Shipbuilders Cite Need for Multimission Vessels
Dec 5, 2008
By Bill Sweetman
More versatile and affordable warships are on the horizon, according to managers and designers attending October’s Euronaval show here.
LHD ships, like Australia’s Canberra and Adelaide, are hot items in the naval market.
Credit: NAVANTIA
There are two emerging trends in surface warships. One is the use of modular designs for smaller warships, reducing design costs and allowing customers to tailor ships to their needs. These are combat ships, but inexpensive enough to build and operate that they do not represent overkill against nonstate threats such as pirates and traffickers.
Another trend is increased enthusiasm for larger, less expensively built landing platform dock (LPD) ships. Since the Indian Ocean tsunami, the LPD has emerged as an instrument of “soft power,” its helicopters, boats, command-and-control capabilities and cavernous holds invaluable for disaster relief, small-scale policing or civilian evacuation. Canada, Malaysia and South Africa are among countries in the market for new LPDs. (For a report on modernization of the South African Navy, see p. 23.)
By and large, the world’s navies found themselves in the mid-1990s with “completely the wrong kind of ships,” according to an official at ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS). “They were transatlantic convoy escorts to fight World War III, or fast-attack craft. Then they moved on to the offshore patrol vessel—but if you haven’t got a hardened ship, what have you got?”
The modern warship, the TKMS executive argues, needs to have the capability for everything from precision land attack and special-operations support to humanitarian missions and emergency evacuation. “That doesn’t take a 6,000-ton ship,” he says, but it does call for the ability to carry 150-200 extra people and four 10-meter-class (33-ft.) rigid inflatable boats (RIBs).
Another emerging market is for small submarines such as Rubin’s Amur-950, trading range for a large weapon load.
Credit: RUBIN
Several technological changes are important, as well. One is the emergence of practical unmanned vehicles—air (UAV), surface (USV) and undersea (UUV). Both the Northrop Grumman Fire Scout and the much smaller Schiebel CamCopter UAVs have demonstrated underway, autonomous shipboard recovery. Even a small ship can carry multiple UAVs, and even a small UAV can match or exceed the endurance of a manned helicopter while carrying radar and electro-optical sensors, making it possible to provide round-the-clock surveillance. “You don’t have to devote a third of the ship to the flight deck.”
UUVs and USVs also extend the ship’s area of influence, for force protection, littoral patrols or minehunting, but require new launch and retrieval arrangements. “A frigate without a dock at the back is inconceivable,” remarks the TKMS executive.
ThyssenKrupp also identifies an enabling revolution in propulsion. Waterjets are smaller in diameter than screws and their centerlines can therefore be placed higher on the stern, which in turn avoids the need for an angled shaft, giving the designer more freedom to install the propulsion machinery. Combined with TKMS’s “delta” hullform, wider toward the rear than conventional shapes, this makes internal space more flexible.
TKMS’s philosophy on flexibility differs from the way that the U.S. Navy has set up the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. ThyssenKrupp sees the ability to upgrade weapons and systems, and to load containerized mission modules, as a way to keep a ship current and improve capabilities across its life; small navies, the company believes, won’t swap missions from one ship to another. Modularity can also ease budget pressures: “Who can afford all the kit they want, now?” the executive asks.
Next in the lineup of new technologies is stealth. Lessons from the Visby stealth corvette, built by TKMS subsidiary Kockums, are being transferred to new designs, including the use of radar-absorbent materials on the superstructure and frequency selective surfaces (FSS) for radomes and antennas. Tactically, the effect is to cut by one half or more the “unmask range” at which the ship is visible to another craft.
The result is the Meko CSL (Combat Ship for the Littorals) design. Similar in size, propulsion and speed to the LCS, it embodies some important differences. It has space for up to 21 ISO-container-sized mission modules, located from bow to stern; even the gun and missile systems are based on modular units. It features a Visby-type approach to stealth, with cooled stern-mounted gas turbine exhausts and fully enclosed, conformal antennas. Like Visby, its clean appearance is in stark contrast to the antenna-festooned LCS (see photo, p. 26).
ThyssenKrupp’s Meko CSL is a high-performance, heavily armed warship. It weighs just over 3,000 tons and is propelled by waterjets.
Credit: THYSSENKRUPP MARINE SYSTEMS
Another new design from TKMS, aimed at increasing demand for LPD ships, is the MHD 200 (Multipurpose Helicopter Dockship), a 20,000-ton diesel-electric craft with a full-length flight deck, cavernous hangar and a rear well deck. “It should not cost more than €150 million ($189 million),” says TKMS, “and it needs to match container-ship technology to gray-ship thinking.” For disaster relief, you need space for a big hospital—120 beds and a full trauma unit, or you need to be able to pull 2,000 people off the beach. An unusual feature is a stepped rear deck, which can be loaded with containerized supplies or used as an extra landing pad, with direct hangar access.
Fincantieri, meanwhile, is also working on a flexible ship family, according to Massimo Guidarini, surface vessels combat system manager. “The future market trend is for offshore patrol vessels and LPD ships. We have designed a basic hull we named Mosaic, to which we add different superstructure according to the client’s request. This saves costs because the basic ship is already designed. One of these superstructures would turn it into an LPD. We are now discussing with the Italian navy a project definition for a 15,000-ton LPD with five helicopter spots and a roll-on, roll-off system, with forward and aft access.”
Navantia Commercial Director Francisco Baron notes that “there is very high demand for humanitarian and multimission ships. There is a steady demand from small navies in the Persian Gulf that are seeking patrol ships. We have a portfolio of medium-sized offshore patrol vessels and corvettes from 1,200-3,000 tons, for which we have basic designs. You can’t go further than the basic design without a client.” A growing trend for Navantia is cooperation with the customer’s home industry. Although Australia’s new 30,700-ton Canberra-class LPDs will be largely built in Spain, Australian partner Tenix will be responsible for 15-20% of the work. However, Australia’s three Hobart-class destroyers will be 100% Australian-built.
With Christina Mackenzie in Paris.
