01.02.2024, 14:53
Wiederbelebung einer alten Debatte...
Schneemann
Zitat:Does The Navy’s New Constellation Class Frigate Have Enough Vertical Launch Cells?https://www.twz.com/news-features/does-t...unch-cells
Recent events in the Red Sea again raise questions about whether 32 vertical launch cells is adequate for the Constellation class frigates. [...]
Debates about the Constellation's vertical launch capacity reflects broader concerns, including how these cells might be reloaded at sea in a major conflict, across the Navy as a whole. The underlying issues here have come into sharp relief recently as the service's vessels have been shooting down dozens of Houthi anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles and drones and launching strikes on the group in Yemen. [...]
Though intended to perform many of the same missions as the Constellation class frigates, both the Freedom and Independence class LCSs have been especially criticized for their very limited armament packages. Their continued lack of air and missile defense capability on the LCSs for anything but close-in defense has been particularly glaring. Freedom and Independence class ships have been prominently absent from the current crisis in and around the Red Sea, which is by definition a littoral combat environment, underlying the ambiguous use case and poor return on investment of these ships many years after they entered into Navy service. [...]
When it comes to vertical launch system (VLS) capacity, there had been questions about the configuration of the Mk 41 array for Navy's new frigates even before the FREMM-based design was selected. The original threshold requirements for FFG(X), a program that was first announced publicly in 2017, called for just 16 VLS cells. By the time competition was over, this had increased to 32.
For comparison, each of the Navy's Flight I and II Arleigh Burke class destroyers have 90 Mk 41 VLS cells. Flight IIA and other subsequent subvariants of the Arleigh Burke have 96 cells. The service's trio of Zumwalt class destroyers feature Mk 57 VLS arrays, derived from the Mk 41, with 80 cells in total (these ships are also getting all new large vertical launch tubes primarily for firing hypersonic missiles). The Navy's Ticonderoga class cruisers, the last of which are slated to be decommissioned before the end of the decade, have 122 Mk 41 VLS cells apiece. All of these ships are, of course, notably larger than Constellation.
Schneemann