"Royal Navy to lose missiles and be left only with guns" Topic

Wow…this is political malfeasance by the British government to have so screwed up the procurement process for the Royal Navy that there is a two-year gap in which there may be no anti-ship missiles available for RN ships. What?!? Do I read this right? Certainly everyone potentially interested in pushing the Brits around want to know…

Royal Navy to lose missiles and be left only with guns

Royal Navy warships will be left without anti-ship missiles and be forced to rely on naval guns because of cost-cutting, the Ministry of Defence has admitted.

The Navy's Harpoon missiles will retire from the fleet's frigates and destroyers in 2018 without a replacement, while there will also be a two year gap without helicopter-launched anti-shipping missiles.

Naval sources said the decision was "like Nelson deciding to get rid of his cannons and go back to muskets" and one senior former officer said warships would "no longer be able to go toe-to-toe with the Chinese or Russians"…

…Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, said: "This is just another example of where the lack of money is squeezing and making the nation less safe.

"We will have this gap of several years without missiles. Well, that's fine if you don't have to fight anybody in the meantime."

The Royal Air Force has long axed its own anti-ship missiles.

Nick Childs, a naval expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Britain was cutting its anti-ship missiles just as America had decided they were becoming more critical to maritime fighting.

"It must be a great concern that this capability is going to be removed without immediate or direct replacement because we are moving into an era of concern about a more contested maritime environment," he said.

link

Well…shoot…looks like the US Navy has done almost the same damn thing during the Obama presidency and only half of the USN surface combatants have an ASM capability as this article details.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID GUNS
Chinese ASCMs in Competitive Control

…(PLAN) is a simple hull count: the United States has 101 in its inventory, while China comes to the table with 184. China's numerical advantage gives it more flexibility in distributing its surface forces to contest or exercise sea control while maintaining an adequate coastal defense. Taking size (displacement measured by tonnage) into account yields a superficial advantage for the United States: nearly
800,000 tons of warship compared with China's 362,000 tons. Taken together, however, the distribution of greater U.S. tonnage into fewer hulls means a more vulnerable concentration of power and faster losses in war.

OUR KNIFE AT THEIR GUNFIGHT
The various vessels' antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) are the key differentiator when comparing their organic lethality. Only fifty of the U.S. Navy's 101 surface combatants are equipped to carry a dedicated ASCM: the Flights I and II Arleigh Burke–class destroyers and the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. These ships each carry eight 1990s-era RGM-84 Harpoons capable of delivering a 488-pound warhead over sixty-seven nautical miles (nm)…

…By comparison, all 184 ships listed for the PLAN have an ASCM capability. Most carry the YJ-83, a domestic version of the C-802A that advertises a 419-pound warhead and a 100 nm range. Some vessels have older missiles, but the Luyang II and Luyang III destroyers carry the modern YJ-62 (661-pound
warhead, 150 nm range) and the YJ-18 (661-pound warhead, 290 nm range).

link

Wow!

Why not just scuttle the ships at dock, to save even more money, and the lives of the sailors that man them?

Ships without SSMs in the 21st Century is just "stoooopid".

Ships without missiles, aircraft carriers without aircraft carriers – and no carriers for years – sounds typical…

See also TMP link

I know – saw this today.

It's lunacy!

The only European navies we'll be more powerful than will be the Irish and the Swiss.

I'm lost for words.

Ships without missiles, aircraft carriers without aircraft carriers – and no carriers for years – sounds typical…

And guns with no ammo…at least if you're talking about the brand new US Zumwalt class DDG…

The USS Zumwalt Can't Fire Its Guns Because the Ammo Is Too Expensive
At $800,000 USD a round, the ammunition is simply to expensive for the Navy to afford.

link

This is what happens when technology becomes and end in itself. We build it just because we can.

And we forget that technology (weapons) do not exist in a vacuum; logistics, cost, people, training, doctrine, etc. have to be considered and integrated in the process.

The Zumwalt ammo is too expensive to buy, too expensive to wed train with and too expensive to use. It will be like the Louisiana Maneuvers, where the army painted TANK on trucks.
Then, some accountant will calculate exactly how many will be needed in the next war, we will buy that number, and the factories will be shut down.
These calculations will be based on each round destroying one target. No misses allowed!

And of course the replacements will be planned to enter service 5 years after they are withdrawn – except the replacements will not ready until 10 years after. Of course, due to cost over runs half the order will be cancelled anyway.

Some one will make an awful lot of money despite this mess.

Perhaps they should equip the ship with typewriters so they can whip up harsh letters that they can give to enemy ships.

No, the RN preferred to use PCs for the job. However, due to various spec changes and upgrades these are not due in service until 2021. Meanwhile, a dedicated telephone line has been set up which can be used to contact enemy ships direct. They are still waiting for the enbemy ships to get back to them with a contact number; meanwhile attempts by them to contact the RN itself get the message 'Your call is very important to us…'

It could be worse, GarrisonMiniatures – if they tried to call the RAF they'd get the message,

"Please call again during office hours; this service is not available during evenings or weekends"

Why not just delay the Harpoon retirement until the new missiles are available?

Missiles (esp anti-ship missiles) are complex and expensive things and presumably need maintenance etc to keep them operational as well as 'best by' dates. But yes, we could just buy some more.

I do wonder if the RN doth protest too much, having garnered a huge dollop of the defence budget to build its shiny new carriers, leaving it without enough money to buy any escorts, planes to fly off them, and now, apparently, any missiles to fire either.

Building carriers is good for the ship building industry though, buying American missiles isn't.

Could have just kept the old Invincibles going… but of course that would have meant the Tornado mafia would have lost to the Harrier partisans, and pilots need poroper fast air to fly, not silly VTOL planes. What ho!

This is largely about MOD politics and inter-service rivalry. As well as the MOD just rolling over when austerity landed.

The plan is to do an EMP burst which will render all missiles useless …… then the guns will rule supreme!!!!!

Look on the bright side, at least they still have the ships, those are what really matters.

Aircraft and missiles are not as important as sensitivity training these days.

Actually when was the last time the RN felt the need to fire guns or missiles?
Someone should do a cost effectiveness analysis.

Missiles (esp anti-ship missiles) are complex and expensive things and presumably need maintenance etc to keep them operational as well as 'best by' dates. But yes, we could just buy some more.

Solid rocket motors, like the ones used to launch Harpoons clear of the ship, have a VERY serious use-by date. When solid rockets get old, the fuel starts to crack. cracked rocket fuel doesn't burn, it explodes.

But the RN could probably refurbish (rather, replace the booster rocket) their Harpoons.

"But the RN could probably refurbish (rather, replace the booster rocket) their Harpoons."

But that means keeping the techies for another 2 years instead of whatever training course they need to attend to qualify for the replacement systems.

I think the RN will do fine, in fact those 2 years will likely be the most cost effective in recent history.

Cost effective, until someone starts a shooting war…

And I doubt that the RN's own techs would be replacing the boosters. Send them back to Boeing Missiles&Space for refurb.