Many designers of fantasy fleets like to come up with all sorts of
plausible-sounding technological developments. I'm mostly going to
borrow ideas which historically worked for the Americans, and transfer
them to the British with appropriate modifications.
After all, the reverse brain drain has to have some effect; all
those American engineers look at the lack of military spending and
decide, in much the same way that British aero-engineers did
historically when the TSR-2 was cancelled, that their chances are
better across the Atlantic.
The main change I want to make early on is to introduce a VLS launcher
for Sea Dart (designated GWS.31). The historical Sea Dart is not at
all a bad missile for its day, but the launcher mounts caused endless
difficulties as late as the 1980s. Going with a vertical launch system
will not only remove these problems but enable a great deal of
flexibility.
As HMS Bristol is being designed, her architects look at the Sea
Dart and Ikara mounts, and think: wouldn't it be better if we could
fire both of these missiles from the same launcher? And, while we're
at it, we could load anti-ship missiles like Exocet too.
Ikara needs to be slimmed down slightly, but can be lengthened at the
same time, so performance won't change significantly; the
launch/storage tubes need to hold a longer missile in order to
accommodate a VL Exocet (the French obviously aren't going to redesign
their missile to suit the RN, but Vickers will happily
reverse-engineer it and redesign it slightly for vertical launch under
the name Flying Fish).
(As a side note, while exocet in French does indeed mean
flying-fish, the Greek etymology could just as well have it meaning
"sleeping with foreigners". I'm sure a less polite translation will
be common among the matelots.)
Sea Wolf will also be fired from its own, smaller, VLS. (This is
actually historical; it was tried that way first before the switch to
the relatively ineffective six-missile launcher, for reasons which are
unclear.) But that's only just coming into service by 1975.
(Next: the carrier and submarine force)
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