a bit lazy in some relational areas and needs to counter by either doing something similar and definitely for mutual economic and strategic benefit and keep up with its aid assistance. I’d still like to see NZ muscle up its military a bit, get another light frigate, a bigger LHD type vessel, maybe some long range drones and or an extra P-8 for increased surveillance. Not sure about subs, UUVs. I’d like to see the RAN here too get another tanker and even a medium-largish sized carrier with some F35Bs that could inter-operate with Singapore, Japan and Korea plus the UK, US when they visit. And we need a couple more subs here too kind of quick. That’s just my short (fantasy) shopping list! Here’s hoping for the best.

Sorry, what I meant was in relation to AShMs torpedos are obviously slower, but I will say 60kts is pretty quick for sub-surface.

They are much more useful than that.The RN wouldn’t have bought them if they aren’t very capable weapon systems.

Robert although I agree that Sea Venom is a useless asset… I wouldn’t say that your argument for it is solid. We could then argue that the Ajax is very capable because otherwise the Army wouldnt have bought it. Oh wait. 😂

Sorry sorry i meant *useful here.

👍

The difference is, Sea Venom and Martlet are in service and meet exactly the requirement they were purchased for. Ajax currently does not. Yet. I generally don’t comment on Army vehicles, because I know naff all about them.

The issue is the Army needs a Ajax style vehicle. The requirement for formation recce hasn’t gone away.

Martlet? What a joke, its just a laser guided 70mm rocket.
Sea Venom? Might sink the Gosport Ferry on a good day.

Well I guess I’ll trust the requirements of the RN more than a random angry lad on the Internet.

It’s worth having a look at what Lynx/Sea Skua did in Iraq. Arguably Sea Skua was the most successful missile the Royal Navy has ever wielded. I don’t see how the Wildcat/Sea Venom combination can be so casually dismissed.

You really have no idea what you are talking about do you?
Do you have any idea of the complexity of systems in a warship? The interdependency of systems on other systems?

You dont need to sink something to mission kill it. Even small missiles will cause damage to systems to take a ship off the grid for a considerable time while BDR is undertaken.

If you want to really screw a ships systems hit the lesser systems like say Anemometers. They feed info for Gunnery, Helo Ops, EW Decoys. All are degraded without that input.
Yes the systems still work but not at full efficiency and it means you are vulnerable.

Ah I see, so you are going to fly your Wildcat into eyeball close range of a real warship with a SAM system to try and peck it to death with 70mm bottle rockets. Do you even know what the minuscule range of the Martlet is?
Stick to playing World of Warships

You’re picking on the wrong bloke “Just Me”!

yes – kind of cringy to read this gobs*ite

No no, let him hang himself mate!

👍

Wow. You had a pop at Daniele – “Do you actually understand anything about anti ship missiles?” (yes he does) and now this “Stick to playing World of Warships” comment to Gunbuster. Those of us who have been on this forum for a while are very aware of Gunbuster’s depth of training, knowledge and experience and have benefited from that on many occasions thanks to his detailed explanations of various things, all subject to only dealing with unclassified info of course. And yes, I am sure that Gunbuster knows the range characteristics of Martlet in great detail.

If you want to carry on insulting very knowledgeable participants by implying a lack of knowledge on their part might I suggest that you now go and find a post by DaveyB and accuse him of knowing nothing about the electronics and physics aspects of radars, missile seekers etc. That would get you a hat trick of insults that are absurdly off target based on the people you are insulting.

Meh, this ‘expert’ can’t even get the very basics about the missiles he’s banging on about right.

I would imagine Gunbuster chuckled at that comment. He is literally the most knowledgeable commentator on UKDJ as regards the RN and its’ ships. He has spent a career working on them, taking them apart, and putting them back together. As Ian said, you picked on the wrong bloke.

I’m certainly laughing at an ‘expert’ who thought Exocet was an anti submarine missile. Les chaps at Aerospatiale are still rolling on the floor in hysterics.

If a target is a surfaced SSN or a ship what is the difference?
And that is not what GB said either but it clearly escaped you.

Where did he say that? All your doing is making yourself look a bit silly throwing unnecessary insults about.

😂😂😂
Mate, not a great way to introduce yourself to this forum….

Using the benefit of your real world naval experience please let us know of just one instance post WW2 where a modern frigate or destroyer has detected a peer enemy surface combatant, tracked it and acquired a firing solution, fired its missiles and successfully engaged and sunk the warship. All without being detected and counter attacked itself. Just one.

We’ll wait……

And what real world experience do you have??

Sea Venom is ever so much bigger than Martlet and its also far longer ranged than the system it replaces, Sea Skua. Skuas actual range was again somewhat longer than the advertised range. Anyway Venom, being an IIR homer doesn’t need to transmit anything to home. The Wildcat PID can ID the target from a considerable distance again no transmissions to give anything away. No EW racket to give a warning…

So for SSMs If you want to do OHT for say a ship launched harpoon strike you are still going to be up flying around and within a ships SAM basket.
Without valid target data you are wasting your ship launched missile shots. You need target course and speed. You need to program in doglegs to have your missiles come in from different bearings. While planning a strike, and I will use Harpoon here because again I maintained it, you will calculate amongst other things time of flight, time of launch to acheive simultaneous time on target, approach vectors, homing head activation distances, homing head look angles. Once input into the console you get a final update from your OHT asset and then you stand a chance of getting a hit as you launch .

For a FF/DD target you need between 3-4 missiles to ensure a good hit probability. So with only 8 missiles onboard you can engage maybe 2-3 targets with a good chance of hitting and killing them. After that it’s defensive missile time… Or use helo launched missiles.

World of Warships? Have you got a link? How much is it? You seem to know a lot about it…

Now this is going to be amusing……keep going, please! Stand by to be blown out of the water!

By what? Gunbluffer?

No matter what you say the first step is getting people to listen. And by making yourself rather unpopular I should say you’ve failed that!

Indeed.

Do you actually understand anything about anti ship missiles?

Yes he does. Daniele has fantastic defence knowledge, about many areas of defence. He is correct. Air launched anti ship missiles are much more affective than surface vessel launched. Why? because warships radars can’t see over the horison at surface level. And you need a kill chain to successfully engage anyone. Find, track, engage. Finding and tracking warships in open ocean at extended range is very difficult to execute, especially when they don’t want to be found. Anti ship is one of the most difficult engagements to pull off, it’s not like the movie’s.

Respect, my friend.

Anytime mate 👍

Bump!

👍

Do you understand anything about wider defence capability beyond my guns bigger than yours??

Your reply says more about yourself than it does about Daniele.

During the Falklands, we had T22s, Leander’s and County class DDGs armed with Exocets, yet we never fired any. It was a SSN that sank the Belgrano with WW2 era torpedos!!
Our ships were sunk by aircraft launched Exocets and bombs, despite the Argentinian fleet having ship launched ASM!
Do you understand anything about the way the RN fights? It’s probably a more pertinent question!!

Exocet was originally purchased to kill subs.

Let that one sink in for a minute… To kill subs!

It was to be used to kill surfaced Soviet Cruise missile subs such as Echo’s and Juliet’s , launching on convoys or against land targets.

When Charlies came to the fore the need kind of diminished for sub killing but was retained for anti surface work. At the time the MM 38s used by the RN where limited to around 25-30 mile engagements.

Good Lord, I never ever knew that!!

No Exocet wasn’t, that was Harpoon, (The clues in the name). Exocet was always and anti ship missile.
Even a Google Admiral like you should have been able to find that out!

A Google admiral like Gunbuster! You’ve just embarrassed yourself mate.

How long do you think GB was in the RN in its various branches?

Harpoon came into the RN at the end and after the Cold War on the B3 T22s and the T23, first being Norfolk.

He can’t even get the very basics right… what was he, the pudding pusser?

Silly me… Of course the Exocet PJT I did was wrong…obviously the RN who designed and ran the courses in Collingwood didn’t know what they where talking about.
You should have let me know earlier and I would have put it on the course critique form when it ended.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind! Subject matter knowledge and experience always beats internet grumpiness and limited academic research. GB will hand you your arse on the subject of the RN every day of the week. Stop being silly and insulting.

I wasn’t aware that was it’s initial use until you posted it on another thread, wasn’t aware of its initial shortish range either mate, ta.
Some just don’t seem to want to understand that AShM isn’t always the be all that they think it is. They won’t be happy until all our ships are fitted with at least 48 AShM each!!!!! Not sure who were going to kill with them all either…

Go and read Daniele’s many previous posts on this forum. He knows more than you could ever hope to understand.

Still picking on the wrong guy!

yes – begining to wonder if this is just a wind-up merchant and/or troll

It’s not often, thankfully that a poster such as “Just me” appears and starts picking on knowledgeable and sensible readers / posters. I can only make a S.W.A.G. that he/she/it is a failed RN apprentice, booted out for gobbing off, or possibly a Russian troll with all the wit of a sausage.

Or a disgruntled former contributor? Not me, I might add!

Well hello H. You’re still lurking.😀

I’ll have you know that I have never lurked in my life! Just a vicious rumour. Very interesting of late to see the comments on the ‘Russian threat’ on these pages….puts into perspective our defence needs that have always (to my mind) had little to do with the security of the British people!

Certainly agree your last, at least when F35 is certified for ASuM. Still, my fear remains that the first fight the RN may have will be with RAF i.e. getting the aircaft on the Carriers. Somehow feel there will not be much time to resolve the lively discussion.

If only someone would invent an object that could fly into space and orbit the earth, data from off ship platforms could be passed to ships from it, we could call it a ‘satellite’.
Other than that, your ARE aware that maiden ASM’s can be fired into a targets general location and told to go find it.

Sea Ceptor can operate from the SYLVER and Mk41 launchers using a quad-pack configuration to maximise packing density and for optimum installation on smaller ships.

MBDA website.

As I understand it, the tilt on the Type 23s is so that if you two launch missles simultaneously from either side of the block, they won’t hit each other in error. Clearly missiles can be spaced in time, too.

Hi Jon, I understand the a T23s, what I was referring to was on the Canadian T26s the 2x3x4 ExLS has the two 3 quad silos tilted away from each other. You can see it quite clearly. So the banks of ExLS are not a flat top like the Mk41s. …or, maybe it’s my eyesight that’s a bit tilted?!! Lol.
The CAMM-ER three cannister set up on their DDX model also looks tilted.
I’ll check my 👓….

Even though it has a purpose, the tilt is not essential.

Their DDX model does show CAMM-ER…you have to look hard but they are there. I think Spain is also going with CAMM-ER, anyone know?

I think it only shows Aster.

Hi Alex, sorry I just can’t find the CG image of the triple cannister configuration of the CAMM-ER on a model of an Italian ship. I’ll post or reference it if I come across again. The Italian’s do like to arm their ships quite heavily, both in guns and missiles. Bit of a contrast to the RN. Maybe the threat environment is a bit more in your face, a bit more littoral, in their mid-end of the Mediterranean?
As has been mentioned before, the Italians selling CAMM-ER to Pakistan I think is a real security risk that should have been avoided considering their relationship with China. Expect a Chinese CAMM copy sometime soon!

In principle i agree concerning Pakistan sell. At same time i admit don’t know enough.

*eco endive?….sorry, expensive