Not unlike what passed for a fighter aircraft during WWII and a fighter today.
Posted on 03/20/2012 8:33:05 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Daring enjoys ‘truly amazing’ experience working with American carriers
20/03/2012
Britain’s most advanced warship, HMS Daring, has worked with two American aircraft carrier groups as her Gulf mission steps up a gear. The new destroyer has been showing off her air defence and fighter control prowess with the USS Carl Vinson and Abraham Lincoln and their task groups.
Turning away from the most powerful surface ship in the world is the most advanced warship in the Royal Navy.
On her maiden deployment, HMS Daring has worked with not one but two US Carrier Strike Groups – here the USS Carl Vinson, but also her sister Abraham Lincoln.
The Portsmouth-based warship – the first of six cutting-edge Type 45 destroyers – has been exercising with both 100,000-ton flattops as she integrates with our closest allies.
That integration has taken the form of swapping sailors with several American ships, notably cruisers USS Cape St George and Bunker Hill, as well as the two carriers, allowing the two navies to share expertise and ideas and forge good working relationships.
The Carl Vinson leads US Carrier Strike Group One, while the Lincoln is the flagship of Group Nine (there are 11 such groups in all, comprising one carrier, one cruiser, two destroyers, one hunter-killer submarine and a support ship, plus an air group of more than 60 jets, helicopters and pistol-engined aircraft).
The culmination of this effort was HMS Daring working fully with the Carl Vinson and her impressive air wing of fast jets.
The Sampson radar (the spiky spinning egg atop Daring’s main mast) and command and control system allow multiple targets to be tracked to ranges of up to hundreds of kilometres. That information is fed to the Aster missiles in the silo on the ship’s forecastle.
With the Long Range Radar (the large black slab just forward of the ship’s hangar) it means Daring can track many thousands of air contacts giving her unprecedented surveillance of huge areas of air space.
Which means that she is a valuable asset for a US Carrier Strike Group providing such a comprehensive air picture of the complex Gulf airspace.
“Working with the US carriers and their air wings is the culmination of many months of training and hard work for the ship’s company,” explained Lt David Berry, one of two fighter controllers aboard Daring.
“For me, this is the pinnacle of my fighter controlling career and it is truly amazing to watch it all come together in this operational theatre.
"Taking control of F-18 Super Hornets in this busy operational environment is hugely rewarding.”
Daring is attached to the Combined Maritime Task Forces on a wide-ranging maritime security – tackling piracy, smuggling, people-trafficking, terrorism and other criminal activities – as well as working with Coalition and regional allies.
Daring’s not the only Royal Navy vessel to link up with a US carrier group. In the Arabian Sea – outside the Gulf – the Abraham Lincoln joined forces with Britain’s capital ship, HMS Westminster.
The Portsmouth-based frigate is also on a maritime security patrol of waters east of Suez – tackling piracy, smuggling, people-trafficking, terrorism and other criminal activities – while ‘Abe’ is conducting both that mission and supporting operations in Afghanistan, codenamed Enduring Freedom.
Same is true here. USN destroyers have the displacement of an old-time CA, but we don’t want to call things “cruisers.”
Not unlike what passed for a fighter aircraft during WWII and a fighter today.
but we don’t want to call things “cruisers.”
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I agree with you but once the ‘butt buddies’ are authorized and SOP no telling what they will call them -
It give a whole new meaning to the “Pink” Submarine in “Operation Petticoat”.
Cool? I suppose so, but the type 45’s always look a bit top heavy to me.
Ship designations actually (used) to mean something. Destroyers were developed in the late nineteenth century when the then new weapon of the torpedo, delivered by small agile torpedo boats, was thought might pose a threat to the big ironclad battleships of the time. To counter the threat, slightly larger gun equipped ships called torpedo-boat destroyers were developed, whose job was to fend off these light attacks. Over time, the designation torpedo-boat destroyer (which is quite cumbersome) was shortened to just "destroyer".
HOWEVER, the function of destroyers also altered. It was soon discovered that torpedo boats, being quite small, were not very seaworthy and did not have the range, so destroyers, as well as suppressing them, also largely supplanted them as the deliverers of torpedo attacks. Then when submarines came of age in WW1, and even more in WW2, destroyers were pressed into service as the primary means of anti-submarine warfare (largely because they were the only fast vessels available in numbers). So the function has altered a lot over the course of their development. Nowadays, multifunctionality is the name of the game, partly because of the technology and partly because of cost, so "destroyer" is now merely an approximation of size in most navies. You build a ship to 3-4000 tons, it gets called "frigate". It gets to about 5-6000 tons and it becomes a "destroyer". At about 8-9000 it becomes a "cruiser". Functionally though, almost all surface combatants are effectively light cruisers. They all have much the same kind of speed and have much the same kind of range, and they are armed with pretty much the same weapons. The larger vessels just have more of them.
Interestingly, the Royal Navy is one of the few that still types ships according to function rather than size. A destroyer, to the RN, now means "anti-aircraft ship". However, the trends in modern naval warfare are challenging this designation. They are still more specialised than "destroyers" in the USN, but they do have a limited antisub and antisurface capability. Its mostly delivered by the gun and the onboard helicopter, but I would think the Aster anti aircraft missile probably has a "reasonable" antiship capability as well.
Thanks for the detailed description. It is pretty consistent with how the USN ranks ships, although I think the tonnages are larger between classes.
The one aspect that I do not see is the function of land support. The destroyers have shallower drafts; hence, they can get closer to shore and provide support for troops on land. The older destroyers had 6-5” guns for that. But today’s ships don’t have the guns to perform that function.
Naval gun support is now largely redundant. The conventional wisdom is that it is far too dangerous to bring ships in that close to a hostile shore, and as you say, most of them dont have the gunfire to make it worthwhile anyway - all the more so because modern land artillery emphasises volume of fire whereas naval artillery stresses accuracy. Naval strategists have now largely delegated land attack to rockets, bombs and precision munitions from aircraft, although the recent development of stand off guided land attack missiles like tomahawk has seen direct naval fire support make a bit of a comeback. Really though, these precision guided land attack missiles are far too valuable to be used on anything other than high priority high-value targets. Direct support of say, an amphibious assault by suppressing beach defences, would almost certainly be done by aircraft.
But that single gun can put out far more rounds than the old six-shooters. Ain’t rapid fire sweet?
And a Corsair shall lead them.....
Ping
The UK dropped out midway through preferring to do their own version of a number of the battle management and sensors, which the French and Italians moved on. Basically, the UK uses the Sampson system while the French and Italians use the Thales system.
Originally the UK was going to buil like 24 of these...then 18, then 12, and now they ended up with six.
This type of vessel does fit very well into the US Battle Plan and order of battle. They are basically like our AEGIS destroyers...but have fewer missiles. They have a newer 3-D radar and battle management...and there is a lot of debate on which is "best." I believe AEGIS because of the upgrades and the many, many years of experience we have with it, is probably the best, but the Daribng class Aster missiles, Sampson System, and PAAMS sensors are very, very good.
I just wish they had built at least 12 of them.
By the way, the Italians and French ultimately built two each of their Horizon destroyers which are very similar in looks and capability. Bopth those nations, like the UK are now building their modern frigates which will basically be miniature versions of these vessels and they will build those in much larger numbers because they are cheaper.
You can see each type of the larger destroyers and a full explanation and specification on them at my:
Here are som pics:
We have built approaching 65 Burke class destroyers and also have 22 AEGIS class cruisers, a total of 87 vessels.
In the whole world, a total of five other nations have built a total of 19 AEGIS vessels, five different nations have built a total of 23 AEGIS-like vessels. So the US has 87 Aegis vessels, and the whole world has 42 AEIGIS or AEGIS-like vessels. Pretty telling.
One of the big issues with the Daring class, is that due to the mismangagement by their liberal politicians, the class has been luanched and put into service without their onboard ASW weapons (outside of the helo), and without their principle Anti-surface Warfare (ASuW) missiles. Basically they have their helo, their main gun and the anit-air defenses...those last being their principle purpose. But it is still sad that the Royla Navy had to send these vessels to sea wothout their full self-defense and attack capabilities.
They are experiencing similar debacles with their new carriers, the Queen Elizabeth Class
The one area where the Daring would have an advantage of sorts would be in counter sea-skimming antiship missiles. The newer AESA SAMPSON radar and it’s significantly mounted position compared to the heavier SPY-1 series would probably give it a few extra seconds of detection time.
From what I understand, the maximum range a sampson radar could detect a low-flying missile is 20 miles. If the missile is a hypersonic missile of the kind developed by China, India and Russia, is this really enough of a distance to launch an intercepting counter-missile? Even if it did, the ballistics of a missile traveling at that speed would still smash a modern, unarmoured ship up even without an explosive warhead...
[quote]Naval gun support is now largely redundant. The conventional wisdom is that it is far too dangerous to bring ships in that close to a hostile shore, and as you say, most of them dont have the gunfire to make it worthwhile anyway - all the more so because modern land artillery emphasises volume of fire whereas naval artillery stresses accuracy.[/quote]
The RN used naval gunfire to suppress artillery and destroy at least one Libyan convoy. I wouldn’t say it is redundant, especially considering that a ship can carry a hell of a lot of cheap shells and only a limited number of very expensive guided missiles for hitting prolific but dangerous enemy targets...
I chose my words carefully. I didnt say it was redundant. I said it was largely redundant. NGS can and still does go on, its just not as important/significant as in years gone by.
A few extra seconds could make all the difference.
Most antiship missiles use inertial guidance systems, which are cheap, passive but only get the missile into the approximate area of its target. Final home in is done by an internal radar in the last 20-30 seconds of the attack, so its quite possible that a missile with 20nm range against sea skimmers can take out an attacking missile before it is very close or directly aimed. So, my thought is that the chances of incidental ballistic damage from an intercepted hypermissile is pretty remote. What might cause problems is if said missile was taken out by a very small and short range system, CIWS basically, things like Phalanx and Goalkeeper and Meroka. I think hypermissiles might cause them a lot of problems.
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