Perhaps the British will succeed with the Type 31 reconfigurable frigate where America failed with the Littoral Combat Ship.
In addition [to basic weapons loads], Venturer will use the new Persistent Operational Delivery Systems (PODS), which are plug-and-play mission modules that will be standard for future Navy ships. Capable of being swapped out even at sea, the PODS modules are the size of a shipping container and can carry drones, autonomous mine-hunting equipment, a command center for commando raiders, humanitarian aid, or a surgery unit, among other things.
I mentioned the PODS concept. The Type 31 will enable Britain to have seapower separate from their carrier task forces which need the highly capable Type 26 ships, as the initial article explains:
While the Type 31 conducts general missions for Britain and NATO, including submarine detection, law enforcement at sea, intelligence gathering, sea combat, and humanitarian support, the Type 26 will concentrate on the specialized tasks of escorting the Navy's Trident nuclear submarines and defending the HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales carrier groups.
Britain, I imagine, designed their fleet around carriers when power projection was the primary mission. But the rise of peer military opponents makes putting all of Britain's eggs in one basket risky when control of the seas is not assured. So now the Type 31 will provide numbers as a safety net.
The PODS systems also give Britain the option of building modularized auxiliary cruisers, which I described for Army power projection roles in "The AFRICOM Queen" in Military Review a number of years ago. As I noted, the concept can be broader for more traditional naval missions.
My fingers are crossed for the Type 31. I have long believed the LCS design concept was sound even though the uses for the ship in the littorals was nuts and the execution of the ship-and module-designs was inept.
Heck, maybe America can buy the ship when Britain begins to sell it abroad. We might salvage the research and development we put into our own shipping container-carried mission modules.
