Author Archives: parvusimperator

MBT LAW

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There once was a time when the shaped charge warhead was triumphant. The bane of armor engineers. Tanks1 were designed with speed in mind, since it was thought infeasible to protect them against the shaped charge weapon. And there were plenty of formidable anititank weapons to go around, both light and otherwise.

Here, I’m defining “light” as “designed to be operated by one man”. This will become important in a bit.

Of course, in the 1970s, we saw the development of composite armor arrays and explosive reactive armor, both of which made life much harder for the antitank weapons designer. Especially the light antitank weapon designer. The weapons got heavier. The rockets got bigger. Armor got thicker.

Now here we are. Anno Domini 2016. Among the latest and most formidable “light” antitank weapons, we have the RPG-29 and the Panzerfaust 3. We’ve talked about these before. They have tandem warheads. They weigh 40-odd pounds ready to fire. They cannot be relied upon to penetrate the frontal armor of modern tanks. The latest models of Abrams, Leopard 2, and Challenger 2 can all take these rockets and keep coming. I do not yet have good unclassified armor estimates for T-14, but I presume it can do likewise.

From the side aspect, the problem was simpler. Well, sort of. You still have to hit something important. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, American tankers noted that while an RPG-29 could penetrate the side armor of an M1A2, this was not likely to stop the tank. You see, the Abrams is particularly large, and this large armored volume makes it hard to wound enough crewmen or damage enough systems to get the tank to go away when you attack from the side.

To make matters worse for the infantry, armor designers haven’t rested. The frontal armor is thicker (as you’d expect). New side armor kits are available that will defeat the RPG-29.2 Interestingly, this can be done not only with explosive reactive armor arrays, but also with composite armor arrays. And this without making the tank stupidly wide or massively overweight.

So if you’re designing a light antitank weapon, you’re facing a bit of a conundrum. You need a bigger warhead to punch through better armor. You’re already hitting the weight limit for a weapon that can feasibly be carried by one man. Something has to give.

Well, if that something is “cost”, a solution could be found with GUIDANCE! This is the same idea as Eryx, but way better executed. Call Saab Bofors, and ask for the MBT LAW.

The MBT LAW weighs 12.5 kg, and is a single-shot disposable weapon. So it’s heavy, but competitive with RPG-29 and Panzerfaust 3 as far as weight goes. And, unlike those two rockets, it can actually do what it says on the tin, namely kill tanks. It does this by utilizing a fire-and-forget, overflight-top-attack guidance system and a pair of explosively formed penetrators. These fire sequentially, just in case the roof is loaded with ERA.

Additionally, the MBT LAW is designed to be used in confined spaces without ill effects. It’s just like what’s used on another excellent Saab Bofors product, the AT4-CS. The idea is that there’s a salt-water based countermass in the back of the tube to absorb the backblast, so you can shoot it in a confined space without turning into some cheap barbecue.

Again, the obvious downside is cost, and that’s painful. It’s on the order of 25,000 €, which hurts. That’s about twenty times the cost of an AT4. So where the RPG-29 and PzF 3 strongly encourage a high/low mix, the MBT LAW makes it mandatory. On the other hand, it will actually do what you ask of it and provide a short-range, effective antitank option.

Range on the MBT LAW is 25-600 m. On the one hand, this compares favorably to weapons like the Panzerfaust 3 or RPG-29, which are theoretically useable out to 600 m, but are very difficult to score hits with at that distance if the target decides to move. On the other hand, the cost and weight of the MBT LAW might also cause you to compare it to weapons like the FGM-148 Javelin or Spike-MR ATGMs. Both are fire and forget, and while they have longer minimum ranges, they also have much longer maximum ranges. They’re also more expensive, and are operated by a couple of men.

So now we start thinking about force disposition, system costs, and how our forces move. For mechanized units, I really, really like the American practice of tossing a Javelin in the back of the IFV. And if you’re gonna do that (presumably with some lighter antitank weapons like AT4s to handle the demoliton uses), there’s not much point to also tossing in an MBT LAW. I could see an argument here for using the MBT LAW instead for the dismounts, but the vehicle will handle the weight, and I’m a big fan of ATGMs on IFVs, so we can get some supply commonality that way.

For lighter infantry units, the modest weight savings might make the MBT LAW a really good buy, especially if you’re willing to accept the range. That’s a question for your expected theaters of operations.

1.) E.g. the AMX-30 and, to a lesser extent, the Leopard 1
2.) I know of such kits for the Challenger 2, Abrams (the TUSK kits), and the Leopard 2.

Resurrected Weapons: CVAST turret

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In my article on the many Bradley Variants, I mentioned that there have been a number of efforts to upgrade the gun on the Bradley, including utilizing the 35 x 228 mm caliber. One such design was the CVAST1 demonstrator. I found a good bit of detail on it in a 1986-1987 copy of Jane’s Armour and Artillery.

As a brief side note, I can’t recommend old copies of the Jane’s Information Group yearbooks enough. They’re packed with information, much of which you can’t get anywhere else, and while prices on the latest copies are eye-watering, older ones can be had for a song. This one came to my door for under $10, shipping included.

Anyway, the turret. The CVAST Bradley (there was also a CVAST turret on an M113) was designed around an ARES Talon 35 mm gun. This was a dual feed cannon, and it was compatible with all existing Oerlikon stocks of ammo, plus an (at the time) brand new APFSDS round. The CVAST turret was a “cleft turret” design, which put the turret in two separate manned sections with the gun in between. The gun mechanism itself was in a compartment behind the two crewed sections. This allowed the gun to have an elevation range of -10 degrees to + 60 degrees, and not have to worry about the turret roof getting in the way (or making the Bradley taller still) The commander sat on the left, and the gunner sat on the right. Elevation and traverse were all-electric. The 35 mm gun was fully stabilized.

The CVAST turret had an interesting wedge-shaped front and sides, and provided better protection than the then-current M2A1 turret (especially on the side where the TOW launcher took up some space for armor on the basic model). The CVAST turret could still mount the two-tube TOW launcher on the right side, but the launcher no longer folded down. It could pivot 45 degrees for loading, but remained in the horizontal “fire” position of the folding launcher during transit.

The CVAST turret matched the then-current Bradley for electrics and fire control components, having a thermal viewer, integrated laser rangefinder as well as cant, crosswind, air temperature, and propellant temperature sensors. A fully computerized fire control system was also provided. No independent commander’s thermal viewer was fitted yet (the M2 would not get this capability until the -A3 model was introduced in 2000).

Here’s where it gets very interesting. Listed ammunition capacity for the CVAST turret was 500 rounds. Five Hundred Rounds of the big 35 x 228 mm. Outstanding. That’s the same capacity of a BMP-2, but in a much bigger caliber. I’m not quite sure how this was done, since I don’t have internal turret diagrams. But there you have it. 500 rounds. Damn.

And that pretty much spoils what I think of the turret, doesn’t it? More rounds and bigger rounds? Sign me up. Even if we have to redo the optronics to bring them out of the 80s and augment the armor protection. I don’t care.

Verdict: Approved for Production by the Borgundy Armored Systems Board

1.) Combat Vehicle Armament System Technology

Infantry Protective Kit

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Editor’s note: Back to the land stuff in time for Thanksgiving (at least here in America). Enjoy the long post to make up for all of the naval stuff

Let’s talk protective stuff for the infantryman. There are a mulitude of threats on the modern battlefield, including bullets and shell fragments, and protection from these threats has been a pretty consistent goal for armor designers. Of course, designing for those two threats is very difficult. Fragments are small and do not deform, and can be stopped by kevlar or similar materials. These materials are relatively soft and flexible, but they are heavier than normal fabrics used for uniforms. Bullets, or more specifically, rifle bullets, are a thornier problem. To stop those, you need ceramic plates and a padded backing. These ceramic plates are rigid (of course) and weigh several pounds apiece, so a stormtrooper-looking ensemble is not very practical. Any body armor also has to work with a soldier’s load bearing rig, which carries his ammunition and other stuff. So let’s start at the top and work our way down, shall we?

First, the helmet. We’ve come a long way since the Adrian helmet of 1915. Our helmet of choice is the American Enhanced Combat Helmet1 We’re going to break this one down by components. Let’s start with the shell. Our helmet shell is made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), and comes in a MICH-type2 cut. To understand what I mean by the MICH cut, we’ll have to step back a bit.

The Adrian helmet was the first modern combat helmet, and was based on the shape of firemen’s helmets used in Paris. When the Germans finally came around to the concept, they looked through medieval helmets to come up with the Stahlhelm design. This was the best shape of all helmet designs in World War I, but nobody wanted to look like the “evil Hun”, so they stuck with their own shapes. It was revisited for PASGT,3 when the US Army was making a new kevlar helmet. The Stahlhelm shape really does protect more. It’s just better than the M1 shape it was replacing. So the PASGT helmet was basically a Stahlhelm in modern kevlar. Cool. Except it’s kind of annoyingly large. When a soldier wearing the Interceptor Vest (early 2000s kit), went prone, the collar on the vest would push the helmet down so the brim went in the wearer’s eyes. Also, if you wanted to wear a headset and a helmet, you were out of luck. So the MICH-cut is a trimmed PASGT-cut, to accommodate larger armor vests and communications headsets.

Okay, so that’s the shape. Why not just get a MICH helmet? Because of that UHMWPE stuff. The ECH is thicker than earlier American composite helmets, but it can stop a 7.62x51mm rifle round at point-blank range. To be clear, the regular M80 ball ammo, not the AP stuff. Still. Seven point six two millimeter. Full. Metal. Jacket. And it’ll stop it. That’s freaking awesome. Plus it’s really resistant to fragments. In testing, the test gun was unable to get the fragments going fast enough to make 50% of them pass through.4 So against basic rifle threats and fragment threats, the ECH has you covered.

Internally, the ECH has pads and a four-point H-back strap to hold it on your head, like a bicycle helmet. This is more comfortable than a chinstrap and won’t fall over and hit you in the face if you bend over. So medics will keep their helmets on. Again, this design bit was cribbed from the earlier MICH helmet. A nape pad can be fitted to the ‘crossstrap’ of the H for some added comfort and fragment protection for the base of the neck. The pads are the Team Wendy Epic Air pad kit using their Zorbium foam. It’s a three-piece pad setup that comes in a few different sizes for comfort and providing adequate standoff between the helmet and the head. The Epic Air pads come with air channels to help with cooling.

There are a few other accessories of note. There’s a bracket on the front of the helmet to mount night vision equipment. Fabric helmet covers in standard Borgundian camouflage5 patterns are available, and come with velcro to mount IR recognition patches if desired. A counterweight can be fitted to the back of the helmet to offset the weight of night vision equipment.

Perfect. So that’s the head taken care of. On to the torso. Right now, inspired by foot operations in Afghanistan and a general desire to emulate SOCOM6, plate carriers are all the rage. Simply put, a plate carrier carries hard armor plates (duh) to protect your vital areas from getting perforated from rifle fire. This means front, back, and sometimes side plate pockets of your choice. The alternative is an armor carrier, which has some amount of soft armor (e.g. kevlar) to protect most of the torso from artillery fragments in addition to plate pockets. This is a pretty simple amount-of-protection v. weight tradeoff. What’s your expected threat? In Afghanistan, you’re walking a lot, so weight really sucks. Most of the threats are dudes with rifles. So you want rifle protection, screw the rest. In Iraq, you ride around in vehicles, and IEDs (and their friends high velocity fragments) are a big threat. Plus dudes with rifles. So you want plates and soft armor.

We’ve spilt a lot of virtual ink on IFVs. We’re pretty clearly a heavily mechanized force. And our expected operating theater is good old Europe in a conventional throwdown. I’m old school like that.7 We can expect plenty of artillery threats in addition to dudes with rifles. So armor carriers it is! They won’t provide immunity from shell fragments, but they do a great job of saving lives.

Previous drafts of this post had a highly optimized choice to shave off the last few ounces, but I’ve since reconsidered. This is general issue. So it needs to be relatively simple and reasonably priced and available in bulk right now. It needs to be reasonably modular, in that we might want to add components to get extra fragmentation protection or to upgrade to deal with the latest armor piercing rounds. We’d like a quick-release system in case someone falls in a river or to help medics get the armor out of the way in a hurry. And it needs to feature PALS webbing or some equivalent integral way of easily adding pouches for stuff. We’re not throwing load bearing equipment over the armor carrier.

Which brings us to our (somewhat boring) choice: the Gen 3 Improved Outer Tactical Vest. Lame name. It’s American. You’re shocked, I’m sure. It checks all of the boxes, and provides support for plenty of modular add-ons if desired. Plus, SAPI-pattern plates are the best shaped/constructed of the current ceramic plate options. At least for mass production. Again, we could find some improvements with respect to weight if we didn’t mind going with a smaller company, but then there would be production line questions. The IOTV G3 is made by BAE. No worries there.

Okay. So that’s armor carrier. Comes ready for SAPI-cut plates. It also comes with soft armor rated to stop things like fragments and 9 mm pistol bullets. So all we need now are plates. This is probably the easiest choice there is. There’s no good reason to go with ESAPI plates. They’re rated to stop the vast majority of AP rounds in 5.56 mm, 5.45 mm, and 7.62 mm (-x39 mm, -x51 mm, and -x54 mm) calibers. No sense making armor easy to defeat by switching from FMJ to AP issue rounds. In general, we’d expect front and rear plates only (i.e. no side plates) to be sufficient for most operational environments. Side plates may be distributed as needed like the other add-on components to the base IOTV unit.

1.) There’s also an Australian helmet called the Enhanced Combat Helmet. Ugh, naming. Anyway, ours is the American one, not the Aussie one. Sorry, Oz, the Yanks did this better.
2.) Modular Integrated Communications Helmet. Maybe it’s not for combat?
3.) Personal Armor System for Ground Troops. 80s vintage stuff.
4.) This measurement is much more statistically repeatable than trying to figure out at what velocity nothing will get through.
5.) There will be another article on these.
6.) Admittedly, they’re pretty cool guys.
7.) Judging by recent events in the Donbass, I’m also avant-garde like that.

Testing Parvusimperator’s Ideas

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Stumbled upon a couple news articles today, courtesy of Military.com. Both concern the USMC and their experimental units playing around with things I called.

The first, and probably least surprising, is that there’s a testing battalion experimenting with the M27 (HK 416) as a general-issue rifle. Compared to the standard M4 that the Corps has finally switched to, the M27 has a free-float barrel, a safe/semi/auto trigger group instead of safe/semi/burst, and the HK short-stroke gas-piston system. A well-designed piston system is a lot easier to regulate than the conventional direct impingement system on an AR (this will be important in a moment). There are definite gains to be made (though you could get a lot of the same stuff by changing out a few parts on the M4, but the M27 has the advantage of being in the procurement stream. It has the disadvantage of costing more, of course. They do really like the M27. As do I, as it was my choice for Borgundy’s military carbine. It was also the choice of the French.

That’s not super surprising though. What is more surprising to me is that they’ve also got a battalion experimenting with suppressors on everything. Carbines, machine guns, everything. Yes, even the Ma Deuces. Hey, that sounds familiar. It makes command and control easier, to no one’s surprise.1 It also took away the noise that provides an illusion of effectiveness. This fascinates me. Noise means “good enough”. Take a lot of that away, and you have to concentrate on what your shooting is actually doing. Huh. Plus, it’s easier to concentrate with all that racket gone. I’m very proud to say you saw that idea here first.

1.) Ever had a date in a loud restaurant? It sucks. You want a place that’s quiet. Same thing here. It really helps if your soldiers can hear you tell them things.

HF-3 Antiship missile

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I’ve talked about my dislike of Harpoon before. In there, I mentioned a pretty good off-the-shelf replacement in Norway’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM). NSM is small, reasonably priced (especially if you buy a lot), and stealthy. It’s got good ECCM and terminal-phase maneuvering capability as well. Awesome!

But I am a jealous man. And those Russians have a number of supersonic missiles. Supersonic missiles, aside from being 79% cooler than slow, subsonic missiles, are a lot harder to intercept because of the shorter reaction time. For a supersonic, sea-skimmer like P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22 Sunburn), which travels at Mach 2, the missile will clear the horizon with about thirty seconds left before impact. That’s pretty cool.

Of course, there are problems. Chief among them is the source. Russia is a classic power rival for us. We wouldn’t want to depend on them for weapons in the event of hostilities (just look at Ukraine). Plus, Fishbreath generally (and rightfully so) makes me source from NATO powers since Borgundy is a proud member of the Western Powers Club. Gotta buy from friends. Again, this bears out. Even if Russia was willing to sell, NATO would also balk.1 Clearly the simple option of “Buy Brahmos” (or SS-N-22) is right out.

What to do? Well, we could look further afield for an island nation that has a lot to fear from a nearby navy.

No, not England. It’s not 1910. They suck at navies now. Heck, they’ve gotten rid of their Harpoon stocks without any kind of replacement. And even though I think it’s long in the tooth, some antiship missile is better than no antiship missile. Guess again.

Taiwan.

Yes Virginia, Taiwan makes stuff besides consumer electronics. They make their own antiship missiles, for example. One of which, the Hsiung Feng 2 (HF-2), is subsonic. It’s a lot like Harpoon actually, though I don’t think the ECCM and GPS integration of the latest Harpoon models is present in the HF-2. I could be wrong though. But that’s not the missile we’re interested in today. If we wanted Harpoons, we’d get those.

No, the missile we’re interested in is Hsiung Feng 3 (HF-3).

There are lots of gaps in the knowledge of the new, advanced, and relatively secret HF-3. It’s supersonic. With a bit of altitude, it’s said to be hypersonic.2 But there’s no unclassifed top speed estimates that I’ve found to be trustworthy. Ditto for range, though most open source estimates put the range at about 200 km. We know propulsion is a rocket booster/ramjet pair, and we can figure it weighs about twice as much as Harpoon. It’s got inertial guidance with a terminal X-band, active radar seeker. There are also some rumors that it’s nuclear warhead capable. The conventional warhead is said to be 225 kg, which would be more than enough for e.g. the W80 nuclear warhead (maximum yield of 150 kilotons). It’s also designed to execute aggressive terminal-phase evasive maneuvers, and is built to withstand the stresses from doing this at speed.

Because it’s so new, it’s not clear if there’s a reduced-size version for shipboard mounting. This smaller version might trade off some range for ease of deployment. However, there are pictures of ROCS Su Ao (DDG-1802, Kidd-class, the former USS Callaghan) mounting eight HF-3s in lieu of the eight Harpoons she was commissioned with. It’s not clear what changes, if any, were made to accomodate this. Frankly, I don’t care about a small loss of range if it means I can deploy them as a one-for-one Harpoon replacement with speed on our F100s and Sejongs.

Sometimes the things you don’t know about a project are damning. This isn’t one of those times. Supersonic is perfectly acceptable. Even if it’s merely Harpoon-ranged. And if it’s as fast as they say, I’ll be thrilled.

Goose, I’ve got the need. The need for speed. Let’s get some superfast ship killers. We already have the best naval air defense systems available. Let’s give them no reason to hope.

1.) Cf. Turkey’s long range SAM procurement project, when they took a ton of flak from the rest of NATO over wanting to buy from the Chinese.
2.) Cue the pastiche of ‘Greased Lightning’.

Borgundy Chooses a Destroyer

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Picking a frigate was hard. There are lots of pretty good frigate designs out there, but none were quite what we want. The F100 came closest, so it got the nod.

Fortunately, choosing a destroyer is a lot easier. There’s one best option: an Arleigh Burke-class derivative. More specifically, the South Korean Sejong the Great-class destroyer, which is just an Arleigh Burke that’s a trifle bigger.

What’s so great about the Sejongs? Well, for one, they carry the excellent and proven Aegis combat system. This system was designed to defend American carriers from saturation attacks by Soviet antiship missiles. It’s great at tracking multiple targets and managing the engagement. The same system (albeit in smaller form) is on our F100-class frigates too. Hooray for commonality. Plus, they can plug into land-based IADS.

Where the basic American Burkes have 96 Mk. 41 VLS tubes, which can accommodate SAMs, VL-ASROC, and Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Sejongs have 128 such tubes. This is better than any destroyer afloat, and better than any ship afloat save for the Kirovs. And the Sejongs have better radar and battle management capability than the Kirovs.

The Mk. 41 VLS can accommodate SM-2, SM-3, SM-6, and ESSM SAMs, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and VL-ASROCs for an antisubmarine punch. Which is nearly everything you’d want a destroyer to be able to do. Note of course that ESSMs can be quadpacked four to a Mk. 41 tube. The rest of the armament suite is pretty conventional: sixteen Harpoon launchers, six 324 mm torpedo tubes, a RAM CIWS forward, a Goalkeeper CIWS aft, and a 5″ gun.

From a sensor perspective, the SPY-1D(V) is a pretty obvious component, dominating the sides of the forward superstructure. There’s the usual array of secondary radar systems for navigation, some infrared search and track units for passive scanning, a bow-mounted sonar, and a towed sonar array. All very nice, nothing here needs changing, so I’m touching nothing.

As for helicopters, the Sejongs have hangar space for two midsize units (SH-60s or similar). No shortcomings there. You could lash a third to the hangar deck if you really wanted.

Like the Burkes, the Sejongs are driven by a COGAG1 powerplant, which is simple and provides for excellent speed. It leaves something to be desired with regards to range, but I don’t care. Buy fleet oilers. Besides, we’re a mostly continental power anyway.

Really the only thing we’d do is swap the Goalkeeper for another RAM launcher. RAM is a more effective system than Goalkeeper. I’m not sure why the South Koreans called for both, but we won’t.

As for antiship missiles, as I mentioned in my piece about the F100s, I’d prefer an upgrade here, but I think it’s more important to ride the coattails of what the US Navy is going to buy. If they stick with Harpoon, they’ll keep it modernish, and it will be the best option because of the number bought. Alternatively, if they opt for NSM, its price will get better because of the large quantity purchased.

The Sejongs aren’t very “transformational” or “revolutionary”. We don’t care. They’re an improved version of a good, proven design. They have plenty of space for incremental, evolutionary upgrades. Plus, when the accountants come calling, you can point to obvious working capabilities today in addition to the hoped-for technologies of the future.

1.) Combined Gas (turbine) And Gas (turbine). So you have gas turbines for cruise and more gas turbines that you can use to also drive the screws when you need MORE POWER!

Borgundy Chooses A Frigate

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Let’s get to picking our own Navy. Like Luchtburg, we’d like a nice, middleweight ship to handle a wide variety of tasks. There are lots of such frigates available, with a bunch of different price points and mission optimizations. Our pick is the Spanish Álvaro de Bazán-class, also known as the F100 class. For us, it represents the best set of compromises.

The F100s have the most powerful air defense missile suite for any frigate in the world, with a whopping forty eight1 Mk. 41 VLS tubes. 48! This is awesome. You’d no doubt expect them to be loaded with ESSMs and the latest SM-2 variant, and you’d be correct. The standard Spanish Navy loadout is 32 SM-2 Block IIIA SAMs and 64 RIM-162 ESSMs. That’s awesome. These missiles are backed up by a smaller version of the American Aegis combat system, and compact versions of the SPY-1 radar system. Very cool.

Having Aegis and the American SM-2/ESSM SAMs is really good from a commonality perspective. There’s no good reason for our Destroyer to be anything but an Arleigh Burke-class derivative (more on that to follow), and it’s really nice to have common radar systems and missiles with the Burkes. I’m a big fan of logistical optimizations where possible, and fewer distinct kinds of spares is always a win. Plus, since the US Navy also uses these missiles, they’ll probably be paying for upgrades, so we don’t have to.

The rest of the F100s loadout is pretty conventional. There are eight Harpoon missile tubes, six 324 mm torpedo tubes, and a 5″/54 gun. The F100 also has the usual bow sonar and a towed sonar array, though the towed array isn’t a very advanced model. It has a Spanish-built twelve-barreled 20 mm cannon CIWS system. This is one of the few things I’m unhappy with, but it’s also one of the simplest to remedy.

The F100s are driven by a CODOG2 powerplant, and have a crew of 250. Lots of navies are going with lower crews on their frigates, but I prefer a bigger crew. More men is better for doing manpower-intensive tasks like damage control. I’m very happy with this compliment.

Maximum speed is 28.5 knots, and the range is 4,500 nautical miles at 18 knots. Pretty typical Frigate stuff here. No reason to complain or specify changes.

As for changes, a few minor things when placing our order. We’d like to upgrade the CIWS to a rolling airframe missile based system, which should be pretty easy. We’d also like a more advanced towed array. Again, nothing hard there. Pretty simple changes. The F100s, like most Western combatants, use Harpoon antiship missiles. I’m not the biggest fan of those, but we’d have to be sure to do the conversion on both these and our DDGs. Not a huge deal, but something to watch out for. Verify compatibility with both before changing things. Or see if Harpoon is getting more upgrades. Presuming it isn’t, the NSM is an excellent alternative.

The only really notable shortcoming is the helicopter capacity. The F100 has a flight deck and hangar for one midsize helicopter like an SH-60. This is decent, but two would be better. Unfortunately, this isn’t something we can easily change. Still, the F100s provide excellent capabilities at a reasonable price. At least if you don’t stop and restart production lines and do a bunch of add-ons to the command and control facilities.

1.) Hilariously, this is the same number of VLS tubes as the Daring-class desroyers, even though those are almost half again the tonnage of the F100s. And called ‘destroyers’, even though they displace as much as a World War 2-era heavy cruiser.
2.) Combined Diesel Or Gas (turbine). So you can drive the screws with the fuel efficient diesel engines or the gas turbines for high speed but not both.

F125 Class Frigate

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Historically, Germany has made some well designed ships in insufficient numbers. Bismarck and Tirpitz were both well designed and well regarded. Bismarck was formidable enough that the Royal Navy issued orders to avoid one-on-one engagements with her.

In general, modern German Frigates1 are high capability ships. I’m quite fond of the Sachsen class, which are excellent ships with a fine SAM suite. Unsurprisingly given the feature set and the small production run, they’re quite expensive. They may or may not be the right choice for you depending on your budget, priorities, and the other ships in your Navy.

But all things must come to an end. And the long chain of well-designed German ships came to an end with the F125 class.

I do not understand the F125 class at all. They’re the biggest “Frigates” in the world, with a displacement of 7,200 tonnes. They are also massively expensive. I am not opposed to large frigates or expensive ships. But I want something for my money. The FREMMs that Fishbreath is fond of and the Sachsens I alluded to earlier are both high capability ships. They’re suitable for any standard mission you might expect from a modern maid-of-all-work from air defense to antisubmarine warfare to land attack to antiship work. The F125s aren’t.

Looking at the F125, it is clear something is missing. And that something is the VLS. The VLS is where you put your surface to air missiles. And, if you’re smart like the Germans, you’ve got a VLS like the Mark 41 that can also take cruise missiles. So the VLS gives your ship the ability to defend itself from incoming antiship missiles and to strike targets over 1,000 miles away. Without it, the F125 is like a clawless, toothless tiger.

The F125 does have the RIM-116 point defense missile system. This is presently the best CIWS in the world. But it is no substitute for proper SAM capability. The CIWS is only able to protect against a small scale attack. It is not capable of contributing to the anti-air umbrella of a task force or providing protection to nearby ships. This might be fine for a small corvette or patrol craft, but the F125 is expensive and important. To put it plainly, the F125 will require escorts, like an aircraft carrier does.

Of course, an aircraft carrier carries aircraft. There’s a reason it has no space for missiles. But the F125 isn’t an aircraft carrier. There are no squadrons of Sea Typhoons ready to scramble from a flight deck. The F125 has one 127mm gun, some smaller remotely operated guns, four RHIBs, a submarine ROV and a pair of helicopters. It has a mere eight Harpoon launchers, and a small crew of only 110. I don’t know what happened to the space. I wish I could tell you.

Such a simple ship should be cheap, but it isn’t. In the tradition of other recent German projects, every gold-plated technological innovation has been thrown at it. The radars are split between the two superstructure islands. Command and control has been split as well. Plus, the ships have plenty of fancy modern stealth shaping. All wasted on a useless hull.

The F125 is optimized for the not very difficult mission of antipiracy hunts off the Horn of Africa. What a spectacular waste of Reichsmarks er, Euros.

1.) Fishbreath would probably quibble about the use of the term Frigate here. Most German frigates follow the European standard of being a destroyer in all but name.

Lessons from Night Gun School

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One of the components of the class I attended last weekend was a dusk/night portion. We engaged targets in transitional light and darkness. I brought with me my trusty Glock 34, which has a fiber optic front sight and plain black rear (i.e. no tritium whatsoever), a Surefire X300U with DG Switch(and a second without), and a Surefire E2D Defender Ultra flashlight. I got some reps in with everything, and I can now draw some conclusions.

Note that these are conclusions from the perspective of a civilian concealed carrier. NOT a special forces type guy or a SWAT guy or a policeman. So I’m not usually engaged in hunting bad guys. This will impact a bunch of conclusions.

First, sights. Or, were fiber optic sights a handicap? I shot in both transitional and nonexistent light. I found that if there was enough light to see the target, there was enough light to use the sights I had. I had no problems in transitional light. Any less light, and you have to use some kind of light of your own, which will wash out whatever sights you’ve brought. So my fiber optics were no problem when it got really dark either. Win. Because they’re cheaper and more pleasant to work with in the daytime. I’m not going to optimize for transitional light.

See, while lots of crime happens at night, it happens in well lit areas. Because criminals need some light to figure out that you’re worth the trouble. They need to see you, size you up, and then make their move. That needs light.

Okay, that’s the carry problem taken care of. Let’s look at techniques that might be used in the case of home invasion, or other night work. First, the independent flashlight. We worked a number of techniques, including the Harries, the FBI, the temple index, the neck index, and the Kyle Lamb technique. Let’s break them down.

I really liked Harries. Despite not being a Weaver stance shooter, I found it was pretty intuitive and easy to use. It was the most stable of the flashlight techniques for me.

The FBI technique worked great for searching. Not so much for shooting in most cases. It’s just awkward, and hard to keep everything pointed where you want it. But it’s easy to transition to the temple index…

The temple index was another excellent technique. It was less stable than the Harries, but it was a lot easier to get the light pointed in the right direction. It worked well for me for shooting. And again, really easy to transition to the FBI technique for searching. Switching between the two worked really well for most purposes. Though it does make you shoot strong hand only.

The neck index is stupid. It illuminates the rear sight too much. The temple index does a better job of highlighting the front sight, which is the one you should be paying attention to.

I did not like the Kyle Lamb technique. This one was super awkward and needed lots of awkward push-pull mechanics. Maybe it would have worked better for a Weaver shooter, but this was significantly trickier than the Harries. And I ain’t a Weaver guy. Pass.

I also brought weaponlights. These are not good for searching, since that requires pointing your weapon at things. But they are great for target identification. Confirming that your target is a hostile and not the cat or your daughter or some shit is what weapon lights excel at. Way easier to engage targets with a weaponlight on your pistol. You have your natural grip. The light is automatically aligned with the barrel. And with a DG switch, a firm shooting grip means the light is on. Relax a little, it goes off. Easy.

Also note that if you come to a door (we did drills with a door), you can easily free a hand to open the door and then reestablish the master firing grip. Makes that problem a lot easier.

The experience of me and the other students reinforced the importance of simple switchology. We didn’t have time pressure or other stress, but people still didn’t get their flashlights to do what they wanted. This is part of the brilliance of the X300U/DG switch combo. You don’t have to think too much. It’s got two settings. On. Off. Press if you want on. Don’t press if you don’t. It’s great. Technically it’s a ‘momentary on’ switch, but I found that gripping correctly meant it was on until I relaxed.

By the end of class, everyone who had a weaponlight but no DG switch had ordered one.

The E2D is a really good handheld. It’s got a low setting and a high setting in addition to off. Default is high, which is what I want. To get to low, you have to double tap the button. So you have to want low to get low. This is useful for small tasks right in front of you like reloading mags. I had no instances of getting the wrong input. Also, the button can be pressed for momentary on or clicked to stay on. Again, this is useful.

Students with poorly thought out flashlights seriously considered flinging their lights over the nearest berm. Lots of problems were had with getting low when you wanted high or vice versa. I also learned strobes suck. I don’t see the point of a strobing flashlight. 500 lumens to the face is just as disorienting, and the strobe is more likely to piss off the user. Any kind of complicated fancy switch mechanism could be counted upon to suck and be gotten wrong. And this was not a stressful environment.

In terms of gear, I came well prepared to do night work, so I didn’t have any gear takeaways from this portion of class. Again, note that it’s very not necessary to have a weaponlight on your carry gun, for the same reasons that tritium isn’t needed. In terms of holster selection, our instructors really like Dark Star Gear and C&G holsters. Both make great kydex holsters. They, and most other good kydex holstermakers, have plenty of options for holsters that will carry a weaponlight.

As for light brands, Surefire. Surefire Surefire Surefire. The other consistent recommendation for something cheaper was Streamlight.

On the Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carrier

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Of the two of us, Fishbreath is by far the naval expert. But even though I’m an old Army hand, I still know a thing or two about navies. Especially the navy of my native America.

The United States Navy is the most formidable in the world, bar none. Full stop. We’re going to talk about carriers today, and they do that better than anyone. The US Navy is also the world’s second most powerful air force. At least, if we’re going by capability and not just “Things That Call Themselves an Air Force”. The US Navy operates the mighty Gerald R. Ford and Nimitz class supercarriers. These are the benchmark for distant power projection. They are unmatched in both capability and cost.

But we know that those are awesome. Let’s take a moment to talk about other people’s carriers. Specifically, the new British flattops, the Queen Elizabeths.

Decatur’s ghost, they’re bloody awful.

The Queen Elizabeths displace 65,000 tons full load and have a maximum air wing of 40 planes. For comparison, this is the same max capacity as the French Charles de Gaulle, and a bit less than half that of Nimitz or Gerald R. Ford (which max out at 90 aircraft). But the Queen Elizabeths are half again as heavy as de Gaulle, and more than half the weight of Nimitz. Tonnage is a decent low-order proxy for ship cost, so we can see that the Royal Navy has bought more ship without getting more capability for their trouble.

It also amuses me that the Royal Navy only plans to equip their new carriers with an air wing of twenty four planes. What is the point of all that ship for 24 planes? Yes, I know 24 planes are cheaper than 40, but then why make a 65,000 ton ship? You could fit 24 planes in a ship of less than half the displacement, which would be a lot cheaper. And no, you can’t just add planes. All of your strike planning and aviation handling skills are going to be based around the nominal air wing, since that’s what they usually have to work with. Siiiigh.

But it gets worse. Far, far worse. The Queen Elizabeths straight-deck ships, with neither catapults nor arresting gear. Both angled decks and arresting cables were British innovations. Nelson is weeping right now. And probably spinning in his grave. At least you can power London that way.

Of course, in addition to spitting in the face of tradition1, this means the Royal Navy has lost quite a bit of capability. The angled flight deck allows for simultaneous takeoff and landing operations. Previous straight-deck carriers had a wire net to catch planes that missed the arrestor wires, and if a plane missed the net on a botched landing, they’d hit their comrades’ aircraft in the deck park forward. Yay fire. There wasn’t enough room to do takeoffs in front of the net. During takeoff operations, the deck park would be aft, containing planes waiting to take off. No landings here for obvious reasons.

Not putting in any kind of catapult or arresting gear causes other problems. Charles de Gaulle is equipped with arrestor gear, catapults, and an angled flight deck, like the bigger Nimitzes and Fords. So the French can cross train with the US Navy. You can borrow notes from the people who have been practicing naval aviation since the 1920s without a break. If the Marine Nationale and the US Navy are doing exercises together, they can take off and land on each other’s ships and share best practices. For the French, this is a great way to build their skills without having to reinvent the wheel. Unlike China or Russia, the French are America’s oldest friends. Do what les Americains do. At least to start. It’s also nice to have an ally’s ships as an optional ship to divert to.

All of that requires that you have the toys to play. The Royal Navy isn’t in the CATOBAR club. So they can’t play well with those who are. They’re also stuck with reduced payload and range, since they’re going to be using STOVL aircraft. Those takeoffs are hard on fuel and put limits on how much you can haul. It was true for the Harrier, it will be true for the F-35B. Shorter range and lower payload than a CATOBAR equivalent. And the F-35C is really nice, with a bigger wing and more fuel stowage capacity than even the basic F-35A. The F-35B loses some tank space to accommodate the lift fan, so it has the shortest legs of the bunch, and that’s before you try to do zippy short takeoffs or leave fuel for a vertical landing.

The more you look, the more isn’t good. The Queen Elizabeths lack any kind of missile armament. I don’t like the notion of turning aircraft carriers into cruisers, but short range missiles like the RIM-162 Enhanced Sea Sparrow (ESSM) or the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile are both a lot more effective than the venerable Phalanx. That’s going to put more pressure on all of those Daring-class destroyers that the Royal Navy didn’t buy. The US Navy has a much more formidable surface escort fleet, and it still put both Phalanx and ESSM on the Nimitzes and put ESSM, RIM-116, and Phalanx on the Gerald Fords.

I don’t like the conventional power plant either. You’re not really going to save all that much for a couple sizeable ships. And you gain quite a bit of range and staying power. Which is super helpful, because politicians love to commit carriers to wave the flag and blow stuff up.

To be honest, it’s hard for me to imagine worse ships. They make excellent white elephants. Something more like Charles de Gaulle or Cavour if a smaller air wing was desired would be a far better buy. But instead the Royal Navy built something bloated and af

1.) Spitting in the face of tradition is punishable by hanging from the yardarm.