River-class patrol vessels of roughly 1,700 to 2,000 tons are larger than Black Swan sloops. Automation lets the modern ships operate with about twenty-eight to fifty people instead of roughly 180 to 192. Those crew-saving systems still occupy weight and volume, and the resulting ship is optimized for only part of the older sloop's mission set. Larger displacement therefore does not automatically mean a broader gradient of combat capability. Crew size and tonnage alone are poor proxies for flexibility.
Notable Point · 1:03:28-1:05:09
Automation reduces crews without recreating mission breadth
Modern River-class OPVs are larger than Black Swan sloops despite far smaller crews, yet they cover a narrower portion of the conflict spectrum.