Some years ago, I said about the Israeli Navy:
I like the Israeli approach, which crams lots of hitting power into even small hulls (see, for example, its Sa'ar 5 class corvettes, which as far as I know are the most heavily armed ships of their size [just over 1,000 tons] anywhere in the world, and on an armament-per-ton or tons-per-weapon basis might be the most heavily armed warships since the age of the dreadnought).
That approach has since been epitomized even more in Israel's Sa'ar 6 corvettes, almost twice the displacement of the earlier Sa'ar 5's, but even more heavily armed. There are probably more weapons and weapon systems aboard a Sa'ar 6 than aboard any two, or even three, typical NATO frigates.
I thought about this when reading an article about the new Falaj 3 class "patrol boats" of the United Arab Emirates. Their displacement is only about 670 tons, but they've packed an awful lot of firepower into that small hull.
Photos of the United Arab Emirates’ Falaj 3 class patrol boat are a reminder that a vessel doesn’t need to be a corvette or even a frigate to be armed like one. At a little over 200 feet long, the Falaj 3 is officially designated an offshore patrol vessel (OPV), but it boasts a weapons suite that would be impressive on a missile corvette and, in some respects, even a light frigate. In fact, at around 670 tons full load displacement, and a crew of just 39, it may be one of the most heavily armed warships anywhere in the world for its size.
OPVs are generally built for constabulary duties rather than high-end naval combat. Their primary missions include enforcing exclusive economic zones, countering piracy and smuggling, fisheries protection, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance. As a result, they typically prioritize endurance, seakeeping, and low operating costs over heavy armament. Many Western designs in this category carry little more than a medium-caliber gun and a handful of remotely operated weapon systems, with no dedicated anti-ship missiles or significant air-defense systems.
The Falaj 3 takes a very different approach, as is immediately apparent from these photos.
Forward sits a Leonardo 76mm OTO Super Rapid gun equipped with the STRALES guided ammunition system, giving the ship a weapon capable of engaging everything from surface targets to fast-moving aerial threats ... Directly behind the gun is an eight-cell vertical launch system loaded with MBDA VL MICA surface-to-air missiles. This ‘fire and forget’ missile can intercept targets at a range of up to around 12 miles and at altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. Further aft is a 21-cell Raytheon Mk 49 launcher for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM), giving the vessel a second, independent layer of point air defense. Most OPVs are fortunate to carry an adapted man-portable air defense system, if they have any dedicated air-defense system at all.
The offensive fit is equally notable. Four MM40 Exocet Block 3C anti-ship missiles provide over-the-horizon strike capability, while two 12-cell Low-cost Guided Imaging Rocket (LOGIR) guided rocket launchers offer an inexpensive way to engage drones, uncrewed surface vessels, and fast attack craft without expending much more costly missiles ... Completing the package are two Electro Optic Systems (EOS) R400-M 30mm remote weapon stations and two 32-barrel Rheinmetall Multi Ammunition Soft-kill System (MASS) decoy launchers, providing close-range firepower and survivability against incoming guided weapons, respectively.
There's more at the link.
I entirely agree with a powerful weapons load-out like that. It remains a perennial worry to some naval observers (including me) that so many corvettes, frigates and destroyers in US and European service are relatively lightly armed for their size. There isn't enough depth to their defenses, particularly if they face a swarm of incoming drones or missiles. If they miss even one, they may suffer severe, disabling damage. They can't even reload missiles at sea, meaning that in a serious engagement, they'd shoot themselves dry in a relatively short space of time. After that . . . they're expensive targets. (Compare them to their equivalents in the former Soviet Union and/or the Russian Navy today. The Russians have not forgotten the lessons of history, and arm their ships accordingly. See, for example, that nation's Steregushchiy and Gremyashchiy classes.)
I hope the example of the Falaj 3 class of patrol vessels is studied, and spreads. We live in an increasingly dangerous world, particularly the ocean passages through narrow straits like Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, etc. To defend them, we need larger numbers of considerably more powerful vessels than have so far been employed. Air power has its place, of course, but in the end ships at sea are like infantry on the ground. You need them to take and hold strategic areas.
Peter
14 comments:
Heavily armed light craft are subject to something like a swarm of cheap drones with laser designators and the naval version of the 155 mm Copperhead laser guided artillery round.
Or even a laser from land or a fishing boat. Le boom.
There's always a tradeoff. What are they giving up for the extra firepower?
I'm no naval architect, but at a guess, endurance. US ships need to be away from home port for long period of time. That means food and fuel stores need to be larger, even with the ability to replenish underway, and quite possibly proportionally larger crew sizes.
American naval doctrine is one that simply counts on always being part of a Strike Group. The weapons on the small ships are for dealing with popups and leakers. This was all post Badger and Backfire regimental salvos. With modern drones there is no question that USN ships are pathetically unarmed in the face of the existing threat.
In addition to range and endurance, US navy ships are also build for damage control. That's not free: you have to allocate volume and mass where it is accessible. You can't just stick your damage control supplies in lockers down in the bilges. It's also backed up by training. Every bit of that gear to save the ship is also an ongoing training expense for every USN sailor.
So far as I can tell, Russian ships don't have any significant damage control capacity. Similar to their general logistics institutional incompetence, they don't seem to have any damage control institutional competence. (Might have something to do with the Imperial Japanese Navy sinking everyone that knew how to do it.) When Ukraine sank Moskva with sea-drones, the ship was afloat for days. Some of it was on fire... where was the firefighting? Some of it was flooding... where was the attempts to control the incoming water? Eventually, it sank enough for the water to reach that corridor that ran down the center of the ship that apparently couldn't be made watertight, and then the water went into all the other compartments and the Russian Navy had a new single-use submersible. Aside from the crew not being willing/able to save the ship, the ship itself simply wasn't designed to control any damage. Lots of weapons, sure; ability to take a hit, non-existent.
By comparison, the USS Samuel B Roberts (FFG-58) hit a Iranian mine in 1988, which blew apart an engine room and broke the keel. The crew sealed off all compartments they could, kept the ship afloat, and held it together with cables while the only thing that kept the front attached to the rear was the deck and the superstructure on top of it. They then limped the ship to a port under its own power, where it was picked up, taken back to the US, had a new engine room and hull section installed, and it was back out to kick but a year later. Any other Navy's ship wouldn't have had the design, the equipment or the trained crew to keep it off the bottom of the sea.
Russian ships are built with lots of compartmentalization and water-tight doors/hatches. Their seals on all those water-tight doors, on the other hand, have sucked and continue to suck.
Maintaining the seals is part of what Western-style navies do very well.
India, which has Russian vessels, does practice seal maintenance.
So Israel and now the UAE have little boats that can smack the snot out of the LCS classes. 76mm auto gun while we're stuck with a 57mm pop gun that barely works.
One must always bear in mind that the Democrats HATE winning wars, and will actively work to lower the ability to fight effectively. WW2 shocked the crap out of them, and it has been downhill ever since. (you did notice that we literally threw away our military after the end of ww2?)
Nice 'little' boat with more armament than a DDG... But I will echo Tirno's question about DC...
Damage Control, like carrier flight ops, is something that is either found in the navy in question or isn't. It must be, to be effective, drummed into the sailors, aviators and marines first and foremost and constantly kept up with drills and training and actual maintenance.
The USSR/Russia has always been lacking in Damage Control due to lack of maintenance and an unwillingness to train past the point of exhaustion.
Arabs haven't shown a great propensity for maintenance and constant training. That may be changing.
How survivable are they?
At only 670 tons, they couldn't take more than one or two hits from a Shahed or something like it. One hit from a "proper" anti-ship missile (Exocet, Harpoon, etc.) would doubtless sink them. On the other hand, they could shoot down quite a lot of what was sent against them, and if there's a flotilla of them, the defensive umbrella becomes much harder to penetrate. I'd imagine there'd be more than a few such ships, forming a couple of squadrons, in a high-tension area, so that if some were lost, there'd be enough survivors to keep on keeping on.
In the US the military exists first and foremost as a conduit for transferring tax dollars to special interests. Second comes imposing our will on hapless small nations. Actual defense of the country is WAY down the list of priorities. Military spending is nothing but a slush fund for connected people.
This is why the only new things are BIG weapon systems. More money involved to spread the wealth among the retired high ranks that get a piece of the action. If you don't have flag rank to push it, forget it, no matter how well it might work.
Different mission requirement, different philosophy, yield different designs.
That said, (a) I'd like to see US ships with a lot more medium-caliber (57mm/76mm/105mm) guns designed for anti-drone use, and (b) one way to get a whole bunch of new shipbuilding contracts is to manage to get a whole bunch of your current ships sunk....
-R
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