Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0

[old faithful]

I watched this last week.
Totally unrealistic, waste of time gaming.
No subs either side, even the approach, China sent a battle group of what? 1 carrier and 4 or 5 frigates? It's not even funny how stupid the scenario is.

 

[koxinga]

A question for the more knowlegable members on RAN.

Does RAN follow USN's survivability standards? I am not sure off the shelf offerings, whether from Asia yards (Japan, Korea) or European ones would meet those requirements out of the box.

 

[StevoJH]

I watched this last week.
Totally unrealistic, waste of time gaming.
No subs either side, even the approach, China sent a battle group of what? 1 carrier and 4 or 5 frigates? It's not even funny how stupid the scenario is.

I watched it as well.

Even assuming that the YJ-18 has the performance displayed in the ‘simulation’, the defenders engaged rather late considering that AEW&C aircraft were airborne.

No EW from the Growlers, plus the Super Hornets would have probably been better off tasked with anti-shipping.

The airgroups from both sides also flew dumb, no co-ordination, which is presumably a limitation of the either the engine or the programming of the scenario. Speaking of the scenario, how did a small PLAN battle group get 200nm off the coast of Darwin?

I was also slightly confused by using Ticondaroga class cruisers with SPY-1A/B as analogues for the Hobart class, yet using Arleigh Burke Class as analogues for the ANZAC class rather than something possibly more representative.

 

[spoz]

A question for the more knowlegable members on RAN.

Does RAN follow USN's survivability standards? I am not sure off the shelf offerings, whether from Asia yards (Japan, Korea) or European ones would meet those requirements out of the box.

Follows; and in many cases exceeds as we have been able to take the best from RN and USN practice. Off the shelf German warship designs, such as the Mekos, are good for their size and era. The Japanese ships of which I have experience, which is admittedly the last generation, were fully up to the standards of the time and I doubt if that would have changed. Last time I was onboard a South Korean ship was 30 years ago, at that time, no, they were not, but a lot of advice and real world experience is likely to have seen them greatly improved.

 

[Meriv90]

Mr. Spoz may I ask if you can expand this?

Last time I was onboard a South Korean ship was 30 years ago, at that time, no, they were not, but a lot of advice and real world experience is likely to have seen them greatly improved.

Was it a case of low standards and procedures or of building quality and probably as a conquence of cultural elements like 빨리빨리 culture (that brought several construction problems in 90s period)?

 

[koxinga]

Follows; and in many cases exceeds as we have been able to take the best from RN and USN practice. Off the shelf German warship designs, such as the Mekos, are good for their size and era. The Japanese ships of which I have experience, which is admittedly the last generation, were fully up to the standards of the time and I doubt if that would have changed. Last time I was onboard a South Korean ship was 30 years ago, at that time, no, they were not, but a lot of advice and real world experience is likely to have seen them greatly improved.

Thank you for your insights.

One of the chief reasons I asked this question was because delays to the USN Constellation / FF(X) program was partly attributed to design changes needed to meet USN survivability requirements. I always found that reason to be suspect given that such standards should be reasonably high within NATO navies and it felt like a way to deflect blame to a "foreign" reason.

The current situation with the FF(X) program is a rather good study on how not to take a foreign design and butcher it.

 

[Todjaeger]

Thank you for your insights.

One of the chief reasons I asked this question was because delays to the USN Constellation / FF(X) program was partly attributed to design changes needed to meet USN survivability requirements. I always found that reason to be suspect given that such standards should be reasonably high within NATO navies and it felt like a way to deflect blame to a "foreign" reason.

The current situation with the FF(X) program is a rather good study on how not to take a foreign design and butcher it.

The USN does have some design and operational philosophies that are different from those of other NATO navies, with damage control being one in particular. The USN also tends to run vessels with larger crews than other navies as well (DC again being one of the reasons) with the planned Constellation-class FFG's to have crew accommodations for 200, vs. 120-150 for French and Italian FREMM-class frigates depending on config and aircraft/aircrew size.

One of the impressions that I have formed of the USN's FFG(X) program is that it was one that was setup to be in a no-win situation, because the ship the USN really wanted did not exist, whilst being forced by gov't to select an existing design that was in production. This effectively forced the USN to select a class from a limited number of candidates, and then modify it to use kit in use service with the USN as well as to fit the number of personnel the USN would use to crew a vessel of this size and with the number of roles needed.

Such problems with the Constellation-class frigates IMO do not really reflect any issue with the base design of the FREMM itself, or even an issue with USN procurement. Rather it seems to reflect issues caused by policy-makers. The whole LCS programme OTOH was a giant c*ckup, but I am uncertain how much of that was a result of Navy decisions vs. policy-makers. One also needs to keep in mind that during the time some of the LCS programme decisions were being made, the US SecDef was Rumsfeld and that there were a number of defence decision made during his tenure that I would consider... questionable.

 

[spoz]

On the Koreans: I’m talking about the early 1990s - 1992 to be exact. At that time they had just started building new designs to replace the old WW2 USN hand me downs which was most of their navy. While their commercial shipbuilding industry was even then quite large (and growing) it was effectively their first generation of home designed warships. So, like everybody in such a situation, they had a steep learning curve. Their first attempts weren’t brilliant but I understand from others that they learnt fast.

I have no real insight into Constellation, but as Todjaeger notes,the USN has a somewhat different philosophy to us on who does DC, for example, and we certainly have a different philosophy to the Italians. Not that any is necessarily better, just different ways of doing the same thing. That does, however, sometimes require you to adapt somebody else’s design to meet your needs and expectations.

 

[Reptilia]

Sorry Reptilia, my bad on the Arafura question.

Yea Echo did the prototype, and if my memory serves me correctly, were the preferred partner for Birdon at the time. I think Austal went with BMT (I could be wrong here). The government however stepped in and selected Birdon and Austal, so broke them up and did a shotgun wedding. This was about the time Austal obtained the strategic partnership with the government (aka guarantee of work). I'm not sure why the government liked the Birdon design over the BMT one.

From what I've heard, they will do the build themselves in their own sheds. Austal made the strategic decision to switch their US yard over to steel a little while ago for the USN and Coastguard workload. The same I would view will occur for their WA yard. Other than ongoing evolved capes, I doubt they will make another aluminium build in Henderson again.

I would suggest that the landing craft (medium and heavy) are Austal's lead in steal build learner for the GPFs. And the government's check to make sure they have backed the right horse.

$100 bucks that the government funds a new shed for the GPFs adjacent to Austal, possibly on the north side, and leases it to Austal. This will be part of the $8 billion war chest set aside for Henderson and Garden Island. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.

Silveryachts recently announced they are moving operations to China, looks like a new GPF shed may be built there next to asc/civmec.

 

[koxinga]

The USN does have some design and operational philosophies that are different from those of other NATO navies, with damage control being one in particular. The USN also tends to run vessels with larger crews than other navies as well (DC again being one of the reasons) with the planned Constellation-class FFG's to have crew accommodations for 200, vs. 120-150 for French and Italian FREMM-class frigates depending on config and aircraft/aircrew size.

What would be RAN's approach to DC, with respect to crew size versus USN? Asia designs (e.g Japanese, Korean) and to some degree, European designs tend to stress automation. I see two reasons (as far as I can tell), namely their services are lean and their operational responsibilities are limited (short duration, littoral or regional, compared to global).

One of the impressions that I have formed of the USN's FFG(X) program is that it was one that was setup to be in a no-win situation, because the ship the USN really wanted did not exist, whilst being forced by gov't to select an existing design that was in production. This effectively forced the USN to select a class from a limited number of candidates, and then modify it to use kit in use service with the USN as well as to fit the number of personnel the USN would use to crew a vessel of this size and with the number of roles needed.

It is a no-win situation indeed, but for a different reason, IMO. The expectation was if USN was given free rein on a bespoke, tailored made design (as you suggest), they would have f*ck it up like the LCS with ever changing, gold plated requirements.

The reasons for delays as highlighted in the CRS report highlighted that issues with program and requirements management was mainly to blame and this would be agnostic to either approaches. Report to Congress on Constellation-class Frigate Program - USNI News

Such problems with the Constellation-class frigates IMO do not really reflect any issue with the base design of the FREMM itself, or even an issue with USN procurement. Rather it seems to reflect issues caused by policy-makers. The whole LCS programme OTOH was a giant c*ckup, but I am uncertain how much of that was a result of Navy decisions vs. policy-makers. One also needs to keep in mind that during the time some of the LCS programme decisions were being made, the US SecDef was Rumsfeld and that there were a number of defence decision made during his tenure that I would consider... questionable.

Agree. As it is not relevant to this thread, let's leave it at that.

 

[Todjaeger]

What would be RAN's approach to DC, with respect to crew size versus USN? Asia designs (e.g Japanese, Korean) and to some degree, European designs tend to stress automation. I see two reasons (as far as I can tell), namely their services are lean and their operational responsibilities are limited (short duration, littoral or regional, compared to global).

The crew size difference is fairly easily to compare and illustrate, since at one point both the RAN and USN operated essentially the same class frigate which in the USN was the Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG, whilst the RAN version (which was slightly different IIRC) was the Adelaide-class FFG. Not including the aircrew, the ship's complement in the USN would be 190 enlisted and 15 officers, but a RAN frigate crew would be a combined 184 personnel again excluding the air crew. As I understand it, the extra 21 personnel would be to provide dedicated DC personnel aboard USN warships, above and beyond what DC might be done by personnel at their various respective duty stations.

As I understand it, the USN approach is at least partially a result of experiences dating back to WWII when a number of DC practices were developed which helped mitigate the effects of damage sustained by USN warships. In some instances, such practices reduced the damage suffered whilst others resulted in ships which otherwise would have either been sunk or incapacitated were able to get back into the fight much sooner than expected.

IMO the practical impact of heavily automated ship systems on/during a DC situation remains unknown and could go a number of different ways. If automated systems remain functional following battle damage, then they might help a small crew handle DC. OTOH if automation is knocked offline or malfunctions, a small or lean crew is going to have issues trying to deploy DC parties which require bodies.

 

[koxinga]

Well Asian navies seem to have chosen or were forced to choose automation over traditional practices and manpower shortages are indeed one of the key drivers. The Japanese Mogami class (FFMs/New FFMs) has a crew complement of around 90+ while the 8000 ton Singaporean MRCV will have even less, a complement of 80+.
RAN is not immune to the same manpower shortages and would be interesting to see if they want to adopt it out of necessity.

 

[spoz]

That’s the US approach; dedicated DC personnel with the training for others onboard still being done, but to a lower level. The RAN (and RN) approach is that DC is everybody’s business; and all onboard have to go through rigorous training. Again, that is based on WW2 experience - in fact in my day there was a great series posters around the Navy entitled “Damage Control Saved This Ship” which made learning examples of seriously damaged RN ships and how DC was applied. That I can still remember them 50 or so years later shows their impact.

Both systems work as was demonstrated in the Falklands (and HMS Nottingham) for the Brits and USSs Samuel B Roberts, Cole, John S McCain and Fitzgerald amongst others for the Yanks. You pays your money and takes your choice. But both approaches require lots of bodies; and I’m not sure automation is going to be great at boundary cooling, applying a shot box, or shoring up a bulkhead.

 

[InterestedParty]

How applicable are the lessons of WWII to the modern age of anti-ship missiles and heavyweight torpedos.
I am no expert but it seems to me that there is little or no armour on modern ships and the skin is more about hydrodynamics and keeping the water out rather than protecting the ship.
A single hit by a torpedo would be much more devastating and no amount of DC is going to help as the ship breaks in two. Or am I just falling for the promotional videos showing the effects on target vessels?
Would a hit from a NSM style missile disable or sink a frigate/destroyer sized ship? I presume they will be guided to hit the most critical parts of the target, perhaps at the waterline, it would not be a lucky hit like happened in WWII when dozens or hundreds of unguided shells were fired to score a few hits.

 

[Armchair]

….
Would a hit from a NSM style missile disable or sink a frigate/destroyer sized ship? I presume they will be guided to hit the most critical parts of the target, perhaps at the waterline, it would not be a lucky hit like happened in WWII when dozens or hundreds of unguided shells were fired to score a few hits.

not an expert either, but even if the missile disables or eventually sinks the ship, damage control is also about (primarily about) saving the lives of the people on board. If your house is on fire your house Is going to be disabled or destroyed, you still want someone to get your family out.
A lot of RAN sailors have died since WW2 from damage (collisions, fires) to ships during peacetime. Warships are cramped, hazardous environments.

Heavyweight torpedoes would sink any ship with catastrophic loss of life so I think you are right that the damage control lessons of WWII (or even the Falklands War) are less relevant to that threat.

 

[SammyC]

In my time, automated systems really only consisted of engine room CO2 or Halon deluge (both of which would kill any people remaining in the space), similar systems in the turbine enclosure (which was sealed), and fitted eductors (electrical and firemain powered) for water removal. Everything else required people power.

A repair base (an ANZAC ran two) consisted of about 15 people. An IC, board marker, comms, (3 people), fire team (3 people IC attack hose, waterwall), leak team (3 people), rovers (1-2 people), first aid (1-2 people), spare (2-4 people). If we had a fire, those spares became boundary coolers and hose managers (fully charged hoses are heavy and required at least one person per hose to move for the fire team). In an incident those 15 people are really really busy, and would need supplementation within about 30 minutes from exhaustion.

We would often move people between repair bases depending on the situation, or draw from a central (any non allocated people typically mustered in the galley, perhaps another 10 people at most) location. We would have another 10 odd people in the engine spaces and about 4 on electrical, tasked with getting machiney back online.

So all up damage control used about 50 people from a 180 person crew. In bad situations we would pull people out of the bridge, CIC or the like. Everybody on the ship had damage control training and could do a broad range of advanced fire, leak stop or first aid duties.

Everybody completed an offsite course where you were firstly drowned (nearly) in a flooding simulation, and then burnt (at least it felt like it) in a fire scenario. I also remember being deliberately gassed with tear gas and having to fit my mask in a room full of it (it stings). This training was better by an order of magnitude than anything offered in civilian industries.

For full OLOC (deployment to an operational area) we would train for a multi fire/flood scenario, lasting in the order of 4-5 hours. They would let us sleep for about 2 hours and then make us do it all again. And we would do this for about two weeks for the assessment, with about 2-3 months beforehand to prepare. We would exercise in total darkness, and several exercises would be deliberately done such that you would fail.

Nearly everybody on the ship (all 180 odd on an ANZAC) would get time in a repair base. I've been in a fire team with my XO. I have found nothing in civilian life that compares to the intensity of an OLOC workup. Few things are as exhausting and push you to your limits.

When you read about ships that have taken significant damage and survived, its because of the above. Numbers of people, advanced training, stress capacity and fatigue management.

Nowadays, engine spaces are fitted with water based hifog systems, which are much safer and just as effective as CO2, meaning they can be used as a first line rather than last line defence. Sealed enclosures for engines is more widespread, rather than open engine spaces, which is much easier to contain and extinguish a fire. These reduce the load on a fire team.

I think ships like the Mogami make much greater use of CCTV, full ship water sprinkler systems (like you would find in an office building) for automated fire suppression. I would suggest these systems are fine for peacetime where a fire may be because a bin caught alight, or say an engine leaked and ignited.

In say a missile strike however, you would likely loose power, the cameras would be damaged, the firemain supplying the sprinklers would be ruptured, and 30% of the crew would be incompacitated.

The ability to recover here would relate to redundancy and robustness. Can you reroute power and firemain to get the automatic/remote systems back online. Were your bulkheads and doors strong enough to contain the impact to a limited ship section. Did you have enough valves to isolate a damaged pipe without loosing the whole system. Did equipment stay on its mounts following an impact. Can you ballast. Can you do all that at once. How much stability margin does the ship have. For a low personnel ship, these systems/features become very important.

 

[SammyC]

How applicable are the lessons of WWII to the modern age of anti-ship missiles and heavyweight torpedos.
I am no expert but it seems to me that there is little or no armour on modern ships and the skin is more about hydrodynamics and keeping the water out rather than protecting the ship.
A single hit by a torpedo would be much more devastating and no amount of DC is going to help as the ship breaks in two. Or am I just falling for the promotional videos showing the effects on target vessels?
Would a hit from a NSM style missile disable or sink a frigate/destroyer sized ship? I presume they will be guided to hit the most critical parts of the target, perhaps at the waterline, it would not be a lucky hit like happened in WWII when dozens or hundreds of unguided shells were fired to score a few hits.

Most people would have seen the video of a torpedo sinking poor old Torrens. Note that was a perfect test, with the detonation exactly under the centre point of the hull, at the optimum depth to maximise the shock wave.

In that scenario, any ship has limited chance of surviving, however if the variables change, then the impact is less. And they don't need to change by much (energy dissipates inversley to the radius by the power of 4). Ships do have tactics to avoid getting in this perfect triangle. Who wins, the cat or the mouse, difficult to say.

Cruise missiles, by design, will hit above the waterline. Most will actually rise or rotate in the final attack stage to be able to dive down on the ship and avoid final defences. They work by penetrating and then exploding. They may not rupture the hull at all. They are the equivalent of a lead bullet, designed to maximise tearing up your insides.

I would suspect that a single cruise missile strike, particularly an NSM or SM6 with a small warhead is unlikely to sink a ship. It will however with high probability take it out of action, either via damage to sensors, control rooms, power or the like. Or via simply forcing the ship to focus on fire control.

A warship prioritises either float, move, or fight capabilities in combat. A missile strike, even a small one would force it to put float and move above fight (i.e move staff to repair bases, and out of weapons systems). And that's probably all it has to do.

 

[mickm]

I can remember during the Falklands War HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet Missile and subsequently sunk after valiant efforts to save her. As a layman I read with interest that some experts have always held the belief that the main damage caused was not the actual missile strike but the subsequent fire caused by the missile's unspent fuel. There are some opinions that the missile did not even explode. It appears that the other issue was the ferocity of the fire and toxic smoke fumes given off by the amount of ship's fittings that were burning and gave off toxic fumes. I would be interested to know if our current fleet has addressed this issue or would the same problem occur today.

 

[Todjaeger]

How applicable are the lessons of WWII to the modern age of anti-ship missiles and heavyweight torpedos.
I am no expert but it seems to me that there is little or no armour on modern ships and the skin is more about hydrodynamics and keeping the water out rather than protecting the ship.
A single hit by a torpedo would be much more devastating and no amount of DC is going to help as the ship breaks in two. Or am I just falling for the promotional videos showing the effects on target vessels?
Would a hit from a NSM style missile disable or sink a frigate/destroyer sized ship? I presume they will be guided to hit the most critical parts of the target, perhaps at the waterline, it would not be a lucky hit like happened in WWII when dozens or hundreds of unguided shells were fired to score a few hits.

I would argue that many of the lessons learned are still quite applicable and indeed I believe a few of them are still in effect via some of the design requirements and/or how certain vessels or equipment is operated. If memory serves, then during either the Battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of Midway, one of the USN carriers (USS Yorktown CV-5 IIRC) started filling the fuel lines used to refill aircraft with inert nitrogen gas when not actively refueling aircraft. By evacuating the air and vaporized AVgas from the fuel lines and replacing it with something inert, the vessel became less susceptible to secondary explosions and fire. An outcome of this is that despite having been damaged at Coral Sea Yorktown was able to participate in Midway, where it was damaged a second time and again the crew was able to conduct DC. The ship was ultimately lost when the IJN damaged Yorktown a third time at Midway, but apparently the IJN had not realized that Yorktown was the carrier they had damaged earlier in the battle and thought she was an entirely different carrier.

With respect to the Falklands Conflict, I believe that whilst some of the lessons might be a little different, they also still hold true. IIRC at least one of the RN vessels lost during the conflict had either it's fire main or electrical system disabled with the backup system either being inadequate to take over or perhaps co-located with the primary so that it too was disabled. As I recall it, the end result of the experience led to future RN vessels requiring more robust and redundant systems which would be less prone to getting disabled by a strike impacting the primary system. \

To be fair though, such lessons need to be heeded more often by not just the armed forces. During the '93 World Trade Center bombing in NYC, USA, the design and implementation of the site's building emergency systems proved inadequate. This was at least in part because the backup systems were co-located with the primary systems, so that when the blast knocked out the primaries, the backups were also knocked out. I myself have also worked at a facility that was rendered out of service because of a lack of foresight with respect to systems and where they were located. In this case, a water main leak caused by frozen pipes ended up flooding the server/switch room which for some reason someone decided to locate directly under the water main. Making the problem both worse and more frustrating is that whilst someone had the foresight to include a backup server and switches just in case something happened to the main systems, the backups were located 2' over from the mains, so the backs became expensive door stops after the deluge from the burst water main.

 

[iambuzzard]

I can remember during the Falklands War HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet Missile and subsequently sunk after valiant efforts to save her. As a layman I read with interest that some experts have always held the belief that the main damage caused was not the actual missile strike but the subsequent fire caused by the missile's unspent fuel. There are some opinions that the missile did not even explode. It appears that the other issue was the ferocity of the fire and toxic smoke fumes given off by the amount of ship's fittings that were burning and gave off toxic fumes. I would be interested to know if our current fleet has addressed this issue or would the same problem occur today.

From my limited knowledge both the Type 42s (HMS Sheffield and HMS Coventry) and the Type 21s (HMS Ardent and HMS Antelope) were built to primarily commercial ship building standards and contained a lot of aluminium in the their superstructures, hence the intensity of the fires.
Sammy and Volks, you may be able to elaborate on this.