Regardless of the relative "wealth" of Lider reports compared to the relative dearth of 21956 reports, it remains a dubious proposition by pretty much every observer (yourself included) that Russia will be able to turn out anywhere near the number of Liders that they claim. Some people even believe that they cannot turn out any of this class at all. I cannot even find an article that quotes a Russian government or military official as saying that they are actually going to build this boat. Add on top of that the laughable ORBAT posed by a few 17.5kt Liders plus, what, eight 4.6kt Gorshkov class frigates and six 4kt Grigorivich class frigates (and this assuming they can transition to Russian engines), with a smattering of smaller corvettes, is somehow going to represent the entirety of the Russian Navy in the 2020s and 2030s when the Soviet-era ships are all gone? Something doesn't add up. There is a giant hole in the numbers, and the shape and size of this hole is that of a destroyer at 8-10,000 tons.
Okay, in that case going back my post #2241 are you basically only willing to look at the Russian Navy's current plans and argue that they are most likely going to introduce an 8000-10000 ton destroyer?
And thus you're not willing to consider the possibility that the announcements and reports so far could also be taken at face value and looked at through that perspective?
I obviously don't have a problem with that choice, but as I said back in that post I think it is not unreasonable to consider both tracks of thought, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive as of yet.
Come on, you know exactly what I mean. Which military vessels in peacetime are being used for their intended purpose within a CSG? Ticos and Burkes are primarily AAW destroyers, but nowadays are they performing that mission to any great degree? They are glorified cruise missile trucks these days. They are performing AAW about as much as OHPs were performing ASW. This does not in any way diminish the fact that OHPs within the USN ORBAT were intended solely for ASW, not AAW or ASuW. At least the LCS frigate will have organic VL Hellfire capability, probably to deal with swarming boat attacks against the CSG, which is more ASuW than could be said for the OHPs after their Harpoons were removed.
Um, Ticos and Burkes today do mostly fire their weapons in anger in the last few decades in the form of cruise missiles, yes, but outside of that during standard operations in the USN they still form the primary shipborne AAW component of CSGs or other formations (as well as independent operations where they conduct multi domain warfare). So when you said OHPs conducted ASW after removal of their Mk-13s, I assumed you meant it similarly, for example there would be OHPs as part of CSGs in the ASW mission, which we would be able to visually ID.
But from what I understood, after the Perrys had their Mk-13s removed, most of them were conducting general patrol duties and interdiction duties as part of their standard missions, and I do not recall OHPs conducting ASW or being part of CSGs in any sort of significant presence after the removal of their Mk-13s. I'd be happy to be corrected of course.
.... that said, this discussion about what the OHP's mission was after removal of the Mk-13 is sort of a red herring as to what the original discussion was about.
You were saying that after the removal of the Mk-13 launchers, the OHP's ASW capability "remained unquestioned," which I interpreted is to suggest that a ship can have powerful ASW capability despite not having potent AAW or ASuW capability, and obviously I do not have any problem with such a statement.
The context of that statement, of course, was the discussion about what armament and capabilities for frigates across multiple navies are, and it seems like you have agreed lacking AAW capabilities like how the LCS/FF currently do, is on the outliers of capability for various navies.
This is being considered for later addition. A Mk-56 VLS could easily 9-pack ESSMs, meaning a 4-cell module could give the LCS a generous anti-air arsenal of 36 ESSMs.
If they have indeed kept the ship modular enough to add something like Mk-56 VLS then that would definitely significantly help compensate for the LCS/FF's AAW deficit.
I would say that I haven't come across any other information out there about the possibility of a Mk-56 refit, and it seems like in this particular article it is the author's own interpretation of what "modular aspects" and "margins" constitute in terms of future VLS possibilities, but given the Mk-56 is a relatively small system it would not be impossible for significant upgrades later on in their life to introduce it to the ship.
