GarryB Sun Nov 08, 2020 2:32 am
Sadly it can become a focus to see how many missile tubes you can mount on a ship... obviously most believe more is better but there is a cost to cramming extra tubes on a ship...
As time goes on those tubes are going to be even more useful as new systems and weapons are developed to be carried and launched from those tubes, but these new ships are supposed to be multi purpose vessels... they are not arsenal ships and need to perform a variety of roles and missions some of which don't even require any missile tubes.
With new missiles becoming available whose performance is unequalled anywhere even just a few missiles become very potent... but of course over time they wont remain unequalled and numbers will become important again... but the point is that these are long range sea going ships that need endurance and the capacity to carry everything they need for longer trips than around the Med or arctic ocean...
Their size means room for men and food and water supplies as well as a decent load of weapons... adding extra weapons is fine because the older weapon loadout was designed for bigger heavier bulkier weapons that were hard to carry around in large numbers, but the new weapons are much more compact and the new vertical cell launchers are a much more efficient way of carrying large numbers of missiles on bigger ship designs.
Upgrades can reduce the numbers needed to man the vessel which also means less space is needed for people and less food and water is needed, but rather than take that space up with more missiles it actually makes more sense to use that extra space for more comfortable living spaces and more food and water and supplies per man to make time on board more tolerable and indeed comfortable.
Short of WWIII the likelyhood of a Russian ship running out of weapons in an incident is rather unlikely... they tend to be rather better armed than their HATO equivalents.
These are stopgap upgrades, they will be replaced much sooner than most ships of their size and type anyway... especially the destroyers... and weren't the upgraded Udaloys being designated Frigates anyway... suggests a less than global operational role for them to me.
Contrary to the apparent beliefs of some people, ships are not designed to be full of empty voids with large letters stencilled over the blueprints, reading "INSERT FUTURE WEAPON SYSTEMS HERE"....
True, but to be fair these are not just assault rifle type weapons... the crew of the ship have to be able to live inside these things for months at a time so it can't all just be wall to wall weapons and sensors.
