RN Type 84 Destroyer: Predecessor to Horizon, Successor to NFR-90?

[TinWing]

Design studies for the UKRN Air Defense Frigate (then designated the Type 84 Destroyer) covered a wide range of single- and double-ended options.

http://www.forecastinternational.com/Archive/ws/ws11473.htm

Original British design studies for the Type 84 destroyer (the precursor to the Project Horizon Common New Generation frigate) featured a Seawolf secondary battery mounted amidships with four Type 911 trackers. This gave a most impressive eight-channel missile-based close-in weapon system (CIWS).

http://www.forecastinternational.com/archive/rs/rs5692.htm

The Type 8X nseries designation indicates a multi-purpose escort, rather than the ASW oriented Type 2X series or the AAW oriented Type 4X series. It raises the question of how the preceding NFR-90 was designated by the RN?

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Forecast International
Original British design studies for the Type 84 destroyer (the precursor to the Project Horizon Common New Generation frigate) featured a Seawolf secondary battery mounted amidships with four Type 911 trackers. This gave a most impressive eight-channel missile-based close-in weapon system (CIWS).

Each Seawolf guidance system (Type 911) can only engage one target. That they can guide two missiles to each target is significant because it is not a semi active radar homing (SARH) guidance system but a command guidance system. So each missile needs to be tracked by the guidance system to ensure a hit rather than just let to follow their noses as in SARH. A simple SARH target tracker/illuminator can conceivably enable an infinite number of missiles to engage that single target.

So the Type 84 did NOT have an "eight channel" anti missile Seawolf missile system. It only had a four channel system. Compared to interrupted continuous wave illumination (ICWI) systems in which the targets are tracked by a phased array search radar that provides mid course update to missiles which only then need terminal SARH illumination even a four channel command guidance system (Type 84's Seawolf) is considerably inferior. As the Seawolf target tracker needs to stay on the target from missile launch to terminal interception the time between servicing sequential targets is far more than the ICWI system so the total number of targets that can be intercepted is far lower.

Edited

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Libel and defamation are the same thing Tin Wing – just that libel is specifically a written word form of defamation. I have no idea what Sealord wrote but if you are attributing libel to my comments about the inaccuracy of Forecast International’s ‘analysis’ then you are way of market. Under any interpretation what I wrote was fair comment and criticism. Especially in response to correcting a supposedly analytical statement made by Forecast which I have shown to be completely wrong. Methinks you are crossing your poster and moderator hats here.

 

[Mercurius Cantabrigiensis]

Each Seawolf guidance system (Type 911) can only engage one target. That they can guide two missiles to each target is significant because it is not a semi active radar homing (SARH) guidance system but a command guidance system. So each missile needs to be tracked by the guidance system to ensure a hit rather than just let to follow their noses as in SARH.

You are correct. If you look at the radar used in the original GMW25 system you can see that it has two secondary parabolic antennas. There were for the two command links needed for a two-missile salvo. The system did have an EO mode, but this was an alternate mode rather than a secondary mode. The tracker could not use radar to track one target and EO to track another - the two sensors used the same boresight.