Could NATO Frigate 90 have been made to work?

[uk 75]

Perhaps the most ambitious NATO programme of the 1980s was an attempt to design a common escort ship platform for NATO navies: NATO Frigate 90.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/nfr-90-and-other-pre-horizon-aaw-projects.923/

The project foundered as it became too expensive and failed to satisfy the requirements of the major NATO navies.

Part of the problem was that the requirements were not clearly defined. Germany and the Netherlands had been more successful in developing joint frigates in the 1970s to a more precise requirement.

The US Navy already had its own Burke class AAW destroyer project to replace its Coontz and Adams class destroyers amongst others. It was unlikely that the NFR90 would be adopted instead. But the US Navy did have large numbers of Knox class frigates which would need replacing if the Soviet threat had continued into the 90s.

Canada and the key European navies (France, FR Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and UK) all needed AAW destroyers to serve alongside their modern GP/ASW frigates.

This basic contradiction between the needs of the customers for NFR90 was not necesarily a deal breaker. The US Spruance class had been developed to meet both AAW and ASW requirements. However, it was larger and more expensive than the RN T22 and T42 or the French Leygues and Cassard classes.
Modular weapons systems were a vogue of the 1980s. Different blocks could be inserted into a common hull depending on the roles required.
Different main guns would occupy one block. As things have turned out since the US 5" gun has gained wider acceptance than in the 80s.
Vertical Launch silos in another block could house both AAW and ASW missiles as well as SSM and cruise missiles.
All the navies accepted the need for a helicopter deck and hangar aft.
Point Defence systems would be Phalanx or Goalkeeper guns or SADRAL or RAM missile launchers.
The Burke class hull could have provided a basis for NFR90. It offered enough space for a gun and VLS forward and a helo aft plus Point Defence.
An ASW Burke would have met US Navy requirements with Sea Lance replacing ASROC in the VLS.
Canada and Spain would have been most likely to accept a NATO Burke, France, Italy and UK least. Germany and Netherlands only needed 2 to 4 AAW ships so might have gone along with Burkes.
It took twenty years for France, Italy and UK to replace their obselete AAW ships. If the Cold War had continued this need would have been much more pressing.

 

[Apophenia]

... Canada and Spain would have been most likely to accept a NATO Burke...

Canada's acceptance of your 'NATO Burke' would very much depend upon details. RW Arleigh Burkes have a complement of 303 to 323 - higher even than the '70s-vintage Iroquois DDHs.

As for NATO members taking 20 years to replace obsolete AD destroyers. Canada retired its 45 year old DDHs in 2017 having faffing about for a decade with conceptual stretched Halifax hulls. That failed concept blebbed into the Single-Class Surface Combatant (SCSC) before being rebranded as the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) project. With CSC, my guess is that Canada's dithering may easily rival that of France, Italy and UK!

Ironically, with its partly-Canadian-funded APAR and SMART-L, the De Zeven Provinciën class (complement 232) fit Canadian requirements to a tee. Ask Damen to substitute the Halifax class powerplant and press 'Go' ...

 

[CV12Hornet]

To be honest, no, I don't think so. The problem isn't technical, the technical problems were solveable, but bureaucratically and industrially there were too many cooks, too many different industry actors wanting to get involved.

I think the experience of the two successor programs, Horizon and TFC, are illustrative. The latter was a fairly loose collection that wound up with three very different ships running two different combat systems that in the end wound up sharing very little, undoing much of the point of an NFR-90-style collaboration. The former was a much stricter collaboration, and was beset from the start by workshare issues and the differing requirements between the Franco-Italians and British that would wind up sinking it.

The only way this might work, IMO, is if the United States took the lead, imposed the requirements, and told everyone else to deal. Not only would that likely prompt the French and British, at minimum, to leave, but it fails the biggest cost-reduction test, because everyone's just going to put their own systems into it.

And that's the real nail in the coffin for NFR-90 - there was no way to fit common weapon and sensor fits, half the participants (US, UK, France, Netherlands) had their own national industries they'd want to keep alive, and the best way to reduce costs is to reduce costs of weapons and sensors.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The Burke class hull could have provided a basis for NFR90. It offered enough space for a gun and VLS forward and a helo aft plus Point Defence.
An ASW Burke would have met US Navy requirements with Sea Lance replacing ASROC in the VLS.
Canada and Spain would have been most likely to accept a NATO Burke, France, Italy and UK least. Germany and Netherlands only needed 2 to 4 AAW ships so might have gone along with Burkes.

No, Burke hulls are way too big. They're 500ft long and 65ft wide, minimum of 8300 tons! Plus they have a crew of some 300.

Honestly, a long Perry class hull would probably be the ideal for this, or maybe stretched a bit. ~450ft long, 45ft abeam and a crew of ~175. Gas turbines to reduce manning, and reduce maintenance. Not sure if GT-electric was really an option in the early 1980s, but if it was that'd be my preference. (edit: yes, I know Perrys were GT. Most other ships of the time were still steam.)

Need to make two weapons fits, though: one mostly AAW, one mostly ASW. I'd want to add an ASROC box launcher for the ASW version, and replace that with either a Sea Sparrow box or a second Mk13 launcher for the AAW version. Same hull sonar for both, probably drop the towed array sonar from the AAW.

I'd want it to use the 5"/54 Mk45 gun personally, but I suspect that for the time the OTO 76mm as used on the Perrys would be more acceptable.

 

[uk 75]

The Burke large hull seemed to me justified by the need to ship a 5" gun and VLS able to cope with a variety of missiles plus helicopter facilities for Seaking/EH101/SH60.
While the US Navy might need the ship to replace the Knox class commonality with the Burkes already replacing Coontz and Adams seemed desirable.
For everyone else the ships they eventually adopted like the Horizon and T45 were closer to the Burkes than the Perry.
The other issue is that the European countries already had frigate sized ships like the T23 in production but had not developed new classes of destroyer.

 

[Hood]

I don't think it could have worked.
The effort was probably pitched at the wrong target. All the navies involved were experienced shipbuilders and all had developed good modern frigates themselves with some notable export successes. So there was no industrial incentive to share design and production. The goal of "economies of scale" would be impossible to attain given how many different ways the cloth had to be cut.
Britain and France were the leading European radar and missile producers, with Italy in third place. So already there was a dual choice before even talking about US-kit.
I think the reality was more political than military - i.e. the politicians didn't want to spend the money to develop new ships and thought that they could share the costs out onto somebody else.

An air defence ship was the biggest need and it probably seemed at the beginning like a good idea to collaborate in that field - which is what CNGF and Horizon turned out to be. But then the UK and France competed with each other with MESAR and ARABEL and then Italy came along with EMPAR. This of course creates industrial headaches, and of course makes the expensive AEGIS/SPY system less attractive.
I suspect had France not developed PAAMS, the the only solution would have been US missiles and therefore most probably AEGIS/SPY.
For whatever reason, Navantia in Spain wedded itself to AEGIS and thus the Fridtjof Nansen-class that they designed for Norway also had it. Given how the UK, France and Italy and Spain and Norway all split into three groups its seems unlikely that one set of hulls and equipment would have satisfied all the users.

 

[Scott Kenny]

An air defence ship was the biggest need and it probably seemed at the beginning like a good idea to collaborate in that field - which is what CNGF and Horizon turned out to be.

Building a dedicated multinational AA ship might have worked better, but you still run into issues with Germany, for example, only playing in the Baltic Sea with all that massive short range threat, while the UK and France mostly don't play in water like that so need longer range missiles that don't need as high a rate of fire or so many simultaneous tracking channels. Even the Med doesn't have the same swarming threat that the Baltic does...

And that's just operational needs, nevermind workshare/employment needs.

 

[zen]

NF-90 seems somewhat doomed from the start.

UK efforts date back to SAM.72, GAST.1210 and Type 43 and Type 44. Which would have alleviated concerns over handling the threat....had they been pursued beyond 70's studies.

Worse ASWRE wanted their radar concepts developed and not without good reason.

Post Sea Dart mkII cancellation, NF-90 might have looked like a 'cheap' solution.....
This led to FUN, FUNGI and Horizon.
That led to the French pulling a fadt one in relocating the project office to Paris and over the course of the project making requirements fit French products.....hence why the RN left.
But
....
Saddling the RN with legacy concepts like the WR.21 with intercooler and 'European' diesel plants inadequate to the power load demands. All a legacy dating back to NF-90.

But the answer was development in terms of ship and propulsion in the Type 23 and in AAW expansion of GW.27 using a longer ranged missile.....hello SAM.72 in updated form.

There is a US missile offering of the times that fits with MESAR and RN doctrine.
But otherwise there would need to be a ARH version of Standard.....but that carries shades of Q-band Tartar.

And that's just the UK.....