I'm aware that Type 31 is based on the same design as the Iver Huitfeldt-class. So I guess if I count the Legend-class cutter as design proving for PF-4923 then it's fair enough to count the Iver Huitfeldt as the same for Type 31.
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
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Very interesting, I hadn’t appreciated that.
That’d be a hard no for the LHDs then.
Much of the design of the type26/Hunter class has included measures to cut out internal noise and vibration making it harder for submarines to detect and evade
Powering the stealthy submarine hunter – Type 26 frigate propulsion system in focus | Navy Lookout
Powering the stealthy submarine hunter – Type 26 frigate propulsion system in focus | Navy Lookout
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
I disagree. The TLAM's which were approved were the ship-launched TacToms. AFAIK, the RAN only possesses three vessels with VLS cells deep enough (Strike length) to be loaded with them. With each of the Hobart-class DDG's having 48 Mk 41 VLS cells, a decent sized LACM strike would require the entire Mk 41 VLS of at least one DDG to be loaded with LACM and such a strike could easily require more missiles than a DDG has VLS cells. How often would the RAN be able to deploy two or even all three Hobart-class DDG's together so that more VLS cells are available to continue providing an area air defence capability whilst attempting so sort of LACM strike package?
The USN does mix the VLS cell loadouts of their DDG's and CG's with a mix of air defence missiles and LACM and this works for the USN, but the USN vessels are quite a bit larger than the RAN DDG's and have nearly twice (or in some cases more) the VLS cell count per ship. Equally important IMO is that the USN have many more such vessels in service and available with a USN CSG containing one or two cruisers and two or three destroyers.
One the RAN starts to have the Hunter-class FFG in service in some numbers, then there might be enough strike length VLS cells to be worth acquiring some sort of LACM capability. As long as 'just' the Hobart-class are the vessels which can be loaded with Tomahawk, then the RAN is IMO likely better off keeping the DDG's available for area air defence.
knightrider4
Active Member
Are you surprised?
So much for the urgency. This DSR is turning into a farce. It‘s nothing more than a cost cutting exercise. I hope a war doesn’t kick off in the next 4 years. With this mob in charge we will probably end up cancelling the Hunter and replacing it with the European patrol corvette. So I guess there will be no need for any tomahawks. We can’t have a navy with point shooty things that go bang, that would only inflame tensions in our region
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
I hope a war does not kick off in that time frame either, because even if a plan was implemented which would actually improve things, it would take more than four years to start seeing any real improvements.So much for the urgency. This DSR is turning into a farce. It‘s nothing more than a cost cutting exercise. I hope a war doesn’t kick off in the next 4 years. With this mob in charge we will probably end up cancelling the Hunter and replacing it with the European patrol corvette. So I guess there will be no need for any tomahawks. We can’t have a navy with point shooty things that go bang, that would only inflame tensions in our region
I have yet to read the DSR in any real detail but so far the impression I have formed it that it looks to make some fundamental structural changes to the ADF, but (absent more information) not deliver an ADF that is overall more capable or versatile and might actually be less capable than it is now or planned for in the future. In some sense, it seems like a DDoA strategy.
Looking at it holistically none of the actual and assumed cuts have any impact on current or projected capability in the next several years.
Every reduction and cancellation can be fully reversed with no impact on schedule or the previously planned capability. If the situation changes they can be reversed, either with or without a change in government.
Basically the production of everything being cut, will still proceed but numbers reduced, so what is actually being cut will have zero impact for several years. The ADF is still going to be getting what they were going to get, when they were going to get it, but just less. In absolute certainty, they will be getting other capabilities yet to be determined.
People are bleating about cuts and reviews etc. but the simple fact is, while we are building the proposed reduced numbers of what is already planned, but not yet ordered or contracted, we have the time to conduct reviews and determine how to proceed down the road.
That is the cuts have zero impact on current force levels, the upcoming reviews have zero impact on current force levels. The decisions that are impacting current force levels and forces levels going out over the next decade, are those made over the last thirty years, most of them made more than fifteen or twenty years ago.
Not one thing is being retired without replacement over the next several years.
Ok we are starting to get into fantasy fleets etc., again, with people obsessing on what may or may not be. We don't have enough information and won't do so until the RAN review is out. The DSR is a political document and like even White Papers, it only sets the govt policy. It is the DSR that will inform any capability reviews etc.
Calm down or the Moderation Team will seriously consider locking an thread where posters are over reaching.
Calm down or the Moderation Team will seriously consider locking an thread where posters are over reaching.
I guess that’s what you call a rose-tinted glasses view of the DSR. I watched the Chief Army’s video after the DSR. His facial expression and body language was like he was announcing a death in the family. The cuts to the IFV will result in the loss of institutional knowledge as we are going from 3 mechanised battalions to 1. The fiscal position is only going to deteriorate over time. It will only get harder to fund defence as time goes on. Short of war (in which case we are already too late), I cannot see capabilities (such as the IFV or SPH) being expanded in the future. Without funding increases you will see the cannibalisation and hollowing out of existing capabilities to fund the SSN program (as that program gathers steam).
There is already talk about cuts to sustainment and maintenance budgets. How did that work out for the German armed forces? I am old enough to remember how underfunded and ill equipped our armed forces were in the 1990s. It looks like we are going back to those days despite the 2020s being a time of heightened strategic risk.
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You are being extremely blinkered in your thoughts and comments.
Prior to Timor it looked like the the DDG capability was not going to be replaced, as it turned out it half the FFGs weren't replaced either. i.e. three ships in place of nine. Corvettes intended to replace patrol boats were cancelled, then belatedly replaced with highly flawed new patrol boats.
This occured over three governments, CLP, ALP, CLP, any one of them could have, but failed to order more, or better ships. This occured during the largest, longest, economic boom this nation has ever experienced.
MBTs came very close to being scrapped, first under ALP ( who were looking at wheeled armoured gun systems), then the CLP. Bushmaster came very close to being cancelled under the CLP, Mulgara (think Hawkei but 25 years earlier) was cancelled.
Part of the reason the M-113 was life extended instead of replaced was to free up money to motorise most of the army with ASLAV, an AGS, possibly a LAV with a turreted mortar, Bushmaster and Mulgara. The army would have retained a mechanised BDE, with three mech btns, 3RAR was meant to be that third btn. There would also have been a SF BDE.
None of this happened because the government changed, some projects and programs were cut, new ones were introduced, money was saved, money was wasted.
Get off your doom and gloom political high horse. The DSR is not the end of the world, it is high level strategic guidence to the detail that will follow.
knightrider4
Active Member
Well Volk we will see in due course won't we.
I see the fact that the government is consistently and openly pressing the fact that we are in a time of great strategic risk as a very positive sign. While you note the examples of previous Australian and German governments dropping the ball on defence, the context in which these examples took place are in periods where global strategic tension had largely dissipated and the vast majority of other developed countries were making significant cuts to the military as well.
This is in very stark contrast to the strategic conditions of today where countries are scrambling to increase their military capability and global tensions are at one of their highest points in the past century. The government has very clearly acknowledged this fact on many occasions at this point.
So you would have to assume the government is either exceedingly dim or they have decided that an acknowledged threat to national prosperity is not something to worry about. I do not see how you could reconcile these things aside from a hefty dose of, what is in my view, unfounded cynicism.
That we shall, but if you do any amount of reading on defence strategy and procurement in the industrial age, you will see it goes beyond politics.
As a rule of thumb defence spending and the resulting capability is, and always has been driven by the international strategic situation and the political/public perception of it. During the 50s and 60s, when there was not an ALP government in sight, defence spending went up and down, capability was introduced, reduced, increased, gotten rid of.
Much of it was under the same prime minister, Robert Menzies. No excuses for changing PM's or governments. Same government, same PM, just changing inputs resulting in different outputs.
Look at the number of back flips under Hawke and Howard, our next two longest serving PMs, same thing. International situation changes, public perception changes, the previously unimaginable becomes reality.
Look through the national archives for defence reviews conducted since Federation. There are multiple examples of highly accurate predictions of coming threats, as well as detailed options to counter them. Most were rejected or bastardised into uselessness.
$7.8b in capability is not proceeding and is being “redirected” according to the defence minister himself.
It is completely inaccurate to suggest these decisions will have no impact on capability. The chief of Army himself admitted as much in a video that needed to be released on the day the DSR dropped, to try and head off mass exodus...
All the core capabilities are proceeding, just not all of them are going to result in the numbers originally projected.
As none of these were going to be providing anything in the next few years, the effect out until then is negligible.
What matters is what new capabilities with now be funded.
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
IMO this is true, but only in part. What I get concerned with is whether or not the reduction in projected numbers will become permanent and without replacement or adjuncts, i.e. replacing 11 MFU's consisting of three Hobart-class DDG's and eight ANZAC-class FFH's with 9 MFU's by retaining the Hobart-class DDG's and then only adding six Hunter-class FFG's. This is particularly worrisome of those who advocate for corvettes still hold any influence with gov't.
There is also IMO legitimate reason to be concerned about what some of the new/additional capability that has yet to be funded or ordered will be. Long-ranged, land-based AShM for instance comes to mind as a potentially very expensive money pit which would require massive investment to be able to make effective use (if that is even possible in an Australian context) whilst delivering a less flexible and versatile capability to the ADF.
For longer term plans, what it the plan for National Shipbuilding if the Hunter-class build programme stops after six vessels? I know my preference would be for the Hobart-class replacement programme to be brought forward but AFAIK that has not been indicated in the DSR.
In terms of long range land-based AShMs it would depend on how you define "long range".
If you define "long range" as >100 nmi then putting NSM on the back of a Bushmaster Copperhead would fit the bill and not be particularly difficult.
If you define "long range" as >800 nmi then we will likely have to sort out a land based launcher system for Tomahawk Block Vb although a similar system named Typhon is in development for the US Army and so getting involved in that would be a good idea.
@devo99 Can you please provide sources for images etc. This is a requirement of the rules and it is to protect both you and the Forum from allegations of plagiarism / IP theft.
Ngatimozart.
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The way I see is that the force structure is always evolving. Strategic circumstances change but you are always going to have a mix of legacy equipment, new equipment and planned equipment. At no point are you ever likely to have that perfect force structure.
The current planned surface fleet is 3 X AWD, 9 X ASW frigates and 12 X OPVs. That will almost certainly change with the navy review but even if it does it would take decades for these changes to work their way through the fleet.
I would suspect that by the mid thirties we will have a mix of Hobarts, a couple of Hunters, a few legacy ANZACs, maybe a few corvettes/GP frigates and Arafuras. What the fleet will be building towards is another story. There will be plenty of defence reviews and changes of governments between now and then.
The current planned surface fleet is 3 X AWD, 9 X ASW frigates and 12 X OPVs. That will almost certainly change with the navy review but even if it does it would take decades for these changes to work their way through the fleet.
I would suspect that by the mid thirties we will have a mix of Hobarts, a couple of Hunters, a few legacy ANZACs, maybe a few corvettes/GP frigates and Arafuras. What the fleet will be building towards is another story. There will be plenty of defence reviews and changes of governments between now and then.