And building a new frigate or destroyer takes years and costs hundreds of millions-if not billions-of dollars.

After all, the Royal Navy doesn’t keep decommissioned surface combatants in reserve. Still, up-gunning the OPVs could be the Royal Navy’s only option for quickly expanding its front-line fleet in a crisis. It would remain vulnerable to submarines and aircraft, however, owing to its lack of sonar and surface-to-air missiles.Īnd a corvette conversion wouldn’t be cheap, of course. A River-class corvette could pose a serious threat to enemy warships. And if the Canadian navy ever decides to up-arm its own OPVs, the NSM is the obvious choice.Īll these additions effectively would make a Batch 2 River a corvette rather than an OPV. Navy is adding the 100-mile-range NSM to its Littoral Combat Ships. The Naval Strike Missile from Norwegian firm Kongsberg is among the most popular. And several companies build containerized missiles that could fit the bill. The most heavily-armed mod moves the 30-millimeter cannon amidships and adds a second unit bolts on a Bofors 57-millimeter main gun adds decoy launchers and new surveillance and fire-control radars stacks onto the aft deck eight box launchers for anti-ship missiles and replaces existing small boats with a gun-armed unmanned surface vehicle. Looking to other users of River-type vessels for inspiration, trade publication Navy Lookout recently proposed several possible “up-gunning” schemes that could transform the Batch 2s into front-line warships.Īll the schemes involve existing “bolt-on” systems that don’t require new research-and-development or deep-and expensive-modification of the hull. The trick, of course, is selecting weapons and sensors that don’t require major modification to the OPV’s hull-cutting into the deck, for example, or running lots of new wires. It shouldn’t be hard to plug new gear into a Batch 2’s combat system.

Rocket launchers boat