Quote:
Originally Posted by gunnut
MN gets only 2 Horizons? Are those enough? Everyone else in the world is building advanced AAWs (UK, Germany, Japan, Korea, Spain, Australia) how come France orders only 2? And MN will have 2 CVs to protect.
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By the time the two French Horizons commission (2008-2009), the MN will only have one carrier still, for quite some years to come. The two ships replace on a one-by-one base the destroyers
Suffren and
Duquesne, which do carrier escort duty.
Cassard and
Jean Bart currently pull AAW duty for the amphibious groups pretty much. France is thinking about a dedicated AAW variant of FREMM (
additional ships) to replace them nowadays. The second Horizon pair has been quietly dropped (like the originally planned third French pair, or the second Italian pair, before).
Btw, the German (F124) project only replaced previously existing AAW destroyers (which, after their last MLU, i'd say were roughly as capable as the
Cassards) on a one-by-one basis as well. Germany originally had an option for a fourth F124 with the builders, but didn't take it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gunnut
What are these used for? Singapore and Saudi Arabia both have La Fayette derivatives that look to be massively upgraded compared to the French version. Isn't it kind of a waste to have advanced hulls like this but not put more stuff on it?
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The French
La Fayettes are not used in the same role. They're used for EEZ patrol, flagshowing, and disaster relief (e.g. helping evacuate civilians,
La Fayette evacuated 200 from Lebanon). Minor secondary roles are AAW/ASuW-only escort/patrol.
Singapore, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all needed something more "multi-purpose" for a very different mission profile.
edit:
What i wrote there makes the
La Fayette's mission profile look like that of the
Floreal "surveillance frigates" (OPVs). In some ways, the mission profile is the same in fact. The
La Fayette class forms a high-end complement to the
Floreal in some way. The two differ in that the
Floreal fill the low-end missions, and the
La Fayette fill the high-end missions, within an overlapping similar mission spectrum.
The MN organizes its fleet slightly differently overall. The destroyer-typed ships are
all tied into specific escort roles (e.g. for carrier or amphib strike groups).
The frigate-typed lighter ships (the
La Fayette and
Floreal classes) fill "the other missions" - which is mostly what i tried to outline above. If you look at the
La Fayette class more as high-end OPVs and presence ships and less as low-end (armed) frigates, they look a lot more impressive.
Note that the Avisos/corvettes pretty much fill up spots in both of those fields as needed, but go more towards the same mission set as the destroyers - they pretty much only end up in "presence missions" if a ASW capacity is needed.