You're maximising flexibility of individual ships, when the fleet is not under resource pressure. Once the pressure's on, & ships are needed for their main roles, that flexibility becomes difficult to use. An RFA can't do MCM when it's accompanying a carrier group to provide fuel or other stores, nor can an LPD full of troops.
We will always have a finite number of RN ships, that's not the point. The point I am making is that with technological advances MCM / Survey capabilities are able to modularised, which are relatively easier to move from vessel to vessel. Warfighting capabilities including weapons, sensor fit, survivablility etc are not.
Here we go again . . . how can they do this role quickly if they're otherwise occupied? You can't make a ship be in two places at once, doing two different roles, just by making it capable of both. And no, I'm not saying it would be quicker to build new escorts (it would, of course, be quicker to upgrade the MHPCs), but that the WW2 scenario is an inappropriate comparison, since we're not equipped for it & wouldn't be whatever C3/MHPC we build. In that environment, we'd be doing everything at once, up to the limit of our physical & financial resources. That isn't the world we're in now. We have a limited budget, & it is NOT going to increase. We don't have the budget for your ships.
Again, the point I am making is that in a serious war the C3s would be quickly upgraded to be escorts, not used as MCMVs unless that was the priority. With MCM / Survey capabilities modularised, building new MCMV or adapting merchant vessels would be quicker. I think we do have the budget for these, it's just that the MOD (wrongly in my view) has prioritised other capabilities. For example, a £150M ship represents about 1% of the UK High Level Defence Equipment & Support Budget (based on 2007 / 2008 numbers).
Exactly. Which is why we can't multi-task the high-value ships with jobs that can be done by low-value ones. They have other things to do.
The point is that we need to maximise the use of every vessel. As per my previous comment, MCM / Survey duties could be given to non-RN vessels if none are spare.
Development and production. Comparing system price, including fixed costs such as development costs for a radar, engine, & much else, with the unit production cost of a ship using OTS equipment is not valid. We can't save any of that development cost by diverting money from the Typhoon programme to ships.
The production cost of a Tranche 2 Typhoon (what's currently building) is 55 mn euros..[/QUOTE]
Typhoon Tranche 3a are estimated as 90 mn euros (not including development costs) which is £80M at the current exchange rate. The Typhoon is just an example, as I say the money we are talking here is less than one percent of the total equipment budget.
Short for the RN. There have also been 'peacekeeping' (really peace enforcing) missions, where there was no threat that a BAM couldn't cope with.
Really? Which peace enforcing missions were you thinking of?
We're not configuring half the RN in this role. We're configuring maybe a third of the RN as multi-role vessels, which can, among their other capabilities, function as OPVs.
You are replacing 14 MCMVs, 4 Patrol Vessels and probably 2 survey ships - that's 20, that's half of the RN signifcant surface fleet in my book.
On the one in three rule, Somalia is currently absorbing SIX escorts. That's a third of what we're heading for. If we had some smaller, cheaper warships we could cover that with a fifth of the manpower, & far less cost.
This is before the T22s were withdrawn - are we still expecting to commit two going forwards? You are probably freeing up ships that are already on the scrap heap.
Yes, we have two out there. And the speed that matters in this role is the helicopter speed. We've deployed RFAs for the same role. I've not noticed that they're faster, or have better sensors.
Like Fort Victoria which is armed with CIWS and has a Type 993 3-D surveillance Radar - doesn't sound like the MHPC you've been describing.
BTW, the MHPCs should be better able to defend themselves than our current MCMVs, which we deploy to the Gulf.
Absolutely true, but we also have a gulf patrol frigate (HMS Iron Duke currently I believe), would your MHPC replace this also?
