Frigates, Destroyer Escorts, and Corvettes

[DarrenP]

What If countries had to face a U-Boat type threat again?
Given the complexitiy of modern warships what would be the way forward?
What would a 21st century equivilent of the flower class corvette be?
Would we go down the road of the Arapaho container ship aircraft carriers?

[pyro-manic]

Take an OPV such as the River class, and fit a 2087 towed-array sonar and a couple of Stingray torpedo tubes to the rear deck. If you can't fit a ASuW helicopter on the same ship, base it on one of the convoy vessels.

[Weaver]

You'll need some point defence, decent radar and ECM on that towed array ship, because to find quiet water, it's going to be a long way from any convoy or fleet, making itself unpopular with submarines that have AShMs. Then you're going to need vibration-isolated engine mounts, so you might as well go to electric drive and have the engines really isolated. Of course, all that slow-speed towing is going to leave you out of position sometimes, so you'll also need gas turbines for re-positioning dashes. Then if you're a long way from the convoy to begin with, and you're detecting subs at long range, the helos from the convoy might be struggling to reach them, so you'd better be able to land one, and re-fuel it and re-arm it too. Mind you, it's reaction time will still be slow, so maybe it's be better if you based it on your ship to start with. Now this is all getting pretty expensive, so to justify the cost, you'd better make the ship capable of other missions: adding AshMs is an easy step, and if you give it a gun it can do NGS for amphibious formations as well as ASW.

Congratulations, enjoy your Type-23 frigate.......

[DarrenP]

Yes buy a T23 takes time to build and equip. The Towed array is useful for creating sanitised convoy lanes or for hunter groups. But more close in defence in larger numbers would need a more numerous and flexible beast. The T23 is the moden equivilent of the tribal and pre war destroyers.But what would be the close in escorts? like the Flower and Hunt classes?
Arapaho equipped Container ships would be the equivilent of the escort carriers with half a dozen ASW helicopters.

[Weaver]

Well the process I was dramatising is exactly the one that started out in real life from a concept like Pyro's and ended up with the Type 23. D.K.Brown shows very clearly in his Rebuilding the Royal Navy how there are "capability gaps" where adding a bit more capability generates a whole new set of requirements and the price suddenly jumps up a bracket.

I suppose the real question is what exactly is a "close escort" supposed to do against submarines that no longer have to get in close?

[DarrenP]

I would say the real close in escorts would be the ASW helecopters but the next layer out would need to be a flexible small warship providing a sensor platform with some ASW weapons. Then the frigates and destroyers with ASW weapons and light helecopters. Further out the towed array ships and out side them the the ASW aircraft and SSK's

[Fulcrum]

May I suggest a possible solution:
Why don't we put ASW hunter/killer gear on a Saar 4/4.5? They are good in oceans up to sea state 5 & are the size of the world's first ever destroyers.