The Royal Navy is currently procuring five Type 31 surface combatants,costing two thousand million pounds,as replacements for five Type 23 or Duke class frigates,here we shall consider which roles these new vessels shall be suited to.
The most basic of the major warships shall be the humble Albatross class naval cutters,chartered to the Waterguard service,which shall be forward deployed in often remote locations to perform civil tasks such as law enforcement,pollution control,research and life saving.
Whilst the Type 31's size and diesel propulsion shall give them reasonable range,endurance,speed and sea keeping for Waterguard cutter tasks,their complex weapons and sensors shall create large crew and maintenance requirements,neither of which is desirable for vessels which must spend long periods far from a naval dockyard.
The Fishery Protection Squadrons' patrolling brigs shall be more complex vessels than the Waterguard cutters,for which they shall provide distant cover,carrying an armoured turret containing two Five and a Half Inch Naval Guns and able to fire three short tons of projectiles per minute to a range of forty miles for engaging land targets,providing local area air defence against subsonic targets,providing point air defence against supersonic targets and crippling or destroying any surface vessel of any size or type currently in service.
The Type 31's hull,machinery and sensors shall be adequate for the role of a patrolling brig,however,their Bofors 57 Mark 3 guns shall be out classed by the armament of cruisers,destroyers,frigates,corvettes and patrol vessels operated by Russia,China,Iran,North Korea,Argentina,Cuba,Venezuela,Spain and,even,the Republic of Ireland (not to mention Syrian coastal defence guns) making them incapable of protecting the United Kingdom's shipping by seeing off foreign warships or of providing useful fire support to marines.
The sloop shall be a more sophisticated vessel than the patrolling brig,intended to perform a variety of specialised tasks such as mining and hydrographing in addition to performing all of the roles of the brig.
The Type 31's shall lack the space necessary to accommodate specialised equipment such as the Eighty Foot Mine Hunting Launch and the large sonars used for surveying,in addition to their inadequacies in the patrolling brig role.
The destroying frigate shall be the most sophisticated of the surface combatants,being able to destroy sea (both on and below the surface),air,land and even space targets in the case of fully upgraded vessels,with missiles,guns and torpedoes whilst also carrying helicopters,boats,vehicles and marines.
The Type31s,despite being based on the design of a "credible frigate",shall have no ability to engage submarines,such as those used by Russia,China,Iran,North Korea,Argentina,Cuba,Venezuela,Spain and,even,drug cartels,due to their lack of a suitable sonar suite and shall be unsuited to engaging land and sea surface targets due to their small calibre guns and lack of heavy missiles.
The Type 31s shall be able to provide local area air defence to high value assets,such as the Queen Elizabeth class flying ships,with their twelve Sea Ceptor missiles,provided there is no submarine,surface ship or land based threat (either due to a lack of enemy assets or the presence of friendly frigates) but the same effect might be achieved at a fraction of the cost by adding more effective Stand Alone Defensive Systems and missiles to those high value assets,which already have the systems to support them.
Some have suggested that the Type 31 shall be suitable for dealing with,near mythical,"small boat swarms" but such a threat is best dealt with at long range by combat aircraft or helicopters,as the Royal Navy has proven,or,as the United States' Ship Vincennes demonstrated,with a larger calibre gun rather than at very short ranges with a smaller gun.
The Schleswig-Holstein opening,should permit small boats to get close to a Type 31 in peace time before beginning a war by attacking it but that is somewhat unlikely as it would require the enemy to keep their armed forces on a war footing,without anyone noticing,whilst waiting for the uncertain outcome of a small boat attack on a low value target to initiate combat operations.
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A terrorist small boat attack such as that on the United States' Ship Cole shall be far more likely but Bofors guns are not the most appropriate way to deal with a threat which may be avoided simply by using secure harbour facilities,a lesson which the Royal Navy often seems to forget.
The Bofors 57 Mark 3 shall add a fourth short range air defence system to the Type 31 class which shall also have two Bofors 40 Mark 4s (which shall at least be well positioned,a refreshing change for the Royal Navy) and Sea Ceptor missiles,but these Bofors guns shall be funded at the expense of more useful systems such as sonars,torpedoes,larger calibre guns and heavy missiles.
The United States' Navy also uses the Bofors 57 Mark 3,which it calls the Mark 110,and,despite having "concluded that the MK46 was more effective than the MK110" (the ballistically literate consider this improbable),intends to fit them to it's new Constellation class frigates,which shall otherwise be rather more credible than the Type 31s,incidentally the Mark 46 uses the same 30mm gun found on many Royal Navy warships and our proposed Type 23M or Royal Duke class.
An earlier generation of American "frigates" (American frigates have somewhat different origins to the Royal Navy's),the Perry class,carried the short ranged 76mm Mark 75 gun which saw very little combat use.
In contrast,the longer ranged and harder hitting 4.5-inch Mark 8 gun is one of the most frequently used weapon systems carried by Royal Navy frigates and destroyers,having engaged aircraft,missiles,ships and land targets in Iraq,Libya and particularly the Falklands,where land based artillery was subject to severe logistical constraints and little air support was available for ground troops.
Had the Type 31s been designed to carry the 4.5-inch Mark 8 naval gun,like our proposed Royal Duke class,then they should have been able to out gun most naval patrol vessels and also usefully engage land targets,in addition to having superior air defence capabilities,but with the Bofors 57mm Mark 3 as a main gun they shall be little more than "Faux Frigates" (F.F.31) which shall look like real warships but be unable to perform their roles.
It is noteworthy that the Royal Navy decided to adopt the previously alien Bofors 57 Mark 3 shortly after agreeing to closer collaboration with the United States' Navy,there is then a possibility that the Type 31s have been rendered useless in the name of Americanisation.
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