navydavesof wrote:
What would you suggest those Burke IIIs embark? Would you suggest any cheaper ships to perform the normal Navy tasks including NFSF/NFGS?
There should be some high quality surface fighting ship and many cheap ones.
For the first there is a new development necessary. The Burke Flight III can be an intermediate design. I am not sure, what they will get, but an active phased array radar (SPY-3/SPY-4) plus perhaps two 96 cell VLS could be possible.
For the low end some cheap frigate design would be good, e.g. TRS-3D in combination with a 16-32 cell VLS plus a big helicopter hangar plus space for towed array sonar, which some ships should get. As the British Type 23 and the Italian FREMM there could be some general purpose frigates and some dedicated ASW ships. Perhaps an even cheaper OPV could be option, e.g. something similar to the Dutch Holland class, to make up numbers for patrol duties. Traditionally large navies always had also such ships, usually called gunboats, sloops, or aviso. Today only a few of the larger navies have such ships, e.g. the French Floréal class or the British River class.
carr wrote:
You seem to have the notion that an older, upgraded ship has to wind up being the exact performance equivalent of a brand new ship. [...] You're still clinging to vague, unsupported claims of high costs for upgrades.
That was a comment to the very extensive modernisation proposal for the oldest, out of commission Ticonderoga class ships
It was not a comment to all kind of upgrades, but one aimed on very old ships!
The main problem with the older 1970s designs are their sensors and command systems. They are outdated and expensive to replace, in some cases the older ships have limited capacities for updates (e.g. the OHP class). The Australian modernisations were limited regarding the sensors, the Turkish ships got SMART-S radars plus the VLS launcher. The Australian program was planed for 20 year old ships - one decade ago. Now these ships are 30 years old and at the end of their life span. Why waste any money on them?
The US Navy had continuously built only high end ships (Arleigh Burke class destroyers) and continuously upgraded the old Ticonderoga class ships. For sure for these ships the modernisation costs are lower compared to older, long decommissioned ships. The US Navy had stopped to built low end ships for some time until the LCS program. The last one before the LCS was USS Ingraham (FFG-61) in 1989 - 28 years ago. There was a 17 year gap, in which no low end ships were built. There are no 15-20 year old low end ships, which would be worth an upgrade, except if the US Navy could buy ships from other navies!