When is a destroyer not a destroyer?
 

When its unarmed!!!!!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12...er_paams_fail/ You really couldn't make this sh1t up could you :nope::nope::nope:

That's the thing that bugs me about modern surface warships. With only the rudimentary little gun turret up front, they pretty much all look unarmed to me anyway. Gone are the days of a ship bristling with gun tubes. But it is a scandal that all this ship is at this point, is a glorified patrol boat.

Well even if the Sea Viper was operational, it, like the Type 42 before is extremely limited in what it can do.

Very limited anti surface capabilities. Even more limited land attack capabilities and horrific anti sub capabilities.

Thought we'd learnt in WW2 that hugely expensive specialised vessels (read battleships) were ineffective and far too easily sunk.

......when the MOD/RN procure a new warship:har:

(p.s read about the new aircraft carriers being built - 1 could be sold to India due to possible military budget cuts, meaning we will have to carrier share with the French Navy.The other could be converted to a glorified helicopter/commando assault ship:nope:)

Or when it's front falls off. Then it become's a submarine. :yep:

Unfortunately for all those who hate Lewis Page, the UK military-industrial-government seems determined to prove him right when it comes to the Navy :D

:damn::damn::damn::damn:

At this rate, they'll be forced to reactivate HMS Belfast, and HMS Victory to make up numbers...

So what you have is a missle platform with no missles ?

Shame too when this is ruling the high seas:

http://www.alaskareport.com/images3/somalia_pirates.jpg

When it's a-float?

*ducks*

Agreed http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

Really? Never heard this one.

Look I've been on quite a few websites that deal with the RN and one of them, the navweaps forum ahs some pretty knowledgable guys, some current and ex-rn whose word I'd take over Lewis Page.

There has been one failure out of numerous successes. For such a complex system you would expect a few failures. We also don't know what constitutes a failure. Lewis Page is to the RN what Karlo Copp is to Aussie military aviation.

Lewis Page basically thinks all stuff American is great and that the UK should just purchase it.

read this link

http://warships1discussionboards.yuk...-missiles.html

I've glimpsed at the discussion, and while I don't have too high an evaluation of Page's technical expertise (in contrast to Carlo Kopp, which I admit to be rather convinced by) - his Navy background really doesn't show in his work, I think he's more on the money than the gallery on Warships1 this time.

A weapon's success percentage in trials is but a most partial measure of its reliability. In the absence of specific knowledge of what each trial entailed, I'll be much happier with a weapon that didn't work in 90% of a 100 trials, but the last five trials (or even 2 or 3) went w/o a hitch rather than a weapon that was mostly succeeding but the last trial failed.

It is generally the later trials that try and bring everything together. A failure there is much more critical than one (or even 3) in the early stages.

The bigger problem, however, is not so much how the failure percentage than the fact that weapon is still somewhere in its trial program AT ALL even after the ship commissioned. In fact, according to your thread, they hadn't even actually shot one Aster out of a Type 45 yet!

They did this in Soviet Union. It is called "experimental operation". It is generally not thought well of by the West.

But worst of all, even if PAAMS works perfectly, it still won't change the fact the T45 is bloody expensive, and even if Sampson does become the more efficient system in the end it still does not seem to justify the cost. Or the idea of not arming the ship with Tomahawks. Or indeed, while there is a role for surface combtants, that a properly carrier looks extremely attractive versus the cost of those T45s!

And I don't think the board answered those questions at all. It is split b/w ad homineming Page and bland assurances that everything is all right, including propaganda from one self-claimed former worker on the PAAMS program (oh, how neutral!).

Well I would expect a former worker on PAAMS to be more reliable that Lewis Page who left the Navy a long time ago and isn't close to the program.

Yes the Type 45 is expensive but I still don't agree with Lewis Pages article or his argument that AEGIS would have been a better route given the problem yet again that the UK isn't going to get the source code for the F-35 so I doubt we'd get the source for the AEGIS thus as one poster said, we'd have to spend more money to bring AEGIS up to the standard we need due to getting given an inferior system for export.

The trials from the barge as I understand it were to allow testing of the missile and system while the Type-45s were being built to make integration easier.

Anyway we don't know what the failure is and how serious.

As for Carlo Kopp, well, I've heard enough and put him in the same basket as Lewis Page.

Actually, it just means another source of bias enters, one that can be seen in certain commentary about the V-22. Especially since the "fomer worker" gave no details, just assurances blander than can be found on a brochure.

I won't be so dim about Aegis source code. After all, it is not the State of the Art like the JSF is supposed to be. It is a modern but well-used system that's being stretched until the day of a revolutionary new system.

Seeing that every Aegis buyer has more or less the same general requirements (anti-air, anti-cruise missile, maybe anti-ballistic missile, the latter of which apparently PAAMS would not have even if it fully works without upgrades and expense), one must wonder what these high and exacting standards are. Making up nebulous or partially valid (as in turning Desirables into Essentials) standards is a time honored technique to insist on not sharing, at enormous cost in time and expense and often getting stuck with an inferior product.

For a historic lesson for such hubris, see the Soviet S-300P and S-300V series; the Soviet Army's proposal was more ambitious & capable in all aspects in theory (the chassis was tracked, a ATBM capability was specified, the launchers theoretically somewhat more independent with separate illuminator, and the battery level engagement radar incorporating more independent search capability than FLAP LID).

That was the excuse they used to go their own way, but as it turned out, the first S-300Ps were clearly superior to the S-300Vs (for example, in the enormously important minimum engagement altitude area). The ATBM ability is nice, but didn't come out till 1988 because the big 9M82 Giant was delayed (by then, the ordinary-sized 48N6 ATBM-capable rocket wasn't that far away). The early S-300Ps came out sooner to boot - the PTs (they "only" had comparable mobility characteristics to Patriot) were operational as a full battalion by 1981 and transitioning smoothly through the PT-1, the PS and PM. Oh, how much stronger would Soviet Army Air Defense be they can start throwing out the old SA-4s in 1981 rather than 1986!

I'll grant that PAAMS, on paper, if they ever get it working, may be more efficient in some areas against even an appropriately modified Aegis. But saying it is worth the delay or the cost is a much more nebulous argument. If the darn thing doesn't even work, it is treasonous...

Yes, that's what trial ships are for. But the fact remains that the damn system hadn't even been tested on the full warship.

So why are you automatically taking an optimistic attitude?

From whom? I know he isn't popular in some circles, but seeing that he attacks both the Australians and the States, it is inevitable. Do they actually have arguments that are bigger than nitpicks (I remember glimpsing one that criticized on of his pages for not mentioning some stupid Swedish fighter had a particular human interface before the Russian Su-35BM or something like that ... I nodded but mostly I was rolling my eyes) or ad hominems?