Global Combat Ship may look silly, but if you want to export it, it's a destroyer to the navy that wants to sound big and scary, and a frigate to the navy which wants to sound frugal.

Could some one kindly explain to me why you need a vessel of 5400 tons to put to sea a gun, a missile silo and a helicopter?

The RN will be lucky to get 8!

Ok Biggus, how much detail would you like?

"Could some one kindly explain to me why you need a vessel of 5400 tons to put to sea a gun, a missile silo and a helicopter?"

Biggus - wah shield on! You could put this on a smaller vessel, but time has shown that smaller vessels tend to be more difficult to upgrade through their lives. One of the limitations on current ships (T23s) is that they are at the very upper margins of their design limits, and we are limited on what we can do with them.

More space means its easier to upgrade over their lifespan, cheaper to fit new equipment (no immensely complex refits to plug new capability into, aka Leander mid life updates). It also means more space to add new capability over time to allow the ship to carry out new roles, not forseen at the time of design.

Other considerations include the space allowing for better living conditions, which is a major retention issue - no point having lots of ships if the highly trained, highly educated crew, who could walk outside to a much better paying civvy street job, aren't staying in. We'd just end up with lots of gapped posts, and less effective vessels.

Tourist,

As much as you have the time/energy/enthusiasm to write.

Perhaps you might also like to add your thoughts on where the money to buy them will come from...


Jimlad,

If your able to say so, what modifications were under consideration for Type 23s that couldn't be carried out due to lack of space/weight?

Phalanx for one. Its also a question of available deckspace as well.

I love the 'Due to enter service after 2020' part. That way, they can never be accused of being late!

Jimlad makes some good points - the early type 42's were probably too small for all the gubbins they loaded on to it

the answers might be to accept less capability but the Admiralty wnat a ship capable of fighting at the top level - when 99% of its life it'll be chasing Somali's and drug runners or acting as a relief vessel

Well, I thought from the thread title that a humorous 'my impression of boat' joke was on the cards. I was quite disappointed to find a serious thread.

CWD

Steel's not that expensive. Even marine propulsion hardware isn't anything like military aero engines in terms of price per unit of power. People are one big driver in ship through-life costs, and another is upgrading.