Hi. I'm looking for information on the SC-21 COEA studies, particularly the Battle Force Combatant (BFC). I did some digging around on the web, and it was supposed to replace all the Knox and Perry-class frigates, and according to an FAS page, this meant an estimated 104 of them would be built to replace the existing fleet. If that's not already a stretch, they were also supposed to carry the AEGIS Combat System, and a VLS block. Would anyone happen to have any specifications for it, or maybe even a basic drawing?
I am not sure if they have a direct connection, but a BFC had previously existed as a program prior (from early 1989 to at about 1993 or thereabouts) to the SC-21 COEA studies, and was related to the Carrier of Large objects family of ship designs. It was not only supposed to replace existing frigates but also most destroyers and cruisers (it was quite an ambitious concept, which important projects such as FFX (Regan Era) and Strike Cruiser had been shelved in favour of, arguably rather ill-advisably). This BFC was also arguably the cornerstone of the 'Revolution at Sea' effort. As to other features, the following old post of mine from another thread (on the Mission Essential Unit) should help give some idea on what was intended for this particular BFC design (short label in red text added to avoid any confusion over the design being referenced below):
It would appear that they haven't gotten around yet to declassifying the studies that are directly related to the design [MEU]. However, the earliest mention of it that I've been able to find so far (via a reference) is in the 1988 Surface Combatants Force Requirements Study, which recommended the MEU as a replacement for the Iowa class Battleships, indicating that a fair bit of preliminary work on the concept had already been carried out at that point (serious work is likely to have started in January of that year, see below).
Some more clues about the design can be found in this unclassified 1991 CSC paper, which, while it does not mention the MEU as such, does provide some insight into the prevailing school of thought (the so called 'Revolution At Sea') behind it, and the design principles that flowed from that origin, such as the fact that it would have had an integrated electric drive.
Some of the relevant material:
In order to determine the future operational requirements
which dictate the design and construction of Navy ships, two
Revolution At Sea studies were conducted: the Surface Combatant
Force Requirements Study and Ships Operational Characteristics
Study (SOCS). A three-star led work/study group, called Group
Mike, was organized by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) with
a charter to improve the reliability, maintainability, and
survivability of surface combatants of the 21st century. (6:37)
The SOCS "Operational Report" spelled out 12 imperative
characteristics for future ships, within four priorities:
Priority A: Cooperative engagement in all mission areas;
integrated machinery systems; survivability and the ability to "fight hurt."
Priority C: co-location of ship control and combat information
center; access control and security; alternative (peacetime/
wartime) use of volume.
Priority D: Smooth topsides; new information management;
organic aviation and other off-board vehicles. (10:72)
Early efforts at designing the Revolution At Sea ships actually
started in January 1988, as engineers at the Navy's David Taylor
Naval Ship Research and Development Center in Annapolis and
Caderock, Maryland, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center at White
Oak, Maryland, started identifying technologies that showed promise
for achieving the goal of total weapon systems for the new family of
warships. Design work is expected to continue until the mid-1990s,
when the Navy will request funds to acquire the ships. (10:70)
According to Admiral Metcalf, if the Revolution At Sea is
successful, the warfighting design policy for the U.S. Navy will be
to maximize a warship's ability to deliver ordinance on target.
Ideally, in such a ship, the internal volume should be all weapons.
In a future strike cruiser, for example, this might mean cruise
missiles in Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells from stem to stern--a
modern-day HMS Dreadnought. (The Dreadnought was the first "big"
gun battleship in which the battle space was measured not in yards
but in miles. (6:38)
I am not sure if they have a direct connection, but a BFC had previously existed as a program prior (from early 1989 to at about 1993 or thereabouts) to the SC-21 COEA studies, and was related to the Carrier of Large objects family of ship designs. It was not only supposed to replace existing frigates but also most destroyers and cruisers (it was quite an ambitious concept, which important projects such as FFX (Regan Era) and Strike Cruiser had been shelved in favour of, arguably rather ill-advisably). This BFC was also arguably the cornerstone of the 'Revolution at Sea' effort. As to other features, the following old post of mine from another thread (on the Mission Essential Unit) should help give some idea on what was intended for this particular BFC design (short label in red text added to avoid any confusion over the design being referenced below):
Funny to bring those threads up; they were my primary source of information for when I made a Shipbucket drawing of the MEU and FFX. More on topic, I'm under the impression the BFC wasn't part of the SC-21 program then? Kind of puzzling me now....
Well, the term 'Battle Force Combatant' was used I think for one of the designs that the SC-21 CODEA studies looked at, but I don't believe it was the same as the BFC from the late 80s / early 90s, though the two designs may have shared a common heritage via the work done on the 'Revolution at Sea', as well as the intention to replace existing frigates (though the older BFC was also intended to replace various destroyer and cruiser classes).
Interestingly though, SC-21 CODEA studies already included a dedicated frigate replacement, in the form of the FMLAC:
the focused mission local area combatant (FMLAC) was the low end of the COEA series, corresponding to the smallest of a possible family of ships (concept 3D2, the Tailored Maritime Support Ship). it was essentially a frigate, a Perry replacement; it can also be thought of as an american equivalent to the French Lafayette class stealthy frigate. in fact the french ship defined the level of signature control desired. as initially envisaged, it would have selectable modules: a 32 cell vertical launcher, area air defense capability, medium range gunfire support, a special operations support module, a humanitarian support module, a disaster relief capacity, and the capacity to support an armed helicopter. this concept is not too far from the current danish command/support ship, which is actually an modular frigate with similar capacities (except for area air defense). Unit price was set at 550 million in FY 95 terms. the ship was armed with NATO Sea Sparrow, initially in eight vertical cells (quad packed, for an total of 32) but ultimately in a 32 cell Mk-48 launcher, plus a 5-in./62 gun, two 25mm guns, and a helicopter. the short upper mast carries a TACAN and an IR search/track sensor. As in Lafayette, there is no hull sonar. the pair of SRBROC decoy launchers on the deck would be shielded from radar by bulwarks. unlike the other COEA designs, this one had conventional rotating radars (TAS Mk 23 and the NSSM director) they were enclosed type of low-cross-section mast (AEMS). the forward tower would have carried, from top to bottom, a sea sparrow director, a TAS Mk 23 search radar, an SPQ-9B horizon search radar, and the SLQ-32(V)2 ESM system. the short mast aft would have carried a second sea sparrow director(it was not an uptake). a larger version with variable depth sonar was offered. dimensions were 403.4(overall) x 45.9 ft, for an displacement of 4260 tons. like other COEA sketch designs, this one used integrated electric drive, with two PGM-1 plus a PGM-3 emergency generator. speed was 30 knots, and accommodation would have been provided for 212.
EDIT: Image copied over from the Shipbucket backup archives, note though that this image is from 2012 (updated in 2013 I believe) and therefore is probably not the most up to date/accurate reconstruction of the design available;
This keeps getting more and more interesting. Seeing as the FFX was cancelled in 1986, and BFC work started in the late 1980’s, it makes me to think there is only one BFC design. I think the SC-21 had 2 small escorts actually, the other being the “Protection of Shipping” concept, mentioned here in this FAS article: https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/scfrs.htm
Is it possible the FMLAC could part of the “Protection of Shipping” design? It really seems like it, seeing as it’s a Perry replacement (which was built to escort trans-Atlantic convoys), it being described as the “low end” of the COEA studies also gives off that feel.
I don’t own Friedman’s US Destroyer book (can’t find a PDF of the updated version either), but I’m curious, what does it say?
So, Freidman has a section on this whole issue. I'm not sure he has this 100% correct, because it got very convoluted, but here's how he lays it out.
In the mid-1980s, then-CNO Mike Metcalf was pushing for the concept of "revolution at Sea," a radical rethinking of warship design away from traditional warships to ships heavily loaded with VLS and with radically reduced manning (this thinking ultimately led to Arsenal Ship). There were two parallel study groups: the Ship Operational Characteristics Study (SOCS), which looked at the desired characteristics of individual warships; and the Surface Combatant Force Requirements Study (SCFRS), which looked at the numbers of ships required. These studies reported out their results in 1989, just in time for any serious analysis of future Cold War warfighting needs to become irrelevant.
SOCS converged on a ship of ~12,000 tons, but was not convinced of the value of low-observable design beyond the Burke. It also considered that cruisers and destroyers would be largely indistinguishable. While Friedman never uses the term, this is probably where "Battle Group Combatant" comes in, as a general term to encompass the first-tier CruDes type ships. (At this time, the thinking was centered on ships with massive missile capacities, like this Future Strike Cruiser from Popular Mechanics.)
SCFRS looked into whether or not it made sense to build new purpose-built "Protection of Shipping" vessels and decided that instead of building deliberate "second-rate" ships, it would be better to relegate formerly first-tier ships to POS tasks about half way through their service life, allowing them to avoid expensive mid-life modernizations (and allowing the Navy to keep buying only high-mix warships as new construction).
There was something of a hiatus in serious thought about future ship needs for several years, until the SC-21 program began in 1994. And SC-21 encompassed an insanely broad scope -- not just one or even a single family of ships, but actually the whole force architecture for several decades. We talk about the SC-21 COEA and the designs that came out of it (including the one that eventually became DD-21/ DD(X)/DDG-1000) but the COEA actually had three base Concepts:
Concept 1, which was the extend the life of the existing fleet (kick the can down the road).
Concept 2, which was to continue production of existing ships (DDG-51 Flight IIA, an improved Flight III, and an LPD-17 derivative with enhanced aviation capacity).
Concept 3 was an array of new ships.
Concept 3 is obviously the one that catches people's imagination, and that's where FMLAC comes from. But even within Concept 3, there were four distinct tracks:
3A, which aimed at the most advanced ships possible -- this is where some of the more gonzo designs in the COEA come from; designs with up to 256 VLS cells, well decks, and up to a dozen helicopters or V-22s.
3B, which looked at more affordable multimission ships -- DD-21 broadly came out of this track.
3C, which considered ship for limited missions -- such as a basic Spruance replacement and a Perry replacement (FMLAC).
3D, which was a family of modular ships -- the modules were very ambitions, up to a specific module for theater ballistic missile defense.
The key thing to take away is that the COEA was at this point literally just offering up a menu of options. Not all of them were meant to coexist -- a force architecture based on Concept 3A would not have included FMLAC, for example. And in the end, the Navy was only able to buy one design from that whole menu. (Although modular designs were in the menu, LCS was not related to the SC21 COEA, although it borrowed some language from it.)
The real key thing to take away, as far as I was able to determine, is that both the SCFRS study's "Battle Force Capable ship" and the SC-21 program, ended up with the exact same result, which is to say "Build more and better Burkes." They haven't *yet* built as many of them as the SCFRS study wanted, but it's on track to happen eventually.
Another big takeaway from the book is that getting the US Navy to draw Protection of Shipping specialist ships is easy, getting them to *build* them is a whole different story...
SebastianP did some digging in Friedman's Destroyer book. Quite frankly, I think he saved me $100. Here are our organized findings, the majority are just reposts, but there are some gems in here. It really makes you wonder, what would've happened if the USN went with these over the Zumwalt and LCS?
To go with that_person's post above, if anyone has any clue what the "missing" project numbers in the COEA Concept 3 sequence are, I'd be very interested to hear about it.
To wit: There is a 3A1 through 3A3, and a 3A5 and 3A6, but Friedman does not list 3A4 anywhere.
There's also mention that 3B was a "series" of designs, but only 3B1 is described at all, there's no mention of what 3B2 and up was.
Finally, the description given of 3D1, the Expeditionary Force Support Ship, is frustratingly vague, with not even a displacement. There literally was only the name and number, and some descriptions of what kind of modules they were planning on.
Any light that could be shed on this would be very welcome indeed.
(it's a real shame this project is *just* too old for there to have been a public project website that's archived somewhere, as happened for the CVX project and I think DD-21. Sure, the 3D graphics from the CVX website were horrendous by modern standards, but at least they showed what the ship was supposed to look like...)
Concept 2, which was to continue production of existing ships (DDG-51 Flight IIA, an improved Flight III, and an LPD-17 derivative with enhanced aviation capacity).
I missed the bolded section the first time through. I've thought a while that the San Antonio (and the Supply class AOE for that matter) hulls could have been useful for surface combatant roles.
I've seen the 90's Burke Flight III design, but what would an enhanced aviation capacity San Antonio look like, and what role would it have?
Concept 2, which was to continue production of existing ships (DDG-51 Flight IIA, an improved Flight III, and an LPD-17 derivative with enhanced aviation capacity).
I missed the bolded section the first time through. I've thought a while that the San Antonio (and the Supply class AOE for that matter) hulls could have been useful for surface combatant roles.
I've seen the 90's Burke Flight III design, but what would an enhanced aviation capacity San Antonio look like, and what role would it have?
“Based on the new San Antonio (LPD 17) class, adding VTOL/armed helicopter strike capability (4-8 aircraft). Such ships might be used as a forward command platform for power projection.”
Most up-to-date version of the SC-21 COEA concept list.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concept 1: Upgrades to existing vessels
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concept 2: Improved designs currently in production or being planned
2A - Baseline FY99 DDG-51 Flight IIA
2B - Follow on the Flight IIA "...follow-on version with the maximum capability that could be packaged within the existing hull by 2003."
2C - "Based on the new San Antonio (LPD 17) class, adding VTOL/armed helicopter strike capability (4-8 aircraft). Such ships might be used as a forward command platform for power projection."
2D - Advance Force Ship (?)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concept 3: New designs, often combining new technology, stealth, and a new type of power plant
3A1 - Power Project Ship - 12,500-ton cruiser, massive electronics suite, 254 Mk 41 VLS cells, small hanger
3A2 - Aviation Cruiser - 23,500-ton cruiser, massive electronics suite, 254 Mk 41 VLS cells, up to 12 helicopters
3A3 - Amphibious Cruiser - 25,000-ton cruiser, massive electronics suite, 254 Mk 41 VLS cells, and a well deck for amphibious craft
3A4 - Multi-Mission Wide Area Combatant (?)
3A5 - Arsenal ship with limited self-defense capability
3A6 - Arsenal ship with no self-defense capability
3B1 - Littoral Combatant - Reduced RCS destroyer, same armament as Ticonderoga CG, new electronics and powerplant, design evolved into the Zumwalt
3B2 - ???
3B3 - ???
3B4 - ???
3B5 - Goal Ship - Low Observable Arsenal Ship with "box girder" protection
3C1 - Maritime Combatant - 5,500-ton 61-cell stealth Spraunce replacement
3C2 - ???
3C3 - Armed Foam Tanker - Concept to have a warship capable of absorbing lots of damage via abundant amounts of volume
3C4 - Small ASW Combatant "essentially a frigate with medium-range anti-ship capability"
3C5 - Focused Area Local Combatant
3C6 - ???
3C7 - ASW Frigate
*There was also something in the 3C branch called the "Agile Maritime Patrol Ship (for area AAW and ASW, with 64 vertical launch cells, naval gunfire support capability, and an armed helicopter)"
3D1 - Expeditionary Force Support Ship - Modular Warship
3D2 - Tailored Maritime Support Ship/FMLAC - 4,000-ton stealth Perry replacement - "A Tailored Maritime Support Ship (3D2) would have fewer modules: 32-cell vertical launchers (Originally the Mk 41, but then switched to the Mk 48), area AAW, medium fire support, special operations."
3D3 - Full Capability Combatant (?)
3D4 - Air Dominance Ship (?)
Very interesting time period for the internet, and I love the grainy 3D model photos plastered all over. Regardless, there's not much to be found on the page, except for an old "SC-21 Industry Day" slideshow. SC-21 Industry Day was September 27, 1996. NAVSEA prepared a 95-page slideshow that I have attached below. Most of the images are completely contextless and impossible to understand, but there are some interesting things in it. I have attached said slideshow down below as a PDF, and also taken the liberty of running an OCR scan, so it should be text searchable.
First things first, this ship here:It is all over the presentation. It bears a striking resemblance to some of the pictures in the Zumwalt concepts threat (I think we should merge the 2). This is a good demonstration of what the navy wanted in terms of new tech from the SC-21 program.
Is this image here. TomS says MERS-97 is short for "Multifunction Electromagnetic Radiating System", a type of "Advanced Tactical Demonstrator (ATD)" that was being proposed to combine communications, direction finding, and IFF into a single mast. ATD simply refers too new technology programs. AEM/S-95 is the experimental Spruance mast installed in the early 2000s. I still don't know what STACK-98 actually is, so I am curious to know if anyone could enlighten me on the subject.
Third thing, this slideshow gives us images of additional SC-21 concepts, specifically the 3B1 Full Capability Combatant, and the 3D3 Maritime Support Ship. I have attached images of them and their related data sheets below.
I assume REV A means "Revision A"
Note the 2 X-Band radars, MFR became SPY-3. The Close-In Gun System (CIGS) is listed below as being the Mk38
Note the SPQ-9X, I presume this was an early name for SPQ-9B, but have nothing to confirm this
But this is where things start to get weird. According to Friedman 3B1 is the Littoral Combatant (see photos in above post), and Friedman says the Maritime Support Ship was an Arsenal Ship preliminary design (photo above in this post).
I can explain away the confusion with the 3D3 Maritime Fire Support Ship with the following link. It appears the 3D3 Maritime Fire Support Ship refers to both the Arsenal Ship concept and a completely separate concept that evolved into the Zumwalt.
As for 3B1, SC-21 I-Day happened on September 27, 1996, potentially a full year later. It's plausible that the 3B1 Full Capability Combatant is simply an evolved version of the one mentioned in Friedman's book, but I'm not sure why they would change the name. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moving on, Friedman said the 3D series was a group of modular warships (although he does not explain what modular means in this context). The slideshow sheds some light on the subject though, it refers to something called the "Superset Concept".
This seems to refer to the idea that you can take the Sea Dominance Ship (frigate, alternate name for FMLAC, see photo above), and put enough hull plugs into it, you'll eventually get a CG(X), with an intermediate destroyer in the middle. The line of progression is:
Sea Dominance Ship/FMLAC ---> 3D3 Maritime Fire Support Ship ---> Air Dominance Ship OR Full Capability Combatant
Sea Dominance Ship ---> Maritime Fire Support Ship ---> Air Dominance Ship OR Full Capability Combatant
The below House Appropriations articles tells us that the Air Dominance Ship became CG(X), and the 3B1 Full Capability Combatant is shown above.
3D2 FMLAC ---> 3D3 Maritime Fire Support Ship ---> CG(X) OR 3B1 Full Capability Combatant
I think it can safely be said that the modularization in the 3D series refers to increasing a ship's length via hull plugs, which include VLS and power generators among other things. I wouldn't be surprised if the Maritime Fire Support Ship and Full Capability Combatant (DDG-51 successor) refer to the same thing. We've already established that names of these concepts frequently changed, or were assigned to more than 1 concept.
That only leaves 1 giant question though. Why is the 3B1 Full Capability Combatant a part of the 3B series and not the 3D series? That I can't answer. If anyone has any ideas, I'm completely stumped.
ATD means a lot of things in different contexts, though, and the context here suggests something to do with bridge consoles, hence my interpretation of Advanced Tactical Display. We had something similar as an acronym for the workstation-based consoles that replaced the old 60s-era PPIs in when I was in the Swedish Air Force in the late 90s.
(an acronym list I found had like 95 different expansions for "ATD", 25 of them military speak for different things. Also, why would an "Advanced Technology Demonstrator" be mentioned as part of the bridge systems, when the whole ship would be a tech demonstrator?)
The whole ship was not meant to be a technology demonstrator, but an operational warship, incorporating technologies validated by a whole series of Advanced Technology Demonstrations to test basic concepts, followed by Engineering Development Models (EDMs) that would test examples of the specific systems to be built into the ship (There were gun and machinery EDMs, for example).
The Multi-Mode Workstation ATD was a demonstration of the feasibility of a single workstation or console that could perform multiple shipboard functions interchangeably. There was a technology goal for SC-21 to control any ship function from any console -- that was essentially the desired end state for ADCON 21. This would allow a great deal of flexibility; if you needed to add an additional radar operator looking at a specific piece of airspace, another console could be fired up to focus on that. If one of the consoles in CIC was broken, a spare could take over its tasks. If the CIC itself was damaged, you could fight the ship from a secondary control room or even another space entirely, like a training classroom or the Engineering Control Room.
BTW, MERS was the the Multifunction Electromagnetic Radiating System ATD, which was assessing the feasibility of combining direction-finding, datalinks, UHF communications, and IFF into a single antenna, as a weight-saving and signature-reduction measure.
As part of the Navy's Integrated Topside Design effort, the Science and Technology Community initiated several technology demonstrations for the development of reduced signature sensors to produce a low-observable surface combatant. The objective of the Multifunction Electromagnetic Radiating...
To follow on this, note the variety of ATDs that the DD-21 Program Executive Office was responsible for (it includes quite a few that didn't come to fruition, like concentric canister launcher)
I take my previous statements back. Googling "fast response missile" (with the quotation marks) says it's a notional hypersonic weapon, but no further info is provided
Moving on, Friedman said the 3D series was a group of modular warships (although he does not explain what modular means in this context). The slideshow sheds some light on the subject though, it refers to something called the "Superset Concept".
The first problem I see is that slide and plug wouldn't work as illustrated. The helicopter landing pad now has vls modules between it and the hangars. I can see splitting the superstructure and putting the vls modules amidships, but not as illustrated without redoing the interior of the aft of the ship
The superstructure has also changed. The Sea Dominance Ship has a shorter superstructure forward of the "tower" and is longer aft, the other two are longer forward and shorter aft. It looks to me like an error in the illustrations, but it's there.
View attachment 703586This seems to refer to the idea that you can take the Sea Dominance Ship (frigate, alternate name for FMLAC, see photo above), and put enough hull plugs into it, you'll eventually get a CG(X), with an intermediate destroyer in the middle. The line of progression is:
Sea Dominance Ship/FMLAC ---> 3D3 Maritime Fire Support Ship ---> Air Dominance Ship OR Full Capability Combatant
Sea Dominance Ship ---> Maritime Fire Support Ship ---> Air Dominance Ship OR Full Capability Combatant
FMLAC is 4000 tons, the SDS is 7000-9500. More like Burke/Sejong/Atago/Maya than a Brandeburg. If you add 30 meters to a Burke you'd still have a decent length to beam ratio. Add 30 meters to a Brandenburg and you're in Spruance territory, add 30 to a Spruance and you'd need outriggers. Which leads me to believe that the SDS is probably not in the COEA taxonomy at all, or if it is it's in the 3B line.
3D2 FMLAC ---> 3D3 Maritime Fire Support Ship ---> CG(X) OR 3B1 Full Capability Combatant
I think it can safely be said that the modularization in the 3D series refers to increasing a ship's length via hull plugs, which include VLS and power generators among other things. I wouldn't be surprised if the Maritime Fire Support Ship and Full Capability Combatant (DDG-51 successor) refer to the same thing. We've already established that names of these concepts frequently changed, or were assigned to more than 1 concept.
That only leaves 1 giant question though. Why is the 3B1 Full Capability Combatant a part of the 3B series and not the 3D series? That I can't answer. If anyone has any ideas, I'm completely stumped.
The hearing transcript, page 314: SC-21 COEA, talks about alternatives 1, 2, 3, and 4. These include some of the designs in the COEA, but the "alternatives" don't seem to correspond directly to the "concepts" (3B, 3D etc.) Friedman lists that have been expanded on here. I don't think they are referencing the same thing. Something closely related, but not quite the same. Or Admiral Pilling is using different terminology than the report for some reason.
The hearing transcript, page 314: SC-21 COEA, talks about alternatives 1, 2, 3, and 4. These include some of the designs in the COEA, but the "alternatives" don't seem to correspond directly to the "concepts" (3B, 3D etc.) Friedman lists that have been expanded on here. I don't think they are referencing the same thing. Something closely related, but not quite the same. Or Admiral Pilling is using different terminology than the report for some reason.
There were 2 parts of the SC-21 study, first the ship concepts, and then the required numbers. I believe Alternatives 1-4 refer to different fleet architecture plans.
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