LPD Al Fulk

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Today, Fincantieri has officially handed over, at Muggiano shipyard, the amphibious vessel LPD “Al Fulk” to the Ministry of Defence of Qatar as the completion of a significant naval program for the Qatari Navy. This unit, equipped with a large flight deck that can host NH90 helicopters, a spacious garage with two vehicle ramps, and a floodable internal dock capable of deploying landing craft, is designed according to RINAMIL standards, ensuring exceptional performance in air, sea, and land operations. This allows the vessel to undertake a range of missions, from humanitarian aid to defense operations and support for ground forces.

The Al Fulk ship is derived by the San Giorgio class similar to the Algerian Kalaat Béni Abbès. The ship measures long and 21.5 metres wide, it could carry up to three NH-90 helicopters.

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That is the weirdest hybrid I've ever seen. I guess it makes sense for the UAE, it that for sure not a concept we're going to see widely emulated.
 
mirco1961 said:
absolutely no, is a project (similar to the Algeria Ship) for second row navies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_amphibious_transport_dock_Kalaat_Béni_Abbès
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It's the UAE implementation that's weird, not the basic hull.

Unlike Kalaat Beni Abbes, Al Fulk is also an air defence vessel, intended to work in conjunction with the Emirati Al Zubarah class corvettes

www.navalnews.com

Fincantieri Delivers Air Defense LPD “Al-Fulk” to Qatar - Naval News

Fincantieri has officially handed over the amphibious vessel “Al Fulk” (Landing Platform Dock – LPD) to the Ministry of Defence of Qatar.
www.navalnews.com www.navalnews.com
 
DWG said:
It's the UAE implementation that's weird, not the basic hull.

Unlike Kalaat Beni Abbes, Al Fulk is also an air defence vessel, intended to work in conjunction with the Emirati Al Zubarah class corvettes

www.navalnews.com

Fincantieri Delivers Air Defense LPD “Al-Fulk” to Qatar - Naval News

Fincantieri has officially handed over the amphibious vessel “Al Fulk” (Landing Platform Dock – LPD) to the Ministry of Defence of Qatar.
www.navalnews.com www.navalnews.com
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To be fair, the Al Zubarahs are also pretty odd -- 16 ASTER 30 but no space for the big volume search radar needed to take proper advantage of it. Which is what the Al Fulk brings. But it's hard to see how it hangs together. Seems like a trio of FREMMs (a cross between the French DA and the Italian GP) would have cost about the same and been rather more versatile.
 
TomS said:
To be fair, the Al Zubarahs are also pretty odd -- 16 ASTER 30 but no space for the big volume search radar needed to take proper advantage of it. Which is what the Al Fulk brings. But it's hard to see how it hangs together. Seems like a trio of FREMMs (a cross between the French DA and the Italian GP) would have cost about the same and been rather more versatile.
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FREMMs don't have docks. The full length flight deck and dock mean it can do disaster relief as well, which is an important mission for amphibious landing ships in most navies. I'd even go so far as to say it is a primary mission for many of the designs.

Landing craft and helicopters for transport to and fro, cargo volume for trucks and supplies, berthing space for personnel, hospital space for sick and wounded, they are useful ships for peacetime missions. Witness the proliferation of the Makassar class designs. They aren't exactly first line ships, but for disaster relief in the South China Sea archipelagos and landing a few marines to fight rebels they are fine. These just have some additional air defense, since they will frequently be deployed on their own and drones and missiles are now a thing to worry about.
 
apparition13 said:
FREMMs don't have docks. The full length flight deck and dock mean it can do disaster relief as well, which is an important mission for amphibious landing ships in most navies. I'd even go so far as to say it is a primary mission for many of the designs.

Landing craft and helicopters for transport to and fro, cargo volume for trucks and supplies, berthing space for personnel, hospital space for sick and wounded, they are useful ships for peacetime missions. Witness the proliferation of the Makassar class designs. They aren't exactly first line ships, but for disaster relief in the South China Sea archipelagos and landing a few marines to fight rebels they are fine. These just have some additional air defense, since they will frequently be deployed on their own and drones and missiles are now a thing to worry about.
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But that's not the whole story here. This LPD is meant as a sort of leader or command ship for a swarm of under-equipped "air defense corvettes" without full sized radar. So the corvettes do not work well without Al Fulk accompanying them. That really limits it's ability to simultaneously do standard LPD missions.

And a basic LPD with only self-defense armament (more like the Algerian version) has to be a lot cheaper.

I suspect that 3 FREMM ADs and a basic LPD would still end up similar in cost. Though the big Kronos radar likely isn't cheap.
 
Definitely a 'quart in a pint pot'. It looks like they started building the middle of the ship, working towards the ends .... and ran out of money..... :p
 
I would like to emphasize that this ship is for Qatar, not the U.A.E., as some in this thread seem to believe.

Put in most simple terms, the Qatari order from Fincantieri and MBDA in 2016 was about protecting Qatari waters and energy platforms from missile threats - most notably, that of cruise missile or ballistic missile attack from Iran. Thus, the major vessels of this force are designed to be able to operate in this BMD role.

In order to be effective in such a role, it was necessary to fit a powerful long-range search radar - in this case the Kronos Power Shield (an L-band, GaN AESA with element-level beamforming). This type of radar is too large to fit on any surface combatant smaller than a large AAW frigate - hence why they are usually reserved for destroyers or very specific AAW-oriented frigate designs. Such vessels were beyond Qatar in terms of cost if they wanted an acceptable number of ships, so they opted to mount it on an LPD instead. The San Giorgio type LPD's are large enough to mount such a radar (base version is 8,000 tonnes, this version is 8,800 to 9,000 tonnes), retains utility in a variety of other roles, and is relatively low cost.

Al Fulk's role is command and control oriented, and aside from the obvious amphibious and aviation (rotary) potential of the ship, its major role is long-range volume search for early warning of missile attack, particularly ballistic missile attack. This allows it to cue the both its own multifunction radar and those of the four Al Zubarah-class corvettes (MFRA/Kronos Grand Naval, a C-band GaAs AESA) on to incoming missiles (sharing the track via datalink), allowing for them to track and engage the threat more rapidly than they would be able to otherwise. This is especially important in endo-atmospheric ballistic missile defense, because your defended area is directly related to the altitude at which you can actually intercept the RV.

And this really is the central role. Al Fulk and the four corvettes are each fitted with 16x Sylver A50 VLS, and the Qatari's exclusively ordered Aster 30 Block 1 to fill these cells (no Aster 15 - short range air defense comes via RAM and the 76mm guns).

Needless to say, it's a very niche ship.
 
Phoenix_jz said:
I would like to emphasize that this ship is for Qatar, not the U.A.E., as some in this thread seem to believe.
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My mistake, I read Qatar and wrote UAE, d'oh!

OTOH I'm not convinced a shore-based radar installation wouldn't have been just as useful for cueing the air defence corvettes.
 
Phoenix_jz said:
Put in most simple terms, the Qatari order from Fincantieri and MBDA in 2016 was about protecting Qatari waters and energy platforms from missile threats - most notably, that of cruise missile or ballistic missile attack from Iran. Thus, the major vessels of this force are designed to be able to operate in this BMD role.

In order to be effective in such a role, it was necessary to fit a powerful long-range search radar - in this case the Kronos Power Shield (an L-band, GaN AESA with element-level beamforming). This type of radar is too large to fit on any surface combatant smaller than a large AAW frigate - hence why they are usually reserved for destroyers or very specific AAW-oriented frigate designs. Such vessels were beyond Qatar in terms of cost if they wanted an acceptable number of ships, so they opted to mount it on an LPD instead. The San Giorgio type LPD's are large enough to mount such a radar (base version is 8,000 tonnes, this version is 8,800 to 9,000 tonnes), retains utility in a variety of other roles, and is relatively low cost.

Al Fulk's role is command and control oriented, and aside from the obvious amphibious and aviation (rotary) potential of the ship, its major role is long-range volume search for early warning of missile attack, particularly ballistic missile attack. This allows it to cue the both its own multifunction radar and those of the four Al Zubarah-class corvettes (MFRA/Kronos Grand Naval, a C-band GaAs AESA) on to incoming missiles (sharing the track via datalink), allowing for them to track and engage the threat more rapidly than they would be able to otherwise. This is especially important in endo-atmospheric ballistic missile defense, because your defended area is directly related to the altitude at which you can actually intercept the RV.

And this really is the central role. Al Fulk and the four corvettes are each fitted with 16x Sylver A50 VLS, and the Qatari's exclusively ordered Aster 30 Block 1 to fill these cells (no Aster 15 - short range air defense comes via RAM and the 76mm guns).

Needless to say, it's a very niche ship.
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It's still only 16x missiles per ship.

Less protected than a US Constellation-class!
 
This LPD/Corvette relationship is not far removed from the old remote missile battery idea, except that the remote batteries also have other missions to accomplish.
 
DWG said:
My mistake, I read Qatar and wrote UAE, d'oh!

OTOH I'm not convinced a shore-based radar installation wouldn't have been just as useful for cueing the air defence corvettes.
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Or just putting the whole ASTER system on a couple of jack-up rigs in amongst the oil platforms.
 
apparition13 said:
It's 80 cells amongst the 5. And they aren't going to be operating on the other side of the planet. They can probably be reloaded in a day or two.
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It's 80 total cells when their primary threat throws a couple hundred missiles per temper tantrum.
 
Scott Kenny said:
It's 80 total cells when their primary threat throws a couple hundred missiles per temper tantrum.
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Not all of those missiles will be aimed at the assets the LPD and corvettes will be protecting, and even those that could be whittled down the Iron Dome way: anything not on course to strike an asset can be ignored.

That is, until the Iranians have a maneuvering, guided ballistic anti-ship missile.
 
Scott Kenny said:
It's 80 total cells when their primary threat throws a couple hundred missiles per temper tantrum.
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Qatar isn't Israel. They are unlikely to be targeted with that mass of missiles.

They also have other assets. Patriot and NASAMS, Roland may still be operational, I couldn't confirm THAAD but they requested it. With Tyhoon, Rafale, and F-15QAs as well.
 
It actually reminds me of the Chakri Naruebet. It never received, but had provision for an 8 cell Mk-41 VLS.

This design, intended as an "Offshore Patrol Carrier" had potential to be upgraded for such a role.
 

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