ADF General discussion thread

[ADMk2]

One thing I never quite got about Arafura and lack of helo hangar and heavy landing space. Surely a Patrol boat with a helo can patrol a dramatically larger area? Get crew to trouble spots faster. Carry an offensive stick of some type. Interrogate contacts without having to transport the ship 100+kms. Get injured or ill crew or supplies to shore or larger vessels, launch and land more able uncrewed UAVs, even do anti submarine work…and so on and so on….

Simply didn’t have the budget (or the helos) for it.

I’m sure we could have conjured up some maritime capable EC-135’s fair easily and given them some helicopter capability…

But the ships were never intended to by RAN - they are supposed to have a maritime UAS but that has been such a dogs breakfast of an acquisition, to the point they have taken it off RAN and Army is now running the project - to have helos from the start.

 

[swerve]

We already operate two ships that are twice the size and twice the capability - Canberra and Adelaide.

The Giuseppe Garibaldi is tiny by comparison - not much larger than a fully loaded Hunter at the current rate - and getting on half a century old. The Indonesians will be doing well to reliably generate a meaningful capability from it.

Are they stretching the hull? GG's 30 metres longer (20%) & 12 metres wider (>50% - though the waterline width isn't as much more).

I worry about how much the Hunters will draw, though, given some of the displacement numbers being bandied around. The RAN website says light weight will be about 8200 tons, but some of the full load numbers suggest that's too low.

 

[spoz]

And about half as much again in displacement terms - about 14 versus something around 9 thousand tons full loaded.

 

[Morgo]

And about half as much again in displacement terms - about 14 versus something around 9 thousand tons full loaded.

I may have stretched the comparison a little, but my point is that they are much closer in size to a Hunter than they are to a Canberra. It’s very small for something planning on carrying multiple aircraft.