Kensuke Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 Are you sure it isn't four Cray Marine launchers, as fitted to T23? See Navy Matters. I wonder if the RN has quietly retired the triple tubes as they aren't listed in the armaments for T42s and T22s on the RN website. I dunno. I was going by what's posted on Wikipedia. The Cray Marine Launchers would just add more procurement expense. If the RN wanted to be really niggardly, they could just use the recycled Mk2s that were/are on the Type 42s. It's not exactly a high tech piece of equipment. - John
Argus Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 Call me a cynic swerve but IMHO it just requires so many things to go right for all the advertising spin to actually come off. I wasn't actually visualising it as a bare bones ship picking up modules for a mission. I realise a ship would have a full out fit at any given time, the point being to switch between them so as to have the most relivent set of capabilities for the mission of the moment. I've got no trouble with this, as I say a couple of quick change pallets are fine. My beef is extending the modularity down to base line (military) functions and building a whole ship around them. Take crewing, if a specialist module comes with its own crew I agree it reduces workup time, but unless that module has just come off a ship being stripped to go into a service period or one currently in commission; it means either both the module and crew have been sitting around in 'storage' or you now have a crew that is unballanced in rotation cycle. The new specialists will be getting 'long' before the ship even deploys, not an issue for WWIII, but under peace time rules it means you need 'slip' personnel, and one of the benifits is supposed to be manpower savings? For my 2 cents the core issue is money, or the lack of it. There are specific capabilities we'd like to have, but don't always need/use and now we can't affored to build niche ships to do those jobs. So we build ships that can fill those roles when provided with the particular module/s for the job, or fill another role with other modules if we need that one today. Sweet, we've got our cake and get to eat it. But going beyond this to the all singing all dancing Lego ship... no. The core idea is good, but the extension looks to me like marketing hype, exageration (into gold plate) to push the core concept. A corvette going on a long deployment far from home would be fitted out for what it's expected to do. Exactly, idealy the crew would be worked up together, deploy together and de-commission together. The only time you'd do an 'in theater' change would be if a new threat/mission emerged within a certain operational window and was serious enough to justify the bother. Of course reality is never that neat, ships are going to be diverted at short notice, deployed with the wrong suites, deployed without the required modules due to short falls in availability etc etc etc. Modularity helps as much as it complicates on this level. But it still amounts to being fitted for - and possiably with what they need at at any give point. The real problem I see is all this flexiability is just going to give the bean counters more 'fat' to cut over time. "You don't need X, because N and Y can do that, you don't need Y because A and F can do what it does" - "but then we can't do X" -"It's only a loss of 10% in capability for a 12% cut in cost so shut up and sailor." So the more capabilities invested in modularity, the more there are to be lost under financial attrition. To retain some few important abilities, a lot of fundamental ones have to go on the chopping block too. It's better IMHO to build a capable base line vessel, and use modularity for the trimmings. shane
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