So you’re pulling shit out of your ass, got it.
Lol.
It's been implied PR that the purpose is to allow COCOMs to shift Burkes to INDOPACCOM in wartime. That's the actual purpose of FF(X). FFG(X) was an attempt to make a minimum viable INDOPACCOM ship, under the mistaken belief that DDG-51 was gold plated, which it isn't.
That's as simple as I can put it. I would suggest you peruse any number of articles linked in the news threads on this very forum about it.
If the US Navy wanted a Blohm+Voss MEKO 200 or 300 (doesn't exist beyond paper but 360 does), or Gowind 3100, seems like they could have done it with a Legend frame.
Not in 24-30 months, and it took realizing that DDG-51 is the actual baseline for an INDOPACCOM escort to fathom the idea, at least bureaucratically.
I guess your point escapes me.
Unfortunate. I literally cannot simplify it further for you.
Kind of like saying newer FF(X) might get Harpoons so that older DDGs can get NSM. During a service cycle, sure, but not just to pass the Harpoons down.
That's likely exactly what will happen until NSM proliferates to the point that it can be spared for FF(X).
That'll take a while given they make about 50 a year right now for the US (to be fair that's just JSM IIRC but JSM is an NSM), and might bump that up to 100-200 a year, while LRASM is hitting 1,000. Much like how every DDG-51 in service is slightly different in sensors and ESM, every FF(X) will likely end up with a odd menagerie of ordnance, with some having NSMs, some having Harpoons, some having Hellfires and some having nothing at all.
It's not particularly important because FF(X) is more important in that it allows a Burke to be freed up to go die in the South China Sea. Americans just need to get over the idea that ships are some special super shiny thing and realize that they're as expendable as army battalions. It's something the actual people in DON have done but it's unclear why the public at large can't.
That would mean taking a ship out of service to give it an upgrade of a redundant system for surface warfare just to saddle a new ship with hand me downs.
No, it would be done when it's convenient, like if a ship being stripped of Mk 141s for NSMs and is doing this at the same time as an FF(X) in overhaul for weapons and sensor refit, they might put the Mk 141s on the FF(X) so that one will have Mk 141s. The one next to it might have NSMs or Hellfire-R.
Standardization simply doesn't matter much for such small amounts of ships and ordnance, and it's not like they're going to stop making Hellfires, NSMs, or Harpoons. They're even restarting the SLAM-ER production line.
I have every faith American shipyards can build what we need.
DON doesn't. Congress doesn't. DOD as a whole doesn't. They're just stuck in a weird holding pattern until they can start handing out Section 8679 waivers to MHI and HHI when the President decides it's important enough to do so.
This isn't really an issue with their quality of worksmanship or anything. Rather it's an issue with their existing capacities and ability to expand, which is something the Japanese and Koreans don't really need to do, because they have plenty of capacity to begin with.
American shipyards are nearly maxed out. It'll take decades to bring them up to snuff if we tried to do it all at once so we're focusing on the gators, CVNs and SSNs for the time being. That means escorts are gonna hurt if we can't find a way to build smaller escorts in smaller yards. Connies kind of tried to do this but FMM is incompetent so it'll be NSCs on open tender for whatever shipyard says they can deliver.
Naval arms races are ultimately industrial races and America has a lot of atrophied industry while China is the world's factory.
Think LCS but without the stupid unfunded mission modules or the high speed for inter-theater relocation.
What our shipyards need are less bureaucrats and more doers. Every layer of bureaucracy is a cost.
Empty platitudes and MBAisms don't cut through bureaucracy. War does. Hopefully it comes sooner rather than later since every day the USN gets weaker relative to the PLAN.
I wish more people practiced Laconic Philosophy, it would save us circular conversations that seem to expand on no concrete point.
The point is there are serious material and escort shortfalls facing the USN in a INDOPACCOM fight and some unfortunate and regrettable assumptions regarding the technical, industrial and economic characteristics of an optimal INDOPACCOM escort ended up making an ass out of FMM and NAVSEA about half a decade ago.
FF(X) might be a bit of an over correction if it results in empty useless hulls like LCS did but that idea seems to be isolated entirely to FMM.
