Nice Catch @Calculus, where did you find the photos?
I was wondering that myself. I think there may also be two on the port side (one just forward of the helicopter deck). I thought two of them (one port, one stbd) could be where the torpedo launchers might be located, but not sure....
Actually @Calculus , you are correct, there is another square door behind the door for the RHIB on the port side. So four doors. Still no idea what they are for.
Good question. I zoomed in on the photo, and to me these look like the same launchers seen on the Fincantieri FFG (X) model at SNA 2020, which are NSM, but I can't be absolutely certain they are the same - the detail in the photo is a bit blurry. Ideally, that same box launcher supports both missiles.
I did a very rough scale off the picture and get about 8 ft square per face (or 64 square feet per face). It is very rough though, difficult to measure off of pictures.
The air dropped AGM-158C LRASM length is about 4.3 m and the NSM length is about 4.0 m, so by the time you add a rocket booster to the SSM-158C LRASM, it will be significantly longer. We know that the LRASM can be lunched out of box launchers and it has been successfully test launched out of the Mk-41 VLS. So you could use the Mk-41 for LRASM and the box launchers for the NSM. I would think that the LRASM would be substantially more expensive than the NSM, so maybe you would ship both, but reserve the LRASM for high value targets and use the NSM on lesser value targets. Talking of NSM, the NSM derivative, JSM, has had a rocket booster attached for vertical launch from the MK-41 VLS. How far this has progressed, I am unsure off, but the JSM has the advantage over the NSM in that it can strike land targets as well.
Yep it is and it's not so much reinforing the top deck and deckhead underneath, but the added topweight which is more critcial because that added topweight affects the ships stability, and not in a good way. That's why I said that the LRASM could be shipped in the Mk-41 VLS which is on 01 Deck behind the main gun. The weight is far lower and doesn't have such a negative impact on the ships stability.
The lack of a Millennium gun or 40 mm autocannon on the hangar deckhead is a RCN / RAN / RNZN / RN / USN CONOP and design choice, not a stability issue. The RDN Iver Huitfelds / Absalon classes have the Rheinmettall 35 mm Milleniumm gun mount on top of their hangars. Both the Italian FREMM classes have the Oto-Melara 76 mm guns mounted aft above and fo'rd of the hangar.
Hi Jack, curious what you used as a reference on the ship for scale? I would have put those radar panels somewhere around 12 x 12 (or maybe 10 x 10), but that's just an eyeball estimate based on the size of the outer hatches, which we can assume are around 2.0 m in height (or roughly 6.5ft).
I used adobe's scaling feature and approximated the height of one of the doors as ~ 2m. It is not very accurate though as there are perspective issues (meaning the hatch used needs to be at the same depth plane as the radar to scale it), and a small change in the estimate of the hatch could make a difference as well. They could be as big as 12 x 12. When I get to work I can post the pdf I did and you can judge by yourself (yeah, I did this while I was supposed to be working
).
Further to my previous post, here is the estimate I did. Please note as I stated before, this is just a guesstimate. I scaled from the deck to the top of the door. I haven't spent much time on ships, so maybe someone else can pipe in, but my recollection was the doors themselves are a bit shorter (maybe 1.8m tall), but there is about 2m from the deck to where you nail your forehead on the door header.
You've convinced me.
That's about as scientific as we can get without the CAD drawings.