‘BLACK SWAN’ Class Sloop-Of-War

[Yellow Palace]

However, the UK said "fuck your crew" and kept doing it up through Astute.

The specific reference in the concept note is 'ASTUTE standard'.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The specific reference in the concept note is 'ASTUTE standard'.

Okay, IIRC that was roughly USN standard for subs, no hot racking allowed. So coffin racks 3 high, maybe 3 sets of those in a bunkroom. Officers get to share their room with one other officer.

But the RN won't stop hot-racking until the last T-class boat is retired!

 

[Yellow Palace]

But the RN won't stop hot-racking until the last T-class boat is retired!

That'll be last December, then - TRIUMPH entered Devonport on 12th December to prepare for formal decommissioning this year.

 

[TinWing]

I really don't see any issue with an 8 man crew for a 12 knot peacetine transit from Portsmouth to Bahrain, aside from the current situation in the Red Sea. A longer transit around the Cape would be great fun with a few ports of call. The accommodations aren't the major issue with design. You don't need massive accommodations for a small motivated transit crew and you fly mission specialists to the port closest to the patrol area and rotate them out every 90 days. A transit aboard a ship like this could be a major career milestone for lifers.

The concept has aged badly in terms of idiosyncratic bellow deck hangar and elevator. Looking at the City class MCM vessels, you need the space aft for davits for USVs. Arguably, for a mulirole vessel, you'd need longer and heavier davits to accommodate longer and heavier fully manned patrol craft up to 16 meters instead of the 11 to 12 meters more typical of current USVs. Think of CB90s or Damen's route survey boat. Aft space would also be useful for Mk70 containerized launchers or other modular missile systems. I'd also question the stern arrangement as a conventional transom would be more useful for a containerized active towed array or the heavyweight torpedo tubes that are back in fashion. Launching ramps are fine for coast guard functions but take up valuable real estate in an era increasingly concerned with ASW.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I really don't see any issue with an 8 man crew for a 12 knot peacetine transit from Portsmouth to Bahrain, aside from the current situation in the Red Sea. A longer transit around the Cape would be great fun with a few ports of call. The accommodations aren't the major issue with design. You don't need massive accommodations for a small motivated transit crew and you fly mission specialists to the port closest to the patrol area and rotate them out every 90 days. A transit aboard a ship like this could be a major career milestone for lifers.

I'd want the mission specialists still officially assigned to the ship, though. It makes problems with mission gear their problem, not the problem of the ship crew.

Example, Blue/Gold crews on USN subs and LCS. When the USN tried multiple crews without the crews being officially part of the ship (3x FFGs getting decommissioned, but the crews were assigned as a whole to a deployed FFG), the ship almost didn't make it home it was in such piss-poor condition. The crews didn't care about it at all.

The concept has aged badly in terms of idiosyncratic bellow deck hangar and elevator. Looking at the City class MCM vessels, you need the space aft for davits for USVs. Arguably, for a mulirole vessel, you'd need longer and heavier davits to accommodate longer and heavier fully manned patrol craft up to 16 meters instead of the 11 to 12 meters more typical of current USVs. Think of CB90s or Damen's route survey boat. Aft space would also be useful for Mk70 containerized launchers or other modular missile systems. I'd also question the stern arrangement as a conventional transom would be more useful for a containerized active towed array or the heavyweight torpedo tubes that are back in fashion.

Agreed here.

Launching ramps are fine for coast guard functions but take up valuable real estate in an era increasingly concerned with ASW.

They do, but I'd keep them.