【军武次位面】作者：海东青
As we mentioned in the previous article, as the largest country in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has started the road of naval expansion, spending a lot of money to order 10 6,000-ton cutting-edge frigates, and plans to have 10 large frigates, 9 corvettes and 12 conventional submarines in the future, aiming at the strongest navy in Southeast Asia.
▲ Singapore Dreadnought-class frigate.
However, the throne of the strongest navy in Southeast Asia is obviously not coveted by Indonesia, and Singapore, the current strongest navy in Southeast Asia, across the sea from Indonesia, has already opened the road of naval expansion one step ahead of Indonesia, planning to build six 10,000-ton frigates and a 15,000-ton light aircraft carrier.
Singapore can be called a typical representative of small but fine, its area is only more than 700 square kilometers, not as big as a county on the mainland, and the population is only more than 5 million, which is no longer a small country, it is simply a pocket country.
However, Singapore's economy is very developed, is the second developed country in Asia after Japan, so Singapore attaches great importance to the development of military strength, especially the development of the navy, at present the Singapore Navy has 6 3200 tons of Dreadnought-class frigates, 8 1400 tons of Independence-class corvettes, 6 600 tons of Shengli class large missile boats, 4 8500 tons of Perseverance class dock landing ships, The two Swedish Sistjotland class AIP submarines and the two Swedish Sea Serpent-class conventional submarines are currently the strongest navy in Southeast Asia.
▲ Singapore's Independence-class corvette, with a tonnage of only 056 but equipped with vertical hair, is better than the scrap iron littoral combat ships also called the Independence-class.
However, Singapore still does not seem to be satisfied with such a level of navy, and in recent years it has embarked on a major naval expansion plan, with the construction of six MRCV frigates, one of the three core projects, already under construction.
MRCV frigate by Singapore in conjunction with Sweden Saab Group and Denmark OMT Group developed a large multi-mission surface warship, the biggest feature of the ship, set frigates, landing ships, UAV carriers three major ship types in one, can be said to be all-rounders at sea, although everything means everything loose, but Singapore is not around a particularly strong rival, blind pursuit of 055, Heavy firepower all-round ships such as Burke 3 are meaningless, and this kind of jack-of-all-trades that are not powerful but can do anything is obviously more in line with the needs of a small but sophisticated country like Singapore.
▲ One of the early PPT of the MRCV frigate, the final product may not be the same as it.
The displacement of the MRCV frigate was only 5,000 tons in the early planning, but perhaps this tonnage was not enough to meet the demand for panacea, so the displacement soared to 8,000 tons after the formal finalization, and there is no conclusion on whether this tonnage is a standard displacement or a full load displacement, but the standard displacement seems to have the upper hand, which means that the ship's full load displacement will exceed 10,000 tons, becoming the second largest frigate in the world (the first place is the German 11,000-ton F126 type, which has been started not long ago).
According to the model released by Singapore, the MRCV frigate has 48 units of vertical hair, presumably the French Silva vertical hair (this is also used by the main Dreadnought-class frigate in front of the Singapore Navy), which can launch Aster-30 medium and long-range anti-aircraft missiles with a range of 120km, and may even equip it with cruise missiles. In addition, there are 127mm naval guns, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and other equipment, in addition to anti-submarine warfare equipment, the upper half of the stern is a huge helicopter take-off and landing deck and hangar, enough to accommodate EH101, a 15-ton heavy helicopter, can also carry UAVs, and the lower half of the stern is the common flooding dock on the dock landing ship, which can accommodate two patrol boats or landing craft.
▲The Seafire phased array radar is also the main radar of France's new generation FDI frigates.
The main radar of the MRCV has been identified as the French Seafire phased array radar, which is a four-sided S-band active phased array radar with a array size of 2.5 meters and a maximum detection range of 300-400km, and its performance is not inferior to the SPY-1D radar of the original Aegis system, and with the Aster-30 missile, it can provide excellent regional air defense capabilities.
As mentioned above, the MRCV frigate is one of the three core projects of the Singapore Navy, and the other core project is the JMMS amphibious assault ship, although it is nominally an amphibious assault ship, but Singapore has clearly proposed to equip it with F-35B vertical / short take-off and landing fighters, which is clearly a light aircraft carrier, and I have to complain, the Soviet Union / Britain / during the Cold War / Italy has used the name of aircraft-carrying cruisers to develop aircraft carriers, and now the term aircraft-carrying cruiser is also lagging behind, and all countries have begun to use the name of amphibious assault ships to cover people's eyes.
Singapore showed a model of the JMMS light aircraft carrier a few years ago, but the design visible to the naked eye is very perfunctory, looking very much like the Japanese Osumi-class landing ship, the original tonnage is only 14,500 tons, the deck area and length are not very rich, it is impossible to take off and land F35B, so the final JMMS project is obviously impossible to look like this, considering the need to carry F35B, it is possible to double the tonnage.
▲Model of a Singaporean amphibious assault ship.
The Singapore Navy as early as 2013 and 2017 successively purchased 4 218SG conventional submarines from Germany, named the Changsheng class, all built by Germany, the total cost of the project is as high as 3.2 billion euros, equivalent to 3.8 billion US dollars, and the unit price is 950 million US dollars, which is jaw-dropping, you must know that China sold 8 S-20 AIP submarines to Pakistan for a total of 5 billion US dollars and sent them to the production line (the last 4 were built by Pakistan), and the cost of Japan's Soryu-class submarines is about 5-600 million US dollars, which shows how expensive the German goods are.
Although expensive but people are really worth it, after all, Germany is an old conventional submarine power, 218 type submarine performance even surpasses the previous 212 type, 214 type, using fuel cell AIP system, displacement of 2200 tons, equipped with 8 533mm torpedo tubes, can launch cruise missiles, the overall performance completely overwhelms the conventional submarines of all countries around except China (including Indonesia, Vietnam, India and even Australia), can be called one of the strongest conventional submarines in the world.
▲ 218SG type submarine.
Due to the early order, the Type 218SG submarine project became the fastest progress among the three cores, and the second boat was the first to enter service in 2023 due to a small fire that delayed the progress of the first boat.
Once the Singapore Navy is fully completed, it will develop into a powerful navy with 1 light aircraft carrier, 6 10,000-ton frigates, 6 3,200-ton frigates, 8 corvettes and 4 AIP submarines.