HMS Portland has become the second Type 23 frigate to receive an outfit of Naval Stike Missiles directly from the factory in Norway.
In November 2022, the RN finally announced the Interim Surface-Surface Weapon (I-SSGW) project would proceed and NSM would be fitted to 11 of its frigates and destroyers. HMS Somerset received her missiles more than a year ago (in December 2023) but due to recurring mechanical problems with the ship, an inaugural live firing of the weapon from an RN warship has not yet taken place.
NSM is primarily an anti-ship weapon and is designed for use in complex littoral environments with advanced ability to discriminate between neutral/friendly or enemy targets. It is effective against small-medium-sized surface combatants and in its secondary role, it can also be programmed to strike land targets. In RN service it is now officially designated as the ‘Maritime Offensive Strike System’ (MOSS).
NSM is exceptionally stealthy and avoids the use of radar for guidance, relying purely on passive optical recognition and inertial navigation techniques, making it especially difficult to detect and defeat. It has been in service with the Norwegian Navy since 2012 but is being rapidly adopted by an increasing number of navies.
Good to see a second set fitted, now for the next 9 sets…..It would look good if the escorts going with POW next year had them fitted
That’s 2 ships in 2 years. I thought it was supposed to be fitted to 11 ships ‘at pace’……..
11 Ships total – 3 Ships at pace.
We’ve missed the at pace
At snails pace?
With the need to regularly reprogramme the T23 flotilla as unexpected maintenance and failures arose to meet ops requirement, the slow down is hardly surprising
The F117 Stealth Fighter was 30 months from white board concent to first test flight! An iconic advancement in technology, delivered at pace. Why have we lost this ability to do engineer and implimement in a decent time frame?
based on previous 3 years of Have Blue research (ironically at least partially using published Russian research). That is a lot longer than the 102 days North American took to design & build the Mustang prototype. Systems have become much more complex over the years as have the threats.
I think you have a typo, though dolorously slow the announcement was November 2022 rather than 2002!
Clearly very slow progress. The promise was three ships (dreaded phrase…) “At Pace” and two years later it’s two ships and no test fire. Still, no doubt D&ES will put out a self-congratulatory tweet. It’ll be ironic if ships 4-11 average faster installations.
Snide remarks about D&ES are really off target – get real here as to why the unfortunate delays happened Admiral!
Theres an epidemic of unfortunate delays which suggest its become the norm rather than exception.
Quentin on other story made the point the RAN has re-equipped its 3 destroyers ‘at pace’
https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/sea/australia-equips-third-hobart-class-destroyer-with-naval-strike-missile
The old adage applies – If you cant get it done , at least get out of the way.
Need to check its suitability to fit the program for DEI first, dont you know.
This seems like an odd decision given the Type 23s are approaching retirement. Why not prioritise fitting “at pace” to the Type 45s and then Type 26/31 as they are built.
Plus if JSM fits Mk41 then I hope the MoD are well along in discussing the Type 83 requirements with Kongsberg (but I doubt it).
The last T23 is probably still going to be in service in 10 years, so I can see why they are being fitted. I suspect the T45 fitment and software upgrade will come as part of a package with Sea Ceptor.
We hope it’ll last 10 years
I’d be amazed if they did given the litany of structural failures.
Not a lot of reason to tie the two things together TBH they don’t really relate.
Stripping the Harpoon power room – not sure why they call it that – but it is where the controller cabinets are – can be done in stages as can putting the new controller cabinets in. To be perfectly honest I would have expected that to be stripped out by the ship’s engineering team.
I’m bemused at the idea that taking some of the bridge floor up is ‘a major job’ I would say that it is a maximum of six days of not particularly pacy work to lift the floor, install the duct and trunking, put the floor back down and glue some new lino on top of it. I assume T23 still has fire retardant lino on the bridge floor?
Not ‘bridge’ but the CIC below deck.
Im surprised that its still ‘ dedicated console’ hardware, and if so just repurpose the harpoon console ?
Harpoon is a bit of throwback nightmare to when systems required a wide range of highly stable AC and DC voltages.
The fundamentals of Harpoon are also pre Ethernet.
So although on the newer versions Ethernet is used to do some things most is still bus type control. So lots of wires and lot of idiotic connectors.
The dedicated hardware on the old style Harpoon console won’t be compatible with anything else.
Fast foward to the 2020’s and voltage-voltage converters are cheap and compact. So a couple of filtered supplies are just fine. Most comms are Ethernet or fibre. While different ball game.
But I honestly don’t understand why the ‘console’ isn’t a nice fat PC/UNIX/blade rack connected by redundant networking.
I don’t personally know anything about how NSM is wired up. But I do find this odd as blowing a few extra fibres or even piling a few Cat7e should be a massive job.
JSM is I believe air launched. Not sure why that would be under consideration for T83.
JSM-VL will fit Mk 41. No NSM variant will as far as I know.
I’d be quite surprised if it did end up on T83 as we are involved, with the French, in developing two systems of our own which should be much superior.
Given the push to spend defence money in the UK I’d be amazed if we bough a system such as JSM-VL when others, locally produced, are readily available.
There is no JSM-VL though? It was mooted, discussions betweeen Norway and US as far back as 2015/6 but never went anywhere? USN seems more interested in JASM, which Lockheed have actually test launched from Mk41 three times. Also we don’t have the cash to fund a JSM-VL when we have the MBDA FCASW programme which is supposed to fill our VLS cells for land attach and anti-ship uses.
JSM to hang off F35 pylons would be nice though!
Must be a significant disappointment to the folks who posted in previous discussions that the RN was much cleverer than every other navy and didn’t need SSM’s.
They are replacing harpoon in a like for like, and continuing the RN fitment of SSM over many decades. Helicopter ASM are a supplement not a replacement
Once the Wildcat helicopters have had Link-16 installed, will they be able to guide Link-16 compatible NSM in flight using their own radar information, or will that need more bits of the kill-chain jigsaw that are currently missing?
I’ve always wondered about this type of kill chain for anything other than basic corvettes with a gun on them.
The helicopter would be ridiculously vulnerable to AAW missiles.
OK, you might be able to pop up for a quick scan and pop down. But the 20-25s window that you would have feels quite tight.
Part of that time needs to be spent below the radar horizon getting out the way and hoping that the missile coming your way doesn’t have any kind of intelligent seeker on the front of it.
How defined is the radar horizon at helicopter ranges? My knowledge of radio propagation is limited to nil.
Can a pilot realistically know when he is targetable and otherwise, short of RWR, which I don’t know whether the Wildcats have?
Otherwise trying to pop up and obtain targeting data is useless outside a littoral environment.
Stick at it at school mate, your knowledge will only improve.
3000m altitude is about 200km horizon range. Wildcat should have an RWR that warns if enemy radar is on, now it depends what is the rwr quality vs enemy radar if LPI etc.
Wildcats carry a full suite of ESM, they know when they are being “painted”, whether they can track a target vessel at range using their radar, or even their long range EO in relative safety of course depends on the AAW capabilities of the target, and the tactical situation, so it may, or may not be useless outside of a littoral environment.
You may not even need to use radar or pop over the horizon. If the enemy ship is using it’s radar the Lynx can probably detect the transmissions and locate the target rhat way. 🤔
Not for a kill chain you need precision on, range, bearing, speed and course..detection of a radar radiating will let you know it’s about..
I know these are extreme distances (taking it ad absurdem for illustration), but Wildcat can supposedly detect a large ship at 200km, so maybe not so vulnerable. The situation is not like when it’s carrying its own short-range missiles and has to close with the enemy. Even SM-2 would struggle at that distance and most ships don’t have AAW with SM-2 range (at least ours don’t). Also the host ship could protect its helicopter with CAMM or Aster anyway, provided it doesn’t stray too far (the ships would need to be within 185km for NSM to work, so it’s possible a targetting Wildcat might even be further away than its host ship, only above 3,000m).
I have no idea how far the Link-16 course correction capability to the missiles would work, but I agree both the NSM missiles and the helicopter would be below the target ship’s horizon most of the time.
By my understanding there are very few surface combattants with AAW systems that match or exceed the ranges of USN (in particular) and NATO vessels.
I believe it’s only the Russian cruisers that have the navalised version of S-200/300 , their frigates and corvettes get to make do with navalised BUK- which is more along the lines of CAMM in terms of range if I understand correctly. I don’t know about Chinese vessels, I expect they’re a bit better equipped in this respect because they seem to try and copy the USN, but no idea of the actual capabilities of those weapons.
Given the ranges we’re talking about, and assuming that the Wildcat really can detect a ship at 200 km (assuming that a “large ship” is frigate-sized and up), the helo would be pretty safe most likely.
It is an interesting and thought provoking analysis.
As is said further down thread the main issue is how high and how close you have to be to discriminate. With a little [surface area] mid power radar such as on Wildcat I’m pretty dubious of 200km.
I’m pretty sure SAMPSON could tell the difference between water and other materials at horizon.
The idea of keeping inside the CAMM ASTER umbrella makes sense but is quite limiting in terms of overall tactics.
A minor-major warship is going to be emitting plenty of electronic signatures. These can ‘bend’ or scatter along the earths curvature
The Wildcat has ESM and of course its own anti ship missile the Sea venom, but its final targeting is only infrared
warship is going to be emitting plenty of electronic signatures. These can ‘bend’ or scatter along the earths curvature PLA navy?
people would add links for these sort of claims
If you’re a believer that Earth is flat it’s not a problem. However if you’re a traditionalist and believe the Earth is a sphere. You’d be right to question how radio frequency waves bend with the Earth’s surface rather going straight as was taught by GCSE physics.
It all depends on the wavelength (frequency) of the transmitted wave. HF and the lower VHF wavelengths do use the phenomenon of the ground wave. Which follows the Earth’s surface. Higher VHF and UHF frequencies and radar bands starting from 1GHz. Will become a more line of sight transmission. But over distance the transmitted beam will diverge and become weaker. As the beam propagates through the atmosphere it will refract and deflect off multitudes of objects at increasing air molecules, water vapor plus any small bits of matter suspended in the air. Plus the air isn’t one solid density or temperature. As the beam passes through different densities of air, it cause the beam to be slightly diverted form its original path. Put all these items together and a radio wave will “seem” to follow the curve of the Earth.
That is why NATO has dedicated ESM ranges to detect that dnd reduce the signature.
Anyone with a decent receiver and a spectrum analyser can do this with a big chunk of common sense as you need to figure out which system(s) the EM is coming from.
Although I don’t believe that ESM is really good enough to determine a fully accurate speed, course, bearing and range as needed for a kill chain. It gives a a pretty good bearing is my understanding, but there are still always errors..of around +/-1 degree but also up to arouns around -/+ 5 degrees on bearing.
“It is always the case that there will be errors in DOA as every transmission by the radar will have been subject to multipath which will affect the amplitude and phase of the pulse. Most of the pulses will have small DOA errors due to multipath reflections (< 1 degree), but a significant percentage of pulses have large DOA errors due to this cause.”
for range you would need multiple ESM detection points at different bearings.
it’s also essentially impossible to track course and speed.
finally it’s really difficult to determine what radar you are looking at somewhat ship you are firing at.
“The identification of radars is one of the most difficult tasks of the ESM system. Identification is carried out by matching measured parameters (such as Radar Frequency (RF) and Pulse Width(PW)) and calculated parameters (such as Pulse Repetition Interval (PRI)) of intercepts with those held in a library within the ESM system.The difficulty that the ESM system has is that there is a huge amount of overlap in parameters between radars. For example, there are several hundred types of radars with RF between 9.3 and 9.45 GHz, the radar band in which ships’ radars operate.
I did a little playing around with an online radar horizon tool:
Assuming a target 25 m above the waves (the upper superstructure of a frigate), at 180 km (range of the NSM), the Wildcat could be hovering at 2,000 m altitude above the launching vessel and essentially be ‘sitting’ on the bottom of the radar horizon of the target vessel; I’m not sure that Sampson could discern a Wildcat from the surface clutter in that scenario, let alone a Russian or Chinese radar system.
At 180km there is also the question as to whether a particular radar set can reliably detect the top works of a ship marginally above the radar horizon.
Fair, although I did try and account for that by making the “target” 25 m above the waterline. Presumably, the wildcat would therefore be able to see the majority of the ship, but maybe I’ve got that wrong?
But conversely, the ship would have to be radiating to detect the Wildcat.
As RWRs work beyond the range of the radar itself, I assume the helicopter would have the advantage in shadowing the ship without being detected.
However, to get targeting data the helicopter would probably have to pop up and radiate several times during the engagement, so it would stray into radar range and the ship’s own ELINT systems would come into play.
Joe16
For a long-range over-the-horizon launches…
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
If the Merlin/Wildcat doesn’t need to leave a position directly above the ship, surely there is a more efficient way of getting radar coverage?
The return of the ship based Aerostat, with a cable drum mounted on the helicopter rail system?
Or maybe a tethered UAV? Have a cable running from the ship to the drone, carrying power for its motors and data from the radar. Still retains more control over positioning but ensures almost limitless endurance.
I envisage something like the ultra large quadcopters the Ukrainians have been using, but with one of Leonardo’s Seaspray radars slung underneath (alternative payload could be a very large E/O sensor). Gives you the same radar horizon as a helicopter used above the ship, but cheaper, can carry more and doesn’t need as much maintenance.
It is a nice idea but has a few issues. It was looked at post Corporate extensively.
Take the weight of SeaSpray and the platform.
Then figure out how much power it needs to keep running. Then add the power that the radar requires. Then work back from that and figure out the cross section of the cable and from that the weight per meter of the cable. Use say 400V AC as that is ship available. You could use higher voltages to reduce the cable cross section and convert down at the top. However, I’m dubious that having a highly mechanically stressed cable on a drum at kV is a terrible good idea.
Then figure out the stresses on a cable to have the tether up in SS6 [or whatever your max is] then add the stresses from the likely wind speed then add the whipping stresses on the tether and then add the stress of the ship bring underway at a useful cruise speed.
Then calculate the mass per m of the mechanical tether.
To cut a long story short you discover that the weight of the tether is the limiting factor in getting to a sensible altitude with a sensible power.
The other problem is that the ship can’t sprint off without cutting the tether.
Can’t the drone follow the ship?
Even a Skjold class might have issues running away from a big quadcopter.
I see the issue wrt cable weights. It sounds a bit like the space elevator issue, doesn’t it?
The T650 from Malloy/BAE has a maximum payload of 300kg. The Seaspray 7000E off the Wildcat weighs just under 90kg “with processor LRUs”, which wouldn’t necessarily be onboard the drone.
That leaves you 210kg of cable to lift.
It’s really hard to find plain 400V cable on Google, no plugs etc.
My main source here is Cleveland Cable, if you want to look them up. Their Defence standard cable weighs 70kg/Km, giving you enough to get to 3000m and carries 440V. No idea what the tensile strength is, but I’m sure you could reinforce it with carbon fibre or something (really showing my expertise here). You wouldn’t be flying a tethered drone in SS6
Aviation and materials has come on a lot since the Falklands. I’m probably missing something huge but on the whole it looks feasible.
Good first try.
You need to size the cable but figuring out how many kW of continuous power you need for the radar and keeping the whole thing in the air.
You then need to get a voltage drop table and figure the cross sectional area.
Then look up weight per meter.
I couldn’t find those stats on the datasheet, you’d probably be able to find it better than me.
Leonardo understandably don’t tell you the power draw of Seaspray, but I have found the lighter 5000E version which claims similar range but only weighs 48kgs once again with processor LRUs.
Interestingly both types claim secondary air to air capability, which could be useful for a T45 and in the counter drone role.
Supportive Bloke
I was about to pull you up for not having mentioned it in your first post!
I am really glad you mentioned “voltage drop” in your 2nd post
After all = we cannot have you wilfully misleading a keen and enthustic young person like sailorbouy …because then he might get the impression that engineering is really easy…..
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Sailorbouy
The correct word for one type of tethered UAV is a “blimp“.
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Isn’t a blimp an airship where the shape of the envelope is maintained by internal pressure rather than structural integrity?
For higher altitudes, the weight and air resistance of the cable will be prohibitive. Terrestrial power beaming maximum is 1.6kW over 1km using X-Band (US Naval Research Lab, 2022), which isn’t quite enough power or distance to run a modern Seaspray at 3km altitude. That surprised me when I looked it up because I thought we’d be able to do better than that.
I meant that the tethered drone gets its power to run the radar and stay aloft through the cable, as well as sending the sensor data back down the cable.
I see where my wording was ambiguous, the power doesn’t come from the radar of the ship.
I was imagining something along the lines of the malloy series of drones, but they would need adaptations to get the landing struts out of the way of the radar and also to operate tethered.
Don’t know much about cable weights, would be greatly obliged if someone had more numbers on that.
Sailorbouy
Who said anything about the definition of a blimp as being something defined by its structural integity and shape?
ou did – I did not!
So, to reiterate on few key definitions
UAV
U – Uncrewed = definitely could be a Blimp
A – Ariel = definitely a Blimp
V – Anything mobile and man-made = definitely a Blimp
Accordingly, as I have now score a hat-trick to your “Nil Points” = therefore a tethered UAV must be a Blimp…
………..as I said in my first post
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS – as your did me a big favour a few days ago by explaining what a school capatin is – I shall now return the favour….
Here are some waits for long steel cables, all eminently suitable for mooring terthered UAV’s to battleships:
6×36 IWRC Wire Rope | Galvanised Wire Ropes
Peter, a blimp is by definition a non-rigid freely mobile airship.
An Aerostat, admittedly, is the blanket term for all balloons and airships that fly using aerostatic buoyancy, but the US government (at least according to 30 seconds on Wikipedia) specifically uses the term to refer to unmanned, tethered balloons.
Your wire rope looks about right, it just needs the data and power cables to go with it, thanks!
I understood. I meant that sending power through a cable wouldn’t be possible at higher altitudes due to the difficulty of the cable’s weight being lifted by the drone. Transferring enough power to the drone through power beaming also isn’t possible yet. So we are stuck with taking the power source aloft. That’s all.
The RN uses (or at least has trialled) a relatively lightweight quadcopter drone, the Sky Mantis 2, on a 110m tether. UK/EU regs limit civilian drone tethers to 120m and I don’t know of any military e-VTOL tethered drones that go above that.
However, it’s not like there aren’t lightweight objects that can’t be flown higher than that on a wire. WW2 barrage ballons went up to 1500m. Kites have been flown up to 5km. So I don’t think there are absolute physical limits. It’s just that the cable weight delivering power requirements for a radar and quadcopter motors for a T400 or T600 don’t seem to work out.
I have no figures on long drone-tethers as I can’t find any. A Malloy T400 could only lift the radar and maybe 50-60kg of cable. A T600 could lift maybe 120kg of wire.
A household 3-core cable, the sort you’d stick in the plasterboard in wall, and might be rated for 20A at 440V (ship’s power), would weigh 115g/m. So maybe you could carry it up to 1km on a T600, assuming the tensile strength was enough and ignoring the lack of any outdoor rating and the wind pulling at the cable. Another problem would be the losses due to Joule heating at 12 ohms per km. It would be radiating more power as heat than you could feed the radar (so much for zero-carbon).
A proper outdoor high-power high-voltage aluminium-cored line for low resistance and steel banding for tensile strength would reduce the Joule heating problem, but it’s far too heavy at maybe 540g/m.
Nail on head.
Yup, you end up with a massive helium filled ballon that can loft the radar, generator and fuel.
Problem with that is that a ballon/blimp that big has huge wind age and you are then in a vicious circle.
The next problem is the size of drum that you need to winch this thing up and down and how do you stow this massive thing? You can just deflate it every time as the helium is precious and not that cheap.
I’m all for drones at high altitude as radar platforms but I don’t think we are quite there yet for useful radar power levels.
Whaever happened to Project Aether? MOD completed two week trials with Sierrra Nevada for a stratospheric balloon-hoisted ISR solution in 2022. I think Project Aether may have tested other solutions too, but since then silence. Probably just another stupidly expensive set of MOD drone tests (reportedly £100m, wasn’t it?) with no budget allocated to follow it up. I think we are more likely to see Hybrid Airships making its military comeback, and that’s not particularly likely.
There is another option. Amazing what your brain can think of whilst in the small office. Ok bare with! If you have a flat plannar AESA array that was mounted on a trainable mount whose boresight is pointing up. Then on a tethered aerostat. That had a turret mounted flat plate. If you used a high powered X-band transmission (small wavelength), you could technically bounce the beam off the plate towards the direct that requires searching. Thereby extending the radar horizon. Kind of bi-static radar but different.
Advantages:
1. You’d need significantly less power to control the aerostat’s turret plate. So the cable can be a much smaller diameter.
2. It would provide a top down search and track of sea skimming missiles. Thereby the threat will generate a higher radar cross section compared to a ship based radar.
3. The reflector plate could be housed inside the aerostats envelope, thereby minimizing sail area and providing environmental protection.
Disadvantages:
1. It would only really work using X-band radar or Ku-band, possibly C-band. As you’d want a smallish reflector plate and turret, due to the mass. L and S bands would require a much wider diameter plate.
2. Maintaining continuous track between the ship based radar and the reflector plate.
3. You would need to shape the reflector, so that it’s doesn’t cause bean divergence. The edges would need treating with RAM to stop scattering.
But if a top level thought, but technically it is doable. Plus would mitigate dime if the carried weight issue.
That’s a really cool idea, frankly. Ingenious.
Few thoughts:
1. How thin can you make a radar beam with AESA?
That would probably be the limiting factor for how far above the ship the balloon can be and also how much of the beam you can get going in the right direction, hence power efficiency.
2. Can you get the reflected signal to go back to the ship?
Would the ship’s own antennae detect the return signal well enough, or would the angle of the reflector be right to send it back down to the ship? If both happen, then there will be a lot of signal processing that would need to happen to get a clear “image”.
3. Why limit yourself to a balloon?
As you have explained to me before, the main limit on SAMPSON and detection of sea skimmers is the difficulty in mounting a heavy, powerful radar high above the ship.
Could you use a “radio periscope”, where the aerostat reflector is an extreme example, to mitigate that? Have a very large, powerful antenna array inside the mast low down, and have shaped metal reflectors either gimballed or fixed at the top.
Again, signal processing would probably be the limiting factor, but removing the antennae and their cooling from the actual “source” of the beam from the ship can only be a good thing.
It also allows better damage control as the fragile elements are buried inside the superstructure rather than perched on top, with reflector panels rather easier to repair.
You are the expert on which wavelengths such a system would work for, but GCSE optics and what I already know would suggest that such a periscope system is feasible.
I am going to try to find if anything like this has been tried before, will report back.
I found a PDF on Google when I searched for “periscope microwave antenna”, called “Periscope Antenna Revisited”.
Apparently microwave reflectors are occasionally used by amateur ‘microwavers’ in America, where their home is obstructed by trees or other buildings. The one in the pdf is fixed and aimed towards a beacon and used because the designer doesn’t want his expensive radio equipment at the top of a tall tower where it is difficult to repair (sound familiar?).
He tested the reflector design and found that it was actually superior to using the same antenna and beam directly aimed at the beacon (this is a flat panel reflector and a parabolic dish antenna).
The beacon was apparently 192km away and the frequency 10GHz.
I hope that means something to you, but it certainly seems like reflectors are feasible as a means of angling and controlling radio and microwave beams.
Sadly the Wildcat is not a F35. Where a pair of F35s can passively work out the range to a target via ESM based networked triangulation.
The JSM is being upgraded with a derivative of the LRASM’s radio surveillance system. This is a passive ESM that can be used to analyze a ship’s RF emissions and then categorize it. This will help remove the need for continuous updates from a 3rd party spotter/controller.
Well, GA-ASI are now offering an ELINT pod for the MQ9B, for an underwing hard point.
Could something similar be done for helicopters? Carry extra sensitive antennae and ESM analysis equipment under the weapons wings specifically for intelligence and targeting purposes.
We could even get MQ9B STOL for the carriers and use the same pod…
No other navy in the world can offer this level of offensive blue water capability, we should congratulate this labour government for their clear sighted view in a world full of angst.
MOSS…!? Well I guess moss can be dangerous if you slip over some on the path to the bus-stop, but I’d have hoped that the acronym commission had come up with something more punchy than that or a decent name like SAAB gave to the RBS15 “Gungnir” – spear of Odin
Matt
The three star admiral in charge of the large RN’s TLA department obviously thought that NSM wasn’t good enough: so he (or she) invented a new FLA (note 1)
The only problem will be confusion during intensive, and thus stressful, naval operations..
……the captain is going to shout “MOSS” – and just ten seconds later, find a matelot standing behind him with a MOPS (note 2)
—————-
However, having joked about the TLA: not much else to joke about here – apart from the very extended installation duration…… Accordingly can we please have the Norweigian’s install them next time around = because they are so much quicker than DES!
———————–
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1: FLA = Four Letter Acronym
Note 2. TLA – MOPS – Manually Operated Pole-mounted Scrubber
Agree it would be nice to see them on every escort.
nearly 6 years since first announced (2018 / 19) as replacement for old stuff- 6 years to get 16 boxes bolted to foredeck of two ships…
2019 was only an ‘announcement’ – a Tory staple- about a requirement for unspecified Harpoon replacement and supposedly some money , but more likely unfunded at that point. 2019 was also election year so time to polish the cannons Aug 2021 was a short list for an ‘interim’ missile https://www.navylookout.com/contenders-for-the-royal-navys-interim-anti-ship-missile-requirement/Nov 2021 the new anti ship missile was dropped from requirements before 2030Jul 2022 a VOLTE FARCE , meaning money might have been found to order https://www.navylookout.com/royal-navy-changes-course-on-interim-anti-ship-missile-for-a-second-time/Nov 2023 Came the news at last in NLRoyal Navy to buy the Naval Strike MissileRoyal Navy to buy the Naval Strike Missile
Of course the NSM was the only realistic choice back in 2019, what can I say , but Tory/Treasury mismanagement again
To be accurate it’s a little more involved than bolting 16 box’s to decks.
Yes. But the 2019 election year ‘cannon polishing’ intention to buy, the Aug 2021 short list, the Nov 2021 dropping the requirement, the 2022 reinstating the requirement and finally the 2023 actual purchase took many years of wasted time.
The stupidity of it all is what infuriates people as NSM was the only real choice
Cannot disagree the procurement process is massively political and not fit for purpose.