Which is presumably why Kongsberg ordered hundreds of NSM engines last July. Remember the USMC is buying it for NMESIS as well as LCS and all the orders from other Western navies. It's also been seen on at least one Burke, being fired from the Fitzgerald in 2024.
This is true but IIRC there's still no plans to procure them in huge amounts.
I suspect the first few FF(X)s will have Mk 141s, or nothing, as far as anti-ship missiles go. Perhaps it will be done by removing the Mk 141s from the Burkes and putting them on FF(X)s while the production backlog chews through the DDGs' needs first? That's assuming the Navy about-faced on its plans to put them on destroyers and isn't just testing it on a handful of ships like it is prone to do.
Considering how little love the CG gets, Im sure they would love more ships they didn't have to pay for. Especially since they only got 10 of the 12 NSCs they wanted.
They didn't want 12. They wanted 8 with an option for 10. They were foisted with 11 to keep a Gulf Coast shipyard open through COVID. Now that the Navy has selected NSC, the Coast Guard can wash its hands of it and just skim off that parts supply chain, and DHS can use the USCG money to do something else.
How are there dozens of documents and wargames including a ship class
As I said, there's no document that's PR unclass that says "this is what FF(X) is supposed to do", obviously.
There are dozens of things saying the USN doesn't have enough escorts for Westpac given the threat environment of China is increasingly dangerous to shipping and unlikely to be survivable for ships less well equipped than a Burke. The Navy needs about 75 Burkes to be available and it has 76. That really means it's something like 60 Burkes at any one time if you really press the matter. Usually it's closer to 50.
End goal at the moment is something like 100 Burkes or so. That will likely increase if there are more delays (there will be more delays) as the Flight Is run out of SLEP time.
When you're sending 10% of your surface escort fleet to show the flag in the Mediterranean so Saudi Arabia and UAE don't snuggle up to Brussels or Paris who are increasingly adversarial to the United States (hooray, the early 1990's and all their geopolitical tensions came back), much less deepen their existing relationship with the PRC and Pakistan, that's 10% fewer escorts for fighting an ongoing WW3. The demands of the U.S. Navy to show the flag in other parts of the world isn't going to disappear just because there's a minor and potentially nuclear naval war in the most populated part of the planet.
If you want to be able to fight China and also prevent Europe (or China) from eating the U.S. network of global bases and alliances, you need something like what Europe makes: a tiny frigate not intended for high intensity combat but merely to show the flag.
Connies were always a bad idea made worse by the yard selection because they were supposed to address the shortfall of the Burke fleet directly by making a cheaper Burke. Turns out that's stupid. It's cheaper to just keep making Burkes and produce a tiny little boat of insignificant armament, outside of a colonial war al a Inherent Resolve or Infinite Reach, which is exactly what Europe does. They have big ships and small ships, fast ships and slow ships, but they also know the best ship of all is friendship.
Unfortunately, America is a bit too silly to get ahead of the Burke shortfall by asking Japan or Korea to make destroyers for it circa 10 years ago (there were USNI articles from 2016-2018 about it and the Jones Act at the time), but MHI and HHI will get fat contracts for battle damage repairs when the Second Pacific War (which may or may not end up being WW3) actually kicks off.
If it doesn't happen, great, because it means the house of cards that is the USN surface escort fleet won't have its nakedness exposed. This is something every mid level is talking about but all the flag guys have their heads in the sand about it. They know, of course (they're not stupid), but they literally cannot say it because it means they would be committing career suicide. We can only hope that the big shots turn out to be more competent in general than their opposites (I wouldn't count on it, considering the PLAN isn't stupid either, it's just inexperienced) because that's about the only way you can beat an industrially superior opponent in an industrial war.
China holds all the cards in a potential showdown with the US and if it comes to blows they have an even, or slightly better than even, chance of defeating the United States right now. It will flow in their favor for the next 20 years or so until the USN can patch over its declining hull strength in the surface escort fleet (this has already hit), the carriers (this will hit in 2028-2030), and the submarine hulls (this will hit 2036-2042).
Past that nobody really knows but the general hope is that the investments made today in ships like FF(X) and the 774 production boost (if you've been getting targeted ads in your email about WELDING SUBMARINES...) skedded for 2028-2030 will be a lot better than the Trump I era stuff like the Connies and other hot garbage. There's stuff moving with the LHAs and CVNs to try to clear the backlogs caused by COVID that made Fallujah 8 years late and JFK just now getting her sea trials. Open question whether those pan out, honestly.
The real problem is that we won't see dividends on all that before about 2050 so that gives China plenty of time to just keep steady pace and surpass the U.S. in global strength within a decade or so. All you can really do about that is spite the sky and hope they fumble it somehow for now. Given they've been breaking every industrial moat we've built that's not terribly likely. The second best thing to do is to make kicking America out of Asia an extremely onerous goal.
The good news is we might be able to manage that one it just might cost pretty much the entire U.S. Navy if it goes off sooner rather than later.
Maybe you can articulate how it makes sense?
Do you understand what an "analogy" is?
Europe has tiny patrol frigates like the MEKO 200/300 and the Gowind 3100.
The USN needs that because it has nothing but high end surface escorts that it can't afford enough of.
Gowind would make an excellent starting point for a light frigate
We're never buying another European frigate again. NSC is better because it's production ready for American shipyards.
