As nations race to restock their fleets and platforms emerge with ever deeper magazines, is the age of the arsenal ship finally dawning?
For some time, maritime strategists have toyed with a novel concept – a lightly crewed or even autonomous ship stocked to the gills with vertical launch missile systems. Known as arsenal ships, this concept never quite made it past the drawing board. Until now…
The War Zone has an interesting report on Germany’s strategy to scale its navy by 2035. Germany is planning to build uncrewed arsenal ships to supplement and support the surface fleet:
“Germany is the latest country to announce plans for a missile-toting new class of uncrewed vessels that will serve as arsenal ship ‘wingmen,’ supporting conventional surface combatants. The Large Remote Missile Vessels (LRMV) are part of the German Navy’s modernization drive and may be especially relevant to help offset limitations in the firepower of some of its other warships.”
South Korea is considering something even bigger – a Joint Firepower Ship with capacity to carry up to 80 land attack ballistic missiles. As Popular Mechanics reports, the lightly crewed ship will form part of an integrated kill chain:
“The Joint Firepower Ship will be the sea-based portion of South Korea’s “kill chain”—a web of sensors, spies, special forces, and shooters designed to get a fix on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a crisis and execute a peremptory attack on him and his nuclear weapons.”
It is no secret that Australia’s fleet lacks the magazine depth required at a time when missiles are proliferating, and single ships can stock over a hundred missiles on board. Things have gone quiet on the Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels that were recommended in Australia’s ‘Independent Analysis of Navy’s Surface Combatant Fleet’ report. The report recommended acquiring vessels with Aegis and missile capacity that matches our current ANZAC class:
“Acquire six Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels (LOSVs) with 32 Vertical Launching System cells, providing enhanced lethality through additional multi-domain strike capacity and directly increasing survivability, lethality and endurance. This investment will increase distributed fleet lethality with a lower cost and crewing impact.”
Could optionally crewed evolve to an autonomous arsenal vessel that scales the strike options available to the future force?
Food for thought!
📷via @Popular Mechanics and links to the articles mentioned are in the comments.