I agree, we appear to be thinking on VERY similar wavelengths.
Don't get me wrong, the Visby and indeed the whole range of Swedish patrol and fast attack stuff is pretty good - they're just not blue water ships. And hey, a fully loaded Visby with AA was priced at about $184 m or about 150-160mill - that's about an 1/8 the tonnage of a Type 26 at near 2/5 the cost of a Type 26.
http://www.rna-10-area.co.uk/files/NAO_type45.pdf#
There are 2 different points here, mine is that a 3rd CVF could be used as a business case for additional money on the grounds of creating blue collar/trades employment. Employment has often been a driver for defence procurement, and this could be a positive point for the RN.
Most of these tasks can be done by an armed OPV, fitted with a 57mm cannon and bolt on/containerised packages. There are also grounds for heaver armed patrol craft, the Frigate/RHIB failed in the HMS Cornwall case.
The same outcome would of occured with a OPV with the same crew, poor decision making with sub standard intel failed the crew of HMS Cornwall, blaming the frigate & the RHIB for the Cornwall mess is stretching it a bit too far dont you think, only a poor builder blames his tools for his shoddy workmanship.
Actually yes, you quote a number in a report that is a calculation of how much a T45 costed at the end of a poorly run project (which was cut in half) and claim that is how much it would cost next time. Please point me to the section which says how much additional vessels would cost in a well run / fully delivered project. By the way nice avoidance of the section that shows how the costs rose by 30% mostly due to delays.
It's irrelevant how badly the project was run when you're calculating how much in individual ship would cost to build. If you were calculating how much each destroyer had cost to build including project costs, then the way the project was run would be relevant. That number is how much turning a pile of steel and systems into a working warship would cost - it's got nothing to do with the project costs - please stop doggedly clinging to factors that have nothing to do with the numbers I've quoted.
Very much so - the trigger for the Cornwall incident was by all accounts the lifting of a pair of Iranians in Iraq by SF - some sort of wider alert should have gone out as an all points warning that the Iranians might be looking for some sort of payback and that might have led to Cornwall shortening it's leash on it's patrols.
Worthless, there is no positive business case for wasting £1.3b (you're rather optimistic figures) on something that nobody wants.
You want to create more jobs in the short term building a ship the RN don't want rather than stick with the current and funded plan of building 5 ships the RN does, assuming your rather crude metric is right then you're talking straight up boom and bust employment cycles.
Spot on, totally agree with all of that; advancing something we do want is a much more credible plan than wasting money on something we don't. There's also the chance that MHPC might have a chance at some exports so there's more chance of those extra bodies staying employed rather than going on the dole again at the end of the contract.
I do agree with bringing the MHPC forward for all the reasons you mention.
Its easy to blame poor intelligence, but these things happen, it could have as easily been completely out of the blue without any warning. I was not actually suggesting the OPV option in that case, more the Visby. I actually think these are to big and would rather have boats that could operate from a LPD/LSD, so they can be transported and maintained (c150-200t). Also it gives another use for LPD. But to your point, why would Cornwall be any better able to deal with a swam of boats than an OPV with a Wildcat?
But the actual incident *didn't* come out of the blue - there was a definite case where Cornwall (and anyone else walking the fence that day) should have been on a state of heightened awareness. There then followed a chain of failures, including a fairly obvious failure to prepare the sailors against the event they were captured.
Lots of reasons why they are cheaper: not carrying all the kit, diesels v GT, smaller crews, size of hull. Your view on CAMM seems to be it requires a ship not far short of a T45 and costs only marginally less...if it does it will not sell.
And with less crew and a smaller hull, they're less survivable. We've been down this route with the batch 1 Type 42's and the earlier type 23's that started out as more or less a place to park a TAS on. The reasons a GP frigate costs more is because it's better fitted to survive being shot at and being hit.
What are you going on about? We are talking about a patrol craft of c2,000 which might have to deal will a randon SSM fired from the shore, (aka INS Hanit). A 57mm combined with either a bolt on SeaRam or Phalanx, should be sufficient. Anything more hostile and you need carrier aircaft or an AWD.