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Australia’s MEKO 200 Frigates
In August, Australia selected the German-designed MEKO 200 frigate over the Dutch M-class as its next-generation surface combatant, the ANZAC frigate. The program was originally planned to include eight Australian and four New Zealand frigates. New Zealand showed some reluctance to participate, but early in September agreed to buy two ships with an option for the other pair. There also has been speculation that the Australian order will ultimately exceed the original eight. The project is described officially as the largest naval construction program ever undertaken in Australia, and it is to last about a decade. Ships are to be built both at Williamstown Dockyard and at a new facility in Newcastle, which will also prefabricate many of the hull sections. The Australian press release stated that the MEKO design, offered by the Amecon consortium, was chosen because its bid came in about 10% below that of its competitor, AWS. Amecon also offered some low-cost options on sensors and logistic support.
These statements tend to downplay the enormous advantage enjoyed by the MEKO 200 design, which has now been chosen by Greece, Portugal, and Turkey. The Blohm + Voss MEKO series capitalizes on the most important fact of modem warship design, that the sensor and weapon package is the most costly single element of the ship. Moreover, it is this package on which a customer navy tends to concentrate. In the past, the usual practice has been to integrate sensors and weapons tightly with the overall hull design, so that it is relatively expensive to modify a given design to accommodate alternative or replacement systems. The Dutch M-frigate, for example, was designed around a particular sensor/ weapon suite. The Australians complicated matters by deciding to choose a basic frigate design before making a final sensor or weapon choice, thus imposing a possible redesign burden on the successful bidder.
Blohm + Voss recognized early that this situation would soon be the norm rather than the exception. Accordingly, the shipbuilder designed hulls that could accommodate special (but standardized) containers accommodating a wide variety of sensors and weapons, with standardized connections to such ship services as electrical power and cooling water. In the latest MEKO frigates, data buses have been added for even easier installation of ship combat systems. The MEKO hull is by necessity slightly larger than hulls more tightly designed around their sub-systems, but the difference in size costs little: hull steel in itself is quite inexpensive. What is expensive is basic ship design time. Blohm + Voss enjoys substantial savings in design work by producing a common hull that is easy to customize; hence its string of recent successes in a generally depressed warship market.
The Australian frigates are officially described as forming part of the second tier of the surface fleet, supporting the most powerful units, the three missile destroyers. Most weapon system features have yet to be specified. The ships will mount a gun, but the choice between a 127-mm. weapon (which would be useful for shore bombardment) and a 76-mm. gun has yet to be made (reportedly the Royal Australian Navy favors the larger weapon). There will be a Mk 41 vertical launching system, to fire either Sea Sparrow, four of which can fit a single cell, or the Standard missile; the choice has not yet been made. Presumably the ships also will be fitted with canister launchers for a surface-to-surface missile such as Harpoon, since no such missile other than Tomahawk has yet been modified for vertical launching. The ANZAC frigates will carry Seahawk antisubmarine warfare (ASW) helicopters. Note that these are not the U. S. LAMPS III; Australian practice has been to tie the helicopters less closely to the ship than does the U. S. Navy.
It is not clear whether the ANZACs will have any stand-o ^ .(s weapon. The Royal Australian Navy is in the process of phasing o Ikara missile, although New Zealand will still retain some. A version of Ikara has been proposed, and Italy and France are deve F their own new stand-off ASW missile, Milas. Without any such mis ^ the ANZACs, like the current Australian frigates, will have to re' ^ their helicopters. The helicopters’ inherent weather limitation may acceptable in some areas of the Australian operating area. erjy
As for sensors, the ships will be equipped with the Bofors (fo ^ PEAB) 9LV453 Mk 3 combat system, akin to the 9LV200 Mk 3 current Swedish missile corvettes, but enlarged to accommodate s . and antiaircraft missiles. The sonar has not yet been chosen. ^eP°sonar the alternatives are the Australian Mulloka, a Thomson Sintra a (probably Spherion), and a Raytheon sonar in the DE 1167 senesln«;o) a British Ferranti sonar (similar to the current Royal Navy Type 2 rather less likely possibility. The ships also will ultimately carry Australian-developed Kariwarra towed array.
Floating Air Base Study Under Way
In August, the Senate Armed Services Committee asked the SeC®* (0 of the Navy to commission a study of the viability of floating air b3s^(£ replace or supplement existing U. S. land bases. There seems to been some hope that the bases would also replace existing carriers, lower unit cost. Presumably the Senate study will be coordinated, at ^ to some extent, with a planned study of the future carrier by the ofh the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air, Op-05. (j,ai
The Senate request was motivated in part by a growing realization ^ the land bases are increasingly vulnerable, not only to attack but ajjty political assault. In the past, the Navy has used the political vulnera argument to justify continued aircraft carrier construction. That ^ ment, unfortunately, avoids the major difference in character bet any fixed (or semi-fixed) base, on or off the shore, and a highly mo
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Proceedings / November
cler- A carrier, like other naval forces, gains much of its effect on an ^ by its mobility. It can offer a very wide variety of possible threats bilv 3 Ver^ s^ort t'me’ ant* a land'based enemy must consider all possi- lales- Thus high speed, particularly if it is combined with anti-surveil- e measures, is a valuable force multiplier.
Sast^^ °r sem'"f>xc<J base is a very different proposition. In theory, at |0[) ’ 11 ls combined with a logistical system that provides it with very
!^ast> it is i
’ endurance, while carriers deploy for shorter periods. Its physical
Co^a,nse a'so buys long endurance, since personnel can be relatively •he L0rtab*e- On the other hand, a decision to build a base implies that sim i3Se w'** b*e of lasting strategic importance. Such decisions were adv 6 enouSb when the Soviet Union and China were the only likely Msaries. However, China is now a friendly neutral (even sometimes a (jmSl_ ally), and the Soviet threat has receded markedly, at least for the feljt' ng’ w‘lb the advent of glasnost. Problems in the Third World are the 1Ve*^ unPredictable. In the past, that unpredictability has pointed up ''alue of carrier mobility.
•hare l'me **le comm'ttee s expectations may be somewhat different cln Past carrier vs. land base debates. The committee is deeply con- fut w'lb £be high cost of tactical aircraft, and suspects that in the for re’ a'rcraft costs themselves will overshadow the cost of whatever bjj •heir bases take. It reasons that the greater the commonality CoWeen Air Force and Navy, the greater the possibility of building mon aircraft, for longer and less expensive production runs. One buv l° acb'eve commonality is to force basing modes together, by ™g carriers that are more like land bases (or vice versa).
^ ue committee hopes that the man-made islands it has in mind might vu,^e virtually invulnerable to conventional attack, whereas carrier js Ability has always been a hotly debated subject. The floating island j"°‘ an altogether new idea. It was raised in several forms during and •he (j^Cr War Ifo and quite serious calculations were made both in
•bainti
any
Ued States and in Britain. Two major problems emerged. One was
enance. A floating island would be far too massive to overhaul in blei|C°nVent'ona* shipyard. It would have to be designed to be disassem- ■ refit. The other problem was weather, which might affect even tons of steel island. To some extent the experi-
huna re ”■ lhe other I reih °f thousands of
6l|Cp r
01 ocean oil drilling rigs, which are small floating islands, might be ®vant here.
A f|Vera1'' tlle committee’s expectations are probably less than realistic. bas °at'ng island large enough to function as an equivalent to a land air hUj.e w°uld not be particularly mobile; it could not respond to a rapidly ha hing crisis. Nor would it necessarily be invulnerable, since it would Ifs 6 *° accomrnodate large volumes of highly flammable aircraft fuel. |a 'jan'vays could be broken up fairly easily (surely more easily than on er . ’ an<J repair would be far more difficult than on land. These consid- a(lv'0nS °^v’°usly also affect carriers, but carriers have some important e„f Stages. First, they move at very high speed, in unpredictable ways, to rcin§ fairly limited options on attackers. Second, they are designed (] ret're for repairs following battle damage. Almost by definition, a Ilng island could not retire at any substantial speed. pQleVen so, properly applied, the floating island idea has some important
Vn
•Uial virtues. The island is, after all, semi-mobile, at least until it has
t0assembled in place. In past Third World crises, the pattern has been Th 1SPatch carriers as an immediate means of projecting U. S. power. Cn’ if the crisis continues (i.e., if carrier endurance begins to be
•ax,
th„et^’ 'and bases can be built up as needed, and land-based aircraft and ne>r Inn;,.: j o. „
Posed
logistics moved into place. Surely a well-designed island, com- Co I °f elements already manufactured and stored in the United States, buj|t. towed overseas and assembled more quickly than bases could be still /n"country- The island would not appear very quickly, but it would W be ready long before the in-country infrastructure could be built. ben-e°Ver> the environment somewhat offshore is likely to be much more to V l^at t^lat 'O'COuntry. These considerations certainly seem to apply •etnam.
•he iif ^oat'ng island idea was raised in just this context about 1970 by Slat fen'Navy Long Range Objectives Group. At that time, the United 8o had just built up a force of about 80 maneuver battalions (about ip . Lighting soldiers) over the course of about four years. The vast % ntT °h the troops deployed to Vietnam were required to support •ho 6 battalions, and their supporting aircraft. The Navy planners and l^at larSe floating structures could be constructed more quickly Eve *,rotecteif much more cheaply (both in human and in dollar terms). n though they might take months to bring into position, they would
achieve a much greater shock effect than the slow build-up of a massive U. S. logistical infrastructure prior to the introduction of offensive combat troops. Once the crisis was over, moreover, the floating structures could be disassembled and stored to await further use. The fixed infrastructure could not be reused. In the case of Vietnam, of course, it was reused by the other side.
The 1970 idea was almost certainly prompted by the success of the floating bases developed for the U. S. riverine force, the “brown water navy.” The bases in turn were practicable because they were designed for helicopters and thus were relatively small, and because the elements comprising them were still available in the form of amphibious ships and barracks ships built during World War II. Now these ships are largely gone, and in any case the island concept would require something much more ambitious.
The 1970 idea was not pursued because the U. S. national security establishment was certain then that the United States would not soon fight another Vietnam War. The focus therefore shifted to Europe, where fixed assets were relatively plentiful and where, in any case, the fighting would probably be too far from water for floating bases to add very much. Now, with glasnost so widely touted, it seems that the major national security problems of the next few years will be in the Third World, much of which is very close to the sea. The floating island idea may be attractive, particularly if it entails much better security than such land installations as the Marine Barracks in Beirut.
On this basis, the proper thrust of the island idea may not be so much to amalgamate the Air Force and naval aviation as to put the Army, as well as the Marines, offshore. In that case it may turn out that the only reliable heavy lift relevant to much of the Third World is sealift, since the floating base almost certainly will not be massive enough to accommodate aircraft like the C-5.
As for the air base issue, the current problem is threefold. First, many nations have decided in the past simply to evict U. S. bases, so that the number of such facilities has fallen drastically since the 1950s. Perhaps the most notorious example is the loss of Wheelus Air Force Base in Libya. Such facilities often fall into the hands of our enemies, in this case Colonel Gadhafi and his Soviet friends. Second, many allies, even when they are quite willing to retain U. S. bases, set limits on the use to which those bases can be put. Perhaps the starkest cases in point arise in connection with the Middle East. More generally, it seems unlikely that many Allied countries, which signed basing agreements directed against the Soviets, will be particularly enthusiastic about U. S. operations in nearby parts of the Third World, which they may not care to offend. Certainly that has been recent U. S. experience in many cases. Finally, many bases are subject to steeply rising rental. Cubi Point and Clark Air Base in the Philippines are perhaps the best-known cases in point.
Floating bases, be they carriers or semi-fixed islands, cannot make up for land installations stretched over hundreds of square miles. They also are limited by the 200-mile exclusive economic zones now claimed by most coastal countries. Warships are allowed to pass through these zones, but surely semi-fixed islands would be a different proposition. It is not clear whether an island moored well offshore (to clear the 200-mile limit) would be able to survive the sort of weather it could expect to encounter, particularly in the tropical zones of greatest interest in the Third World.
Even so, the fixed air base problem is becoming more urgent. In August, the House and Senate killed a request for military construction in the Philippines and in South Korea, to support F-15E strike fighters. Reportedly the Air Force fighters would have performed naval-style power projection missions, and would also have delivered some nuclear weapons in a central war. Reportedly, too, the Air Force plan was used to justify the Defense Department decision not to retain 15 deployable carrier battle groups. However, the congressional action did not prompt the Department to reverse itself on the carriers.
This is not quite as irrational as it may appear, because the Defense Department did not have any quick option suddenly to increase the size of the carrier force. The cut to 14 amounted to a choice to retire one carrier, the aging Coral Sea, (CV-43) earlier than planned, rather than any choice to forego currently planned new construction, which fills the available production capacity. The implications of not expanding the Asian bases will be felt if the Defense Department finds itself buying more new carriers earlier than had been expected. It also seems likely that, given the congressional action, the United States will continue basing a carrier permanently in Japan.
hr,
°ceedi
>ngs / November 1989
133