If you have not yet had the chance to catch up on what will be the Royal Navy’s next surface combatant, the Type 26 frigate, there is no finer place to go than to our friends at ThinkDefence.
They have the history of the program and its capabilities well covered. You owe it to yourself to spend some time reading the links.
In catching up, there were two things that came to mind about the ship and its program. Both point to two large gaps we have in our fleet that a program such as the Type 26 would have been a perfect fit.
First there is the obvious one. Our two major shipbuilding programs (DDG-1000 does not count – that is effectively a technology demonstrator program now) are the LCS/FF and the ubiquitous Arleigh Burke Class destroyers.
Let’s just review the most superficial aspects of those two ships. For LCS, let’s use the FREEDOM Class as the baseline:
– Length: 378′
– Displacement: 3,500t
– Speed: 47 kts at sea state 3
– Range: 3,500 nm at 18 kts
– Main gun: 57mm
– AAW: RIM-116 (range 4.8nm)
– Anti-Surface Missile: none yet; tbd. Possible bolt on Harpoon or other.
– Land attack missiles: none.
Now the DDG-51 Flight IIA:
– Length: 509′
– Displacement: 9,200t
– Speed: 30+ kts
– Range: 4,400 nm at 20 kts
– Main gun: 5″/54
– AAW: RIM 162 ESSM (27+ nm), RIM-66M (40-90 nm range), RIM-161 (ABM ~378 nm)
– Anti-Surface Missile: none.
– Land attack missiles: TLAM.
The Type 26:
– Length: 487′
– Displacement: 6,500t
– Speed: 28+ kts
– Range: 7,000 nm at 15 kts
– Main gun: 5″/45
– AAW: CAMM (13.5nm)
– Anti-Surface Missile: TBD to fit in MK-41 VLS.
– Land attack missiles: Possible TLAM.
Clearly, the Type 26 fits that “we don’t need a frigate” gap as a large frigate/small destroyer. As our British friends say, a nice bit of kit.
That brief outline above is the obvious gap filler, but not the most important one. The most important gap the Type 26 fills is in the programmatic mindset. How they got to the ship they did.
Where we were stuck in a narcissistic awe that was the transformationalist movement and begat LCS/FF and the Tomorrowland DDG-1000 (with the expected results warned of from the start), with time – and perhaps an eye to the slow rolling train wrecks across the pond, the Royal Navy took a different approach.
The most sensible part of the whole programme is its attitude to technology risk. Whether this is wholly intentional, or merely a happy by-product of Type 23 obsolescence and timing issues is for others to argue, but the fact remains, Type 26 has a relatively low level of technology risk.
Most of the major systems have been, or will be, de-risked on Type 23, with perhaps a few on CVF.
From an old Royal Navy publication (page 120);
To reduce programme risk, and in keeping with the principles of through-life capability management, there is a drive to maximise pull-through from the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, Type 45 destroyers and ongoing Type 23 capability sustainment/upgrades, in an effort to both reduce risk and capitalise on previous investment, and/or existing system inventory. So while the Type 45 is characterised by approximately 80 per cent new to service equipment and 20 per cent reuse, these percentages will be effectively reversed for Type 26
The air defence system, gas turbine, countermeasures, helicopter handling, combat management system, medium calibre gun, sonars and even the chip fryers will be in service on ships other than Type 26 GCS before they are in service on the Type 26 GCS.
Without a shadow of doubt, this is a good thing.
There is of course, design and engineering challenges, but at least, there are no major systems to develop in parallel.
There it is. That is the takeaway. That is the largest gap that the Type 26 fills in our fleet; an intellectual gap of humility.
It has been covered over and over through the years, and no reason to do it again, but going forward with every program we must not repeat the mistakes from the first decade of the 21st Century; we cannot ignore centuries of evolutionary success in shipbuilding to chase the revolutionary mirage. Technology risk is real, compounds, and surprises.
Good people with a lot of confidence will almost always over-promise and under-deliver their technology. That is why a culture of happy-talk, group-think, and best-case-only has problems.
You need a balance of styles and world-views. Bringing a program to a successful conclusion where it displaces water and makes shadows on the deck in a manner that is of use to the warfighter takes calm, humble, and firm programmatic leadership. Leadership, that while looking for promise, roots all in the firm soil of the tested, proven, affordable, and practical.
To do otherwise is to spend your money, time, and career building fleets of A-12s, SSN-21s, and DDG-1000s. For our fleet LTs and LCDRs of today that will lead the programs coming out of the coming Terrible 20s – remember the lessons of those programs and – if you don’t mind looking around a bit – look at what some of our friends did too.
You can learn just as much from clear-eyed close examination of failure as you can from success.
