Today I'd like to share a little of the local scenery. This is the German Navy oiler Berlin as she approaches the entrance to Souda Bay, Crete. The last snows are melting from the mountains that tower above the Bay, and the colors of springtime are well in evidence. It is a strange contrast; grey steel on beautiful Aegean background, but I like it!
Today's photo is of USS Laboon, guided-missile destroyer number 58 (DDG-58). Laboon is the seventh ship of the Arleigh Burke class which makes her one of the older destroyers in service, of early-'90s vintage. She weighs in at just over 9,100 tons (this is actually her "displacement", or how much water she displaces when stationary), and is approximately the size of a World War II light cruiser, or three times the size of a WWII destroyer. In fact, the Burke-class ships are among the largest destroyers in the world.
But is in firepower that Laboon and her sisters excell. Examining the photo, she would seem to have only the one gun mounting forward, but her vertical launchers conceal an impressive arsenal below decks. While I don't know what her actual load-out might be (and wouldn't tell you if I did know!), her launchers can hold up to 90 missiles ranging from short-range anti-submarine rockets through radar-guided SAMs up to telephone-pole-sized Tomahawk cruise missiles. In addition she can carry up to eight Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles in launchers situated aft, plus two mounts of anti-sub torpedo tubes. In other words, Laboon and her sisters are very dangerous customers.
Today's photo posting could be titled "Success Redux", as it again features Australian replenishment ship HMAS Success; I thought you might like to see what see looks like from a different angle! Note that in this image she is still alongside John Lenthall (you can see the fuel hose at far left, connecting our two ships like an umbilical); this time we are seeing her in her entirety.
Success is of the same era as Lenthall; she was also built in the mid-1980s. She is quite a bit smaller, though, which reflects the thinking that went into her design. Australia had by then decommisioned their sole aircraft carrier (HMAS Melbourne, a former British flat-top) and had focused on a naval construction scheme based upon destroyer- and frigate-sized ships. Lenthall, however, was built to support large aircraft carriers and amphibious warships in addition to "small boys". Given this difference in intended role, a smaller "oiler" could be built to supply Australia's warships, a sensible decision as long as a return to carrier-centered operations remained off the table.
Success, like all Australian auxilliary ships, is manned by RAN officers and ratings rather than the US (and UK) practice of having a separate organization within the Navy, manned by civilian Mariners. This makes sense as well, since the RAN requires only a handful of replenishment vessels to support their forces, and a special command and manning structure for that purpose would be quite wasteful and superfluous. The opposite is true of the USN and RN; the size of these nations' fleets--and especially their active and nascent aircraft carrier forces--demand large, versatile auxilliary forces, and manning those numerous replenishment ships would be a tremendous drain on naval manning.
For all her differences in design, mission and manning, this "Ozzie" oiler and her crew are much like Lenthall; we have both come halfway 'round the world to support our nations' combat forces in troubled waters. It's not a mission you will hear about on the television news, and there will never be a movie made about our contributions to the support and readiness of our and our allies vessels, but without ships and crews like ours there would be no far-flung naval forces. A Navy without proper logistical support is, at best, a coastal patrol force.
So join me, please, in wishing these unsung heroes all possible Success in their voyaging!
A warship, like any large engineering project, is a collection of compromises. How many tons displacement, how many guns or missile launchers, what sensors (radar, sonar, etc.) will it bring to the fight? Engines, defenses, armor, fuel capacity, damage control and fire-fighting equippage, what is the proper balance? What kind of endurance should it have, and how many spare parts. How large should its magazine capacity be? Will our hypothetical dreadnought operate in deep ocean waters or coastal, "brown water" environs, or perhaps both? How large a crew should we plan for, and how will they be provisioned, heated, cooled, trained, fed and bedded?
These and a thousand other considerations go into the process of designing a combat ship. And they must be considered in light of the fact that the ship will not actually kiss water for years--even decades. What will the naval environment be like when our warship finally is ready to sail? We need to plan for flexibility, the ability to change-out weapons systems, sensors and electronics, to replace damaged and worn components, all in an effort to keep our new design current and effective in the coming years. To keep it relevant.
Now, take all of the hardware, plumbing, shops and parts, and work out the most efficient means of fitting it all together. Decisions, deletions, modifications, compromises upon compromises, seemingly without end.
The average time for a new-design warship from beginning of the above consultations and considerations, moving on to debate in Houses of Parliament or other legislative bodies, into funding and legal wrangling, compromising at every step of the process, adding this and subtracting that, and finally to the moment when steel is first cut and keel laid, can be measured in decades.
For a new-design submarine or aircraft carrier, add a few more years.
For your consideration I offer the French Ship (FS) Forbin. Built at Lorient and commisioned in 2010, she represents the hard work of thousands of draftsmen, artisans, welders, and technicians over the final years of the last century and the first decade of this one. With a crew of 195 and displacement of just over 7,000 tons she is somewhat smaller and more lightly manned than an American Burke-class destroyer, but with comparable firepower and speed. Fifteen years of compromise and integration have brought her into being, and a fine, handsome, well-found ship she is.
In keeping with modern warship design principles, Forbin is built to have a minimum radar "signature"; to reflect the least amount of an enemy's radar beams as possible. Not truly "stealthy" (something that NO commisioned warship has accomplished, to my knowledge), her "low-observable" form makes her more difficult to detect, track, and attack than earlier designs. By hiding most of her weapons and equipment within radar-distracting shapes and special materials, Forbin presents fewer details for radar energy to reflect from, fewer "angles" to stand out on a hostile receiver. In a naval environment dominated by the active-radar-homing supersonic cruise missile, this is a valuable characteristic for any warship!
This is a warship of the future, the shape of things to come. I am quite impressed!
