NATO's focus on persuading its wider membership to adopt expeditionary warfare capabilities is beginning to be reflected in the choices member nations are making concerning the calibre of gun systems to be installed aboard their present and future generations of naval escorts. On the face of it, those navies with an established focus on gunfire support are minded to revert to systems in the traditional naval 6-inch (155 mm) calibre. On the other hand, those for whom this particular activity has not been so high on the list of ship-design and operational priorities are tending to gravitate towards 5 inches (127 mm) as a compromise calibre.
At the same time, the spectre of massed attack by hostile forces in littoral waters - whether by means of missiles, aircraft or fast inshore attack craft (FIACs) - has ensured that there has been no let-up in interest in the acquisition of guns with lesser calibres (57-76 mm and lower). Certainly the gunless escort designs propounded in the heyday of the missile age 30 to 40 years ago are a distant memory, and multiple-calibre, multiple-gun fits are reappearing.
In the case of the UK Royal Navy (RN), the defining role for its larger-calibre gun mounts is fire support for the land force component in the littoral, as enshrined in its Future Maritime Operations Concept. The latter suggests power projection from the sea and sea-basing of forces, one consequence of which is a requirement for greater weapon range as an aid to maintaining surprise and flexibility when 'poising' such forces offshore.
With some understatement, that range requirement "is greater than we can service at the moment", says Commander Tim Cryar, desk officer for surface effects in the UK Ministry of Defence's (MoD's) Directorate of Equipment Capability (Above Water Effects). The RN's 'stretch' requirement for littoral fire support is to deliver kinetic effects at ranges of up to 210 km (sufficient to provide cover for helicopter landings up to 180 km inland, while poised offshore below the visual and radar horizons), and to do so within three to five minutes of a call for fire. With present technology, fulfilment of such a goal clearly falls outside the scope of a gun solution, but a less ambitious aim of providing coastal suppression and close support of troops operating up to 100 km inshore from 30 km offshore is more attainable.
Image: The current-production 5-inch gun for the USN is the Mk 45 Mod 4, which has an extended 62-calibre tube capable of handling higher-pressure charges and over-length guided projectiles (BAE Systems)
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