"The U.S. Navy’s Newest Frigate Can’t Carry Enough Missiles" Topic

"The question boils down to this: should a warship be packed to the gills with weapons? The Soviet navy, and today's Russian fleet, opt for ships far more heavily armed than their Western counterparts. But that can come at the expense of other desirable qualities, such as endurance at sea and ammunition reloads (Soviet warships were essentially one-shot weapons).

The U.S. Navy's new frigate may not be armed with enough missiles to defeat Russian and Chinese warships, according to a new report…."
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Amicalement
Armand

That's all you need, since few if any vessels will be very survivable in the modern missile age, when SSMs and ASMs start flying in earnest.

They missed another important aspect – how many missiles can he ship actually control at one time? More or better control systems may enable it to engage more targets at the same time, something that may be important if your opponent just relies on mass attacks with inferior weapons – all those extra missiles are less useful if you can't shoot them because you can't control them.

I think the author missed another important point, which is that, at least traditionally in the missile age, frigates are escorts, not the battlewagon/task force combattants of the day. They are not intended to be your primary missile-heavers nor to fight other warships, at least alone. That is what we have Burkes and Ticos for. If you evaluate an escort through the lens of battlewagons, you will always come up short on a lot of stuff besides missiles.

all those extra missiles are less useful if you can't shoot them because you can't control them.

Right… which is one of the main reasons why the Leahys, Belknaps, etc. have passed into history – the ability to control only, 2 or 4 missiles at a time does not stand up in the saturation age. Brings back memories of when we were playing Harpoon in the mid-80's….. when the VLS Ticos were game changers.

Two words – underway replenishment.

We're good at it, our potential foes, not so much.

Right now my understanding is underway replenishment does not include missiles, although as of 2017 solving that was an active program.

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The inability to reload a Tico or Burke at sea was one of the inspirations for the Arsenal Ship concept.

More missiles on small ship means more rocket fuel and explosives sitting about just waiting maybe for years, to be used, for an accident or damage.

Though perhaps the old Cold war Russian trick of lots of big empty boxes is the answer.

Brings back memories of when we were playing Harpoon in the mid-80's….. when the VLS Ticos were game changers.

Not too long ago we played a brief scenario set in the South China Sea near Taiwan in which a US Arleigh Burke and a Taiwanese Perry class frigate are doing a "freedom of navigation" patrol when things go sideways. Concept was an aggressive move by PLAN ships to intimidate the US/Taiwan ships, including aiming active fire control radars at the two ships. When the US and Taiwan frigates do the same, the PLAN ships mistake it as an attack and launch missiles.

Basically the two US/Taiwan ships had to survive a series of escalating attacks until air cover could arrive. The PLAN side had various assets that it activated and brought into the game to simulate the Chinese bringing more assets into the fight. The Chinese player acted on the assumption they were doing a hasty response rather than a concerted attack and fed units into action as soon as they were rolled up.

While the Taiwanese frigate was seriously damaged, the Burke was not and the PLAN lost a Jiangwei II frigate, two Houbei class missile boats and 17 aircraft, as well as damage to several other ships.

Frigates should not be carrying more than about 8 Harpoons as their anti-ship loadout, and Harpoons aren't loaded into the VLS anyways.

Their VLS needs to be a mix of ESSM and SM2s for point defense, with the rest of the load being VL-ASROCs to hunt submarines.

Assuming a 32-cell VLS (the size of a Burke's forward VLS), I'd make it 8 cells of ESSM quadpacks for 32x ESSMs, 8-12x SM2s, and then 12-16x ASROCs.

If you are going to add Tomahawks, that would be at the expense of ASROCs and SM2s, so I wouldn't take more than 4x Tomahawks, lowering the totals to 8x quadpacks, 8x SM2s, 12x ASROCs, and 4x Tomahawks.