Stealth warships to form core of Singapore navy

last SG · 2003-11-15T00:14:14+00:00

Actually RSN & any navies has exercise on ship to ship transfer at sea for training. Commercial or miltary oilers r meant for refueling of ships at high...

Blockhead SG

I don't have much knowledge about anti-ship missiles, so following this thread has been an educational experience. Smile

Anyway, it seems that some of the pple here have raised the problem of using supersonic missiles in a crowded environment like our surrounding waters. I was wondering if satellites would be able to help solve this problem by providing realtime info on the target? Just throwing an idea about..... Mr. Green

foxtrout8 SG

To wd1 :

Dear pal , i disagree generally with u.

1) I agree that Supersonic missile have way much advantages than subsonic missiles in terms of evading interception and detection. U had said a great deal abt it , however i had already illustrated that such supersonic missiles aint the optimum choice for our Frigate. Basically , it cant engage precise targets in crowded environment of our region and without supersonic missiles , we aint at all at the lower end. So why supersonic missiles for Singapore?

2) U had stated that our Frigates are for power projections and they need 4 legged missiles. I believe u had missed the importance of wire guilded missile on our the frigates which are suspose to replace our MGBs. If our MGBs had been replaced by the Frigates and if the Frigate aint armed with wire guided missiles , who will do the close range cum very precise engagement?

3) I stated that supersonic missiles aint an reliable aspect in naval engagement currently. It can be justifiy as we see that the western navies ( in fact most of the world navies ) do not arm their ships with such weapons. U debated that the reason why Americans aint investing into such system because their unmatchable naval fleet is able to give cover to their ships ( am i right here ? ). However , i wonder do the British navy , the Spanish Navy , the Japanese Navy etc think likewise that their fleet air arm can cover their ships , thus not investing into supersonic missiles?

4) U had stated that the supersonic is almost unstoppable when it is fired. However i had already stated that our Frigates stealthy design cum advance electronic make us virtually 'not there' at a range of 200 to 300km away. U had not thought on wats the use when our enemy's ships were destroyed b4 they can even detect our ships?

My illustration ( above )had said that our ships first look capability will certainly give us a first kill capability. Even if our ships were detected early , we still have the capability to shoot first and kill first using NG-subsonic missiles such as the Exocet Bk3 against most of our enemy's ships (armed with most of the general supersonic missiles except afew).

foxtrout8 SG

So my stand is that not until that Supersonic missiles are more 1) Reliable , 2) Agile , 3) Accurate , 4) Manovearable and 5) proven , i doubt MinDef will buy the idea.

At most , i believe Mindef is onli interested in engaging into supersonic missile research , but not a straight intergration onto our flagship Frigate due next Jan.

eurofighter SG

Though officially stated that the Deltas are the replacement for the MGBs, I believe that RSN will hold on to the MGBs till another similar platform of that size and capability is introduced. The RSN will be at the lossing end in littorial warfare without the MGBs and its Gabriel. The actual replacement could be in the form of ST Marine OPVs armed with short to medium range SSMs or fitting Gabriels permanently on our PVs.

YourFather SG

I agree that the US builds its weapons based on its perceived needs first and foremost - to not do so would be stupid. But to write off the Harpoon as expensive and lousy, that's underrating it. I cannot proclaim to be an expert on ASMs, but let me give you a post on another forum by one who is well versed...

"Don't hold your breath. Statements like that are an absurd
over-simplification. The Russian anti-ship missiles represent one set of
technical solutions to penetrating anti-missile defenses. They are not
the only set of solutions to those requirements nor are they necessarily
the best.

The Russian attention to hypersonics had its costs. The missiles are big
and heavy. limiting the number that can be carried. Their high speed
causes severe airframe heating that prevents them using infra-red
guidance. It also commits them to a straight run-in course (or, at best,
gentle curves). They have a heat plume that a thermal sight can detect
while the missile is still kilometers over the horizon.

There are such things as adaptive and iterative guidance systems that can
be applied to subsonic missiles that simply cannot be used on the
hypersonics. Subsonics have much lower signatures so can be more
difficult to spot. They don't guzzle fuel like hypersonics so can deliver
equal punch in a much smaller airframe. And so it goes.

For your information; Russian-style hypersonics are known as "streakers",
Western style highly agile subsonics as "dancers". Both have their place
but their relative merits are still being evaluated with great passion.

What is startling is how few of their naval weapons the Russians have
actually sold. P-270 Moskit has gone to China and they have sold 96 Kh-35
Harpoonski to Algeria. Contrary to your repeated assertions, they have
not sold any of their naval weapons to the US. They have sold a small
number of M-31 target drones to the US via Boeing on the simple logic
that it was cheaper to buy the actual missile in question than to spend
money developing a simulator. M-31 is a version of Kh-31, a short-range
air-to-surface missile, roughly equivalent to Maverick.

As a point of factual accuracy, neither the US nor the UK nor any other
major western sea power has adopted or has any plans to adopt any Russian
designed weapons system.

As a point of factual accuracy, according to SIPRI, Russia is now the 5th
largest arms supplier in the world in terms of value of signed contracts
and its relative position is declining.

I would like to revise my first sentence. please do hold your breath
while waiting, you'll find the experience instructive

Stuart [Slade]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Streakers and dancers complicate intercept in two ways. If we take the
intercept window of a crude, basic anti-ship missile (subsonic,
straight-in) as a baseline there are two options. The first is to use the
Russian approach and get the missile to cross that intercept zone as
quickly as posisble. This means adopting the shortest path across it and
flying that path as fast as possible. Hence P-270. This is a perfectly
viable approach.

The second is to stretch the time the CIWS needs to destroy the missile
to the longest possible point. In effect, this (a) reduces the percentage
chance of the system killing the missile and (b)reduces the number of
inbound systems a single CIWS can engage. One way of doing this is to use
an iterative guidance system in the missile. This works by giving the
missile a fine-cut radar receiver which picks up and localizes the
emissions from the CIWS fire control system. The missile knows its own
course and speed, it now knows the position of the CIWS (and can work out
the course and speed of the target). The computer in the missile knows
the algorithms used by the closed loop tracking system in the CIWS to
correct the aim of the CIWS. it can therefore work out what the firing
correction applied by the CIWS will be and alter the missile's flight
path to be somewhere else. This system is a service reality.

A third method is to physically shrink the envelope. The outer edge of
the intercept window is set by the maximum range at which the inbound
missile can be spotted, the inner edge is the range at which wreckage
from the shot-down missile will still strike the target ship. We can push
the outer edge in by flying the missile lower, by making it more
difficult to spot and by reducing its emissions. We can pull the inner
edge outwards by making sure the shot-down wreckage travels faster.

Putting all this together means that existing streakers fulfill
rerquirement (a) very well at expense of (b). In terms of (c), the
significantly pull the inner edge back (from 1 km to around 2.5) but have
major sacrifices in the outer edge. Their level of airframe heating,
their heat plume, the altitude at which they fly, their active radar
emissions, all mean they can be detected well over the horizon.

On the other hand, dancers make major gains in (b) at cost of performance
in (a). They sacrifice the inner edge of the engagement zone but achieve
major gains in reducing the outer edge by being inconspicuous. Typically,
they come in with their radars off (homing on command or IR), they are
coated with RAM (which streakers can't use since it burns off), they have
little airfrme heating and only a limited plume.

In summary, streakers move fast but have a larger, more distant intercept
zone. dancers move more slowly and evasively and have a much smaller
intercept zone, closer to the target ship. Close your eyes and visualize
it, you'll see what I mean.

This leads to a curious point which comes back to the Soviet's lack of
systems analysis. They designed P-270 to exploit certain weaknesses in
the SPY-1 radar performance. This it does, but by looking at a single bit
of equipment in isolation, they neglected to evaluate the target system
as a whole. Had they done so, they'd have found they'd managed to push
the intercept envelope back into an area where AEGIS works very, very
well. Once Standard SM-2 had been given an IR auxiliary homing system,
it was more than capable of shooting the P-270s out of the sky. Its
essential to think system-to-system NOT weapon-to-weapon.

On average a P-270 weighs about 4.5 times as much as a Harpoon. This
loads the odds in favor of Dancers - remember effectiveness is related to
squares of numbers.

Your comments about Yakhonts containers do not represent new technology
or anything particularly unusual - most western missiles have been
delivered that way since the late 1960s. We treat them as "wooden rounds"
- get them, slip them into the rails, hook them up, run a self-diagnostic
then adjust people's attitude with them.

Sadly, I can deny the Russians are achieving a lot of success; I say
sadly because I thought they were going to do a lot better than they
have. Their equipment has stirred up a lot of interest but relatively
little of that has translated into sales. Where it has, it is usually
because of a lack of any opposition. Malaya represents the only case
where Russian equipment has secured an order in the face of Western
competition.

Stuart "

The Standard which he was referring to is the SM-2 Block IIIB... I believe that after reading his post, one can conclude that the seemingly much poorer performance Harpoon may not necessarily be that bad when compared to its Soviet counterparts..

wd1 SG

ohhh shit!!! i forgot the frigates are replacing our MGBs. of course we still need those gabriels for accurate pointblank range plinking, they're very impt there still. agree wholeheartedly on that. the MGBs' small size and agility make them great for hiding between big merchant ships and ambushing enemies too.

i was talking mainly on the open-ocean arena, and admittedly concentrating on harpoon-bashing at that. but i really doubt harpoon can be considered a cutting-edge missile anymore. if as u said our as-good-as-invisible frigates shot first, the harpoon will get shot down easily by his CIWS and the enemy will know he's being hunted and the general direction of our ship.

u have a point though on how come many other navies all use harpoon. u win here...maybe coz its reliable and proven and commonly used? i dunno...

basically my pt was that harpoon is getting overtaken by new missiles, and to have an advantage the RSN should buy a new-tech faster missile. i think whats impt is not strictly whether an antiship missile is supersonic or not, but that it is fast and survivable enough to beat a warship's self defense systems and kill it. harpoon is not. if exocet 3 which goes at almost double harpoon's speed (mach0.5 vs 0.9) is good enough lets use it. thats what ure saying rite.

kinda noe more abt brahmos and sunburn... first time ive heard of exocet 3, so was trying to promote the first two a bit haha. i'll go check exocet 3 out yeah?

gary1910 SG

Just a thought, I once read that the Fearless class PV was supposed to be 6 ASW ships & 6 Anti-ship wif Gabriel missiles, when they were commissioned only 6 r ASW & the other armed wif guns.

Maybe becos they plan to transfer the launchers to the 6 PVs after they have decomissioned the MGBs to save cost.

Joe Black SG

You are right - I also read that 6 (actually now 5, given one had an accident) are anti-ship PVs. They are fitted for Gabriel II. I think RSN still have sufficient launchers, at least 18 (3 launchers per ships when they replaced those with 4 Harpoons).

eurofighter SG

Wasn’t the one lost in the accident an anti-sub PV?

eurofighter SG

~~Double post~~

foxtrout8 SG

Yesh , that one is an Anti-sub version.

foxtrout8 SG

I doubt the existence of such confriguration. Firstly Mindef nv breath a word abt such intergration and there are no photo susgesting it's existence. Even if there are such confrIguration available, we still have to consider arming our Deltas with wire guided missiles.

U see , if our Deltas aint armed with precision wire guided missiles , she will face problems of which she can detect enemy vessels approaching however unable to engage due to the constraints posed by the surrounding environment. Imagine if 2 enemy vessels will to be posing threat in the northern end of the Malacca straits and due to the crowded environment of the strait , the Deltas cant engage the enemy with her main Harpoon SSM. So now , are we going to wait for PVs to arrive or wait for the enemy vessel to strike?

For our Delta Frigate to be a all roundedcombatant , we must equipped her with the different classes of weaponaries for different classes of engagement. It will certainly explain why the Israeli DF is arming her Saar5 Corvette with the Harpoon and the Gabriel SSMs eventhough that ship is very obvious a blue water combatant.

Matlaysia SG

Originally posted by foxtrout8:

I doubt the existence of such confriguration. Firstly Mindef nv breath a word abt such intergration and there are no photo susgesting it's existence. Even if there are such confrIguration available, we still have to consider arming our Deltas with wire guided missiles.

U see , if our Deltas aint armed with precision wire guided missiles , she will face problems of which she can detect enemy vessels approaching however unable to engage due to the constraints posed by the surrounding environment. Imagine if 2 enemy vessels will to be posing threat in the northern end of the Malacca straits and due to the crowded environment of the strait , the Deltas cant engage the enemy with her main Harpoon SSM. So now , are we going to wait for PVs to arrive or wait for the enemy vessel to strike?

For our Delta Frigate to be a [b]all roundedcombatant , we must equipped her with the different classes of weaponaries for different classes of engagement. It will certainly explain why the Israeli DF is arming her Saar5 Corvette with the Harpoon and the Gabriel SSMs eventhough that ship is very obvious a blue water combatant.[/b]

IMHO, thats where the naval helicopter will come in. Armed with 2 penguin or sea skua missiles, it will be able to disable or take out the enemy vessel. After all, one can hardy expect the gabriel to sink a large combantant

gary1910 SG

I think our frigate better suited for much more rough sea like south china sea ,therefore it should be good enough in "current" configuration. As for coastal water around SG, a Gabriel armed PV should be much more suitable, dun you think?

I think Mindef did not armed them with missiles so not be too alarming to our neighbours & will only armed them during a crisis.
Becos a 500 tonnes PV only armed wif gun is such a waste in my opinion, and I dun think Mindef is so stupid. As the matter of fact, it has almost twice the tonnage as compare wif the MGBs, there are a lot more room than the MGBs for more armament, if they r armed to their potential, I dun think you or I could even recognise it! Mr. Green

Anyway a SG naval task force include not just only the Frigate but other vessal like the corvettes ,PVs,MPA & maybe even the subs to compliment eachother during operation. So therefore your argument does not really hold water.

Fairyland SG

http://mzak.webzdarma.cz/motory/microturbo/microturbo_motory.php

Anyone knows what engine is Brahmos using?

wd1 SG

ramjet, thats all i know...

what abt polyphem as a gabriel substitute/replacement?

its a 60km range IIR missile that has the option of fibreoptic guidance just like our spikes... the operator can fly the missile around crowded SLOCs and find and identify and hit the enemy ship. the ultimate IFF is the human eye, IMO.

20kg warhead is a bit small... but its so accurate (10cm CEP) the operator can aim it at some vital part of the ship (bridge, magazine) and disable it wif one or two shots...

wd1 SG

a good link:

http://www.global-defence.com/2001/MSpart4.html

YourFather, that was a great post!! where'd u get it from?

if its some forum, can recommend me?

foxtrout8 SG

think our frigate better suited for much more rough sea like south china sea ,therefore it should be good enough in "current" configuration. As for coastal water around SG, a Gabriel armed PV should be much more suitable, dun you think?

No Gary , pardon mi but i dun think u get the idea.

U see ,u are right to say that our Frigate is build for blue water operations , but however havent u read my senario above? Imagine if our Frigate is patroling northern Malacca Strait and it detect enemy vessels among rows and rows of civilian ships. If our Frigates are not armed with wire guilded missile , she do not have the optimum weapon to nengage u know? So are u going to tell mi that the Delta will wait for the PVs to arrive and engage or wait for our enemy to engage?

Why do u think the Israelis armed their Saar5 with two different type of missiles ( Harpoon cum Gabriel )? For fun?

I think Mindef did not armed them with missiles so not be too alarming to our neighbours & will only armed them during a crisis.

Do u know that the RMN have more Naval vessels than Singapore? Annoucing that we can arm 6 PVs with missile aint going to be hostile.

Becos a 500 tonnes PV only armed wif gun is such a waste in my opinion, and I dun think Mindef is so stupid. As the matter of fact, it has almost twice the tonnage as compare wif the MGBs, there are a lot more room than the MGBs for more armament, if they r armed to their potential, I dun think you or I could even recognise it! Mr. Green

I did some search and i find out that there are rooms of the Gabriel however since the Mindef aint confirming , lets dun put so much bet.

Anyway a SG naval task force include not just only the Frigate but other vessal like the corvettes ,PVs,MPA & maybe even the subs to compliment eachother during operation. So therefore your argument does not really hold water.

Wrong Gary. If u will to look at our navy orbat , u will like to see a defensive fleet and an offensive fleet. Bear in mind that when the MGB is being replace , that means that no ships will be carrying Gabriel. Even if the PVs are to carry Gabriel , u have to understand that PVs are brown to green water ships. Are u telling mi that when the Frigates is in blue water operation , the brown/green water ship follows and provide cover?

So the arguement is , the Frigates being the onli blue water fighting ship require wire guided missiles because she may require such engagment in the open. We mustnt put to much bet onto fleet support If all our vessels are blue water ships , i will buy that , but our vessels are varying. Imagine if our Deltas will to be send to the Arabian Gulf , are u saying that our PVs have to follow jus to provide that cover? Wat if in the Arabian Gulf , the Deltas require such engagement?

Why do u think that EAD is marketing her Polyphem to blue water navies? Why do u think that Israel is arming her Saar5 85m boat with two different class of weapon?

foxtrout8 SG

U have a very good argument here , but even so torpedo armed helicopters nv deter Ships to be armed with torpedo. LOL Mr. Green

gary1910 SG

1)First thing first, our fleet was designed & meant to operate in the regional water .

2) There are the ASW PVs in our naval striking arm, therefore you said there are no PV is wrong.

3) Even if we would to send our Frigates to far off region as you said the Gulf region, it will not be alone but will be wif the US naval task force or other true blue navy, SG frigate could only be the supporting role. RSN will be stupid to send them to operation elsewhere w/o air cover or other true blue navy, agree?

4)There is much more than meet the eye for RSN, a good example is the PV, bigger & have twice the tonnage as compare wif our MGBs, yet only armed wif guns!!! It is not logical to build such big ship & yet only armed wif guns???
As the matter of fact, I believe they all could perform both ASW & antiship role at the same time, there r certainly enough room.
Therefore I would say that we dun have the true picture of RSN to even argue abt what should be armed or not.

Note:
Victory Class corvettes-600tons 62.4 x 8.5 x 3.1m
Fearless Class PV-500tons 55 x 8.6 x 2.4m
Seawolf MGB -254tons 44.9 x 7 x 2.3m
From here, the Fearless class is just slightly smaller than the Victory class corvettes.

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