Shipbucket

I hope you take a moment to reflect on the silliness of a '70s-'80s frigate attempting to have four missile fire control channels, one more than a Kidd of twice the displacement.

There is more to naval electronics than the antenna you stick on the top of a deckhouse, especially in that era.

yup, the mod-2 CAS gives one missile fc channel via it's dish tracker antenna (w/ cwi injection), while the CAS parabolic search antenna gives two TWS/track-while-scan channels for surface fc...

so for the CAS, it's 3 fc channels in total, but only 1 channel is usable for missile fc... while the STIR adds 1 more missile fc channel...

so combined, mod-2 CAS+STIR gives 2 surface TWS fc channels and 2 air fc channels... and w/ cwi injection available for both air channels this equates to 2 missile fc channels...

Guidance channels are like money, sex and dakka. Enough is more than you've got, and less than too much, and there's no such thing as too much!

As for the Kidd, I never understood exactly why it did have so few. I always chalked it up to having originally been designed for Iran, but there is no reason it couldn't have had at least one more, especially on a hull that size.

Looking at revised possibilities, maybe a Spook-9 for the 76mm forward, keep the pair of STIRs where they're currently at, and replace the aft CAS with a with one of the little directors that can guide either the aft 40mm or the NSSM.

Plan B is would be to get rid of the NSSM completely, and add a couple more 40mm mounts, with a dedicated director.

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We can't stop here--this is Bat country!

If it's close enough to cast a shadow, I think the flying house wins initiative.

Bronies are like the Forsworn. Everyone agrees that they are a problem but nobody wants to expend the energy rooting them out.

"That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way."

Looking at it, unless there is space issue with the electronics, I see no reason the Spook-9 can't be replaced with another mini-STIR.

_________________
We can't stop here--this is Bat country!

If it's close enough to cast a shadow, I think the flying house wins initiative.

Bronies are like the Forsworn. Everyone agrees that they are a problem but nobody wants to expend the energy rooting them out.

"That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way."

I know the design is for an AU, but you may want to consider placing the aft stir-24 at the back of the mast facing to the rear...

reason is that IRL, the perry's had a mod called "Missile System Engagement Improvement" done by JHU APL (john hopkins univ, applied physics lab) in w/c they tweaked the perry's mk92 fcs so that it could fire an sm-1 from the mk13 launcher at a target directly to the rear of the ship but w/ the launcher itself pointed at an angle off of the rear (since it was blocked from directly firing to the rear)... this meant that at launch the sm-1 seeker was not yet receiving rf energy reflected from the target... the sm-1 would then fly a curved path around the ship until it's seeker could acquire the signal from the stir (located at the rear) as reflected off of the target (and this curved path was done w/o the use of an inertial guidance unit, w/c only came later w/ sm-2)...

that way the perry could engage a target directly to it's rear w/ an sm-1 w/o needing to re-orient the entire ship to give the mk13 a clear line of sight to the target...

in the case of your AU design it would allow you to engage w/ SM-1 both to the front and rear, while still preserving the original fire arcs of engaging w/ NSSM to the rear, plus engaging w/ SM-1 and NSSM to both sides...

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btw, is that still an sps49 on the mast? I thought you were going to go w/ an sps52?

I forgot to change that; thank you for pointing it out.

_________________
We can't stop here--this is Bat country!

If it's close enough to cast a shadow, I think the flying house wins initiative.

Bronies are like the Forsworn. Everyone agrees that they are a problem but nobody wants to expend the energy rooting them out.

"That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way."

the mini-STIR, the STIR 120, is an post cold war design (even post 2000 IIRC) so was not available at the time. you also lost all heightfinding ability with the loss of the SPQ-9 IIRC, so your STIRs will be less capable. even worse, you have no aerial target designation system left, so your fire control channels are now next to useless.
you have an ship with an launcher larger then a perry, with the gun forward (more bow length required), twin shaft propulsion, helideck (twin hangar too?) with an near full tartar fire control system (you only miss the 3D radar) and NSSM on an hull the size of an perry.... I think the hull is overloaded, if not top heavy.
if I compare ships with about the same, I get at the Tromp class for example, 1200 tons more then a perry. even that gave only space for a single lynx helicopter, on an arrangement much more ideal then you have now.

when looking at the kidd class, with only 3 fire control channels, it seems little, but the fact even the burke has only 3 directors shows that it is enough. note that the virginia class has only 3 fire control channels as well. (2 SPG-51, 1 SPG-60) either you are saying the people designing those ships did not do their job properly, or you are going overboard with the fire control channels on this drawing, as Erik just noted.

all in all, you will need either less systems or an bigger hull.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
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Updated now.

_________________
We can't stop here--this is Bat country!

If it's close enough to cast a shadow, I think the flying house wins initiative.

Bronies are like the Forsworn. Everyone agrees that they are a problem but nobody wants to expend the energy rooting them out.

"That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way."

Twin shafts are much more justifiable, especially if you're looking at CODAG/CODOG.

I was originally thinking in that direction, but hopefully the current is something that will actually work. Feels a bit underarmed, however. I suppose is a big improvement over the Perry, though.

_________________
We can't stop here--this is Bat country!

If it's close enough to cast a shadow, I think the flying house wins initiative.

Bronies are like the Forsworn. Everyone agrees that they are a problem but nobody wants to expend the energy rooting them out.

"That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way."