Considering KSR's size, this thing really needs a mothership to work in terms of endurance and targe acquisition. So the mothership in my view is more like an organic part of the system. But this makes me wonder if Indonesia really needs such mothership vessel that can deploy smaller missile attack crafts. Indonesian doctrine and diplomatic relations really projects no serious regional military/security threat from other countries but more of counter piract operations in Malacca, more focus on freedom of navigation in nearby waters, fishery resource disputes, especially with the Chinese, internal operations and stability.
There's some questions that needs to be answered first in regards to this mothership-boat concept. For a reported $900M, the practicality seems very questionable. The Mothership reportedly carries 4 of this tiny mosquito boat, with SATCOM and INS based navigation and communication, the thing is our SATCOM navigation aren't that robust and if you put the heavyweight electronic attack player like USA, China, Australia there's every reason to be worried if we could operate these concept in dense EW restricted environment. Kongsberg promised robustness in its GNSS, but then again I'm expecting that to be overwhelmed as well.
And then there's the issue of the missile boat and its practical endurance before reaching bingo fuel. I don't have the numbers but just a quick look and I don't think the boat could keep up far away from the mother ship for day long operation, at some point the mothership commander will have to calculate just how far and just how long this boat operate from its mothership else it loses contact.
Then there's also the question regarding the motherships own size, at 100m long, 18m beam, this ship would be the size of the current Martadinata, but with rooms inside the ships occupied by decks, its questionable how many liters of fuel it could carry on its own + for its missile boat , consider the ship itself have questionable fuel tank capacity.
Last but not least this naval MUM-T has yet to be adopted anywhere in the world, with only testing like the IBP 21 conducted by the US navy in 2021. I'm not sure if its wise to adopt the concept without proper testing first. Anything that sounds good on paper, may not work in real life , case in point is the multiple failure of Ukraine drones against the Russian navy. Even though suicide drones are once hailed as the 'game changer'.
The question in my head is for such a concept, isn't it just better if Indonesia invested on an LHD instead, with its rotary air wing providing a larger coverage area than the LOS limited sensors on the missile boat ? I mean the price of an LHD like the Mistral is less than $900M. I'm sure the sortie rate of a helicopter based missile launch is a lot higher than that of crappy missile boat. Recent development in fact has pointed that fixed wing aviation/drones like Mojave could be launched from LHD without much modifications. I mean if the Indonesian navy is really desperate to be tech savvy, why not use an aerial drone instead of crappy missile boat.
What do u think ?
Only real "threat" comes from territorial disputes with Malaysia in Northern Borneo and Natuna Sea overlap with 9-dash lines. I really don't think that this mothership-KSR system has much use in any of those scenarios. If you give me the choice, I'd rather use that money to build more Bung Karno like ships, but not as presidential Yacht but as an actual patrol boat. Or reallocate that fund to KPLP so that they could actually build more class 1 patrol boats and build a fleet that is capable of patrolling the vast Indonesian EEZ. If they don't want that, just build a frigate instead of this thing. Frigate's welcome considering Indonesia is trying to build a regional force-projection navy.
It is ! in fact other than the need for large +4000 tons frigate, the most pressing need of ships for us is now ships the size of Diponegoro or Bung Tomo. It's not overly large and expensive to operate but able to at least able to defend itself in case of attack and able to patrol for a long time, I agree with you that securing ships from piracy isn't a mothership strong suit, a simple coast guard OPV is suffice, and when it comes to facing of China, its survivability itself is questionable. Lose the mothership, lose all 4 missile boat. The PLAN would find the mothership notably defenseless without proper air defense and in heavy Chinese naval and air superiority it would not survive for long.
I hope they increase the OPV 90 order into 10-15 ships. And each of those OPV should be equipped with 12 VLS (Mica) as minimum. While the larger AAW ship like the Merah Putih be equipped with 32 or more VLS (Aster). In the future Indonesia really need to consider air defense ship with VLS in the triple digit, consider the missile heavy doctrine of the PLA, good for additional layer of air defense and reduce burden to land based launcher. The investment on those ships will provide a greater return for the safety of Indonesia's overall economic and population from attacks. Can't see missile boat offering the same bargain.