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Le rapport IHS estime que le marché mondial n’a jamais connu une croissance aussi forte. 

(BRUXELLES2) Le Conseil des ministres des Affaires étrangères de l'UE, lundi (20 juin), doit adopter la décision sur l'extension du mandat de l'opération maritime en Méditerranée (EUNAVFOR Med / Sophia) au contrôle de l'embargo sur les armes et la formation des garde-côtes. Le Conseil aura quatre sujets "politiques" à l'agenda : 1. la politique intégrée […]

(B2 - exclusif) La réforme des structures de gestion de crise entamée fin 2013 — et jamais terminée — ressurgit. Très discrètement, car il s'agit de ne pas semer de "troubles" juste avant le référendum britannique. Une note est sur le bureau de la Haute représentante. Elle a commencé d'être examinée, informellement, par les ambassadeurs […]

Rheinmetall Air Defence will showcase its new remotely controlled, autonomous, network-capable air defence system, Oerlikon Revolver Gun Mk3 at Eurosatory 2016.

The UK Ministry of Defence has confirmed a further £642m of funding for the Successor submarine programme, bringing the total spend so far to £3.9bn. With the programme’s assessment phase totalling £3.9bn and opposition remaining strong, how feasible…

The US Navy's newest Pathfinder class oceanographic survey ship, USNS Maury (T-AGS 66), has successfully concluded its first voyage.

Battelle and Halyard Health have been contracted by the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) to co-develop a medical device that can help reduce the loss of tissue in severely injured limbs.

Germany-based ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) has received a service order worth €40m from Peruvian naval shipyard SIMA to support extensive modernisation work on the Peruvian Navy's four HDW 209/1200 (Type 209/1200) class submarines.

A series of ten Project 12418 missile boats are being licence-built at the Ba Son Shipyard for the Vietnamese Navy.

Alors que se déroulent cette semaine en Pologne les plus grandes manœuvres militaires alliées depuis un quart de siècle, la France est singulièrement absente.

L’effet politique d’une telle décision est sous-estimé : ce serait reconnaître que la menace justifie l’envoi de chars lourds.

(B2) Les missions civiles de la PSDC sont financées en grande partie sur le budget communautaire. Mais elles ne représentent qu'une part limitée de ce budget (1‰) Financement mixte C'est la ligne du budget PESC (1) dans la rubrique 4 qui assure le financement des missions civiles de l'UE. Une partie du budget est cependant […]

The UK then joined France and Italy in the Horizon-class class of air-defence destroyers frigate program; however, differing national requirements, workshare arguments and delays led to the UK withdrawing on 26 April 1999 and starting its own national project Type 45 destroyer. The class is primarily designed for anti-aircraft and anti-missile warfare and is built around the PAAMS (Sea Viper) air-defence system utilizing the SAMPSON AESA and the S1850M long-range radars. The Type 45 destroyers were built to replace the Type 42 (Sheffield class) destroyers that had served during the Falklands War, with the last Type 42 being decommissioned in 2013.

The six Type 45 Daring Class destroyers, which cost the taxpayer £1bn each, are the backbone of Britain’s combat force at sea and are among the most advanced missile destroyers in the world. They are the Royal Navy’s first all-electric ships and are driven by two Rolls-Royce WR21 gas turbines and two Wartsila diesel engines. The WR21 is designed to deliver significantly improved operating costs by using an intercooler recuperator, which recovers exhaust and recycles the gas into the engine. But, as a rule, power turbines slowed down in warm temperatures.

But the engines powering the Royal Navy’s cutting-edge fleet are unable to operate continuously in the warm waters of the Gulf. Responding to questions about why the power systems failed in warmer waters than the UK, John Hudson, managing director of BAE Systems maritime, said the original specifications for the vessel had not required it to sustain extremes. “The operating profile at the time was that there would not be repeated or continuous operations in the Gulf,” he said.
Tomas Leahy, of Rolls-Royce naval programmes, said the destroyer was now operating in “far more arduous conditions than envisaged in the specifications”. “This is not the fault of the WR21,” said Mr Leahy. “It is the laws of physics.”

But the Type 45 was designed for worldwide operations from sub-Arctic to extreme tropical environments and continues to operate effectively in the Gulf and South Atlantic all year round. It also emerged that some of the difficulties were rooted in late-stage design changes demanded by the US Navy, when it was leading development of the electric propulsion system. However, the US Navy pulled out of the programme in 2000, when it was taken over by the UK’s MoD. Mr Leahy said that only 1,900 hours of testing had been carried out on the system after the design change, while the problems only emerged after 4,000-5,000 hours of operation.

“With hindsight it would have been good to do another 4,000-5,000 hours of testing on it,” he said. The MoD is having to set aside tens of millions of pounds to fix the destroyers. The plan is to install two extra diesel engines which will require cutting a hole in the hull of the brand new destroyers. The costs of repairing the Type 45 were forcing a delay in the Type 26 frigate programme. Original plans were for the first steel to be cut on the frigates by the end of this year, but this is now not likely before December 2017. The government had already weakened the Royal Navy’s capabilities by cutting the number of frigates that would be ordered from 13 to eight in last year’s strategic defence and security review.

The Type 45 uses a pioneering system called Integrated Electric Propulsion (IEP). There are many advantages associated with IEP, fuel efficiency, flexibility in locating the engines and a supposedly reduced maintenance and manning requirement. In basic terms, two WR-21 gas turbines (GTs) and two Wartsila 2MW diesel generators provide AC power for the motors that propel the ship as well as the power for the ships systems – weapons, sensors lighting etc. The WR-21 GTs were designed in an international partnership with Rolls Royce and Northrop Grumman Marine Systems. The turbines are of a sound design but have an intercooler-recuperator that recovers heat from the exhaust and recycles it into the engine, making it more fuel-efficient and reducing the ship’s thermal signature. Unfortunately the intercooler unit has a major design flaw and causes the GTs to fail occasionally. When this happens, the electrical load on the diesel generators can become too great and they ‘trip out’, leaving the ship with no source of power or propulsion.

The MoD has not revealed how frequently these blackouts have occurred but the first 2 ships, HMS Daring and HMS Dauntless seem to have suffered the most. The first indication of problems was as far back as 2010 when it was admitted HMS Daring lost all power in mid-Atlantic and had to be repaired in Canada. Although the Type 45s have been active, some significant commitments have been missed. An indication that all is not well could be seen by the number of Type 45s alongside in Portsmouth at any given time during the last few years. Historically the RN has never been a fleet of ‘harbour queens’ and today’s over-worked navy can ill-afford unreliable ships. HMS Daring entered service in 2009, it has taken more than 6 years to agree to deal with the problem and it will probably be well after 2020 before the work is completed. It is obviously dangerous from a seamanship and navigational point of view to suddenly lose propulsion at any time. It is even more serious when operating in a high threat environment as the ship would be a sitting duck.

Replacement of the WR-21 GTs is not a practical option. Instead additional or more powerful diesel generators will provide long-term redundancy and assurance that electrical supplies can be maintained in the event of GT failure. The good news is that the large Type 45 design has the space and reserve buoyancy to cope with larger or additional diesels. The rectification work on the six ships will be done one by one as part of the normal major refit cycle. This will extend the length of the refits but should not have an especially dramatic effect on frontline availability.

It is ironic that the RN is suffering with propulsion problems, having had a great history of propulsion innovation and success. The steam turbine was a British invention and in HMS Dreadnought (1906) was the first capital ship to use this leap in propulsive power. The steam turbine drove the majority of major warships for the next 60 years. HMS Amazon (1974) was the first all-GT warship and British engines were subsequently exported to many foreign navies. Much of the world-renowned expertise in naval GT design was derived from an obscure and secretive facility, the Pyestock National Gas Turbine Establishment at Farnborough which tested & developed marine and aero engines until it was closed in 2000. One of Pyestock’s last projects was some of the initial development of the WR-21 done in partnership with Rolls Royce and Northrop Grumman. Reliance on computer modelling signalled the end for Pyestock but with hindsight perhaps there is no substitute for ‘real world’ testing. It is interesting to note that recently Rolls Royce opened a brand new testing facility for the WR-21 and the MT-30 GTs (Which will power the QE aircraft carriers and Type 26 frigate).

There are growing signs that frustration with industry in the MoD has reached breaking point. The Type 45 propulsion problems are just one of many expensive problems with major defence contacts. The cost over-runs of the Astute class submarine have led to Whitehall creating a special project office to manage the Trident Successor submarines and failures will be met with harsher financial penalties. The surprise emergence of the alternative frigate programme, in addition to the Type 26, is also a sign of disillusionment with late, expensive and flawed offerings from BAE Systems.

Source
http://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/putting-the-type-45-propulsion-problems-...

Tag: Royal NavyType 45

(B2) Pour mettre en commun leur flotte aérienne de transport militaire, des pays membres de l'Union ont créé le commandement européen de transport aérien (EATC). Cette institution au commandement intégré, a pour but de renforcer les capacités opérationnelles des nations participantes et d'améliorer l'efficacité du transport aérien dans différents domaines. L'origine C'est le couple franco-allemand […]

A bord du Phoenix des ONG, un membre de la croix-rouge italienne (crédit : CRI)

(BRUXELLES2) Nouvelle journée difficile en mer Méditerranée pour les sauveteurs. Vendredi (10 juin), l’avion luxembourgeois Merlin III a repéré plusieurs canots pneumatiques surpeuplés à 20 milles nautiques au large du port de Garabuli (en Libye). Une alerte répercutée en chaîne du QG de  la Force de l’opération Sophia à bord du porte-aéronefs italien Garibaldi et au centre de coordination du sauvetage en mer (IMRCC) à Rome.

Le navire océanographique britannique HMS Enterprise a pris en charge 523 migrants à bord de 4 canots pneumatiques tandis que le navire auxiliaire allemand FGS Frankfurt faisait de même pour 3 canots pneumatiques supplémentaires transportant 293 personnes. D’autres canots ont ensuite été repérés par l’hélicoptère AB 212 de la frégate espagnole Reina Sofia.

Les personnes prises à bord du HMS Enterprise ont ensuite été transférées sur le navire norvégien Siem Pilot de l’opération Triton. Le FGS Frankfurt s’est dirigé vers le port de Messine (Sicile) après avoir pris en charge 243 migrants, sauvées par le Phoenix, navire affrété par les ONG, lors de deux opérations de sauvetage consécutives jeudi (9 juin).

Au dernier bilan dressé par le QG de l’opération Sophia (EUNAVFOR MED) à Rome, 71 passeurs et trafiquants présumés ont été poursuivis par les autorités italiennes. Et 139 bateaux (109 canots pneumatiques, 27 bateaux en bois, 3 navires de pêche) ont été détruits. Depuis son lancement en juin 2015, l’opération militaire européenne a pris en charge directement 15.600 personnes lors de 95 interventions et contribué au sauvetage de 32.334 migrants supplémentaires par d’autres moyens (garde-côtes italiens, Frontex, ONG).

(NGV)