Larger Japanese Carriers On the Way
Japan has decided to build a second class of aircraft carriers, slightly larger (779 feet/248m) and heavier (over 20,000 tons) than the current Hyuga class ships. The first Hyuga entered service this year, and the second ship in the class, the Ise, was launched. These are 610 foot long, 18,000 ton warships that operate up to 11 (mostly SH-60) helicopters from a full length flight deck. Although called a destroyer, it very much looks like an aircraft carrier. While its primary function is anti-submarine warfare, the Hyuga will also give Japan its first real power projection capability since 1945. The Hyuga is the largest warship built in Japan since World War II. The Japanese constitution forbids it to have aircraft carriers, which is the main reason it is called a destroyer.
The Hyuga also has 16 Mk41 VLS (Vertical Launch System) cells for anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles. There are also two 20mm Phalanx anti-missile cannon and two triple 12.75-inch torpedo mounts. There is a crew of 350 and a top speed of over 30 knots. Vertical takeoff jets like the Harrier and F-35B could also operate from the Hyuga. A third Hyuga class ship is planned.
The last Japanese warship to be called the Hyuga was a World War II battleship that entered service in 1918, and was converted to a hybrid battleship/aircraft carrier in 1943. The new Hyuga will be used for peacekeeping missions as well, and for that role its many helicopters will be most useful. During World War II, there was also a Japanese battleships named Ise, which was the lead ship of a class of ships that also contained the Hyuga.
The new class of carriers will carry 14 helicopters, a battalion of troops, and fifty trucks or armoured vehicles. The new carriers will carry enough fuel to be able to refuel other ships. The Japanese admirals see the new carrier as a multi-purpose ship, being capable of anti-submarine warfare, as well as amphibious operations and logistical support.
Trials Successful for General Dynamics Littoral Combat Ship
The U.S. Navy’s second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) successfully completed its acceptance trials Nov. 19, paving the way for the ship to be transferred from its shipbuilder and enter naval service.
“Independence performed extremely well during trials,” Rear Adm. James Murdoch, LCS program manager, said in a Navy statement released last Thursday. “LCS 2 conducted two outstanding days at sea. We look forward to delivering this critical asset to the fleet.”
The Independence left its builder’s yard at Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, on Nov. 16, running at speeds up to 45 knots and demonstrating its systems to a team from the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV). Like most new ships on sea trials, the ship was crewed by workers from the builder, along with test-and-evaluation teams from prime contractor General Dynamics and several subcontractors. Sailors from the ship’s future Navy crew were also on board as observers and to operate weapons.
According to the statement released by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Independence “was presented to INSURV with high levels of completion in production and test. The official results of the trials, including the type and number of trial cards, are currently being reviewed by the Navy.”
Construction of the Independence began in November 2005. The ship, like the Freedom from LCS competitor Lockheed Martin, was originally programmed to take two years to build at a cost of $223 million. But a series of miscalculations by the Navy and its contractors, design adjustments and other technical issues doubled the construction time, and the cost for the first-of-class ship has gone over the $700 million mark.
Delivery of the Independence is expected in mid-December, with a formal commissioning ceremony scheduled for Jan. 16 at Mobile, Alabama.
Lockheed’s Freedom, commissioned a year ago, is now conducting warfare tests, and is expected to carry out its first operational missions next year.
In addition to the first two ships, Lockheed and General Dynamics each are working on their second ship. The Navy plans to pick one design in mid-2010 on which to base another 51 LCS ships.
French Navy Storms Pirate Ship, Arrests 12
French commandos stormed aboard a Somali pirate “mothership” and arrested 12 gunmen, the military announced Nov. 13, adding that the gangs are increasingly operating in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.
Tipped off by spotters on a Luxembourg maritime reconnaissance plane, the French frigate Floreal intercepted a dhow towing two motorized skiffs 500 nautical miles northwest of the Seychelles on Nov. 12.
A helicopter from the warship fired a warning shot across the vessel’s bows as its crew began to throw incriminating material over the side. French troops boarded the ship and arrested the pirates without violence. On board, they found grappling hooks, GPS navigation devices and assault rifles, said French military spokesman Adm. Christophe Prazuck.
“Last year or at the start of this one the center of gravity was in the Gulf of Aden,” Prazuck said, referring to the straits between Arabia and the Horn of Africa that have become notorious for pirate attacks.
“The European team in place has significantly reduced the number of boats taken hostage. Though they still threaten the Gulf of Aden, the pirates have switched their activity further offshore into the Indian Ocean.”
Prazuck said pirates were now striking in areas up to 800 nautical miles from their bases on the coast of Somalia, a lawless and largely ungoverned African state plagued by faction-fighting.
Several naval task forces now carry out anti-piracy patrols, including flotillas commanded by the European Union, NATO and the U.S. Floreal is fighting under EU colors as part of Operation Atalante.
Malaysia Commissions Second Scorpene Submarine
The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) recently commissioned its second submarine, KD Tun Tazak, into its fleet.
Tun Tazak will be based at the RMN naval base in Telok Sepanggar, Sabah, where she will join KD Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s first submarine which was commissioned in September.
The two Scorpene-class submarines, classified as Perdana Mentari-class submarines by the Royal Malaysian Navy, are armed with Blackshark wire-guided torpedoes and Exocet SM-39 sub-launched anti-ship missiles. They are capable of conducting anti-submarine or anti-surface ship operations, as well as special forces deployment missions in coastal waters.
Russia plans reactivation of two Kirov-class cruisers
The Russian Federation Navy (RFN) is to reactivate two laid-up Kirov-class (Project 1144) battle cruisers, according to statements attributed by Russian media to the country’s deputy defence minister.
Colonel General Vladimir Popovkin reportedly said that the Ministry of Defence has decided to renovate and modernize its heavy nuclear-powered missile cruisers Admiral Lazarev (ex- Frunze ) and Admiral Nakhimov (ex- Kalinin ).
The 24,300-ton ships were commissioned into the Soviet Navy in 1984 and 1988, the second and third vessels in a class that eventually numbered four. Col Gen Popovkin made no mention of the lead ship, Admiral Ushakov (ex- Kirov ), which entered service in 1980 and was decommissioned in 2004, appearing to confirm earlier reports that it is to be scrapped.
The RFN currently has one ship of the class in service, Pyotr Velikiy which was launched in St Petersburg in 1989 and commissioned in 1998.
US Navy Chief Favours Speeding up Unmanned Programs
![250px-ADM_Gary_Roughead_CNO[1]](http://blog.marport.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/250px-ADM_Gary_Roughead_CNO1.jpg "250px-ADM_Gary_Roughead_CNO[1]")
The U.S. Navy’s top admiral said on Monday he hoped to speed up work on unmanned weapons systems, including unmanned underwater vehicles and an unmanned combat plane being developed by Northrop Grumman Corp.
“I tend not to want to put things off. I’d rather put a little pressure on the system and get things done,” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead told reporters after a speech to the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
He cited the Navy’s earlier-than-planned deployment last month of the MQ-8B Fire Scout, an unmanned helicopter also being developed by Northrop, on board an aircraft carrier in the eastern Pacific, and said it was performing “wonderfully.”
But if the Navy had stuck to its original plan, the helicopter would still be going through testing in southern Maryland, he said.
The Navy will continue flight tests and operational evaluations of the helicopter aboard the carrier. Eventually it is to be used aboard a new class of smaller littoral combat warships, working in tandem with a manned H-60 helicopter.
Roughead said there were differing opinions about the technical maturity of the systems involved in the Navy Unmanned Combat Aerial System, but he was pressing to accelerate the program and roll it out sooner than planned.
Some analysts had suggested the program could be slowed down to save money in the short-term.
“I believe that this is an area … where I think we can move a little more quickly than what we have in the past. As we do that, I believe that there has to be an acceptance that it’s not all going to be perfect,” he said.
Sometimes it was better to field a system that met 90 percent of one’s targets and then upgrade it later after learning about its performance and any shortcomings, he said.
Roughead said he was also exploring ways to move forward as quickly as possible on autonomous underwater vehicles, where he said technology was actually further advanced than the Navy’s operational concepts for using such vehicles.
He said the Navy’s decision to reorganize its operations putting intelligence and command and control functions under one leader would allow better decision-making on cyber warfare and unmanned technologies.
He said the pace of technological advancement in both areas necessitated a different way of thinking about future military operations and how the Pentagon buys weapons.
It was important to factor in the people needed to operate, service and maintain such systems, as well as the fuel they would consume, to arrive at serious estimates for their long- term operating costs, he said.
He said unmanned weapons were not a panacea for future challenges, but they could prove very useful for helping the U.S. military prevent and prevail in future conflicts.
Roughead said he favored close cooperation among the military services to ensure unmanned systems had a lot of commonality, which could help save costs and would ensure that they could work together in the future.
“If we don’t do that, we’re going to end up spending more money for the same capability and it won’t be as effective,” he added. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; editing by Andre Grenon)
More Frigates Sought for EU Somalia Mission
The outgoing chairman of the European Union Military Committee wants more assets to combat piracy in the Somali basin because of the vast area that needs to be covered.
“The EU has committed three or four frigates, in 2010 but we probably need between six and 10 to cover that vast area,” General Henri Bentegeat said at a news conference following a meeting of the EU Chairs of Defense Staff (CHODs). He insisted that there was coordination between the EU and NATO naval assets in the area and “certainly no duplication.”
As for progress on developing military capabilities at the EU level, he said it was “hard to tackle shortfalls in a time of economic crisis” but stressed that “countries cannot afford to go on focusing on national priorities without giving more thought to European cooperation.”
But he pointed to an embryonic European Defence Agency project for third-party logistics support that enables civilian contractors to make logistics offers to EU countries for crisis-management operations, and which resulted in considerable savings in the EU mission to Chad and Central Africa.
Regarding the use of EU battle groups, Bentegeat said the concept would not be changed but that some countries might be allowed to use them as a reserve force for current operations.
General Syrén, who will take up his duties Nov. 6, underlined the importance of civil-military cooperation given that there is often a need for conflict prevention and stabilization.
Finally, with regard to the notion of “permanent structured cooperation,” in which some EU countries could press ahead with military cooperation with or without others, Bentegeat said this was a “complex subject” and that the CHODs would allow the Spanish presidency of the European Union, which will begin in January, to launch its own program on the issue.
France, Russia Move Closer to Mistral Deal
France will send a warship to Russia in November in the run up to an unprecedented deal to sell it a helicopter carrier, a top defense ministry official said Oct. 31, RIA Novosti reported.
“In November, the Mistral helicopter carrier will arrive on a visit to St. Petersburg,” the first deputy chief of the Navy general staff, Oleg Burtsev, told the news agency.
Burtsev also confirmed that Russia was planning to purchase one of the Mistral warships and to construct a further four warships under license.
“We plan to buy one Mistral-class ship in France, and with technical support from the French to build four helicopter carriers of this class under license,” Burtsev told the news agency.
Burtsev said that he attended talks on the warship deal in France two weeks ago and that France agreed to Russia’s proposal to buy the ship, RIA Novosti reported.
The Mistral warship can carry 16 heavy helicopters, landing-craft and troops and can also act as a command and control vessel.
Burtsev did not name a price, but the ship is set to cost up to 500 million euros ($740 million) RIA Novosti reported Saturday, citing French media.
The Russian armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, said in August that Moscow planned to buy a Mistral in an unprecedented deal that experts said reflected Kremlin efforts to accelerate military modernization.
The naval commander-in-chief Vladimir Vysotsky raised questions over the deal in September when he said that Russia might look to Spain or the Netherlands to buy the ship-building technology.
Since World War II, Russia has insisted on producing all military hardware for its own use and export, but it has failed to keep up with the West.
In recent years, Russia has talked a lot about modernizing its armed forces, which still rely heavily on Soviet-era equipment, and steadily increased its procurement budgets during Vladimir Putin’s presidency.
The Mistral-class warships would be based at Russia’s northern and Pacific fleets but might also be used against Somalian pirates, Burtsev said.
“The ships are being acquired for troop-carrying, peace-keeping and rescue operations. What’s more, this ship can be effectively used for fighting pirates, including those off the coast of Somalia,” Burtsev told RIA Novosti.
Russia is one of several countries to have sent naval ships to the coast of Somalia to try to combat the rising tide of attacks on vessels passing through the strategic Gulf of Aden.
In the most recent attack, Somali pirates seized a Thai fishing trawler with a crew including 23 Russian sailors, the Russian foreign ministry said Oct. 30.
Iran Buys North Korean Midget Submarines
The US Congressional Research Service suggests that Iran has purchased several midget submarines from North Korea. In June, the Iranian Navy commissioned its fourth, fifth and sixth units in its Qadi (also written Ghadir), r-class program, an indigenous midget submarine program which first became known in the west five years ago.
Military sources report that the North Korean miniature subs are capable of dropping small teams of commando forces on enemy shores, damaging large warships and mining the approaches of naval bases and harbours. They are capable of sowing EM-52 “rising mines” originally developed by China, which lurk on deep sea beds until triggered by a passing ship to release a missile which shoots up to strike its hull.
This weapon substantially enhances the Iranian navies’ menace, a development Israel will have take into account in the defense of its Mediterranean naval bases and commercial ports.
In 2005 Iran announced it would start production of its first indigenous submarine. In May 2005, Iran officially launched the production of its first locally built submarine, a craft capable of operating stealthily, state-run television reported. Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammad Imani was quoted as saying “the enemy would not be able to detect the submarine.” He did not elaborate. One submarine had already been built and was shown on television, cruising at sea level. The Defence Ministry had commissioned an unspecified number of the craft that’s been dubbed “Ghadir.”
The hull was launched in 2006. In 2007 the Iranian navy unveiled a submarine, named the Qadir (also written Ghadir), first of a number of planned midget submarines of the Yono class. Some observers suggested that the Qadir was otherwise similar to the North Korean Yugo boats, leading observers to suggest that this was an Iranian design based heavy on that class. But the Ghadir was 50% longer than the Yugo, and in fact resembled the North Korean Sang-O Class coastal submarines.
Iranian authorities asserted that the Qadir was an entirely Iranian design, and that the vessel could launch anti-ship missiles. Such a capability would have required the installation of more advanced systems into the submarine or the operation in concert with other vessels capable of guiding any such missiles. The Qadir does have provisions for mounting a Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (SDV), a type of craft that Iran has also developed.
Iran described the Ghadir as a “light” submarine, meaning it is smaller than the attack subs used by the United States. Iran has provided very little information about the craft, including its dimensions or the size of its crew.
The submarine, which is capable of operating in the Persian Gulf and Oman seawaters, can launch both missiles and torpedoes at the same time, the television reported, without specifying the range of the projectiles. In December 2004, Iran announced the production of a line of stealth torpedoes that could be launched from helicopters, ships or submarines. Iranian officials have repeatedly said the Islamic Republic will defend itself should the United States or archrival Israel initiate any aggression. Pressure has mounted on Iran recently with suspicion over its nuclear program which Washington suspects is aimed at building unconventional weapons, a charge Iranian officials vehemently deny.
In November 2007 Iran claimed to have built a small submarine equipped with sonar-evading technology, saying the craft had been launched in the Persian Gulf. The navy chief, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, was quoted by state television as saying the new Ghadir-class submarine is the second Iranian-built underwater craft outfitted with “state-of-the-art electronic equipment.” He said it took 10 years to build.
Iran’s Naval Submarine fleet will be equipped with a new domestically manufactured submarine, the senior Iranian navy commander said in August 2008. Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said that Iranian technicians have used indigenous technology to build the new submarine. He did not specify the class of the new submarine. Iran’s Navy currently operates Ghadir and Nahang (meaning whale in Persian) submarines. According to Rear Adm. Sayyari, the Ghadir submarine is equipped with the latest military and technological equipments.
On 26 November 2008 the Commander of the Islamic Republic Army’s Navy Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said that in next 15 days another Ghadir class submarine would be delivered to the Navy. Sayyari told reporters after touring IRNA head office that the submarine has been designed and built by Marine Industries Organization. He said moreover, a light submarine will join the Navy’s fleet on the Navy Day. He added that once the submarines join the Navy, its deterrent power deep inside the sea will increase dramatically. This would mark possibly the fourth submarine in this class.
Reportedly being mass produced [supposedly at a cost of $18 million each], the first of this class, Ghadir, has been paraded for the press. Although generally described as a mini-submarine, it is rather larger that Iran’s other mini-subs. The Ghadir, with an estimated displacement estimated at between 120 tons and 500 tons, is probably better described as a littoral submarine, similar in concept to the Italian Sauro class though significantly smaller. Photographs indicate it has a pair of bow torpedo tubes which appear to be 21” allowing them to fire typical heavyweight torpedoes. It could thus serve as a launch platform for the infamous Shkval rocket torpedo, which has been transferred to Iran.
New Russian Aircraft Carrier Killers
In Russia, the fifty man crew for the first Yasen (Graney) class SSGN (nuclear powered cruise missile sub) recently arrived at the Sevmash shipyards where their boat is being built. The crew was put together four years ago, and has been training ever since. The crew will continue training, increasingly on the first boat of the class (the Severodvinsk), which will be launched in a few months and enter service within two years.
Last July, construction began on a second Yasen class SSGN. Russia plans to complete six boats of this class within the next six years. Construction of the first Yasen class boat, the Severodvinsk, began in 1993, but lack of money led to numerous delays. Originally, the Severodvinsk was to enter service in 1998. Work on the Severodvinsk was resumed six years ago. If work is not interrupted, the second Yasen class boat should be delivered in less than six years.
The 9,500 ton Yasens carry 24 cruise missiles, as well as eight 25.6 inch torpedo tubes. Some of the cruise missiles can have a range of over 3,000 kilometers, while others are designed as “aircraft carrier killers.” The larger torpedo tubes also make it possible to launch missiles from them, as well as larger and more powerful torpedoes. The ship is highly automated, which is why there is a crew less than half of the 134 submariners needed to run the new United States Virginia class boats. The Yasen design is based on the earlier Akula and Alfa class SSNs. Russia had originally planned to build 30 Yasens.
