Usn Frigate Program

[Argus]

On 1/23/2022 at 1:16 AM, shep854 said:

Hopefully, someone is figuring out a way to reload cells at sea.  I doubt a peer enemy will call time out so our ships can run back to port. 

BINGO

Welcome to the biggest issue with the VLS generation of warships.  It is really really hard to reload them at sea, it can be had to do it alongside a pier or at a mooring if the sea has much life to it. The old type railed launchers could be RAS-ed, as can guns, lasers and carriers can be replenished, but at present VLS cells are finite, and once you start figuring that  into any dynamic tactical scenario, the qualities of quantity become quite vicious.

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Argus

[RETAC21]

17 hours ago, Argus said:

BINGO

Welcome to the biggest issue with the VLS generation of warships.  It is really really hard to reload them at sea, it can be had to do it alongside a pier or at a mooring if the sea has much life to it. The old type railed launchers could be RAS-ed, as can guns, lasers and carriers can be replenished, but at present VLS cells are finite, and once you start figuring that  into any dynamic tactical scenario, the qualities of quantity become quite vicious.

 

Once upon a time, it was possible

http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-return-of-at-sea-reloads-big.html

And then, there are the imaginative schemes:

https://2n.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/ROVR.pdf

[DB]

I think people are making a little too much of this reloading thing.

An unpackaged SM-2 weighs over 700kg, is 15 feet long and not known to tolerate being bent in half by accident. With the container shown, that weight would probably double and probably not be notably more tolerant of mishandling. they removed that crane from the design for a reason - it was there to meet a requirement, but in practice was too unwieldy and unsafe to use.

If a full on peer war happens and your CVBG is found, you get to stop one alpha strike if you're lucky. After that, you'd better be leaving, have a second CVBG or land air to support you, or you're going to be swimming.

[Cajer]

38 minutes ago, DB said:

I think people are making a little too much of this reloading thing.

An unpackaged SM-2 weighs over 700kg, is 15 feet long and not known to tolerate being bent in half by accident. With the container shown, that weight would probably double and probably not be notably more tolerant of mishandling. they removed that crane from the design for a reason - it was there to meet a requirement, but in practice was too unwieldy and unsafe to use.

If a full on peer war happens and your CVBG is found, you get to stop one alpha strike if you're lucky. After that, you'd better be leaving, have a second CVBG or land air to support you, or you're going to be swimming.

I agree.   Which is why VLS magazine size if super important as you can't reload at sea.  It's much cheaper to add a 3-400 tons to the frigate and double the VLS capacity than build a entire other ship to get double the VLS count.

 

It's even harder to understand with the new destroyer.  You can make the case that doctrinally frigate doesn't need that deep of a magazine, but the same can't be said for destroyers.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Cajer

[Olof Larsson]

6 minutes ago, Cajer said:

I agree.   Which is why VLS magazine size if super important as you can't reload at sea.  It's much cheaper to add a 3-400 tons to the frigate and double the VLS capacity than build a entire other ship to get double the VLS count.

I doubt that you would get away with that little extra weight. Not without loosing speed and range. And the Constellation is allready to slow follow a carrier. You would need the space for more weapons, more fuel and a bigger machinery. And all of that will cost money to produce, operate and maintain. And so would filling up those tubes. And even if the VLS-parks would be increased, there would be ships that would end up low on one type of munition or another during a conflict that might last months, while most ships will likely hardly fire anything.

[Cajer]

11 minutes ago, Olof Larsson said:

I doubt that you would get away with that little extra weight. Not without loosing speed and range. And the Constellation is allready to slow follow a carrier. You would need the space for more weapons, more fuel and a bigger machinery. And all of that will cost money to produce, operate and maintain. And so would filling up those tubes. And even if the VLS-parks would be increased, there would be ships that would end up low on one type of munition or another during a conflict that might last months, while most ships will likely hardly fire anything.

It's not a 1:1 comparison but the Flight 1 Burkes had 90 vs 32 vls and were less than 1,000 tons heavier despite having 50% more crew, higher top speeds, RIB facilities, a bigger gun, longer range (once you factor in the speeds the ranges are calculated at), and I believe a larger radar.

With this in mind it sounds reasonable that you could double the VLS size for 3-400 tons.

[Josh]

My read is the USN has apparently decided to offload the strike mission from the escort fleet. In that context, 32 cells is perfectly adequate for medium threat air defense or high threat self defense, when quad packed ESSM are accounted for. The AShM is separate and already quite large. The DDGX as proposed still carries 80% of a Tico's load, and just as much as a Burke. Keep in mind it is rumored that the USN rarely sails with full cells anyway, and some stores in particular (ASROC) apparently are frequently cross decked.

The question becomes, what is the USN going to use to carry strike weapons? And that hasn't been answered yet. Right now a CSG consists typically of 3 Burkes and a Tico. Do we have any metric for how many cells are dedicated to strike? I think I read a guestimate that two of the DDGs kept ~40 on hand, but I don't think there's any good figure in open source to rely on. But as an off the cuff estimate, it sounds like a CSG needs a substitute for ~100 VLS cells worth of strike weapons. Or perhaps not necessarily the CSG directly - perhaps by separating the strike role you could move it to a different TF and location altogether.

[DB]

Oops, I just shot the Director.

Edited January 28, 2022 by DB

[Olof Larsson]

18 hours ago, Cajer said:

It's not a 1:1 comparison but the Flight 1 Burkes had 90 vs 32 vls and were less than 1,000 tons heavier despite having 50% more crew, higher top speeds, RIB facilities, a bigger gun, longer range (once you factor in the speeds the ranges are calculated at), and I believe a larger radar.

With this in mind it sounds reasonable that you could double the VLS size for 3-400 tons.

But then the Burkes Flight I are completely different ships, that also lacked helo capacity. Adding that capacity for the Flight IIA, added another 1000 tons to the ships.

[Olof Larsson]

50 minutes ago, Josh said:

My read is the USN has apparently decided to offload the strike mission from the escort fleet. In that context, 32 cells is perfectly adequate for medium threat air defense or high threat self defense, when quad packed ESSM are accounted for. The AShM is separate and already quite large. The DDGX as proposed still carries 80% of a Tico's load, and just as much as a Burke. Keep in mind it is rumored that the USN rarely sails with full cells anyway, and some stores in particular (ASROC) apparently are frequently cross decked.

The question becomes, what is the USN going to use to carry strike weapons? And that hasn't been answered yet. Right now a CSG consists typically of 3 Burkes and a Tico. Do we have any metric for how many cells are dedicated to strike? I think I read a guestimate that two of the DDGs kept ~40 on hand, but I don't think there's any good figure in open source to rely on. But as an off the cuff estimate, it sounds like a CSG needs a substitute for ~100 VLS cells worth of strike weapons. Or perhaps not necessarily the CSG directly - perhaps by separating the strike role you could move it to a different TF and location altogether.

Well in the future the air force, army and USMC could take over that capacity. A C-17 with the Rapid Dragon pallets would be capable of droping 32 JASSM-ER's in one go and the "sortie ratio" should be at least 10 times higher than a Ticonderoga or Arleigh Burke. Furthermore if a war doesn't drag out for more than a couple of weeks, or if the US havn't had months to prepare for the war and been given the time to deploy the ships, most Ticonderogas and Arleigh Burkes will not fire a single missile in a war. The entire surface force of the US Navy would be unlikely to launch even 500 cruise missiles in a war vs. Russia or China (say 20-25% of the surface fleet at sea in the right part of the world do launch before the war ends), while the USAF, each might do that every day of the war, as long as they have missiles left.

[RETAC21]

3 hours ago, Josh said:

My read is the USN has apparently decided to offload the strike mission from the escort fleet. In that context, 32 cells is perfectly adequate for medium threat air defense or high threat self defense, when quad packed ESSM are accounted for. The AShM is separate and already quite large. The DDGX as proposed still carries 80% of a Tico's load, and just as much as a Burke. Keep in mind it is rumored that the USN rarely sails with full cells anyway, and some stores in particular (ASROC) apparently are frequently cross decked.

The question becomes, what is the USN going to use to carry strike weapons? And that hasn't been answered yet. Right now a CSG consists typically of 3 Burkes and a Tico. Do we have any metric for how many cells are dedicated to strike? I think I read a guestimate that two of the DDGs kept ~40 on hand, but I don't think there's any good figure in open source to rely on. But as an off the cuff estimate, it sounds like a CSG needs a substitute for ~100 VLS cells worth of strike weapons. Or perhaps not necessarily the CSG directly - perhaps by separating the strike role you could move it to a different TF and location altogether.

No, they are moving in the opposite direction. However, it seems the Frigates are going to be ASW oriented mainly, with DDGs being the anti-surface assets

https://navalpost.com/what-is-distributed-lethality-concept/#:~:text=Distributed Lethality is the condition,-killer SAGs.” Arming the

[Josh]

Perhaps older Burkes will take on the strike mission as DDG(X) enters service. DDGX seems like a Tico replacement and I can't see even the Burke IIAs being replaced by it. IE, it looks like it will be a dedicated AAW/ABM platform to me, and having to carry separate types of ordnance for those two missions will probably fill it out even with ESSM.

[Dawes]

As far as number of missiles (Tomahawks) available for use during a confrontation, you would also have numbers of submarine-launched assets.

[futon]

PLAN probably can't reload their VLS at sea either. So it's not a disadvantage. 

Although how much is known about ship anti-ship defensive measures? Smoke screens, CIWS, and perhaps EW may be able to eat up a number of in coming missiles. So that would make number of VLS matter because maybe it'll take several rounds before being able to score a hit. Some types will require more rounds to get through defenses. Anti-ship tomohawk have great range but probably not had to neutralize. If a bunch could be coordinated to arrive at a target at the same time, maybe that would overwhelm CISW but maybe an effective smokescreen could neutralize a swarm of incoming missiles.

[TrustMe]

You also have to fact in a possible China / US naval battle that some of the anti-ship missiles will be nuclear tipped. In a conventional war these couldn't be used thus less throw weight for the destroyers.

[Olof Larsson]

21 hours ago, Dawes said:

As far as number of missiles (Tomahawks) available for use during a confrontation, you would also have numbers of submarine-launched assets.

True, but those boats will not be able to reload during a war eighter and a SSN that operates against the enemy might be operating to far away to launch or might not be able to take the risk of launching. In the first case perhaps a SSN hunting enemy subs in the Java Sea and in the later case a SSN trying to intercept rebel landing crafts from Western Taiwan from reaching East Taiwan.

[Olof Larsson]

6 hours ago, futon said:

PLAN probably can't reload their VLS at sea either. So it's not a disadvantage. 

Although how much is known about ship anti-ship defensive measures? Smoke screens, CIWS, and perhaps EW may be able to eat up a number of in coming missiles. So that would make number of VLS matter because maybe it'll take several rounds before being able to score a hit. Some types will require more rounds to get through defenses. Anti-ship tomohawk have great range but probably not had to neutralize. If a bunch could be coordinated to arrive at a target at the same time, maybe that would overwhelm CISW but maybe an effective smokescreen could neutralize a swarm of incoming missiles.

That would assume that a war between the US and China, would take place midway between each sides naval bases, which is extermely unlikely to be the case during this century.

It would also assume that the PLA would be as dependent on launching missiles from ships as the US is. But that is not the case. The chinese could be expected to launch a large part of their cruise and antiship missiles from ground launchers. So ships would be less likely to use up VLS-space for land attack weapons and would also be less likely to fire antiship missiles, that would then have to be replenished.

In a war for the first island chain, it would also quite likely be far easier for a PLAN ships to return to their coast, than it would be for the US to get back to the nearest achorage where the relevant munitions could be supplied.

If the US would have prepositioned stocks of weapons, C-17's and the relevant ground units in northern Australia, so that they could be resupplied in the PH, Indonesia or Malaysia, that might change.

[bfng3569]

they also carry 16 NSM's amidships and not in the vls tubes.

[futon]

5 hours ago, Olof Larsson said:

That would assume that a war between the US and China, would take place midway between each sides naval bases, which is extermely unlikely to be the case during this century.

It would also assume that the PLA would be as dependent on launching missiles from ships as the US is. But that is not the case. The chinese could be expected to launch a large part of their cruise and antiship missiles from ground launchers. So ships would be less likely to use up VLS-space for land attack weapons and would also be less likely to fire antiship missiles, that would then have to be replenished.

In a war for the first island chain, it would also quite likely be far easier for a PLAN ships to return to their coast, than it would be for the US to get back to the nearest achorage where the relevant munitions could be supplied.

If the US would have prepositioned stocks of weapons, C-17's and the relevant ground units in northern Australia, so that they could be resupplied in the PH, Indonesia or Malaysia, that might change.

Well, the most central part of the island chain and so often expressed desire of the PRC is Taiwan. So a hypothetical scenerio is PRC naval assets being used for the goal of entirely occupying Taiwan and holding it. So they'll need to establish naval and air superiority on the east side of Taiwan as well so as to prevent a landing by the US forces onto Taiwan itself. Taiwan main island is essentially linked by the Okinawan islands and Japan has already started deploying SAM and AShM on those islands. The East side of Taiwan isn't terrible far from US bases in Japan so such distance advantage for PRC is not so great. And if the question is about Taiwan, it can be assumed that as far as ship to ship goes, JMSDF is getting involved.  There is also Guam which is closer to Taiwan than Northern Australia. Although probably won't be hard for the US to get cooporation from Australia for munitions base to facility USN expanding operations towards the SCS. 

[Cajer]

On 1/29/2022 at 2:42 PM, futon said:

Well, the most central part of the island chain and so often expressed desire of the PRC is Taiwan. So a hypothetical scenerio is PRC naval assets being used for the goal of entirely occupying Taiwan and holding it. So they'll need to establish naval and air superiority on the east side of Taiwan as well so as to prevent a landing by the US forces onto Taiwan itself. Taiwan main island is essentially linked by the Okinawan islands and Japan has already started deploying SAM and AShM on those islands. The East side of Taiwan isn't terrible far from US bases in Japan so such distance advantage for PRC is not so great. And if the question is about Taiwan, it can be assumed that as far as ship to ship goes, JMSDF is getting involved.  There is also Guam which is closer to Taiwan than Northern Australia. Although probably won't be hard for the US to get cooporation from Australia for munitions base to facility USN expanding operations towards the SCS. 

If the Chinese are able bring in ASM/SAMs to the eastern side of Taiwan/islands off the eastern coast, then their job of naval air superiority is much easier. 

I would assume Guam and US bases in Japan would be hit quite badly by IRBMs/SRBM's or cruise missiles in such a scenario so I wouldn't expect them to be good spots for resupply.  Aus/Hawaii seems like a much safer bet for resupply. 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Cajer

[futon]

22 minutes ago, Cajer said:

If the Chinese are able bring in ASM/SAMs to the eastern side of Taiwan/islands off the eastern coast, then their job of naval air superiority is much easier. 

I would assume Guam and US bases in Japan would be hit quite badly by IRBMs/SRBM's or cruise missiles in such a scenario so I wouldn't expect them to be good spots for resupply.  Aus/Hawaii seems like a much safer bet for resupply. 

If the PRC makes the bold move to include targets on Japan as part of its Taiwan campaign, then there are a lot of targets to choice from. Kadena, Futenma, various installations on the more southern islands like Miyako, Sasebo, Iwakuni, Yokosuka.. how many hits would be needed to knock one of them out? 

[Cajer]

12 minutes ago, futon said:

If the PRC makes the bold move to include targets on Japan as part of its Taiwan campaign, then there are a lot of targets to choice from. Kadena, Futenma, various installations on the more southern islands like Miyako, Sasebo, Iwakuni, Yokosuka.. how many hits would be needed to knock one of them out? 

I couldn't find solid sources, but supposedly they had over 2,000 cruise/ballistic missiles of various types assigned to Taiwanese targets.

They wouldn't need as many for Japan as they'd just need to target munitions/fuel storage (both of which are quite vulnerable) and aircraft hangers.  This would prevent easy munitions resupply for allied ships/aircraft and much more difficult aircraft refueling while they tried to invade Taiwan

Edited January 31, 2022 by Cajer

[Josh]

That level of escalation is going to involve daily USAF raids putting hundreds of missiles on mainland targets per day. The US can simply hit all of the ports the PLAN lives at, practically on day 1. The PLA-AF would be much harder to neutralize but it doesn’t seem particularly problematic to devastate the 3-4 major fleet bases and any ship that hasn’t put to sea…or is still fitting out or in dry dock.

[Cajer]

11 minutes ago, Josh said:

That level of escalation is going to involve daily USAF raids putting hundreds of missiles on mainland targets per day. The US can simply hit all of the ports the PLAN lives at, practically on day 1. The PLA-AF would be much harder to neutralize but it doesn’t seem particularly problematic to devastate the 3-4 major fleet bases and any ship that hasn’t put to sea…or is still fitting out or in dry dock.

It's difficult for me to imagine any China/Taiwan/US conflict that doesn't involve Japan and more than likely North/South Korea.  So that doesn't really feel like an escalation to me and seems likely to have already been accounted for in Chinese war plans.

The issue with this assumption is that the US is not going to strike first.  Meaning that the USAF will be operating at degraded capacity from the beginning and may lose a substantial number of aircraft in the first strike against allied bases.  

It would be interesting if there was a wargaming thread on a Taiwanese invasion sort of like how there is one for a war over the Spratly Islands.

[futon]

49 minutes ago, Cajer said:

I couldn't find solid sources, but supposedly they had over 2,000 cruise/ballistic missiles of various types assigned to Taiwanese targets.

They wouldn't need as many for Japan as they'd just need to target munitions/fuel storage (both of which are quite vulnerable) and aircraft hangers.  This would prevent easy munitions resupply for allied ships/aircraft and much more difficult aircraft refueling while they tried to invade Taiwan

Munitions will be spread out throughout the Okinawa island and at a new base being made on one of them. Some munitions probably can't be knocked out with a typical cruise missile.