Design characteristics of type 23 frigate

Although the actual size and tonnage of Duke class are much higher than the original design in 198 1, it is still lower than the type 22 frigate. Duke class adopted many advanced technologies superior to Type 22 in basic design and combat equipment at that time, and based on the painful lessons of Falklands War, it will never compromise on survival design and damage management ability for cost factors. The concept of reducing ship traces (including radar, infrared and acoustic noise) has been put into practice by advanced countries since the 1980s. Duke class is the first ship in the Royal Navy to apply stealth technology. The appearance of the superstructure is inclined about 7 degrees, and there are no sharp corners on the outer edge of the hull. All the above designs can disperse radar reflected waves and reduce the intensity of radar reflected to enemy radars.

When the Falklands War broke out, the detailed design of Type 23 was nearing completion. The lessons of Falklands War made the Royal Navy re-examine the protection and damage control ability of the newly built ship frame, which was immediately reflected in the 23-type ship that has not yet started construction, further strengthening the survivability of damage control. Type 23 hull is made of steel, giving up the fusible and flammable aluminum alloy, and replacing the flammable and toxic traditional vinyl halide coating with a coating that is not easy to burn and does not produce toxic gas when burning. At first, the hull of Type 23 was divided into three fire damage areas by two fire bulkheads. However, in view of the lesson that there are too few fire damage areas (only two) in type 42 destroyer, the Royal Navy revised the design of Type 23, and increased the division of fire damage areas inside the ship to five, so as to improve the fire extinguishing speed as much as possible. Duke class adopts a power system combining diesel power generation and gas turbine (CODLAG). When sailing at high speed, the gas turbine directly drives the big shaft through the gearbox; As for the occasion of towing 203 1Z towed sonar in anti-submarine warfare (within 10 section), diesel generator is used to generate electricity, and propeller is driven by motor. At this time, the reduction gearbox is in a static state, which can achieve the best mute effect and minimize the interference to the towed sonar. Another advantage of diesel-electric propulsion is that the fuel consumption during cruising is greatly reduced, which makes the endurance of Duke class almost twice that of other ships of the same tonnage. In the middle and low speed diesel-electric propulsion mode, 65% of the power is used for propulsion, and the remaining 35% is used for the operation of various systems on board.

Except HMS Westminster F-237 adopts two Spey SM- 1A gas turbines, the main engines of other gas turbines of this class are two improved Spey SM- 1C, with a total output of about 34,000 shaft horsepower. The marine diesel engines are four GEC- Alstom Paxman Valenta12RPA-200Cz, with power of 8 100 shaft horsepower, and two of them are equipped by the Mechanical and Electrical Department of Alstom Group (APC, which became Converteam in 2005, and 201Kloc-0/was acquired by GE Group of America). In order to reduce the noise and vibration radiated into the water, these four diesel generator sets are all installed on the wooden elastic base, of which two are even installed on the upper deck instead of in the main/auxiliary engine room, far away from the waterline, which can further reduce the noise transmitted into the water, and the other two are installed in the front main engine room.

The maximum speed of type 23 is usually recorded as 28 knots, but in fact its high-speed performance is not only that; Take HMS Lancaster F-232 as an example. Before the overhaul of Zhongshou, it could still run 32 knots. In order to reduce the noise generated by propeller cavitation, 65,438+05% of the total length is cut off below the water surface, and bubble generators are also installed at the propeller and the fin stabilizers on both sides to reduce the noise transmitted by these objects. In addition, the Duke's chimney is equipped with an air cooling system to reduce the heat signal of exhaust gas. In terms of radar, Duke University has a multi-functional plessy (now BAE Systems) 996 3D E/F medium-range air/aircraft search radar, which is not only used for air and sea surveillance, but also used as the target guidance radar of the ship's Shanghai Wolf air defense missile. The performance of 996 radar is excellent, and it can still accurately lock small targets in the environment of high-intensity noise and electronic interference. The shipboard fire control radar is two BAE system 9 1 1 models, which are responsible for guiding the sea wolf air defense missile and Mk.8 4.5 inch automatic naval gun at the bow; In addition, another important fire control equipment on the ship is a set of GSA-8 Seaarcher-30 photoelectric fire control system of BAE Systems Company, which is mainly used to command MK-8 4.5 inch naval gun to fire at the bow.

In the sonar system, the bow of the Duke ship is equipped with Thomson Mahoney Saunal's 2050 active/passive sonar, which has good shallow water detection ability. As for sonar, the first batch 1 1 ships of this class (F-229~239) are equipped with 203 1Z low-frequency passive towed array sonar of Dottie Company, which has been used by the second and third batch of 22 frigates to detect long-range targets. In fact, one of the biggest considerations in the hull design of Type 23 is that it can successfully tow the huge 203 1Z towed sonar for operation. 203 1Z towed array sonar has a total weight of 70 tons and a total length of1000 m. It consists of a 500-meter-long towing cable and a 500-meter-long low-frequency listening array. By changing the length and towing speed of the cable, the listening array is towed at a specific deployment depth. When towing at 203 1Z, the speed of the ship should be limited below 10 knots.

203 1Z has extremely long detection distance and good azimuth accuracy. Therefore, in general, 203 1Z is used for early detection. After suspicious contact is found, its own anti-submarine helicopter is dispatched to the target range for accurate positioning by sonar buoy or suspended sonar, or accurate calibration by active/passive sonar at the bow of the ship. Of course, after finding a long-range target, you can also call friendly anti-submarine aircraft and other platforms to go to work. In addition, the ship is equipped with Ferenti Thomson. The 2050 low-frequency active/passive sonar produced by sintra Company is used for close submarine attack. For a 4000-ton frigate, 203 1Z long-range towed array sonar is a huge and luxurious equipment. Although its detection distance is very long, it also pays a huge, complex and fragile price. As for the shipborne combat system, Duke adopted a new generation of "Surface Warship Combat System" (SSCS) developed by Britain in the early 1990s. SSCS is a product of Dodi Company, which is based on the FM2400 computer architecture of Ferranti Company and replaces the original FM 1600 computer architecture of CACS-4. SSCS adopts fully decentralized design, even if some systems are damaged, they will not completely lose their combat effectiveness. SSCS has four multi-function consoles, which are directly connected through a dual-fiber LAN using Ethernet technology. The application processor of SSCS is Intel 80386, which matches Motorola 80386 display processor. The software is written in ADA language of US military regulations.

Duke-class electronic warfare equipment includes 675 or Scorpion electronic warfare system, UAF- 1 (the first seven ships in this class) or UAT( 1) (the last nine ships in this class), and 130mm six-pack DLF-3 NATO Seagnat. UAF has four groups of omnidirectional amplitude direction finding antennas, covering different frequency ranges, which can be combined with phase interferometer for more accurate direction finding. UAF does not have an independent omnidirectional antenna for frequency measurement, but uses the direction finding channel for instantaneous frequency measurement. Duke class has a complete and powerful armed force. The most important Duke-class air defense and self-defense weapon is GWS.26- 1 Sea Wolf air defense missile B gun position vertical launching system, with 32 tubes in total, which provides quite strong point air defense and self-defense capability. Sea Wolf air defense missile is guided to the line of sight (CLOS) by instructions. First, use the search radar to detect the target position, and then use the computer to aim the fire control radar at the target and launch missiles for engagement. The fire control radar tracks the incoming target and the sea wolf missile at the same time, transmits the data to the fire control computer to calculate the phase difference between them, sends a course correction instruction to the sea wolf missile, and directs the missile to fly in the line of sight between the fire control radar and the target until it hits the target.

In addition to the Sea Wolf missile, another Duke-class air defense weapon is two rapid-fire guns DS-30B 30mm 75 times caliber air defense guns, which have automatic combat capability, stable base, water target range of 10km, and air defense range of 3.5km, which is also increased according to the experience of Falklands War. In this war, the Royal Navy found that as long as a machine gun fired tracer bullets at Argentine fighters, even if it missed, it could greatly interfere with their bombing, thus reducing the hit rate. In terms of anti-ship weapons, the bow of Duke is equipped with MK-8 4.5-inch automatic naval gun produced by BAE system RO Defence company, with a range of 22km to the sea and 6 km to the air; In addition, two sets of quadruple harpoon anti-ship missile launchers were installed between the vertical launcher and the bridge.

As for anti-submarine weapons, Duke class itself is equipped with two triple-mounted 324mm mine launchers, using stingray light anti-submarine torpedoes made in Britain. There is a helicopter hangar at the stern, which can provide landing refueling and loading operations. As mentioned above, the size of the landing deck and hangar of Type 23 conforms to the newly developed HM Mk. 1 Meilin heavy anti-submarine helicopter (its size and weight are larger than Neptune's largest anti-submarine helicopter in the Royal Navy at that time). However, because the development speed of "Meilin" could not keep up with the service of Type 23, an active Lynx)Mk.8 anti-submarine helicopter was operated at the beginning of service, while "Meilin" was in service.