Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates

hauritz said:

Bell Helicopter, BAE Systems position AH-1Z for potential Tiger replacement? | Australian Aviation

Here is a thought ... sell the Tigers to NZ and buy the AH-1Z instead.

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Would it be possible to robotise them, turn them into combat UAV? They are new enough that all the controls would have electrical interfaces, so there wouldn't be difficult engineering needed. I think I have seen somewhere that Boeing turns an F16 into a drone for a bit over a million USD, why not a chopper?

Moved to RNZAF

swerve said:

Then they sketched out a version of that aimed at the RAN's ANZAC replacement. They say the RAN version is 80% the same as the base model A400 - not the F125. It's more different from the F125 than that.

It's the same hull as F125, but modified propulsion (faster), Australian radars (CEAFAR . . .), VLS for ESSM & if desired Standard, proper ASW capabilities, etc.

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Seems risky and expensive IMO. I still thing the F-105 hull based option is attractive because it can be built right away, we have already got experience building that kind of hull, more common fleet etc. The evolved F-105 will probably do everything we want to do for a whole lot less risk/money.

As I understand it, the Spanish problems are Spanish. Spain got Navantia to build a version with locally-designed modifications - & that's what's gone wrong. Spain had previously built two generations of French submarines under licence successfully.

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True, from what I can see, however the Spanish aren't going to France to resolve the issues, they are using American know how. But it does highlight what even relatively "straight forward" modifications can do to a project. Heck look at the issues we had with the AWD, we really need a top flight team on board who have it in their strategic interest to sort this shit out and not just operate a profit generating centre in Australia. The Japanese already operate two efficient yards.

Here is a thought ... sell the Tigers to NZ and buy the AH-1Z instead.

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Sell them back to France/Germany and Aus and NZ can operate the AH-1Z. 24 for Australia and 8 for NZ. Fully marinised, US logistics, USMC training, US upgrade paths, cross decking etc.

Do our MRH-90's operate the General Electric T700-T6E? It would be good if the MRH-90, the AH-1Z and the SH-60 all used the same engines. We would finally have a common helicopter fleet engine (except for the Chinook).

StingrayOZ said:

Do our MRH-90's operate the General Electric T700-T6E? It would be good if the MRH-90, the AH-1Z and the SH-60 all used the same engines. We would finally have a common helicopter fleet engine (except for the Chinook).

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According to this sites, the MRH-90 have the RR Turbomecca engines:

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/a...ngine-failure-due-to-compressor-blade-345390/

Airbus Group Australia Pacific - MRH90

Why would we wantnt go with the F100-105 anyway. How old is that hull design, from the last century is'nt it? Why would it be cheaper when the AWD's are costing us near $3b each?

hairyman said:

Why would we wantnt go with the F100-105 anyway. How old is that hull design, from the last century is'nt it? Why would it be cheaper when the AWD's are costing us near $3b each?

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Yes but keep in mind that a huge portion of the AWD's price tag is coming in the form of Aegis combat system. I don't know the exact figure I do remember it is in the billions over the class. It's defiantly not an insignificant figure that's for sure.

hairyman said:

Why would we wantnt go with the F100-105 anyway. How old is that hull design, from the last century is'nt it? Why would it be cheaper when the AWD's are costing us near $3b each?

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The first Spanish F 100 commissioned in 2002 were still building them.
The first AB built for the USN commissioned in 1992, they're still building them.
What's your point?

The AWD project is expected to cost $3b but that includes cost associated with starting at a greenfield sight. The workforce has improved productivity by over 50% between ship 1 to 3, the Navantia design philosophy is now understood and design idiosyncrasies have already been dealt with.
All the above is the point.

ASSAIL said:

The first Spanish F 100 commissioned in 2002 were still building them.
The first AB built for the USN commissioned in 1992, they're still building them.
What's your point?

The AWD project is expected to cost $3b but that includes cost associated with starting at a greenfield sight. The workforce has improved productivity by over 50% between ship 1 to 3, the Navantia design philosophy is now understood and design idiosyncrasies have already been dealt with.
All the above is the point.

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And why we should be building flight II Hobarts increase AWD to 6 ships, they can allways work down but not up.

Just my 2 cents worth

hairyman said:

Why would we wantnt go with the F100-105 anyway. How old is that hull design, from the last century is'nt it? Why would it be cheaper when the AWD's are costing us near $3b each?

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if the hull is effective why discard it?

eg look at the Burkes, basically they're on their 4th discrete platorm type - 6 if you want to be liberal and include allied vessels based on the baseline

t68 said:

And why we should be building flight II Hobarts increase AWD to 6 ships, they can allways work down but not up.

Just my 2 cents worth

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I like the idea of refining and improving your current stuff rather than jumping into a high risk/expense every new project.

The Burkes are successful not because the design is so advanced and revolutionary (its not, its no DDG1000), but it has evolved, made more efficient and more capable. Same with the Japanese subs, same with the 911, its an evolution that makes a good tool better. Lower risk, lower cost.Eventually you may reach the reasonable limits, but for the RAN I don't think the F-105 has hit that yet.

Unless your jumping into someone else evolving and supported project (like the Japanese Subs or building Burkes etc).

The money/time we save building and supporting a decent common hull, can be put to better use. A safe clockwork build program is what industry really needs right now. Upgrades and improvements can be shared across the 11 common hull ship fleet.

I think the capability we could get with F-105 base future frigates will still be substantial. With room to be almost twice the displacement of the predecessors, with most likely 6 times the VLS capacity. Its not like it will lack teeth.

StingrayOZ said:

Surely we can ask Brazil and Spain how there French linked submarine programs are going.
...

I can't seem to find much about the Brazillian one but the first isn't expected to be operational for 8 years and the entire nuclear program is in doubt after corruption.

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Brazil's nuke is seen as a strategic priority for the country and it reflects their ambition to not just be seen as a regional power, but more of a global power. While that may take many decades of investment it's an initiative started with De Silva who took office in 2003 and has a fair bit of political momentum behind it, the limiting factor in recent times has been a stagnating economy. That's kind of knackering a lot of their procurement budget, it got cut by 25% last year I think.

A common observation is people linking the effectiveness of Conqueror in the South Atlantic to their program.

I while funding may be reduced, because this is more of a political program born from national strategy/prestige rather than military doctrine, I reckon it'd be a pretty hard program to shut down for any reason.

TBH I just find the Brazilian Armed Forces a particularly interesting force to study.

StingrayOZ said:

I like the idea of refining and improving your current stuff rather than jumping into a high risk/expense every new project.

The Burkes are successful not because the design is so advanced and revolutionary (its not, its no DDG1000), but it has evolved, made more efficient and more capable. Same with the Japanese subs, same with the 911, its an evolution that makes a good tool better. Lower risk, lower cost.Eventually you may reach the reasonable limits, but for the RAN I don't think the F-105 has hit that yet.

Unless your jumping into someone else evolving and supported project (like the Japanese Subs or building Burkes etc).

The money/time we save building and supporting a decent common hull, can be put to better use. A safe clockwork build program is what industry really needs right now. Upgrades and improvements can be shared across the 11 common hull ship fleet.

I think the capability we could get with F-105 base future frigates will still be substantial. With room to be almost twice the displacement of the predecessors, with most likely 6 times the VLS capacity. Its not like it will lack teeth.

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Pretty much agreed on the Burkes.

Compare an early IIA to a current one and there are substantial differences, then again compare the upgraded ships to their yet to be upgraded sisters and the differences are vast. Existing ships are now being retro-fitted with HED (Hybrid Electric Drive) which will permit the ships to cruise at speeds of up to 13kts on generators alone, dramatically improving fuel economy. They are being fitted with advanced towed array sonars, SM-6 and MCM UUVs; AEGIS is being upgraded to provide BMD, crewing requirements have been reduced, all things that there is no spare displacement or volume to do on the F-100.

The Flight IIA Burke although being an older design, is significantly more capable flexible than the F-100 or F105. It is being actively evolved and upgraded keeping the type more than competitive and relevant and could even have been built in Australia for far less money than the Hobarts. How? Easy, had three or four been ordered from Williamstown in the mid to late 90s (before they were bought out by BAE), they could have followed straight on from the ANZACs meaning the shipbuilding black hole that is the cause of the majority of the issues with the Hobarts would never have happened. With Burkes being built in the 2000s instead of the 2010s there would be no need for an interim capability to replace the DDGs, i.e. no need for the stupidly expensive, significantly delayed and questionable results of FFGUP, saving over a billion upfront.

Then of course there is no reason why we would need to build 8 or 9 more ships based on the F105.

We could just build a couple of more Hobarts and give ourselves more time to evaluate the Type 26 and other contenders that aren't in the water yet. In fact that would seem to be the lowest risk option.

Having said that I do like the Meko A400.

StingrayOZ said:

I like the idea of refining and improving your current stuff rather than jumping into a high risk/expense every new project.

The Burkes are successful not because the design is so advanced and revolutionary (its not, its no DDG1000), but it has evolved, made more efficient and more capable. Same with the Japanese subs, same with the 911, its an evolution that makes a good tool better. Lower risk, lower cost.Eventually you may reach the reasonable limits, but for the RAN I don't think the F-105 has hit that yet.

Unless your jumping into someone else evolving and supported project (like the Japanese Subs or building Burkes etc).

The money/time we save building and supporting a decent common hull, can be put to better use. A safe clockwork build program is what industry really needs right now. Upgrades and improvements can be shared across the 11 common hull ship fleet.

I think the capability we could get with F-105 base future frigates will still be substantial. With room to be almost twice the displacement of the predecessors, with most likely 6 times the VLS capacity. Its not like it will lack teeth.

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Agree with all the points, but...

The RAN could certainly do worse than select a version of the F-105/AWD hull for the Future Frigate (including the Frigate specific mods that would have to be made regardless of hull design chosen).

Yes certainly from a 'continuity' of building point of view, a lot of lessons learnt with the AWD's will no doubt be applied to the modified Future Frigate version.

My only question (and yes it is significantly larger than the Anzacs that are being replaced), but will the modified F-105 be flexible enough in it's basic design/configuration to allow for future growth over the probable 25-30yr life of the ship?

Not suggestion that the growth margins would be as thin as they have been with the Anzacs, but merely asking the question as to future growth potential.

On the other hand, the Meko A-400 (modified F-125), appears to be a very large ship, with what also appears to have a significant growth potential (one example is that the design being offered does have the same 48 strike length VLS as the F-105, but the Meko A-400, from what I've read has the capability to expand to 64 strike length VLS too). And yes of course that is only one example.


My basic point is, would by selecting a modification of the F-105/AWD hull allow for a quicker and simpler build process (and probably cheaper in the beginning too), but possibly run out of growth potential in the long term?

And on the other had, if the Meko A-400 was to be selected, be more of a learning curve in the beginning, and increased cost (at least for possibly the first and second hull), but in the long run turn out to be a better choice over the life of the Future Frigate fleet?

Anyway, just my opinion of course!!

hauritz said:

Then of course there is no reason why we would need to build 8 or 9 more ships based on the F105.

We could just build a couple of more Hobarts and give ourselves more time to evaluate the Type 26 and other contenders that aren't in the water yet. In fact that would seem to be the lowest risk option.

Having said that I do like the Meko A400.

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Yes exactly, up until we decided to go cheap with the FFG-7 we maintained a mix of roughly equal numbers of multirole destroyers and ASW frigates / destroyer escorts. In fact the FFG buy was part of an attempt to replace older GP destroyers and ASW destroyer escorts with a GP guided missile frigate, i.e. instead of six destroyers and six frigates (specifically in the 70s 3DDG, 3DD, 6DE), it was to change to 3DDG and 10FFG (all of this was with a carrier in the mix).

Once we got out of the carrier business plans changed and a low end was reintroduced but numbers were planned to increase from six destroyers and six frigates to eight guided missile destroyers / frigates (DDG/FFG) and eight patrol frigates (FFH) planned with 3DDG, 6FFG and 8FFH, with the first DDG being replaced by the final FFH before a new class of 6 FFGs began replacing the remaining pair of DDGs and the first 4 FFGs, with the final pair of FFGs (which were a decade younger than the others) being modernised.

These major surface combatants were to be supported by eight to twelve OPCs, basically light frigates or corvettes, to replace the Fremantleclass PBs. They would be armed with ESSM (Mk-41), a 57mm SAK2, Harpoon and perhaps most importantly a light/medium naval helicopter with modern anti shipping missiles or ASW torpedoes. This was actually an old concept that the RAN had been trying to get off the ground since the late 50s, they were a modern incarnation of the prewar/ wartime sloops, corvettes and frigates (some of which served into the late 50s, early 60s. They were general purpose warships that were second rate ASW, gunnery, anti aircraft as opposed to frigates that tended to be first rate at one job and third rate or totally lacking at the others, or destroyers that were first rate at all jobs.

Of couse none of this went to plan and primarily to save money (but also to increase the size of the F-111 force), the Keating government decided to defer the DDG/FFG replacement, retire the DDGs and upgrade all six FFGs. This would have reduced numbers of major combatants from sixteen to fourteen but wasn't seen as a major issue with the OPCs brought forward and due to follow the ANZACs out of Williamstown.

Then there was a change of government which saw the OPC cancelled, the FFG upgrade awarded to ADI, instead of Tenix (who had built them), leaving Williamstown with no RAN work whatsoever to allow them to maintain what was at the time the premier naval shipbuilding workforce in the Southern Hemisphere. This basically pissed away a capability that had taken almost two decades and hundreds of millions to build. ADIs selection to upgrade the FFGs had a number of effects, it increased "greased" the sale of ADI to Thales, it saw the RAN getting an inferior upgrade baseline as the Tenix plan was far more comprehensive, and it saw costs blow out and schedules slip as ADI lacked sufficient capability to deliver. In the end only four of the six ships were upgraded at much higher cost and more time than it would have taken to build either six new FFGs or three Arliegh Burkes at Williamstown.

A very verbose way of saying six AWDs and six ASW frigates would have been closer to traditional RAN force levels than the current and planned levels (since the first three FFGs started retiring without replacement due to botched upgrade and replacements programs). A second batch of three AWDs, even at the expense of some ANZAC replacements is probably worth it.

John Newman said:

Agree with all the points, but...

The RAN could certainly do worse than select a version of the F-105/AWD hull for the Future Frigate (including the Frigate specific mods that would have to be made regardless of hull design chosen).

Yes certainly from a 'continuity' of building point of view, a lot of lessons learnt with the AWD's will no doubt be applied to the modified Future Frigate version.

My only question (and yes it is significantly larger than the Anzacs that are being replaced), but will the modified F-105 be flexible enough in it's basic design/configuration to allow for future growth over the probable 25-30yr life of the ship?

Not suggestion that the growth margins would be as thin as they have been with the Anzacs, but merely asking the question as to future growth potential.

On the other hand, the Meko A-400 (modified F-125), appears to be a very large ship, with what also appears to have a significant growth potential (one example is that the design being offered does have the same 48 strike length VLS as the F-105, but the Meko A-400, from what I've read has the capability to expand to 64 strike length VLS too). And yes of course that is only one example.


My basic point is, would by selecting a modification of the F-105/AWD hull allow for a quicker and simpler build process (and probably cheaper in the beginning too), but possibly run out of growth potential in the long term?

And on the other had, if the Meko A-400 was to be selected, be more of a learning curve in the beginning, and increased cost (at least for possibly the first and second hull), but in the long run turn out to be a better choice over the life of the Future Frigate fleet?

Anyway, just my opinion of course!!

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Steel is cheap and air is free, using a larger hull than Dennis Richardson believes necessary will actually reduce through life costs as the ships will be much easier, quicker and cheaper to upgrade. Previous discussions on just how much the Burkes have evolved support this and it should be noted that the Hobarts have pretty much used all of their design margin before the first ship enters service.

Having worked on the AWD project I must say I am not a fan of the F-100. While the Hobarts are being built to a very high standard and its combat system is world standard, it really is an evolution of a low cost, lightly built frigate more akin to a Perry, Baleares (FFG version of the Knox class FF) or Brooke than a destroyer. If you look at the DDGs, they were upgraded and remained relevant for years and were only retired because they were physically worn out, while the more modern FFGs were actually less capable than the DDGs, even after being specifically upgraded to replace them. The Hobarts, I fear, will be more like the FFGs, never as good as needed and pretty much impossible to upgrade to any degree.

It may seem odd, even hypocritical (possibly schizophrenic) how I bag the F-100 but then push building another three. Its quite simple, we didn't choose the Baby Burke, or the standard Flight IIA for that matter, let alone develop an evolved Burke as South Korea did; nor we build twice as many, new, non Aegis DDG/FFG (as originally planned), we chose the F-100 against all professional advice. Although it was not the best fit for requirements it will be a game changing improvement over the Adelaide's and will be perfectly good enough for probably twenty years. That's the issue, it will not be effective for it's entire planned life, only for half to two thirds of it. If we accept this and plan accordingly (supplement them at fifteen years,, replaced by twenty four/five years) we will get good service out of them. If we try and modernise or upgrade them to get thirty years, let alone extend them beyond that, there will be tears (not to mention a glaring capability gap).

We could have gotten away with only three Burkes over thirty years because they are literally larger and more durable. The frames, bulkheads, decks and shell plating are all heavier gage and will literally last longer. Their greater size means they are much more flexible in how they can be upgraded. With the F-100 we wont have any of this, we will not be able to drive them like we did the DDGs, they will wear out.

Solution, build more of them, build improvements into the second batch, reduce the wear and tear on individual hulls and hopefully set up the class so each ship will reach twenty four years. Building another three AWDs will stretch the program out until the early 2020s when work can start on the new frigates. If one new ship commissions every two years then we have our continuous build.

Thanks for posting Volk. Always enjoy reading your posts.

Pretty much educating the ignorant

MS

Volkodav said:

we didn't choose the Baby Burke, or the standard Flight IIA for that matter, let alone develop an evolved Burke as South Korea did; nor we build twice as many, new, non Aegis DDG/FFG (as originally planned), we chose the F-100 against all professional advice.

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that's the thing that continues to gawl me

I remember seeing the schemers for the baby burke and struggled to find anyone in uniform who didn't want it over the other offering..... there were however snr sirs who obviously wanted to promote the notion that less dependancy on US gear was import for evolution of the aust military

some of them didn't leave and go private sector until much too late - and you see some of them still sniping at the acquisition relationship between oz and the US - well after they helped stuff things up

I also believe we should have another three destroyers, maybe more GP than AWD, incorporating Tomahawk or equivalent anti surface weapons, as well as substantial AAM. To do all that,, I dont think the F105 would be a good enough hull, and would prefer we use the Meko 400.
As to the prohibitive cost of the Aegis, could we use the Japanese version if cheaper. or would'nt the Americans permit it?

May be a crazy idea, but, if most of us agreed that the f100 hull is an dead end for any major improvement in the future. How about local build/FMS 3 Burke flight llA or flight lll?

Yes, then the shipyard has to be retooled, but at least we can have a better ship with much less pain to upgrade.