Two little things
There was an article in a magazine the other day. I think it was australian pacific defence reporter, or something like that. The articel was about using hte Cocos/Keeling Islands as a forward operating base. There was also some news recently about the americans using the Cocos islands as an airfield to fly drones off. I know this gets pretty political.
One thing of note was that it was said that a submarine could remain submerged till 5 minutes before docking at the island, due to the large depth of water close to the island. If the submarnine came in at night, and if there was a roof over the dock, then there is the possibility that a sub visting these islands may be undected. Idea would be to refuel the subs, give the crew a little rest, stock up on fresh food, and possibly make a few minor repairs that could not be done at sea.
anyway, the article was an interesting read, have no idea if it will happen. I think upsetting other nations would be the largest negative, They may reply with their own forward operating bases, like the Maldives or lease an island from Burma.
I am not sure if this is a great idea or not. My main concern is that we might start provoking other countries, and instead of seeing us a mostly benign nation, they might view a forward operating base as a little agressive.
The armidale patrol boats are a fraction small for where they operate, hundreds and hundreds of miles out into the ocean. I did like the Tenix patrol boat made for the Phillipines, at around 500t and in steel. It was a fraction top heavy to look at (subjective I know... not scientifically tested). It does give an idea of what can be done on 500t and in steel. Plus the heli pad would always come in useful, small helicopters, UAVs etc. I played around with the photos, it should be possible to reduce some of the topweight structure, it looks better in my opinion. Yes the space that is removed would eat into space on lower decks. It is always easier to add topweight it there is too little, than it is to reduce topweight. Worse comes to worse they could keep the ballast tanks dry most of the time,
I was playing around wiht the lines of a cape class patrol boat and armidale class If it was extended a few meters forward, and a few meters aft, it could easily accommodate a pad forward, when I added an SH60B for scale, it did fit, though the forward weapon had to be lower and more forward. A UH-1 huey would fit very easily though.
Say 6m longer, that is about 10 percent, to give same scale one would assume that beam is increased by 10 percent. Thus a very rough approximation is that dispacement would be about 25 percent larger. increasing from around 250t to approx 310t. I do realise that a larger hull needs bigger engines, and bigger engines use mroe fuel etc. However a patrol boat around 320t to 350t could just squeeze in a heli pad forward. I do realise that this is not the ideal spot, as it is exposed to the elements, and it obstructs forward view, However if a helicopter only dropped in very occasionally it should not be a huge deal. More of a contigency option.
Of course going up to 500t gives a lot lot more options, the Tenix boat did not seem to have those RIBs. I wonder it they could fit under the heli deck there. I mean is one deck enough height to store a RIB. They can put a man on the moon, so my thinking is that they should be able to make it work.
