Tag Archive for: frigate

People matter—especially when frigate crews are too small

People are getting carried away with the virtues of small warship crews. We need to remember the great vice of having few people to run a ship: they’ll quickly tire.

Yes, the navy is struggling to recruit and retain enough people, so needing fewer on each ship is superficially attractive. The wages bill will be lower, too. But the experience of Royal Australian Navy people, including me, tells us that a ship’s endurance is measured in the size of its crew more than almost any other data point.

Moreover, overloading people with work will only worsen the retention challenge. It almost certainly is doing so already.

In a 28 February article in The Strategist, Eric Lies expounds the virtues of the Mogami-class frigate, a derivative of which is being offered to Australia for its requirement for up to 11 general-purpose frigates. Among its advantages, he says, is that the ‘design needs a smaller crew’.

Even US aircraft carriers, with crews of more than 5,000, are limited by people. Each carrier has only one flight deck crew.  When those people need rest, it’s not negotiable. A carrier captain will husband the ship’s flight deck and air crews every bit as carefully as each other.

No amount of automation will change the dependency of ship endurance on crew endurance. Getting the endurance requirement right for a warship is one of the most vital capabilities to set. It’s simple: a navy’s ability lies in its people.

It follows that the small crew of the offered Mogami derivate, probably similar to the 90 in the original design that’s in service with the Japanese navy, would be a major limiting factor for a frigate in Australia’s sea conditions and enormous operating area. We need substantial endurance if our ships are going to be on station where we want to sustain a presence.  No presence is no deterrence.

A Mogami with a crew of 90 or so (presumably including an embarked helicopter flight of six aircrew and nine maintainers), will be exhausted after a fortnight on operations, even at low intensity and in good weather.

Trying to solve the navy’s recruitment and retention problems with small crews misses the essential point. If a ship is not designed with enough endurance to deliver the capability requirement sought, especially crew size and all the supporting facilities to sustain that crew, such as food storage, then the demand placed on each person aboard will be excessive.

I have no doubt that shrinking crew sizes has contributed significantly to the Royal Australian Navy’s recent poor retention. My experience tells me that we have been asking more of our people than is reasonable and that they pass judgement in the only way they can.

This matter is critical to the sustainability of naval power. Our history has useful pointers. The 4500-tonne Perth class destroyers built in the 1960s, one of which I commanded, had crews of 330. My Adelaide-class frigate, of much the same size and completed in 1993, had a crew of 220 plus an embarked helicopter. That is, it had a mission the destroyers did not have. My frigate crew became tired much more quickly than my destroyer crew.

In my frigate, everything we did as part of normal business—such as replenishing fuel at sea, launching and recovering the helicopter, firing weapons, myriad mundane domestic tasks,  plus simulated fire fighting, plugging up of holes and patching up of people in the event of battle damage—very quickly consumed everyone available. In navy parlance, almost everything was a whole-ship evolution, requiring the entire crew be put to work. No one except the captain had the luxury of having just one job. There was no redundancy.

The smaller Anzac class frigates have essentially the same set of missions as the FFGs, although with less capability overall. As fleet commander, I saw that fatigue in their crews of around 180 was a sharper problem than in earlier ships.

With the same suite of missions as an Anzac but half the crew, the endurance of a Mogami-derivative ship would be even more limited.

The smaller the crew, the more a ship can do things in only sequence because there are just not enough people to do them in parallel. Commanders may not have a choice about that. And, even when they do, the crew will always need rest sooner if the ship, for want of people, has no redundancy.

History shows starkly what has been happening.  Australia’s future Hunter-class frigates will reportedly be around 10,000 tonnes, with crews of 180. The heavy cruiser HMAS Australia, which served in World War II, also displaced 10,000 tonnes but her crew was greater than 800. In many respects, Australia was a much simpler ship, equipped for fewer missions, albeit more labour intensive to operate.

Reducing crew numbers is incompatible with increasing the size of ships, the number and complexity of their missions, their technological complexity and the variety of their systems. Our experience already tells us this.

Mogami class offers strong technical advantages in Australia’s frigate competition

Japan’s Mogami class is clearly the best choice for Australia’s general-purpose frigate program. Compared with its very capable competitor, the Meko A-200 from Germany, the Mogami design needs a smaller crew, offers deeper magazines and has a newer system for combat control.

The project, Sea 3000, is intended to replace the Anzac-class general-purpose frigates with as many as 11 ships, part of a larger program to expand the Royal Australian Navy’s surface fleet. TKMS’s Meko A-200 and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ Mogami class are the shortlisted contenders. Australia plans to order three ships of the chosen design from the winning contractor’s shipyard, taking first delivery in 2029, and build the rest locally. A decision is expected this year.

(An accompanying article looks at industrial and strategic factors in the decision.)

The Australian Defence Force has been suffering from a recruitment and retention shortfall, and the Royal Australian Navy has been especially troubled in finding and keeping people.

Minimising crew sizes is therefore more important than ever as the RAN builds up to an expanded fleet of surface combatants and nuclear-powered submarines. Because the Mogami class is designed for greater automation than the Meko A-200, it has a crew of only 90 instead of 120. So Australia’s frigates could be crewed more easily if they were Mogamis and, should the government expand the program, the smaller crew improves the practicability of operating more than 11 ships.

Alternatively, it would be more feasible for the RAN to give each frigate two rotating crews,  maximising each ship’s operational availability. The United States does this with some submarines and surface ships to reduce crew fatigue and the time ships are unavailable due to crew training requirements.

Implementing a strategy of deterrence by denial requires an ability to rapidly shift mission sets, so the enemy must be wary of complex threats. If recent experience in the Red Sea is any indicator, modern naval warfare will be frenetic and victory will hinge not only on which side has the better equipment but which has the greater magazine depth.

The upgraded Mogami design offered to Australia has 32 vertical-launch system (VLS) missile cells, twice as many as the Meko A-200. Mogamis would therefore spend less time shuttling back to port for re-arming, or, if Australia follows intended US replenishment practice, undertaking exceptionally difficult reloads at sea.

The increase VLS count also gives greater flexibility in loadouts. After accounting for self-defence, the Mogamis would have greater capacity for offensive missiles than the Meko A-200. This means they can be readily retasked and kept in the fight. While frigates can’t carry as many long-range strike missiles as heavier surface combatants can, the magazine depth of the Mogami design allows for a greater distribution of weapons through the fleet, maximizing distributed lethality.

By one important measure, the combination of a small crew and deep magazines results in high efficiency: a Mogami of the upgraded design has only 2.8 crew members per missile cell, compared with 3.4 for the US Arleigh Burke class and 7.5 for the Meko A-200. Between the higher efficiency and magazine depth, the Mogami is well positioned to support the Australian strategy of defence by denial.

A ship is only as capable as the combat management system that ties everything together, however. The Meko A-200 is presumably being offered with a combat control system developed from the one that the RAN already uses in the Anzacs, offering more-seamless integration. While the current system has been improved since its initial release, its age does raise the issue of long-term upgrade costs. The price associated with updating an older baseline rapidly increases and runs into hardware limitations. A case in point is the United States’ destroyer modernisation program, which is costing an estimated $17 billion for 20 ships.

The combat management system the Mogami utilizes was developed alongside the frigate, with initial designs beginning in 2015. This newer baseline means there are potentially large long-term cost savings to be had from the Mogami class.

The RAN would need time to adjust to the new Japanese combat management system, and there would be additional costs associated with integrating weapons  that Australia uses but Japan doesn’t. But these growing pains would better position the fleet for the future. Rather than presenting challenges of backwards compatibility, the combat management system would launch the RAN cleanly into the next generation of fighting ships.

Underpinning the better fit for the RAN is that cooperation with the Japanese strengthens a key geostrategic alliance between Australia and Japan. The shared operating area, threat assessments, and threat capabilities means that the Mogami is already tailor made for fighting and winning in the Indo-Pacific.

The Meko-A200 is a capable platform, and replacing the Anzac class with an upgraded variant wouldn’t be the worst choice. The Japanese bid for the Sea 3000 project, however, represents the stronger choice for Australia. The Mogami offers enhanced flexibility across the board. And there’s icing on the cake: reported costs are lower for Mogamis than for Meko A-200s.

Strategic and industrial factors favour Japan for Australia’s frigate project

It’s not just technical naval capability. Australia has persuasive geostrategic and industrial reasons for choosing Japan over Germany as its partner in building as many as 11 general-purpose frigates in a priority defence program.

The upgraded Mogami class offered by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) does have strong technical advantages for the Royal Australian Navy over the competing Meko A-200 from Germany’s ThyssenKrupp. But Australia must also consider that it and Japan share the threat from China, which is another reason to choose the Japanese design.

Related to that, the two countries can and should help each other. And, industrially, Japan is well positioned to help.

The Australia-Japan ‘special strategic partnership’ has great potential but is underexploited in defence industrial cooperation, largely because of Japan’s historically strict arms export controls. But the controls are gradually loosening as Japan faces an increasingly complex Indo-Pacific security landscape, with three assertive nuclear-armed neighbours—China, North Korea, and Russia—at its doorstep.

In response, Japan has taken significant steps, including establishing a joint public-private committee to support defence exports. This committee brings together representatives from various ministries and major industrial and defence firms such as MHI, Hitachi and NEC. The effort stems from lessons learned following Japan’s unsuccessful bid to sell submarines to Australia in 2016.

The stakes are high this time, since MHI is one of two finalists in the frigate program with an estimated budget of $7-11 billion.

The program, Sea 3000, prioritises rapid acquisition, requiring the first ship to be delivered by 2029. The first three members of the class will be built overseas by the designer and the rest in Australia.

The Mogami class is in Japanese naval service but the upgraded version offered to Australia is yet to be deployed. Thyssenkrupp’s design, Meko A-200 is an evolution of the Anzac class, which the new ships are intended to replace. A choice between the designs is due this year.

Leaving aside the question of which design is better technically suited to Australia (discussed in an accompanying article), Japan can offer more at a strategic and industrial level than Germany can. There are three aspects to consider.

The first is that Australia and Japan both reject Beijing’s moves to treat the South China Sea as its own. Australia and Japan have shared concerns over China’s increasing coercive behaviour that is responsible for the deteriorating strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific. Recent actions include China’s unlawful maritime claims with its 10-dash line (updated from the original nine-dash version), resource pilfering in the South China Sea, dangerous military manoeuvres, such as releasing flares in front of an Australian aircraft over international airspace, and violating Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands.

The steady tempo of China’s coercive measures in the Indo-Pacific prompted action from Australia and Japan. In December 2022, Japan approved three strategic documents: the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Buildup Program. These marked a shift in defence policy, a response to the real threat of military attacks on its territory. Similarly, Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program emphasise a strategy of denial, aiming to deter conflicts and prevent coercion through force.

Together, Japan and Australia view themselves as the northern and southern anchors of Indo-Pacific security, and both stand to play a strategic role in deterring China.

Germany is awakening to the challenge that China poses, but it is not there yet. The government of outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz introduced a strongly worded China strategy in mid-2023, but his coalition government was deeply divided on China policy. So Berlin maintained Angela Merkel’s risk-averse policy, prioritising short-term economic gain over tackling strategic risks. Moreover, a major flaw in Scholz’s China policy was how strongly influenced it was by German companies with longstanding investments in China. This led to overdependency on China, paralleling the country’s reliance on cheap Russian oil and gas. However, the next German government, under Friedrich Merz, could potentially change course.

The second reason for Japan being a more attractive partner than Germany is that Australia and Japan stand to gain strategically by working more closely together in the Indo-Pacific. Canberra and Tokyo already share significant strategic alignment on China’s intensification of coercive activities, as highlighted in their eleventh 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Consultations in September 2024.

Australia and Japan have also taken steps to strengthen military cooperation with the planned deployment of a Japanese Amphibious Brigade to Australia for joint exercises with US Marines. These measures underline the salience of the special strategic partnership, reflected in the Reciprocal Access Agreement signed in 2022. The agreement, Japan’s first defence treaty with an international partner since 1960, demonstrates the priority both nations place on their bilateral ties.

The third reason is that Australia would benefit from Japan’s industrial capacity and maritime expertise in building advanced warships designed for the same operational environment in the Indo-Pacific. Australia’s limited shipbuilding capacity demands help from partners, and Japan is well positioned to provide it quickly. A clear indication that Japan is serious came from Japan’s defence chief General Yoshihide Yoshida, who said Japan would give ‘priority’ to Australia if the Mogami design was selected for the frigate program.

A related consequence of choosing the Mogami design would be strengthening the interoperability of the Japanese and Australian navies: they’d be using almost identical ships.

Australia must also be wary of risks to export supply from a German arms industry that is suddenly coming under great pressure as the United States tells European countries to look after their own defence. Urgent domestic needs can push their way to the front of the queue. Japan’s industry has been under rising pressure too, but the problem has been building up for years.

Australia stands to gain significantly by deepening its defence industrial cooperation with Japan. By forging a robust industrial partnership, both nations can enhance their defence capabilities, address shared security challenges in the Indo-Pacific and translate their strategic relationship into tangible benefits. Given their shared concerns over China’s coercive behaviour, this enhanced cooperation is necessary for maintaining stability and deterring aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

Why attack missile boats can’t replace major warships

Attack missile boats are no substitutes for the Royal Australian Navy’s major warships, contrary to the contention of a 4 February 2025 Strategist article. The ships are much more survivable than attack boats and can perform long-range operations that small vessels cannot.

In the article, the author argues, for example, that a single missile hit could cripple a billion-dollar warship. In fact, this is highly unlikely.

The planning for the number, type and direction of travel of missiles needed to successfully engage a warship is a tactical art. The calculations are classified, but the Salvo Equation is an unclassified means of understanding how many missiles must be fired to damage a major warship, such as a destroyer or frigate. The number is greater than most people assume.

The debate on warship survivability isn’t new, and it remains paper-thin. Warships are designed to float, move and fight. As the RAN’s Sea Power Centre describes, they are survivable ‘through layered defence systems, signature management, structural robustness and system redundancy’.

Just because a missile is fired doesn’t mean it will strike, and even a strike doesn’t ensure the ship is disabled.

It’s true that threats to warships close to coasts have increased, and the proliferation of uncrewed aerial vehicle, uncrewed surface vessels and anti-ship missiles has made operations more complex. However, as offensive threats evolve, so do defensive capabilities, tactics and procedures. This is the dance of naval warfare.

To bolster the flawed claim that warships are ‘increasingly vulnerable in modern conflicts’, the article points to the 42-year-old, poorly maintained Russian cruiser Moskva, which Ukraine sank in the Black Sea in 2022, as a ‘most advanced warship’. Yet far more modern US, British and French warships have repelled more than 400 Houthi missile attacks in the Red Sea since 2023 without sustaining damage. Fourteen months of Red Sea operations show that well-armed warships with trained crews are highly effective.

The article conflates strategy with concepts, saying ‘the urgency of shifting Australia’s naval strategy to distributed lethality cannot be overstated’.

Think of a naval strategy as the big-picture plan for what a nation aims to achieve at sea with its naval capability (as opposed to maritime), while a naval concept is the theoretical framework that explains how its navy might actually fight and operate to achieve those goals.

‘Distributed lethality’ fits within the established concept of Distributed Maritime Operations, which isn’t about any particular category of vessel, large or small; it’s a way of fighting that emphasises massed effects through robust, networked communications that allow for dispersal of maritime units.

At its core, it’s a network-centric, not platform-centric, concept—as applicable to a fleet of frigates and destroyers as to smaller craft.

It’s a concept the RAN, at least in theory, has already embraced. In a 2024 speech on Distributed Maritime Operations, Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Chris Smith said ‘distribution as a core concept of our operations … seeks to manage a defensive problem while seizing an offensive opportunity’.

Australian naval strategy: reach and balance

In advocating for a shift towards attack boats, the article dismisses their limited range and endurance as problems that are easily fixed. They are not: range and endurance are fundamental to Australia’s naval strategy and central to the concept of reach.

At its core, reach is the requirement for a maritime power to be able to protect its vital interests at range from its territory. As an island nation dependent on long sea lines of communication for essential seaborne supply—from fuel to fertiliser, ammunition and pharmaceuticals—Australia needs an ability to protect critical imports and exports.

Doing that requires the combination of sensors and weapons that cannot fit into an attack boat: heavy and bulky towed-array sonars, large radars mounted high, long-range air-and-missile defence systems, and helicopters for hunting submarines.

Acceptance that Australia’s vital interests at sea are far from its coast is inherent in the roles ascribed in Australia’s National Defence Strategy. They include power projection, such as the capabilities of the Australian Army’s new amphibious fleet, which require protection that attack boats can’t provide.

Limited endurance and operational range are deficiencies that cannot be mitigated by basing in northern Australia, as the article suggests. Territorial force posture such as northern operating bases cannot transform coastal green-water naval assets such as attack boats into the open ocean blue-water capability Australia requires.

Another key strategic requirement for Australia is having a balanced fleet, anchored by larger destroyers and frigates. The essence of the idea of a balanced fleet is that a smaller fleet of ships must operate across the spectrum of maritime tasks. Attack boats cannot fight effectively in all three spheres of maritime warfare: surface, air and sub-surface. While they may complement frigates and destroyers where the budget allows, they are unsuitable to form the backbone of Australia’s fleet.

The call for such vessels falls into the common trap of thinking that modern naval warfare is simply about missile capability. But what is needed to constitute a balanced fleet is a mix of capabilities that can be brought together only in a frigate or larger ship.

This debate is an opportunity to highlight a crucial issue often overlooked in Australian strategic thought. The country needs a naval strategy with genuine reach and a balanced fleet, capabilities that simply can’t be met by a force built around attack boats.

Distributed firepower: attack missile boats are alternatives to major warships

A single missile can cripple a billion-dollar warship. Australia must explore other forms of sea power to effectively meet its immediate strategic needs. A distributed naval force comprising fast attack missile boats and aerial drones offers a cost-effective and tactically superior alternative to reliance on large vulnerable ships.

Attack boats can be highly versatile, capable of being armed with anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles and using targeting data from other vessels, ground stations or aircraft. They can thereby engage targets at long distances, dealing with surface targets and providing air-defence coverage.

Historically, Australia’s naval procurement has prioritised destroyers, frigates and submarines—formidable but costly and operationally complex assets. These large vessels are increasingly vulnerable in modern conflicts, where advanced sensors, precision-guided weapons and unconventional tactics can quickly neutralise them. Ukraine’s sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva in 2022 underscored the susceptibility of even the most advanced warships to anti-ship weapons.

History demonstrates the effectiveness of smaller, agile and numerous vessels. During World War II, PT boats excelled at hit-and-run tactics against larger Japanese vessels, leveraging speed and agility to outmatch superior firepower The Battle of Savo Island highlighted how coordinated small-ship operations could disrupt even well-defended fleets, showing proving the tactical value of dispersed mobile attack vessels.

Australia must adopt the concept of distributed lethality—spreading combat power across interconnected vessels and aircraft. A network of such platforms could overwhelm adversaries by presenting numerous threats across three dimensions. Their small size would also make them harder to detect and target, complicating an enemy’s engagement strategies.

Critics may question the survivability of small vessels in high-intensity conflicts, but advanced technologies help mitigate such concerns. Stealth features, electronic warfare systems, decoys and jamming equipment can disrupt enemy targeting. Combined with tactics emphasising speed, dispersion, hit-and-run strikes and over-the-horizon targeting, these vessels can minimise vulnerability while maximizing offensive potential.

While they lack the oceanic reach and integrated sensor suites of larger warships, attack boats do not require such systems, thanks to using targeting data from elsewhere. This enhances their strike effectiveness while minimising the risk of direct exposure. This agile warfare approach imposes significant challenges on adversaries attempting to mount a cohesive defence. Operating alongside uncrewed aircraft, they would also complement air and land forces in joint operations.

The financial argument is compelling. A fleet of 25 missile attack boats, each costing $100 million to $150 million, would cost between $2.5 billion and $3.75 billion—far less than the $9 billion required for three Hobart-class destroyers. Operational costs are also lower. A destroyer needs a crew of about 200, but an attack boat can operate with one of 15 to 30. The attack boat crewing requirement is so low that using dual crews could be considered, so each vessel can be at sea for longer while also giving crew members extended time ashore—potentially improving retention in the navy.

Corvettes are smaller and cheaper than destroyers, but attack boats outperform them in key metrics. For example, corvettes typically still require crews of 40 to 60 people. The smaller size and enhanced manoeuvrability of attack boats make them more effective in littoral and shallow waters, where corvettes may struggle. Modern attack boats can reach 45 knots (83km/h), far outpacing corvettes, which generally max out at 25 to 30 knots.

Operational range and endurance, often cited as a limitation of smaller vessels, can be addressed by adding bunkering and replenishment options. Forward operating bases along Australia’s northern approaches could support extended deployments, while underway replenishment vessels would further bolster operational reach across critical maritime zones and enable convoy operations.

Australia’s vast coastline and its proximity to key maritime choke points make a dispersed fleet of agile vessels even more valuable. They could hide among islands, taking risks in narrow waters where larger ships fear to tread.

The urgency of shifting Australia’s naval strategy to distributed lethality cannot be overstated. Smaller, agile vessels offer a pragmatic and forward-thinking alternative to large ships, addressing vulnerabilities while enhancing operational flexibility.

Norwegian frigate sinking has far-reaching implications

In an incident that has attracted relatively little media attention in Australia, the modern 5,300-ton Norwegian frigate KNM Helge Ingstad sank in a Norwegian fjord after a collision with the large Maltese-registered oil tanker Sola TS.

It’s now clear what happened. In the early hours of 8 November, the Ingstad was proceeding at 17 knots along the Hjeltefjorden near the Sture oil terminal. The Sola TS had just left the terminal fully laden and was proceeding at 7 knots. The watch on the Ingstad, which had just changed, thought that the deck lights of the tanker were part of the well-lit terminal.

The Sola TS became concerned about the situation. However, because the Ingstad wasn’t showing automatic identification system (AIS) data, initially neither the Sola TS nor the traffic station on shore could identify the frigate to warn it of the imminent danger. Repeated warnings to the Ingstad after it had been identified failed to get it to alter course until just seconds before the collision. The heavily laden tanker couldn’t manoeuvre out of the way.

The Ingstad suffered extensive hull damage along the starboard side, lost propulsion and steering control, and experienced flooding in three compartments, before running aground and later sinking. Eight crew members were injured.

Commissioned in 2009 and built by the Spanish shipbuilder Navantia, the Helge Ingstad was the fourth of the Fridtjof Nansen class of frigates in the Royal Norwegian Navy. Australia’s Hobart-class air warfare destroyers are of a broadly similar Navantia design.

Navantia has produced several designs similar to the Nansen class, including under the trilateral frigate agreement set up by the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. Through this agreement, the F100 class of frigates is being built in Spain by Navantia, and the Dutch De Zeven Provincien class and the German F124 Sachsen class are being built by other companies.

A preliminary investigation by Norwegian authorities found that confusion on the Ingstad’s bridge was the immediate cause of the collision, but that the ship sank because of progressive flooding. After the collision, water quickly moved through several watertight compartments, apparently via the ship’s propeller shafts, which pass through the bulkheads between the compartments through theoretically watertight openings (known as stuffing tubes or stuffing boxes) that should prevent progressive flooding.

Based on crew interviews, authorities determined that the stuffing boxes weren’t working properly, jeopardising the watertightness of the ship. The investigation report warned that the faults that sunk the Ingstad could also be in other Navantia ships, raising questions about a possible problem with the design.

The Ingstad accident has eerie similarities to the serious collisions suffered by US Navy destroyers during a horror year in 2017. The Ingstad was proceeding at excessive speed in a busy shipping area and wasn’t showing AIS information, and the team on her bridge clearly lost situational awareness and failed to appreciate the serious situation that was developing.

There are lessons here for navies around the world. First, for questionable operational security reasons, warships often don’t show AIS data, even though it’s a vital collision-avoidance mechanism that’s used extensively by the commercial shipping sector. Not using AIS may be acceptable on the open ocean, but it’s poor practice in busy shipping lanes.

After the US Navy accidents, the chief of naval operations instructed his ships to show AIS when they’re in heavy shipping traffic. This was apparently a message that had not got through to the Royal Norwegian Navy, although it’s been reported that an American naval exchange officer was onboard the Ingstad at the time of the collision.

Second, the high-tech bridge of a modern warship isn’t amenable to using the most basic sensory mechanism of all—what is often referred to as either the ‘seaman’s eye’ or the ‘Mark One eyeball’. The many screens and electronic data systems on a bridge can preoccupy the bridge team and distract them from what is happening around them.

An accident such as that suffered by the Ingstad can have many causes, the sum of which leads to the collision. In addition to the ones already mentioned, two other factors contributed to the incident. First, the collision occurred soon after the watch had changed on the bridge, and the incoming watch may not have gained a proper perspective of the situation that was emerging.

Second, the tanker was extensively lit up by deck lights that may have obscured the navigational lights, leading the incoming watch to believe that the Sola TS’s lights were part of the terminal. A fully professional bridge team, however, should have observed that the tanker was both underway at seven knots and showing AIS.

The incident raises questions about the survivability of modern warships with their lightweight construction and a design emphasis on their weapons and sensors rather than on ship integrity and damage control.

It also raises questions about the basic training and seamanship skills of bridge watchkeepers. The high-tech bridges of modern warships can be congested with both people and equipment. This environment is not conducive to the exercise of basic safe seafaring practices, such as the use of the ‘seaman’s eye’.

Modern navies must ensure that their bridge personnel are safe seafarers, as well as skilled equipment operators.

The expanding of the shrew

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One of the questions I’m sometimes asked is ‘why do we call 6,000 ton warships frigates’? The implicit assumption behind the question is that the frigates of the past were vessels of modest size, and that there’s been some bracket creep going on. Perhaps there’s even a suspicion that navies have been keeping the same nomenclature while ratcheting up the capability of the vessels to put one over the bean counters. (Heaven forbid.)

If we go back a few hundred years, a cursory analysis seems to back up the idea of growing frigates. In the late 1700s, most navies ‘rated’ their ships based on their armament. First rate ships carried over 100 cannons, second rate ships 90–98 and so on. In this taxonomy frigates were fifth (30–44 cannons) or sixth (20–28) rate ships. Even then there was a tendency for size inflation, but at the time of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, they were still a modest 36 guns.

So a frigate wasn’t a ‘ship of the line’. Instead, they were the primary vehicle for what we now call C3ISR (computers being the ‘missing’ C). They roamed freely in the armed reconnaissance role, collecting intelligence and communicating between ships at sea and authorities ashore. They were Nelson’s over the horizon intelligence gathering capability and he literally couldn’t get enough of them, famously writing: ‘I am distressed for frigates, which are the eyes of the fleet’.

But that didn’t mean they weren’t useful fighting vessels. Fifth or sixth rate was a comparative term and there were many smaller classes of vessels. Frigates were still capable of sustained and independent cruising operations. They were heavily tasked for trade protection and trade attack—one of the reasons there was a shortage for fleet reconnaissance. The ability to sustain independent operations later came to define the ‘cruiser’—which is what many of today’s ‘frigates’ actually are. That’s why the modern frigate has come to occupy a loftier role in modern force structures than its forerunner wooden namesake.

It’s the same with destroyers. They began life as a counter to torpedo boats after they became a threat to major surface vessels shortly after the invention of the self-propelled torpedo. Originally ‘torpedo boat destroyers’, they were small and fast fleet escorts. The Royal Navy received its first destroyers in the 1880s: two Daring class vessels under 300 tons. Australia followed suit; the first naval vessels built at Cockatoo Island were three 700 ton River class torpedo boat destroyers. A large WW2 destroyer was 1,500 tons, while today’s 9,000 ton Arleigh Burke destroyers are major fleet units.

I think there are two explanations for the evolution in fleet nomenclature. The first is that modern vessels are mislabeled. Many of today’s frigates and destroyers are in form and function actually cruisers—large vessels capable of prolonged independent action. There’s probably something in the ‘fool the bean counters’ argument there. The Royal Navy, for example, has had a tendency to underplay the size of proposed vessels to hide the degree of ambition from Treasury. The Type 45 ‘destroyer’, at over 8,000 tons, looks a lot more like a cruiser—a class of vessel that has been around that size for a century.

But there’s another parallel explanation. Today’s frigates and destroyers are big for the same reason that elephants are.

I might need to explain that a little further. Sixty-five million years ago dinosaurs ruled the Earth and even project LAND 121 lay in the distant future. Dinosaurs occupied the most lucrative ecological niches and the mammals subsisted at the margins as ‘small shrew-like creatures’. Once the dinosaurs were taken out by atmospheric changes or a giant cometary impact (or both), the mammals had new ecological space to literally expand into. Given time and opportunity, shrews became elephants. So it is with warships. In the first part of the 20th century the naval equivalent of dinosaurs were dreadnoughts and battleships and, like diplodocus and its ilk, some of them reached huge sizes. (See graph below.) Japan’s battleship Yamato displaced over 70,000 tons and by the 1930s the average was above 40,000 tons.

(Image courtesy Wikimedia)

Like the dinosaurs, the huge warships’ habitat changed markedly due to the invention of the aeroplane and submarine. WW2 wasn’t as dramatic as a cometary impact (though dramatic enough for most tastes) but it effectively ended those lines. Smaller vessels such as frigates and destroyers hung on and, like the mammals before them, expanded into newly-opened ecological niches.

And just as mammals had new tricks like four-chambered hearts and sophisticated temperature regulation, new technology like missiles, helicopters and precision targeting means that frigates and destroyers don’t have to be battleship-sized to carry a big punch. An elephant doesn’t need to be as big as a sauropod, and an Arleigh Burke doesn’t need to be as big as an Iowa class battleship.

The author would like to thank RADM James Goldrick for comments on an earlier version of this post. He shouldn’t be blamed for anything here.