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Ship Classifications

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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by Rincewind   » Sat Feb 17, 2018 10:39 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Rincewind wrote:Actually you are not quite right. In the Royal Navy the classification is on the basis of role and NOT by size. Destroyers are Air Defence warships and frigates are either Anti-submarine or general purpose. Also, unlike the United States Navy where all ship capabilities are built around the Carrier Battle Group, Royal Navy frigates are intended for autonomous operations.

Some of our frigates have been quite large ships, larger than destroyers

Though as recently as the 50s the RN used frigates for different specialized roles, having the:
Type 41 or Leopard class anti-aircraft defence frigates
Type 61 Salisbury class aircraft direction (AD) (or radar picket) frigates
Type 12 or Whitby-class anti-submarine frigates

It's just that they found all but the specialized anti-submarine designs to be unsatisfactory - partly because of lack of commonality of parts and equipment, multiplying maintenance and supply issues. Anti-submarine effectiveness justifies some unique hardware for quieting, while also being expensive to include on all ships, where as the other uses really don't so a split between ASW and general purpose ships was determined to still make sense.

And I do wonder how much of the decision to make RN destroyers the air defense specialists had to do with the size ship you needed to carry a useful number of the big missiles needed for useful SAM range in the 60s and 70s. Kind of forced into it by default - though IMO it's stretching things to call a 6,200 ton ship a destroyer in 1962; the County-class air defense destroyer having almost twice the displacement of the contemporary USN Charles F. Adams-class guided missile destroyers. It was almost 15 years before the USN built an anti-air destroyer that large.


I think part of the reason was trying to sell it to the politicians. The original designs for air-warfare ships were for cruisers with a displacement up to 17,250 tons & crews of 1,050. This was obviously unaffordable so they came up with a cheaper design based on a conventional gun armed destroyer: (see Rebuilding the Royal Navy by David K Brown & George Moore for the evolution of this design).

Another point is that, as you described by your examples, frigates were originally single role vessels & sloops were general purpose vessels. Then they were faced with a general reduction in the fleet whilst simultaneously having to cater for a commitment to declare seventy frigates for NATO. So general purpose ships were reclassified as frigates & voila, they could meet the commitment.

Ultimately it's all about politics. Look at all the hoops the Navy had to go throw to get the Invincibles built, especially when they were forbidden to call them aircraft carriers; (their original design origins did stem from cruiser studies although it eventually morphed into a through-deck flight deck). Then, when the Soviet Navy began to deploy their first carriers the Thatcher government decided to reclassify the Invincibles as aircraft carriers to make it appear the Royal Navy was stronger than it looked.

As for the point about the Charles F Adams-class DDG's, at the same time the USN was building a series of Frigates; (both gun-armed & guided missile). Ultimately all the gun-armed frigates & one class of guided missile frigates; (the Coontz-class) were reclassified as guided missile destroyers whilst the remainder were classified as guided missile cruisers.

P.S. The Frigates were also described as Destroyer Leaders & they did use the DL/DLG identifier.

P.P.S. If you want another variance if you look at the all the classes based on the US Navy's Spruance-class DD962 hull the Spruances & the Kidds were classed as destroyers & the Ticonderogas were classed as guided missile cruisers. My point? In the Royal Navy the Kidds would have been classed as DDG's but the Spruances would have been classed as frigates: (God knows what they would called the Ticonderogas. Probably cancelled them, more than likely).
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by PalmerSperry   » Sun Feb 18, 2018 5:02 pm

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Rincewind wrote:In the Royal Navy the classification is on the basis of role and NOT by size. Destroyers are Air Defence warships and frigates are either Anti-submarine or general purpose.


Well all the frigates are ASW, however the ones that haven't received the Sonar 2087 upgrade get referred to as "general purpose" when they really mean is we have good ASW frigates and less-good ASW frigates - The ASW frigates can do anything and everything that a general purpose frigate can do, but the reserve is not the case whilst the phrasing might suggest the reverse is true.
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by ldwechsler   » Sun Feb 18, 2018 7:10 pm

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PalmerSperry wrote:
Rincewind wrote:In the Royal Navy the classification is on the basis of role and NOT by size. Destroyers are Air Defence warships and frigates are either Anti-submarine or general purpose.


Well all the frigates are ASW, however the ones that haven't received the Sonar 2087 upgrade get referred to as "general purpose" when they really mean is we have good ASW frigates and less-good ASW frigates - The ASW frigates can do anything and everything that a general purpose frigate can do, but the reserve is not the case whilst the phrasing might suggest the reverse is true.


The problem is that we're dealing with pretty small wet water navies on one small planet.

Many of the same issues remain because politics seems to be reasonably much the same.

But the clear growth of all classes, well, at least war classes from destroyers on up, comes from the increasing focus on missiles. They reach further than direct weapons and can do an immense amount of damage. Increasing accuracy also plays a major role.

Note that Manty destroyers took down Byng's much larger ship. And cruisers took down Crandall's SD's.

This is a major reason why Kingsford was so gloomy.
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by Rincewind   » Sun Feb 18, 2018 10:43 pm

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PalmerSperry wrote:
Rincewind wrote:In the Royal Navy the classification is on the basis of role and NOT by size. Destroyers are Air Defence warships and frigates are either Anti-submarine or general purpose.


Well all the frigates are ASW, however the ones that haven't received the Sonar 2087 upgrade get referred to as "general purpose" when they really mean is we have good ASW frigates and less-good ASW frigates - The ASW frigates can do anything and everything that a general purpose frigate can do, but the reserve is not the case whilst the phrasing might suggest the reverse is true.


Actually, that's not quite true. The 8 Type 23 ASWs are being replaced by a specialist ASW frigate, the Type 26 but the 5 GP Type 23s are going to be replaced by the Type 31, which is definitely going to be a GP frigate, rather in the manner of the Type 21s: (Part of the reason is that they hope to be able to order more of them to make up for the Royal Navy's crippling lack of numbers).
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by Vince   » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:45 am

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ldwechsler wrote:The problem is that we're dealing with pretty small wet water navies on one small planet.

Many of the same issues remain because politics seems to be reasonably much the same.

But the clear growth of all classes, well, at least war classes from destroyers on up, comes from the increasing focus on missiles. They reach further than direct weapons and can do an immense amount of damage. Increasing accuracy also plays a major role.

Note that Manty destroyers took down Byng's much larger ship. And cruisers took down Crandall's SD's.

This is a major reason why Kingsford was so gloomy.

Slight error. Byng's SLN Nevada-class BC was taken out by RMN Nike-class BCs with Mark 23 MDMs fire from pods at New Tuscany in Storm From the Shadows. I think you are referring to when 4 RMN Rolands with Mark 16G DDMs fired from internal tubes took out 4 SLN Indefatigable-class BCs at Saltash in Shadow of Freedom.
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History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by Maldorian   » Fri Feb 23, 2018 8:25 pm

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I think the biggest problem if you try to match wet navy classification and Honorverse classification is the fact, that the wet navy has to fight in 3 different areas, under water, water/land and air. Each area need specialized weapons and not all ships are big enough to carry weapons for all areas.

Honorverse has only one area: Space. You need only one kind of weapon and not 3 different (yes, you have long range missles and short range energy weapons, but both is space).
That make it easier to classify by pure size.
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by ldwechsler   » Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:34 am

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Maldorian wrote:I think the biggest problem if you try to match wet navy classification and Honorverse classification is the fact, that the wet navy has to fight in 3 different areas, under water, water/land and air. Each area need specialized weapons and not all ships are big enough to carry weapons for all areas.

Honorverse has only one area: Space. You need only one kind of weapon and not 3 different (yes, you have long range missles and short range energy weapons, but both is space).
That make it easier to classify by pure size.


I don't think it was the Nike's. It was from the Artremis and others of her class.
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by Armed Neo-Bob   » Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:22 am

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ldwechsler wrote:
Maldorian wrote:I think the biggest problem if you try to match wet navy classification and Honorverse classification is the fact, that the wet navy has to fight in 3 different areas, under water, water/land and air. Each area need specialized weapons and not all ships are big enough to carry weapons for all areas.

Honorverse has only one area: Space. You need only one kind of weapon and not 3 different (yes, you have long range missles and short range energy weapons, but both is space).
That make it easier to classify by pure size.


I don't think it was the Nike's. It was from the Artremis and others of her class.


Artemis is the flagship of the 106 BatCruRon, which is Nike class. Then when Oversteegen brought in the 108th, Mike had a second squadron of Nike's.

Rob
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by PalmerSperry   » Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:28 pm

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Rincewind wrote:
PalmerSperry wrote:Well all the frigates are ASW, however the ones that haven't received the Sonar 2087 upgrade get referred to as "general purpose" when they really mean is we have good ASW frigates and less-good ASW frigates - The ASW frigates can do anything and everything that a general purpose frigate can do, but the reserve is not the case whilst the phrasing might suggest the reverse is true.


Actually, that's not quite true. The 8 Type 23 ASWs are being replaced by a specialist ASW frigate, the Type 26 but the 5 GP Type 23s are going to be replaced by the Type 31, which is definitely going to be a GP frigate, rather in the manner of the Type 21s: (Part of the reason is that they hope to be able to order more of them to make up for the Royal Navy's crippling lack of numbers).


Still going to be the case that a ASW Type 26 can do everything a GP Type 31 can do, but not the other way around. i.e. GP is less capable than ASW.
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Re: Ship Classifications
Post by ldwechsler   » Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:36 pm

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Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
Maldorian wrote:I think the biggest problem if you try to match wet navy classification and Honorverse classification is the fact, that the wet navy has to fight in 3 different areas, under water, water/land and air. Each area need specialized weapons and not all ships are big enough to carry weapons for all areas.

Honorverse has only one area: Space. You need only one kind of weapon and not 3 different (yes, you have long range missles and short range energy weapons, but both is space).
That make it easier to classify by pure size.


I don't think it was the Nike's. It was from the Artremis and others of her class.


Artemis is the flagship of the 106 BatCruRon, which is Nike class. Then when Oversteegen brought in the 108th, Mike had a second squadron of Nike's.

Rob[/quote]

Are you certain of that? I recall that the Artemis was a pod-laying BC and the Nike was not.
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