Monday, November 12, 2012

Gowind LCS

We should no longer called it SGPV, it is LCS or littoral combat ship. A version of light frigate with limited number of middle range air to air missile.. well this our royal navy definition.

Hopefully the LCS will use ESSM instead of Mica, although only 8 missiles can be installed on board but of course you don't expect much from a limited tonnes LCS. The interception range for ESSM is 60 km while Mica is 20 km.

The current navy fleet is  depending on 2 light frigate Lekiu class, 4 Laksamana class & Plus 2 scorpene submarines. While 6 NGPV or Meko 100 are currently not equipped with any missile.

All these ships depend on the air force from any aircraft threat since most of them have short range missile. Therefore the need of such medium range missile such as ESSM is crucial.

As for Gowind LCS she will be 2730 tonnes,  107 meters long

The weapons are:
Bofors 57 mm Mk 2 for main gun
MBDA Mica VL for air defense in the VLS cells?

MBDA MM40 BlkIII anti-ship missiles
2x 30mm guns from MSI-Defence Systems Ltd located on top of the helicopter hanger

Also experting:

TMEO Mk2 - TMX/EO Electro-optical tracking and fire control system by Rheinmetall
SMART-S Mk2 3D multibeam radar by Thales &
Thales Captas for sonar

While the combat managed system will be the SETIS by DCN.

Something that we should take note, Gowind LCS is not being benchmark with the Delta class frigate as in RMN,  since the priority is to add number of fleet ships.  The issue is cost of procurement of frigate way too high... even the current Scorpene submarines operational cost really boost the navy yearly Opex.


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