FFG(X)

[Felocie]

Yeah ...those Constellations should be in the water any day now, and for a good price.

Also you try to assert that I think Constellation is a good program, I have clearly stated multiple times that FMM has absolutely cooked the design. It just so happens that this FF is worse than an LCS while costing more. It's unjustifiably stupid and a clear political choice over practical

 

[Jimmo952]

Also you try to assert that I think Constellation is a good program, I have clearly stated multiple times that FMM has absolutely cooked the design. It just so happens that this FF is worse than an LCS while costing more. It's unjustifiably stupid and a clear political choice over practical

The only thing I am trying to assert is that design is cooked and it's going to be a long time if ever before we see hulls in the water.

By the time we do, the cost is going to be close enough to a Burke that if won't make sense to build more.

I'd like to be wrong.

 

[Moose]

Here come the dingbat conspiracy theories.

Maybe, just maybe, they failed twice trying to build a small surface combatant and now have to except a more practical, austere but buildable approach.

Which 2 times? LCS was not an SSC, the Connie is not failed helle the yard is still building her. What makes austere better, and what makes you certain austere can be more easily managed?

The earlier version of this same administration demanded a European design and chose the FREMM, swearing the whole time that American designs sucked and couldn't get the job done. It's hard to leap to the conclusion that they're definitely making the right call now. With no study. With no oversight. With no supporting data. With no strategy. With no transparency. While calling it the Golden Shower Fleet.

 

[Felocie]

The only thing I am trying to assert is that design is cooked and it's going to be a long time if ever before we see hulls in the water.

By the time we do, the cost is going to be close enough to a Burke that if won't make sense to build more.

I'd like to be wrong.

Don't bother engaging with the thrust of my argument, just create a strawman. It's always easier than taking time to understand nuance

the Connie is not failed

This is the crucial point. Connie has been a really really bad program since FMM was chosen but that doesn't change the fact that the money is still being spent to make it succeed... and only two will be ordered?

What makes austere better, and what makes you certain austere can be more easily managed?

Better yet, what about an austere platform can actually complete the missions that the USN needs to complete and/or how does this austere platform actually save money for the US Government

 

[Jimmo952]

Which 2 times? LCS was not an SSC, the Connie is not failed helle the yard is still building her. What makes austere better, and what makes you certain austere can be more easily managed?

The earlier version of this same administration demanded a European design and chose the FREMM, swearing the whole time that American designs sucked and couldn't get the job done. It's hard to leap to the conclusion that they're definitely making the right call now. With no study. With no oversight. With no supporting data. With no strategy. With no transparency. While calling it the Golden Shower Fleet.

LCS was an attempt at a small surface combatant albeit an unconventional one.

It was the replacement for the FFGs afterall.

So was Constellation though it ended overweight and expensive. Not so small and still existing only on PowerPoint.

 

[Felocie]

It was the replacement for the FFGs afterall.

It wasn't a 1:1 replacement for prior US Navy frigates in role or number, I strongly encourage you to understand what LCS was meant to before you assert as such.

Not so small

What does this realistically mean? Size and displacement is not the determining factor in capability. Steel is cheap after all

 

[Jimmo952]

Don't bother engaging with the thrust of my argument, just create a strawman. It's always easier than taking time to understand nuance

This is the crucial point. Connie has been a really really bad program since FMM was chosen but that doesn't change the fact that the money is still being spent to make it succeed... and only two will be ordered?

Better yet, what about an austere platform can actually complete the missions that the USN needs to complete and/or how does this austere platform actually save money for the US Government

Not sure where you are going with that. I don't think I'm dodging anything but I can't say I feel pressure to respond to every point you make.

The jury is out on if a Constellation is ever going to be launched. The jury is out on if it will actually float. The ultimate cost is still an unknown.

If the shis can be delivered to the fleet, actually works and the price makes sense, maybe there will be a desire to buy more. Right now though, that is a big if.

The NSC will be a better blue-water asset than LCS. It's been proven reliable with excellent endurance and sea keeping.

Let LCS handling minesweeping and guarding piers.

 

[Jimmo952]

It wasn't a 1:1 replacement for prior US Navy frigates in role or number, I strongly encourage you to understand what LCS was meant to before you assert as such.

What does this realistically mean? Size and displacement is not the determining factor in capability. Steel is cheap after all

Are you making the argument the Constellations will be cheap? I don't think anyone believes that anymore.

How much was spent on the LCS program trying to get something useful out of them?

How much was spent before we ended up with a mine warfare craft and a....whatever the Freedoms have become.

I understand the LCS original concept of operations was quite different than a traditional FFG but it still represented the only small surface combatant the Navy planned to field.

 

[Ozair]

Again, they're probably a fine LCS replacement if the USN actually works on a new FFG. At this point I have no confidence they'll do that until '28 at best, but who knows.

Sorry was just a joke. I agree, if the intent is hulls in the water then this will work well and gives the USN time to work on a Flt II that is more capable in areas the USN need. I'd certainly like to see some thought given to teaming with unmanned platforms.

But I don't see these replacing LCS either, last I read the USN was happy and LCS will continue on in the fleet.

 

[joshjosh]

By the time we do, the cost is going to be close enough to a Burke that if won't make sense to build more.

Burke Flight III: $2.7B per
Constellation: $1.1-1.2B per

Even if that Constellation number goes up dramatically, its still a long way from a new-build Burke.

I do wonder if the Constellation would not have been significantly more expensive, though. Less than half the cost of a Burke, but still with a lot of expensive equipment, makes you wonder if the latest estimate is anywhere close.

 

[Jimmo952]

Burke Flight III: $2.7B per
Constellation: $1.1-1.2B per

Even if that Constellation number goes up dramatically, its still a long way from a new-build Burke.

I do wonder if the Constellation would not have been significantly more expensive, though. Less than half the cost of a Burke, but still with a lot of expensive equipment, makes you wonder if the latest estimate is anywhere close.

If it was still half the cost of a Burke, it is probably still worth doing.

As far as I can tell though, it's still undergoing design/redesign.

Didn't Phelan say the cost was now 80% of a Burke? Maybe he was speaking out of turn or maybe he has access to information we don't?

 

[Felocie]

Are you making the argument the Constellations will be cheap? I don't think anyone believes that anymore.

Something I literally never said

How much was spent on the LCS program trying to get something useful out of them?

How much was spent before we ended up with a mine warfare craft and a....whatever the Freedoms have become.

I understand the LCS original concept of operations was quite different than a traditional FFG but it still represented the only small surface combatant the Navy planned to field.

LCS at this point is useful so probably not the tack to take when attacking them, although there are a great deal of arguments you could have made. An LCS would be cheaper and quicker to produce than an NSC derived PF while still representing greater capability

if the intent is hulls in the water then this will work well

proof? All the numbers say it will be no quicker or at best marginally quicker than Connie

Didn't Phelan say the cost was now 80% of a Burke? Maybe he was speaking out of turn or maybe he has access to information we don't?

Even if we take Phelan’s comment at face value, NSC is still a stupid choice and especially in its mostly unmodified form

 

[Jimmo952]

Something I literally never said

LCS at this point is useful so probably not the tack to take when attacking them, although there are a great deal of arguments you could have made. An LCS would be cheaper and quicker to produce than an NSC derived PF while still representing greater capability

proof? All the numbers say it will be no quicker or at best marginally quicker than Connie

Even if we take Phelan’s comment at face value, NSC is still a stupid choice and especially in its mostly unmodified form

Stupid? So is spending billions on somewhat that doesn't float.

Connie has a lot to prove. I wish it luck.

 

[Felocie]

Stupid? So is spending billions on somewhat that doesn't float.

Connie has a lot to prove. I wish it luck.

Ordering nothing and providing more funding to DDG(X) would make more sense. Why are you so happy with a patrol frigate that doesn’t meet requirements over a badly run program that does? It’s like saying “anything is better than nothing” when the “anything” is just a waste of money

 

[Jimmo952]

Something I literally never said

LCS at this point is useful so probably not the tack to take when attacking them, although there are a great deal of arguments you could have made. An LCS would be cheaper and quicker to produce than an NSC derived PF while still representing greater capability

proof? All the numbers say it will be no quicker or at best marginally quicker than Connie

Even if we take Phelan’s comment at face value, NSC is still a stupid choice and especially in its mostly unmodified form

My point is took a lot of time, energy and money to make LCS into something useful.

What was the total program cost? A ridiculous amount of time and money for the capability delivered.

Stupid? So is spending billions on somewhat that doesn't float and probably never will.

Connie has a lot to prove. I wish it luck.

 

[Jimmo952]

Ordering nothing and providing more funding to DDG(X) would make more sense. Why are you so happy with a patrol frigate that doesn’t meet requirements over a badly run program that does? It’s like saying “anything is better than nothing” when the “anything” is just a waste of money

I am an optimist by nature. Maybe taking a spiral development approach, something can actually be delivered.

It's worth a try.

Happy is a strong word though. I would have been happy if Connie was delivered ontime and for the initial expected price.

Maybe the Connies requirements are outdated. Take too long to deliver and that happens. Ask LCS and Zumwalt.

 

[joshjosh]

If it was still half the cost of a Burke, it is probably still worth doing.

As far as I can tell though, it's still undergoing design/redesign.

Didn't Phelan say the cost was now 80% of a Burke? Maybe he was speaking out of turn or maybe he has access to information we don't?

He said that, yes, but who know what he meant. Perhaps he meant the lifetime costs. Perhaps he just made up a random number for propaganda reasons in accordance with the current administration's GAAP.

One interesting note about the cost estimates is that years ago, when the Navy was predicting $800M per ship, the CBO was estimating $1.2-1.4B. The Navy's cost estimates rose over the years, and the CBO eventually reduced the upper bound of their estimates, with both parties converging on $1.1-1.2B in the latest documents from each organization. At this point, a sudden jump to, say, $2.0B per ship would be surprising.

But this is what I never understood. How is it that the Constellation could be less than half the cost of a Flt III Burke yet still come with so much equipment?

AMDR: $226M APUC
EASR: $48M APUC

The cheaper radar gets us from $2.7B to $2.5B. Now, how do we get from $2.5B to $1.2B?

 

[Jimmo952]

He said that, yes, but who know what he meant. Perhaps he meant the lifetime costs. Perhaps he just made up a random number for propaganda reasons in accordance with the current administration's GAAP.

One interesting note about the cost estimates is that years ago, when the Navy was predicting $800M per ship, the CBO was estimating $1.2-1.4B. The Navy's cost estimates rose over the years, and the CBO eventually reduced the upper bound of their estimates, with both parties converging on $1.1-1.2B in the latest documents from each organization. At this point, a sudden jump to, say, $2.0B per ship would be surprising.

But this is what I never understood. How is it that the Constellation could be less than half the cost of a Flt III Burke yet still come with so much equipment?

AMDR: $226M APUC
EASR: $48M APUC

The cheaper radar gets us from $2.7B to $2.5B. Now, how do we get from $2.5B to $1.2B?

All the time spent reworking the design costs money. If the design changes enough that any work the yard did has to be redone, it costs money.

The last we heard, the design was severely overweight, top heavy and would not make the speed requirement.

There was talk of going to an alloy superstructure to deal with that.

Making that happen will not be free. The costs add up.

 

[joshjosh]

All the time spent reworking the design costs money. If the design changes enough that any work the yard did has to be redone, it costs money.

For the USS Constellation, yes. But those cost forecasts are for the entire class. Design changes and first-in-class reworks are not going to add a billion dollars to each ship in a class of 20 ships.

 

[TwoTribes]

First, the U.S. Navy needs a sufficient number of warships.

Second, the U.S. Navy needs a sufficient number of low-tier warships.

Third, the U.S. Navy needs 30+ such low-tier warships by 2045.

The U.S. Navy finally got it — numbers matter, and they can't afford to wait anymore. The new FFG(X) program is clearly all about building ships fast.

So, just a proper frigate (something better than the LCS — is that really so hard? It should be simple enough, right?)

The new FFG(X) should be better than the LCS, but only slightly better.

But 16 NSMs? That's still way too many. I don't get it.

 

[Scott Kenny]

An absolutely worthless ship for USN missions, unless we decide that the USN should continue to be in the business of illegally blowing up drug boats that aren't even headed to the United States in a.zero threat environment.

You do realize that the law authorizing military action dates to 1986, right?

Sponsored by Chuck Shumer.

 

[Martes]

The U.S. Navy finally got it — numbers matter, and they can't afford to wait anymore. The new FFG(X) program is clearly all about building ships fast.

With the choice being between a bad ship and no ship.

Burke Flight III: $2.7B per
Constellation: $1.1-1.2B per

I don't understand the obsession with costs and penny-pinching. Let's face it, the US Government can print any amount of money to throw at the shipbuilders, and make them eat it. The problem is it wouldn't make them do something, i.e. it's all about build times, quality and shipyard capacity.

 

[Dilandu]

I don't understand the obsession with costs and penny-pinching. Let's face it, the US Government can print any amount of money to throw at the shipbuilders, and make them eat it. The problem is it wouldn't make them do something, i.e. it's all about build times, quality and shipyard capacity.

Printing more money make each new one less and less valuable = costs would rise even more. Inflation, duh.

 

[Martes]

Printing more money make each new one less and less valuable = costs would rise even more. Inflation, duh.

Pennies on the US budget (and debt) scale. And they print it anyway. The bottleneck here is industrial, not financial.

 

[kqcke for you]

It is when that sacrifices NSM and/or an ASW payload. Actually if we're being real it would cut into the flight deck too given the size of a 40 footer. so you're losing your helicopter and UAS capability too. All that for what?

It wont sacrefice NSM and it doesn't sacrefice ASW capability because someone tought the first flight wont need it anyway and after that ASW only based on helicopter is well its shit because you're pretty mutch shit

 

[TomS]

You do realize that the law authorizing military action dates to 1986, right?

Sponsored by Chuck Shumer.

If you're talking about the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, it does not authorize the summary execution of suspected drug traffickers. It authorizes the boarding of vessels suspected of trafficking, with the consent of their country of origin.

 

[Hood]

Given the global usage the RN has gotten out the Rivers the NSC is perhaps an economical choice for peacetime flag showing - the are Rivers OPVs cosplaying as frigates or destroyers for the "gunboat diplomacy" role and this FF plan using the NSC seems to be somewhat similar.

Fine for training seamen, pootling about, showing the flag and busting some drug runners but as long as the USN doesn't pretend these are combat assets then that's fine.

Meanwhile Myanmar (not noted as a naval power) are building better-armed frigates than these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalun-class_frigate

 

[donnage99]

I am an optimist by nature. Maybe taking a spiral development approach, something can actually be delivered.

It's worth a try.

Happy is a strong word though. I would have been happy if Connie was delivered ontime and for the initial expected price.

Maybe the Connies requirements are outdated. Take too long to deliver and that happens. Ask LCS and Zumwalt.

You have to hollow out the Legend class and design a whole new ship in confinement of the old ship's shell for it to have quietness level suitable for sub hunting mission if I understand it correctly. Not to mention survivability rated less than LCS.

Modification to make it a proper frigate would probably take as much if not longer than Constellation. Flight I will be useless and Flight II would face enough engineering problems that it would eventually face cancellation, and because Flight I is more useless than LCS, Navy would try to force early retirement of those ships.

 

[kqcke for you]

To be honest at this point it would probaly be even easier to take an Arleigh Burke and make it ASW capable

 

[Jimmo952]

You have to hollow out the Legend class and design a whole new ship in confinement of the old ship's shell for it to have quietness level suitable for sub hunting mission if I understand it correctly. Not to mention survivability rated less than LCS.

Modification to make it a proper frigate would probably take as much if not longer than Constellation. Flight I will be useless and Flight II would face enough engineering problems that it would eventually face cancellation, and because Flight I is more useless than LCS, Navy would try to force early retirement of those ships.

An NSC will never be built to the same requirements as the Constellations.

It is a smaller ship. At best it will be a light frigate.

The first iteration is more of a blue-water, high-endurance corvette.

 

[Airbus A340]

Flight II gonna be such a major redesign they probably gonna end up paying work force to sit on their ass waiting for flight II design to be finalized once they done building flight I

I have a better idea. Start building Flight II before the design is even started.

 

[Jimmo952]

Pity they didn’t do just that with the FREMM hull. No major structural changes, just fit US radar and weapons and end up with something similar to FREMM EVO.

That might in fact still be a better option, as inserting real combattant capabilities into an NSC Fight II is going to be at least as hard as building a FREMM EVO at Marinette with minimal customization.

The real pity is we nolonger have the ability to competently design and build, an affordable but capable frigate.

That is a shame.

I doubt anyone thinks the NSC is ideal but it is what we have. It's a fairly large, reliable ship with excellent range and seakeeping.

Maybe something useful can be built from it.

I hope so.

 

[TomS]

To be honest at this point it would probaly be even easier to take an Arleigh Burke and make it ASW capable

The Burkes are already highly ASW capable.

 

[yeetmahboi]

My opinion is that if the US can live with the F-35 they can live with the Connies. Not that they should, but just my opinion.

 

[Jimmo952]

8th

It seems likely the USN thought that the 57mm was better for missile and small boat defense and that the naval gunfire mission was no longer relevant. They also might have wanted to preserve weight and space margins for later DEW installations, or perhaps just were being cheap. Some combination of all three. But as noted above, only 5" and 57mm are in inventory now and they weren't going to adopt a new caliber.

As for surface warfare - I personally never believed that module was especially necessary. The 57mm alone seemed more than adequate. On the FFG9(x), anything even moderately sized could be an NSM target and anything too small for that could eat a RAM blk2, so further focus on small targets outside the 57mm seems especially pointless to me.

At the time the LCS surface warfare was conceived, Iranian boghammer swarms were the major concern.

They expected LCS to be fighting large numbers of Iranian speed boats and RIBs.

 

[kqcke for you]

The Burkes are already highly ASW capable.

*Make it ASW capable to the requierments that created the FFG(X).

While ity definitely not bad but it can't compete with any dedicated ASW hunter

 

[cccgong]

The Burkes are already highly ASW capable.

They are likley too loud these days as the opfor subs have all gotten quieter. Everyone else’s ASW boats has hybrid electric propulsion these days.while having all the baggage of a 45 year old design.

At this point a clean sheet design is needed for everything

 

[whatismoo]

They are likley too loud these days as the opfor subs have all gotten quieter. Everyone else’s ASW boats has hybrid electric propulsion these days.while having all the baggage of a 45 year old design.

At this point a clean sheet design is needed for everything

Maybe they'll put some money into a clean sheet FFG but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[whatismoo]

They can't do MCM which is the major role for LCS in 2025, nor can they support large numbers of UxVs which is the most important feature for futureproofing MCM and ASW designs.

I meant replacing the patrol mission, not MCM or ASW.

 

[Jimmo952]

What is the Freedom Class LCS doing these days?

The Independence Class has mine warfare.

What is Freedom's focus?