The Royal Navy is continuing to assess the potential compatibility of the Aster missile with the Mk41 vertical launch system as part of wider efforts to expand its missile flexibility.
In response to a written parliamentary question from Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty on progress integrating the Aster 30 missile into the Mk41 system, the Ministry of Defence referred to an earlier answer confirming that assessment work is ongoing rather than providing a specific programme update.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard said: “The Royal Navy has announced its intention to become a Mk41 Navy, to ensure that future combatants have a versatile missile launcher capable of deploying both offensive and defensive missiles.”
The Mk41 vertical launch system is a widely used modular launcher capable of firing a range of missile types, offering flexibility across air defence, strike and anti-submarine roles. The Royal Navy has already begun the process of introducing Mk41 cells on new platforms, including the Type 26 frigates.
Pollard indicated that the assessment of Aster is part of a broader review of potential weapons and effectors under development concepts for the fleet. He said the Navy is “currently assessing a range of effector options, including missiles, guns, lasers and drones as it develops the Hybrid Navy concept.”
The Aster family of missiles currently forms the backbone of the Royal Navy’s principal area air defence capability, deployed via the Sylver vertical launch system on Type 45 destroyers. However, no timeline has been provided on this effort.
Fine, as long as it doesn’t water down anti-ship and cruise.
It’s good to have options. If it’s done now, the T31 and T26 will be more capable, BUT, it can influence design choices on the T83 and those Drone ships packing more Ait Defence or Landstrike missiles.
Well as long as they close the port holes, they should be fine Geoff.
There are enough holes in our defence budget to sink the whole navy! 🙃
What’s a porthole between friends then…?
Of course if it was the hatch on an Upholder… that might have foreseen consequences when you shout ”Dive, dive, dive!”
I get paid more than $120 to $130 per hour for working online. I heard about this job 3 months ago and after joining this i have earned easily $15k from this without having online working skills.
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Bit of a strange article, the parliamentary answer just pointed to a previous question that had already been covered in UKDJ.
It one of those gap fillers. If you run out of ideas, recycle.
Clearly Ben Obese-Jecty needs to follow UKDJ more closely. If he had, he’d have known the answer and not asked a pointless question 🤷🏻♂️
Oh great – were ‘ assessing’ something else . That’s the problem with UK Defence, too much assessing and far too little doing let alone ordering IMHO. 🇬🇧👎
You’d prefer we didn’t and then find out after we’ve bought them that our missiles and launch tubes are incompatible… really??
I guess he’d rather we got on with sticking the missiles in the VLS and test firing them. However, we don’t have any Mk41s that I’m aware of, other than perhaps on Glasgow, an incomplete ship. I’d rather we worked flat out getting Glasgow to trials. Until then there’s time.
…and I guess near weekly reports that we are assessing whether Asters can fit into Mk 41 isn’t really necessary this is the third report of it on here this year. An actual update might just be a little more newsworthy.
As for the assessment itself an assessment was done some years back with a positive outcome that it was indeed feasible if all parties were supportive of it. MBDA did this because it was concerned about losing sales around the World if it stuck to a French VLS design. So in the end it’s about willingness, cost and time.
I don’t think it’s a case of weekly reports. It’s a question of having to answer (unecessary) questions that have been asked.
Clearly Ben Obese-Jecty needs to start reading UKDJ as at the moment we seem to know more than he does 🤷🏻♂️
Are you surprised that a government minister knows less than we do?
As STARMITE has made clear bring PM is the art of knowing nothing. I’m pretty sure he would deny knowing which day of the week it was or wether he lives in 10 or 11 Doening Street (it is an in joke as the flats stray across the party wall line).
Sir Humphrey would be proud of that lack of knowledge and that ministers are properly house trained not to know anything or ask awkward questions which might lead to factual answers…..
Err wrong.
Ben Obese-Jecty is not a “government minister”, he’s a Tory, so he’s in the opposition. He is the Shadow Parliamentary Private Secretary for Defence. So you’d hope his knowledge of Defence would be a tad better than the average MP…
So your resulting Starmer rant isn’t really relevant 🤷🏻♂️
It was a thing called a joke?
We have seen ministers lining up to ‘know nothing’….
Don’t give up the day job 🤷🏻♂️
Former fmr forces to boot.
We we’ve ordered them from LM for the first three Type 26s, so I’d imagine we have them by now, given build progress.
But clearly not in any way functional.
Surprise surprise were ‘ assessing’ something else . That’s the problem with UK Defence, too much assessing and far too little doing let alone ordering IMHO. 🇬🇧👎
Not sure if I am missing something here, but if Aster forms the “backbone” of the Royal Navy’s AD capability shouldn’t we have done the assessment before integrating into the T26?
MBDA assessed the mk41 and its ability to fit Aster more than 10 years ago.
The announcement is just more nonsense.
They did a basic dimensions check. There’s a little more to it.
Oh you beat me to it Jim, yes we know it can it’s a matter of cost, time and will. Hopefully that’s the assessment they are doing not the mere principle because if so you can guarantee more assessments will merely follow.
T26 will have Sea Ceptor, which is designed for the Mk41 VLS. Aster is an area defence missile used by our destroyers, not frigates.
Not sure the RN will put classic CAMM into the mk41 strike length but keep that to the CAMM x6 farm silo unless some boffin can come up with a “double stack” CAMM cannister launcher? CAMM-ER x4 and CAMM-MR x2 yes and Aster. It’ll be good to spread Aster beyond the T45s but I think the radar choice on the T31s is not strong enough and not the job of the T26s but who knows? Even to purchase some SAMP/T land Aster might be useful to complement the SkySabre units.
Unless there is a radar upgrade to T26 and it’s existing set and T31 and the Thales radar they couldn’t use Aster to full effect? So is does this give a possibility of a retro fit on T45 ( which would open up other options) or is it something they would plan for unmanned vessels to complement T45 or FADS,, so the uncrewed vessels could forward deploy Aster and or cruise missiles?
There is a significant upgrade to Artisan being offered by BAE.
If the T26 does get the radar upgrade and can begin to carry area defence weapons such as Aster 30 NT and CAMM MR (twin packed) and CAMM quad packed then it may be time to change its designation to a destroyer while changing the designation of the type 83 to a cruiser.
A 8,000 tonne warship able to carry over 100 missiles with an anti ballistic missile capability and aerial target engagement capabilities over 100 miles should not be a frigate no matter how good it is at ASW.
Same goes for T83, at over 10,000 tonnes it is really a cruiser not a destroyer.
The terms Destroyer, Frigate, Cruiser are meaningless. They hark back to the Washington Treaty when they were enforced by international agreements, and when the only effective weapons were guns, which required a large ship to carry powerful ones, and torpedoes, which required getting in close (and were therefore either for rare occasions, or for ships you could afford to risk). A 4000 ton warship for example, would have made a lousy cruiser and a very expensive destroyer. With modern weapons systems and sensors you can build a ship of any size you like, what you call it is just a political decision.
Of course that does lead to a different issue. Which is the tendency to increase the amount of equipment each ship has until the cost creeps up so much you can’t afford enough of them.
I disagree and would say in the modern era dominated by the USN a destroyer refers to a more general purpose all round capability to do both AAW and ASW, a Frigate is an ASW platform and a cruiser an AAW platform.
I don’t disagree that the term cruiser is irrelevant but I think it’s different for destroyer not least due to the prevalence of the Arleigh Burke class.
One who has to look at the “debate” going on across the pond discounting frigates and only focusing on destroyers to relies the name does matter politically. In royal navy terms it would also help to differentiate between the T31.
So we would have 8 T26 Destroyers, 5 type 31 Frigates and 4 Type 83 Cruisers
A T26 with a new AESA radar, 100 missile load out and ABM capability becomes a general purpose asset capable of doing ASW and AAW tasks and should be called a destroyer.
I’d always considered Cruiser to be the general term, an AAW ship large and capable enough that adding in ASW capability is a negligible part of the cost. The discussion is largely meaningless beyond that. There are ASW destroyers, AAW frigates, 3500t destroyers, 10,000t frigates, destroyers with 32 VLS and frigates with 64VLS.
But I think your force structure and the ability of an upgraded T26 to make up for only having four T83s are correct. If proper money turned up I’d add another three T31s with an AA spec as well, but that’s personal preference.
Forgetting that half the time, the classification is for political reasons and not about the actual capability.
If they removed the forward 4×6 CAMM blocks could they potentially put another mk41 in there? Or replace that with a consolidated CAMM block cell with maybe 4×8 for 32 for both CAMM andCAMM-ER. I read somewhere that the French Naval Group are designing this for CAMM as part of their FDI offer to Sweden.
It’s not that big a problem, the French have been putting Aster on everything and the Constellations were going to have SM6. It’s just a general shift that every high end ship needs to be able to defend itself against the full range of possible air threats as every man and his dog in the ME has anti ship missiles and lobs stuff on ballistic trajectories. The T26 is what in the 1960s would be considered an ASW destroyer, yes, but I’m perfectly ok with calling it a frigate- look at what USS Constitution was to the average Royal Navy frigate in the 1790s, 70% more displacement and twice the weight of broadside!
More widely I am slightly annoyed we are sticking with Aster rather than moving on to something new and better. Aster is a good missile but its form makes it quite limited in the developments that can be made. We have the lineage of CAMM now, which is entirely MBDA UK and not dependent on working with France or Italy, we ought to be able to develop a family of interceptors that can be used and redeveloped further into the future.
Spot on.
As far as I know, Italy are doing CAMM-ER and Poland are doing CAMM-MR. Not exactly UK sovereign. So what better missiles do you have in mind for our frigates? Something existing or a clean sheet SAM?
The status of the foreign CAMM evolutions is quite murky. Officially they are the result of collaborations between the host country’s MBDA branch and MBDA UK (or PGZ and MBDA UK) because MBDA UK own the CAMM IP. So we should be able to develop the developments ourselves, if you see what I mean.
For every generation of RN destroyers we have been able to develop entirely new missiles and CMS. The pace of technological development hasn’t slowed down between T45 and T83, so why shouldn’t we do the same for the next?
The staus is not the least bit murky. Just your knowledge of the situations.
Mind explaining the level of UK industrial content and the status of IP for CAMM-ER and -MR then?
Any additional information would be helpful.
I disagree with your latter point.
The modern Aster blocks are entering service soon, and cover the original role as mid-range defence against ABTs, whilst adding all the terminal phase defence capability against BMs and HGVs that something like PAC-3MSE and SM-6 offers.
It’s only real deficiency in comparison to SM-6 is a reduced lateral range against ABTs. In all other areas, B1NT is superior to the American equivalent, and should absolutely be emphasised by the RN, given established production lines.
Pouring money into CAMM variants is, for one, simply looking for a solution to an issue the RN doesn’t have, secondly, the kind of departmental waste that cripples our budgets, and finally, a poor platform from which to replace the Aster.
Aster is fine for now and probably up to 2040, but T83 will be in service long beyond that. The problem is that as a mk41 navy Aster doesn’t maximise the size and weight limits that are now available, an SM-6 sized missile will have superior performance independently of the cost (an inability to produce solid boosters notwithstanding). We won’t get an Aster 45 as even MBDA with their HYDIS concepts are moving towards a more modern ABM arrangement of a large booster and second stage with a small, extremely manoeuvrable hittile. SM-3 and the Korean L-SAM ABM are similar.
So my suggestion would be two interceptors, because although Aster has been capable of both previously the high altitude and long range air breathing threats are different enough that they shouldn’t be managed by the same missile. There should be an ABM as described above and then a dedicated long range conventional SAM. That could either be the ‘telephone pole’ long range rocket motor as followed by China or a ramjet type.
Variants of the Standard have been in service for some 58 years, more if you count the preceding Tartar. Variants of the Buk and S-300 are similarly long-lived. I don’t see any particular reason why the A30, which has a design far more conducive to upgrade, would need replacing past 2040.
You suggest that an A45 wouldn’t happen, and I agree, but not because I think that Aster is less suitable for that kind of role. In fact, I’d argue that by using this booster/dart configuration, Aster is better suited to being strapped to a bigger booster, and therefore going further.
Instead, I just don’t really see what use the RN has for a dedicated, very-long-range, strictly AAW missile. The USN’s SM-6 is reserved mostly for BMD, with fighter aircraft (ironically also using SM-6) instead performing the role of a long-range SAM.
A T83 needs to cover ship-self defence, medium-range CSG defence against cruise missiles, and high-altitude BMD. CAMM covers the first, A30 the second, and Aquila the third. In an ideal world, CAMM-MR takes over the second, and A30 and Aquila both cover the third, but I don’t think that’ll happen.
The long-range AAW role is better covered by more responsive, heavily-armed, versatile intercepting aircraft, which can prosecute distance threats such as surveillance aircraft without revealing the position of the CSG.
The nations purchasing SM-6 for their warships are not buying it to swat bombers, AEW&C aircraft and Soviet-era high-altitude cruise missiles. They’re buying it because it’s the only terminal-phase BMD option for the Mk41. Only the US, and its CEC initiative, are using SM-6 as a long-range AAW system as a primary function.
The USN spent a LOT of money in the 1970s pinning down the concept of the ‘outer air battle’ using AEW, the F14 and Phoenix to intercept aircraft before they could launch missiles against the carrier group. I don’t think the RN will have a capable enough ASaC airframe to do that role in the foreseeable future, so our F35s will be limited in what they can do in that regard. We are in a similar position to the Soviets and until recently the Chinese in that we have naval groups but not the comprehensive air wing to defend and attack simultaneously, hence the requirement for a long range SAM.
It could also be given a surface attack role as SM-6B1A has.
I realise I am mostly just describing STRATUS RS, if given a large enough booster.
I’m struggling to envision a scenario in which a British CSG would actually be in position to use something like SM-6 ahead of manned CAP. If you could explain when you think a system like that would be used, perhaps I can better explain my position.
You’re not swatting cruise missiles at 200km. You’re not going to be engaging manned missile carriers prior to your own CAP arriving there. Your CAP is better suited to engaging AWAC aircraft given its lower signature.
Doing what the Americans have done, and strapping a very-long-range missile to their interceptor aircraft, seems to me to be superior in every available scenario. Meteor already offers 200km engagement range, as does AMRAAM-D that’s currently in use.
The area that isn’t covered well at the moment is high-altitude BMD.
I think you need to consider how the T83 will be used in the future. The first key requirement is that it must be able to handle the fight on its own, i.e. no carrier or “loyal wingmen”. The RN is no longer in the position where the T83 will only be used with the carrier. As we know if there’s a requirement and a ship available it will be used, even though it might be best suited to the task.
The RN will be going big on automation and reducing crew sizing as much as possible. I think the driver for this is the cap on personnel numbers. So they want to try to do as much with less, hence the T91 and T92 being possibly lean manned/autonomous. But networking will be the key driver to achieve mass effects.
Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) comes with an ITAR caveat and Link-16 if quad stacked, doesn’t really have the bandwidth to handle significant amounts of data. The RN will need to look at something that is similar but compatible with the US CEC as well as other countries CEC, if it doesn’t go down the US route. CEC does mean though that targeting information can be fed to the air commander, who can then decides on priorities and which assets are used to counter the threat. But also prevents targeting duplication, so maximizes the use of the assets they have.
However CEC/networking isn’t the golden bullet to solve everything, it does have an Achilles heel. Link-16 is particularly bad for this, in that it uses an omni-directional antenna, i.e. it broadcasts in all directions. As far as I’m aware CEC also uses omni-directional antennas. So its transmissions aren’t covert. As an opponent with the right equipment will be able to detect it and through triangulation pin point the transmitter. Which could be the ship or an aircraft. The only means of remaining covert is to use electronic beamforming antennas, like the F35 uses for its multifunction advanced datalink (MADL), laser based comms or satellite based comms where the ship’s and aircraft antennas are only looking up.
The ability to remain covert is essential. Granted the T83 may be blatting away with its radar, but if other ships under its protection can remain silent and undetectable. So long as they are using a “covert” datalink. Then your opponent won’t have/see the whole picture.
CEC does give a ship an over the horizon capability. The USN regularly use Hawkeye to give an Arleigh Burke (AB) a better radar picture, but F35s can also do the same with ABs. In essence the AB can have its radar on standby, and act as a magazine for the Hawkeye/F35. Could the T83 do the same? I guess it will depend on whether our carriers get a Mickey Mouse AEW platform or not. But I am hoping the RN use a Proteus like drone, to give the ship its own organic AEW capability. Thereby extending the ship’s radar horizon and allowing it to target threats beyond the ship’s horizon.
I agree with this, except for the final paragraph. What’s the actual benefit to having the ship act as the shooter for the interceptor, as opposed to another F-35, for example?
To clarify:
1. When the ship is operating on its own. Or in the T45/83’s case, is the main AAW element for a task group minus carrier of land based AEW support. Without carrier/land based AEW, the ship/task group must rely on the shipborne radar. Thereby incurring the very short radar horizon problem, i.e threats can approach from behind the horizon unseen, giving the ship not a lot of time to respond. By giving the ship its own AEW VTOL platform, even if it mounts a single X-band radar. By doing circuits at 10,000ft, the radar horizon will be nearly 230km instead of 28km for the T45. This would allow the ship to do over-the-horizon targeting and interceptions, rather than waiting for the threat to appear on the ship’s horizon.
2. If an F35 or a pair of F35s are operating covertly on a combat air patrol (CAP). By using the ship’s missiles to engage targets means two things. Firstly, the aircraft doesn’t have to open its weapons bay doors. Thereby preserving the aircraft’s radar cross section. Which might be important when the target is an aircraft that is actively pinging and looking for threats. Secondly, it preserves the weapons the aircraft is carrying, so it doesn’t have to return to the carrier for re-arming, thereby it can stay on patrol for longer. By returning early, the carrier would have to replace the jets with another armed pair etc. But realistically for this to be an option. The ship would need to have a surface to air missile that has at least the same range capabilities as the SM-6, i.e. over 200 miles. Otherwise the aircraft will have to be much nearer to the ship.
1) I fully agree with that first proposal – having a small AEW bird would be a gamechanger for naval air defence.
2) Does having the ship launch the missile not give far more warning, far more time to react for the target, whilst revealing the carrier and its escorts to the opposition aircraft?
In terms of balance, is it not worth risking an F-35, that can then change position rapidly, and engage on a far shorter time frame, than risking the CSG itself.
As for magazine depth, this seems a poor argument, given four F-35Bs would have the same magazine depth as a single destroyer of having to replace other air defence missiles to carry them.
CAMM is near an order of magnitude cheaper than A30.
That is the reason to collaborate with others who fund the development of UKIP for CAMM.
WRT missiles Hi/Mid/Low is needed and A30 with CAMM covers off Hi & Mid.
A CAMM capable of replacing A30 will be barely cheaper than A30 itself. That’s what TJ is proposing above, and that’s what I’m arguing against.
As you say, distributing A30’s current dual TBMD and AAW roles across B1NT and CAMM-MR would be better in terms of pure capability.
I wasn’t suggesting that CAMM replaces A30 but is used as a mid tier weapon against mid tier threats.
CAMM-MR will still be a fraction of the price of A30 but have a different usage profile.
👍, I agree. Keep them separate.
Aster was designed for the Sylver A50, which defined the overall length of the A30 variant at 4.2m and its container at 4.9m long. I have no idea why MBDA did not look at the longer 7m long Sylver A70, and not scale Aster to fit. Aster could easily have a longer 1st stage booster.
The 2nd stage dart of Aster is 2.6m long, whilst the Aster 30 1st stage booster is 2.3m long. Meaning using the same sizing rules for the A70 as the A50, you could fit a 3.6m long 1st stage booster to the Dart. Giving Aster an overall length of 6.2m. Giving Aster an additional 1.3m of fuel, will significantly increase the missile’s effective range/altitude, but also the terminal speed. Which I’d predict will be closer to Mach 5.
The additional length booster would help Aster reach similar heights/ranges to the first block SM-6. However, the latest version of SM-6, uses a new “fatter” 2nd stage, that contains more fuel, helping it push past 120,000ft. For Aster to reach the same heights the dart will need replacing with a fatter version, so it can hold more fuel. But you do have to be careful as the fineness ratio (length/diameter) gets too large. Remembering that a larger frontal area coupled to a shorter fatter body, creates a serious amount of drag. Which has a knock on effect when the missile is gliding, as it slows down quicker.
CAMM will struggle to replace Aster. The base size just isn’t big enough for a long range, high speed missile. CAMMs main benefit is that it is cheap and small enough you can fit multiple missiles but we end up wasting the size with mushroom farms that are the least dense firing solution ever, and more importantly, for some things like a hypersonic or a ballistic missile you just need Aster 30 NT or SM-6/SM-3, lobbing 2 CAMM-MR won’t do the job.
We should also be able to make an Aster 45, follow the board method the US used for SM-3, stuck on an extra booster and make a few changes from the base missile. That would really help range of Aster which is currently its biggest downfall compared to SM-6.
What about the Aquila missile? Isn’t that tje next step up from Aster? Are you suggesting we now need an even more powerful CAMM variant with the best bits of CAMM-Aster-Meteor?
If they managed to do that Jim, T83 would simply dissappear and T45 would be replaced by additional T26.
Near enough, would be regarded as good enough.
Is that the NGRD antenna? GaN that can fit on the same mast?
NGRD and Artisan NG are the same thing, it just comes from the two ways BAE referred to it when it was publicised.
If you look at the Navy Lookout article “The Royal Navy’s next-generation radars” there is a graphic of Artisan NG superimposed on Artisan 300 on the T26 mast. It’s a LOT bigger but it does fit on the same mast.
Thanks. Great insight.
If T31 is getting the Thales NS110 rather than Artisan, are there any implications for the proposed Mk41 on ship 3 onwards, in your opinion or are the systems equivalent?
It’s hard to dissect Thales brochures, but Artisan and NS110 are apparently quite similar in performance- not worth trying to distinguish between them from public information. So the mk41 on T31 would only be for anti-ship, land attack or ASW rather than air defence.
Thanks. That means T31 would be reliant on 40mm for air defense?
Sorry, I didn’t put that very well. If mk41 were fitted they would either have fewer than the full 32 to allow some CAMM to be carried or quad-pack CAMM for self defence.
Either way some CAMM would be carried but not in the numbers on T26.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought it would be strange not to have some CAMM, as minimal as it seems, for self defence or in support of RFA (cos they won’t get anything any time soon).
T45 area defence capability is constrained by the Sylver A50 launcher. Being only 5m in depth, the size defines the length of weapon that can be used. To give it the same possible missile capability as an Arleigh Burke, it needs either the 7m long Sylver A70 or the strike length Mk41 (7.7m long) to be fitted. These would allow weapons up to 7m long to be used, i.e. SM3, Sm6 and Tomahawk etc .
The hull depth is great enough and the seatings were built up for A50.
Cheers, that’s good to know. So at least there’s a possible future option.
I am confused. Surely having defensive missiles is a basic requirement? If the radar isn’t good enough what is the point of paying for the radar? If there is always the need for a second ship to protect it, why not just build the second ship?
Are you talking about the Type 26s? They already have the Artisan 300 radar and 48 CAMM missiles.
Artisan 300 has a claimed range of 200km maximum, or 55km against anti-ship missiles. It’s widely acknowledged to be better than those stats give it credit for due to very advanced software, but the front end is quite limited and so the performance against very high end threats like hypersonic missiles is likely not to be very good and the lower power output reduces the warning time before a missile launch is necessary. CAMM has a stated range of 25km and is manoeuvrable enough to hit supersonic anti ship missiles conducting evasive turns, but is cheaper than most defensive missiles and doesn’t have enough energy to have a good chance of hitting targets like ballistic or hypersonic missiles at high altitudes. So Type 26 has a good defence against most current threats at the moment, but would struggle in a war against Russia or China in the future.
So what BAE have done is as part of their continuous development of new radar tech and concepts have publicised a new radar to replace Artisan 300 which they call Artisan NG. As well as being generally bigger and heavier, instead of the very wide but flat shape of Artisan it has a square face formed by four of BAE’s new modular radar panels, which will help with putting a lot more power into the radar beam and focussing it. That should give the radar much better performance against more distant and faster-moving targets, and BAE are still working on improving the back end software which is already very good. That will allow Aster to be used to its full potential from T26 which adds an extra layer of defence to the ship when it isn’t operating as part of a fleet with a destroyer.
Many thanks for explaining – that’s very interesting.
Yes, thanks TJ. Might have been useful then to have had an extra Mk41 but there’s the added weight and expense of doing that.
T26 was ordered to a budget VLS capacity is really pretty good with CAMM and Mk41.
The shape of the NG array, is all about the beam shape. The lozenge shape of the current Artisan array, produces something similar to a beaver tail shaped beam (generalised), but placed on its side. This is due to how electronic beamforming generates the beam. To get a narrower and more circular beam, you need the same number of antennas in the x and y axis that makes up the array, the more antennas/active elements the tighter and circular the beam can be made. A lot of large AESA panels (SPY-6 and 7) are Octagonal in shape for this reason. The current Artisan does mean more sky is covered in a sweep, but also more energy is averaged out along the beam’s front. By concentrating more energy into a smaller and more circular beam, more energy is concentrated in one area. But being an AESA, the sweep rate will be really quick so you’re not really missing out sweeping the sky time wise. Technically the transmission range should increase, and in some cases a squarer (hexagonal, octagonal) antenna array increases the receiver sensitivity, thereby helping to increase detection range.
Thanks DB, I’d thought I’d missed something but not sure what.
If the T26 and T31 get the Artisan NG, it would mean they “should” be better at detecting and tracking a wider range of air threats, but crucially further away. This radar combination with CAMM-ER or CAMM-MR, will give the ship an area capability instead of the baseline CAMM’s local. I would also say due to the greater mass of CAMM-ER and CAMM-MR especially, they should be more capable in intercepting SRBM or ballistic threats in the near to target terminal phase. Which will be a cheaper option than going down the Aster route. Plus it means for the 24 cells, using CAMM will give you a larger magazine depth, due to quad and dual packing of the cells.
I do think the cells on the T26 will be used to house STRATUS-LO/RS. But the RN did send out a RFI a few years ago for a missile launched torpedo that would be Mk41 compatible. Looking at some of the blurb coming out from the RN and reading between the lines. It does look like the CAMM-ER/CAMM-ER could be on the cards. Which may be a requirement for the Norwegian Nav’s ships having a larger air defence umbrella, as they currently use ESSM. Where the CAMM-ER is a direct competitor. The CAMM-MR would give them a much wider area coverage similar to the Aster Block 0.
As far as I can tell (thankyou Navy Lookout), Artisan NG is still like its predecessor only a single antenna array. Whereas, using back to back antennas like used by Sampson, will give a much better radar picture, due to the smaller dead zones. I guess only using one antenna is down to cost more than top weight, as the masts are lower on the T26 and T31 than a T45.
Artisan NG/NGRD is a big bulky beast, it’s not surprising they can’t fit a double panel if they’re trying to replace Artisan all of the way up on the T26 mast.
Clearly. It will have Sea Ceptor with their own silos for air-defence, the question is else goes into the MK41s.
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The errors in force numbers are indicative of the competence these government / opposition figures have. Why does the UK put up with these (subjectively) fools? Rhetorical.
I think you are confusing Lisa West @George’s wife – hope I got that right? – with Lord West who did serve as 1SL.
As far as I know they are not related….