FFG(X)

I don't know why people are fixated on low (32 or lower) VLS count when steel is cheap. VLS is literally a steel box, which you don't need to fill with an expensive missile, but have the option of doing so if needed or if a low cost missile is developed.

The cost drivers for this are going to be what radar, propulsion, ASW (helos included), missiles, manning/maintainace requirements there are for the vessel.

To reduce cost, for a convoy escort/red sea Houthi ship. You could reuse the SPY1 radars from the flight 2A AB after they get upgraded to SPY6 for a new frigate build. Yes, it'll be big and heavy, but again steel is cheap.

If there is a way around the Jones act the best solution is to buy into the Super Mogami build with minimal/low modifications. That will also ease maintenance in the Pacific when Japan/Australia also share the same ships.
 
Dilandu said:
I wouldn't rely on admirals rationality there. Seeing big frigates - "almost as good as destroyers" - "wasting their time on convoy duty, while they could be protecting carriers or augmenting SAGs", would inevitably create tensions between strike forces and escort forces. So its better to design frigates that are too escort-specialized to be useful outside their niche.
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Most of those admirals would be reminded that the point of every ship having SPY6 and Aegis is that now detecting SPY6 doesn't tell the enemy anything other than maybe "USN ship".

It's NOT almost as good as a destroyer. Nowhere near. It's a [expletive deleted] convoy escort. Crud, it may not be able to keep up with the carrier group. The only ships that a 28kt FFG could escort are the Amphibs.



Dilandu said:
Yep. Not sure about top of container stack being workable, but it would probably be possible to find SOME places on cargo ships to fit Mk-70 anyway. It would be much more logical placement for big area-defense missiles (like SM-6 or PAC-3 MSE) than on frigate itself; cargo ships won't even notice the additional load of a pair of Mk-70 containers, while frigate would be hard-pressed to find space for strike-lenght Mk-41.
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I mean, those Mk70s can't have anything on top of them. But yes, you might need to leave off 3-5 rows of containers bow and stern for the Mk70s.
 
Earlier discussion about 90s design concepts reminds me the Navy went all-in on large combatants around this time and intended to exit the small combatant enterprise entirely. If I recall correctly, frontline combatants would assume secondary protection of shipping roles as they aged and were relieved by newer large combatants.

Interesting to consider DD-21s held together with duct tape performing protection of shipping in their latter stages of life when maintenance costs would be at their highest.
 
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Airbus A340 said:
How much did battleships achieve in WW1? Ships too valuable to risk are not useful. When carriers are scarce, they do not get used like they were in 1942, they get used like they were used in the Guadalcanal campaign. There are some deep rooted issues that have to be resolved before money is spent on massive numbers. If all vessel are going to be viewed the way BBs were in WW1, then how can they be used in a war?
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Anything short of a carrier is not "too valuable to risk" in the USN.

We have LOTS of Burkes. But they're too expensive to have enough hulls to have one everywhere we need a hull. Technically, the USN is down about 100-120 ships from what we need on the lower end** of ASW craft. There were 51 USN Perry-class FFGs on top of 46 Knox class FFs during the Cold War (plus a few others in previous classes). The US could keep 30-40 frigates AT SEA then, and that's about what we need now.
** Zumwalts were supposed to replace Sprucans as the High end ASW, so we got more Burkes instead.​

It may be possible to rig up the LCS as ASW ships, but I'm not sure that the complete ASW module package was ever built. LCS was intended to carry both CAPTAS-4 VDS and the TB-37 Multi-Function Towed Array, and to operate both at the same time.
As a submariner, that is good planning. Let the TB-37 stay up above the thermocline, while the CAPTAS-4 is listening below the thermocline. No place for the submarine to hide!​
Only one CAPTAS-4 sonar has been purchased for the entire LCS program, but the TB-37 could be snagged off a decommissioned Buke instead of bought new. So that would get us one LCS able to do ASW relatively quickly.

What really concerns me is how loud the LCS are. While I don't have any experience with LCS, the other HSVs I have seen have been extremely loud. To the tune of "the crew should be wearing hearing protection even when asleep in their bunks(!)," "an HSV at range completely drowned out a sonar contact at half that range," and "an HSV halfway to the horizon from my sub was so loud that I had to shout at my Officer of the Deck to be heard."


Back to that stated need for 30-40 "low end ASW ships" AT SEA in order to equal what the USN had in 1990. If each ship has two crew, that will let you get away with between 40 and 60 total low end ASW ship hulls. Dual-crewing allows for between 2/3 and 3/4 of the class to be deployed at any given time. Let's split the difference, 50 such low end ASW ships in the fleet.
 
Desertfox said:
That's an AAW destroyer, might as well build more Burkes in that scenario.

The idea of a frigate is it can do lower risk scenarios the Brakes are currently doing so the Burkes are freed up for those specific high risk scenarios.
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The freaking FFG-7s that made up half the US frigate fleet had 40 Standard missiles onboard.

The missile threat has only increased.
 
Pardon me, I didn't get to the last page before posting earlier.
VishnuOsiris said:
Earlier discussion about 90s design concepts reminds me the Navy went all-in on large combatants around this time and intended to exit the small combatant enterprise entirely. If I recall correctly, frontline combatants would assume secondary protection of shipping roles as they aged and were relieved by newer large combatants.
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Yes. IMO that is a really good idea in general, especially if you're designing new ships as well.

So you design the DD-21s for a 40 year ish service life, and then instead of a major upgrade refit at 20 years you "only" fix what is broken and keep the old combat systems.

Introducing a whole new class about the time the first ship of the previous class hits 20 is good for your industrial base and your engineers.

And not following this plan after not designing new frigates when the Knox- and Perry-classes were aging out is what got us into our current troubles.



VishnuOsiris said:
Interesting to consider DD-21s held together with duct tape performing protection of shipping in their latter stages of life when maintenance costs would be at their highest.
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Yes, maintenance costs would be higher, but remember that we're talking about needing to completely replace the radar systems and EW systems to keep a ship at the cutting edge. And that's basically the expensive part of a ship!

Not to mention however much it would cost to maintain the new, cutting-edge gear.
 
VishnuOsiris said:
Earlier discussion about 90s design concepts reminds me the Navy went all-in on large combatants around this time and intended to exit the small combatant enterprise entirely. If I recall correctly, frontline combatants would assume secondary protection of shipping roles as they aged and were relieved by newer large combatants.
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The large combatants aging down into escort roles rings a bell, but the USN was looking at small combatants from about '93, leading to LCS at the larger end of the scale and Streetfighter, at 300t, at the smaller by the end of the decade.
 
Scott Kenny said:
We have LOTS of Burkes.
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If the technology of building Burkes is not yet lost, maybe it could be more practical just make some kind of ASW-focused version of them and continue building those. Somewhat more expensive, probably, but surely better than throwing money at nothing.
 
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DWG said:
So a Spruance.
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Just the two-hangar version of the Burke, with hull sonar and a towed array, maybe with ASROCs replacing some of the missiles in the VLS. Otherwise there is a risk the feasibility study and development project will stretch for years and years with no ships actually built.
 
Scott Kenny said:
ack to that stated need for 30-40 "low end ASW ships" AT SEA in order to equal what the USN had in 1990. If each ship has two crew, that will let you get away with between 40 and 60 total low end ASW ship hulls. Dual-crewing allows for between 2/3 and 3/4 of the class to be deployed at any given time. Let's split the difference, 50 such low end ASW ships in the fleet.
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They tried that blue and gold shit on LCS and it was a flaming trashfire. Surface ships don't work like subs in this case.
 
Martes said:
Just the two-hangar version of the Burke, with hull sonar and a towed array, maybe with ASROCs replacing some of the missiles in the VLS. Otherwise there is a risk the feasibility study and development project will stretch for years and years with no ships actually built.
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is that not just a flight 3 with some ASROCs?
 
whatismoo said:
is that not just a flight 3 with some ASROCs?
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That's the idea. And probably crew focus on ASW ops. Although wiki says something about towed array not included in flight 3, but I am not sure.

They can - probably - cut some AAW capabilities, but
1) why bother
2) the cut planning would likely be more expensive than just leave them in place
 
Scott Kenny said:
The freaking FFG-7s that made up half the US frigate fleet had 40 Standard missiles onboard.

The missile threat has only increased.
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Yes, but since then there appeared active ESSM and searam; provided you can fill the cells(neither is cheap), Connie's 32 are massively ahead of that was back then.

It's really a fallacy requirement - threats which require more than 32 cells on non-fleet defense unit either shouldn't be addressed by 2 mil/shot weapons, or they'll come from a state actor who'll do attack plan and will overwhelm you regardless.
I.e. you'll pay more, equip less ships, and this 'more‘ will end up on the bottom.

If you don't have frontline ambitions(which connie had) - frankly speaking, even 12-16 is totally ok. Just b/c first number, shall the need arize, can easily be (8x4)+4.

Same math will apparently work in case of fight with China - b/c for all the SM-6 fight, SM-6 isn't an ABM/anti-hypersonic weapon of choice; PAC-3(which is iirc ongoing emergency integration into mk.41 and AEGIS) is - and those are also multipacks. Without new burke you can't even use SM-6 advantages over sm2c against modern targets. An additional box and some(really some) bonus flexibility - good, as if USN faces problem deploying enough SM-6s, rather than fielding enough SM-6s.
Sure, sometimes ship rotation and resupply could, in theory, create a situation where this would've been life and death situation, where SM-6 would lie on pier rather than be in the cell in the fight. This situation was so ridiculously unlikely, however, that compared to losing entire FFG class and many years - it's an outright disaster.
 
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whatismoo said:
They tried that blue and gold shit on LCS and it was a flaming trashfire. Surface ships don't work like subs in this case.
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I know they tried 3 crews rotating across ships (well, crew A had the ship, B's ship decommissioned so they went to ship A for 3-6 months, and then C's ship decommissioned and they went to ship A for 3-6 months), and that was a total fustercluck. None of the crews felt any ownership of the ship itself, so everything possible became "the next crew's problem"

Having two crews assigned to the ships and rotating more often worked a lot better because the crews felt the ownership. It was going to be their problem again in 4 months.

But because the ship was basically out at sea twice as much, it suffered twice as much wear and tear caused by the ocean.
 
Ainen said:
Yes, but since then there appeared active ESSM and searam; provided you can fill the cells(neither is cheap), Connie's 32 are massively ahead of that was back then.

It's really a fallacy requirement - threats which require more than 32 cells on non-fleet defense unit either shouldn't be addressed by 2 mil/shot weapons, or they'll come from a state actor who'll do attack plan and will overwhelm you regardless.
I.e. you'll pay more, equip less ships, and this 'more‘ will end up on the bottom.

If you don't have frontline ambitions(which connie had) - frankly speaking, even 12-16 is totally ok. Just b/c first number, shall the need arize, can easily be (8x4)+4.

Same math will apparently work in case of fight with China - b/c for all the SM-6 fight, SM-6 isn't an ABM/anti-hypersonic weapon of choice; PAC-3(which is iirc ongoing emergency integration into mk.41 and AEGIS) is - and those are also multipacks. Without new burke you can't even use SM-6 advantages over sm2c against modern targets. An additional box and some(really some) bonus flexibility - good, as if USN faces problem deploying enough SM-6s, rather than fielding enough SM-6s.
Sure, sometimes ship rotation and resupply could, in theory, create a situation where this would've been life and death situation, where SM-6 would lie on pier rather than be in the cell in the fight. This situation was so ridiculously unlikely, however, that compared to losing entire FFG class and many years - it's an outright disaster.
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It's not a fallacy of a requirement, it forces them to commit more forces to attacking your convoys. Also let's say you have some convoys carrying missiles, ship/aircraft parts, or fleet oiler/replenishment vessels. The loss of one of these would be crippling to your efforts in theatre. You have to protect them extremely well.

Also as mentioned many times before VLS cells are just steel and steel is cheap. There's no reason not to have even 64 or more cells on a ship as that's a marginal cost once you've added decent propulsion, radar, battle management systems, ASW equipment, and helos. You don't even need to fill the cells fully if you don't want to. The fact that the CAN be filled forces a much greater force allocation to engage your convoys.

If you want something to be cheaper and not autonomous, but effective really the only significant cost savings you can make is highly automated/minimally manned ships like the Mogami/Super Mogami class along with a highly reliable ship/multiple crews so you need less time docked up.
 
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Jimmo952 said:
So what comes next? Where do the US Navy go from here?
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The Next Generation Future Frigate System will incorporate the latest Emergent Technology, Unmanned Systems, AI, and See Everything Sensors. It will incorporate Lean Logistics, Minimal Manning, and Next Generation Damage Control. All of the above will make the system affordable while giving our warfighters unrivaled capabilities.
 
Airbus A340 said:
The Next Generation Future Frigate System will incorporate the latest Emergent Technology, Unmanned Systems, AI, and See Everything Sensors. It will incorporate Lean Logistics, Minimal Manning, and Next Generation Damage Control. All of the above will make the system affordable while giving our warfighters unrivaled capabilities.
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Sounds like the kind of PowerPoint speak that doesn't necessarily bring success.

At a practical real-world level, what will be done?
 
Jimmo952 said:
So what comes next? Where do the US Navy go from here?
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The year is 2045.
The third attempt at a Gerald R. Ford replacement has been cancelled due to cost overruns, the Navy has opted instead to order 22 Arleigh Burke-class guided missile helicopter destroyers.

The year is 2065.
The US Navy orders 18 more Arleigh Burke flight 5s as a stopgap after development is delayed on the new frigate.

The year is 2085.
The entire surface fleet…it's all Burkes…the only ship the US can still build.

The year is 2105.
The Secretary of the Navy performs the annual sacrifice of a multi-billion dollar project to appease the Burke gods, as is tradition.
 
MihoshiK said:
The year is 2045.
The third attempt at a Gerald R. Ford replacement has been cancelled due to cost overruns, the Navy has opted instead to order 22 Arleigh Burke-class guided missile helicopter destroyers.

The year is 2065.
The US Navy orders 18 more Arleigh Burke flight 5s as a stopgap after development is delayed on the new frigate.

The year is 2085.
The entire surface fleet…it's all Burkes…the only ship the US can still build.

The year is 2105.
The Secretary of the Navy performs the annual sacrifice of a multi-billion dollar project to appease the Burke gods, as is tradition.
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Its year 3895 and the first intergalactic class of destroyer a flight 35 Arleigh Burke class destroyer was put in services built in the Bath Space Works the first american naval yard on mars
 
kqcke for you said:
Its year 3895 and the first intergalactic class guided destroyer a flight 35 Arleigh Burke was put in services built in the Bath Space Works the first american naval yard on mars
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As part of the commissioning ceremony, a flypast of newly re-engined B52Y bombers is undertaken, before the ship conducts its first weapon trials with the BGM-109 Tomahawk Block XXVII.
 
Jimmo952 said:
At a practical real-world level, what will be done?
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Seriously, though, it's either more Burkes, or back to LCS.
LCS would require redeveloping the ASW suite, as there is no such thing currently?

Another option would be taking the USCG cutter design, it's a 4k ton ship after all
en.wikipedia.org

Legend-class cutter - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
and putting the sensors and weapons on it.

All in all, if I wanted to get things started now, I'd go with Burkes, as they don't require any additional development (that seems to turn into a black hole for time and money), and try to get another shipyard or two set up to produce them.
 
cccgong said:
It's not a fallacy of a requirement, it forces them to commit more forces to attacking your convoys. Also let's say you have some convoys carrying missiles, ship/aircraft parts, or fleet oiler/replenishment vessels. The loss of one of these would be crippling to your efforts in theatre. You have to protect them extremely well.
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(1)first you spread resources, thin, over the entire Ocean. Not the opponent. It somewhat works when you're industrially dominant and get everything from your superiority over oceans(it is worth any investment), but when either of those preconditions break - it's an impossible requirement.
(2)then opponent commits more resources in point of his choosing. And yes, with a conscious calculus how much it will take to overwhelm your AA. You are not getting 2nd, 3rd, 4th engagements where your mag depth will play out - short concentrated burst, focused on weaknesses of your ship design(for example, for ship working via multiple arrays and active seekers - single tightly packed strike from one direction, which guarantees leakers via picture clutter). Note that it's the least favorable scenario for the redfor - normally, when you overcommit to a certain technical solution via requirement stretching tens of thousands of interceptors, industrial opponent will try to design something that invalidates them in the first place.

As such, you need a design, that invalidates concurrent (1)sustainable attacks, making them unsustainable at least on opportunity cost basis(it usually primarily means sufficient ASW, but also low tier AA and ASuW now), (2)able to fend off a limited high tier attack, 1-2 times to get the hell out, (3)when operating with higher tier ships, such a ship shouldn't be an obvious weak link in formation. It, more or less, means sensor integration and some SeaRam(ESSM is dream) to work on blind side of convoy.
When you ask for more - you start chewing at you highest capability for the purpose.
People often refer to WW2 US experience, when US got away with mass-producing rather elaborate designs, just because 1/2 of world industrial capacity worked that way. Modern US operates in between positions of UK(for Pacific problem) and Japan.

And note, that Japan self-screwed even early in the war, numerically, because it physically couldn't win unless opponents' will collapsed.
Forget about Midway, when after string of unreasonable(!) success, Japan started planning operation to land on Hawaii - they didn't have enough transport capacity and escort capacity to make it work, even numerically. Building just Burkesnice A class destroyers somehow returned with vengeance.
cccgong said:
Also as mentioned many times before VLS cells are just steel and steel is cheap. There's no reason not to have even 64 or more cells on a ship as that's a marginal cost once you've added decent propulsion, radar, battle management systems, ASW equipment, and helos. You don't even need to fill the cells fully if you don't want to. The fact that the CAN be filled forces a much greater force allocation to engage your convoys.
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Cells, themselves, are. Accomodating them on a ship, especially ship not designed to receive them, is a dealbreaker - it's literally the process which killed Constitution. Where did the hull weakness came from? From adding 32 strike cells (which btw is twice the number 052D has) right to the double bottom and rearrangement of all affected equipment. :)
Suddenly insuffucient power (and powerplants are expensive and major operational cost driver) also got out of there.

Which is why cells are not too expensive on new ships(you still pay with volume, displacement, etc). Cells should be very cheap if you deploy them separately without redesigns - on freighter decks or purpose made USVs(which are more or less mini-freighters).

But for Constellation, "cheap" cells are what killed the whole ship class. They're a multi-billion, irrecoverable 1/2 decade "bargain".

cccgong said:
If you want something to be cheaper and not autonomous, but effective really the only significant cost savings you can make is highly automated/minimally manned ships like the Mogami/Super Mogami class along with a highly reliable ship/multiple crews so you need less time docked up.
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This is not true: frigate prices differ by a full order of magnitude even between western ships (difference between Connie/commonwealth 26s and UK type 31). When we add China, difference will be more painful still - 054A/B are a thing.
 
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MihoshiK said:
The year is 2045.
The third attempt at a Gerald R. Ford replacement has been cancelled due to cost overruns, the Navy has opted instead to order 22 Arleigh Burke-class guided missile helicopter destroyers.

The year is 2065.
The US Navy orders 18 more Arleigh Burke flight 5s as a stopgap after development is delayed on the new frigate.

The year is 2085.
The entire surface fleet…it's all Burkes…the only ship the US can still build.

The year is 2105.
The Secretary of the Navy performs the annual sacrifice of a multi-billion dollar project to appease the Burke gods, as is tradition.
Click to expand...

This but unironically.
 
Martes said:
Seriously, though, it's either more Burkes, or back to LCS.
LCS would require redeveloping the ASW suite, as there is no such thing currently?

Another option would be taking the USCG cutter design, it's a 4k ton ship after all
en.wikipedia.org

Legend-class cutter - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
and putting the sensors and weapons on it.

All in all, if I wanted to get things started now, I'd go with Burkes, as they don't require any additional development (that seems to turn into a black hole for time and money), and try to get another shipyard or two set up to produce them.
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No, I'd go with a Legend-class fitted with CAPTAS-4 and a TB-37, LCS combat systems.

Everything off the shelf.

Problem is lack of AA defenses.
 
kqcke for you said:
And and an electrice drive refit with also an asw hull optemisation
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And lengthen it so you can fit a second VLS, and widen the hull so you can do more compartementilisation, and you also need room for the gold plated unicorns, and the three-ring circus.

And we'll call it Constellation.
 
Martes said:
Another option would be taking the USCG cutter design, it's a 4k ton ship after all
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Scott Kenny said:
No, I'd go with a Legend-class fitted with CAPTAS-4 and a TB-37, LCS combat systems.
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I've written extensively on the notion to restart the NSC line or procure a Sea Control Frigate derivative.
Long version: It's not cost-effective, and delivering any meaningful capabiltity over LCS would delay construction by 2-3 years (and still be cost-inefficient). Instead keep on Constellation and start a program to domesticate the Type 31 as a PF.
 
MihoshiK said:
And lengthen it so you can fit a second VLS, and widen the hull so you can do more compartementilisation, and you also need room for the gold plated unicorns, and the three-ring circus.

And we'll call it Constellation.
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Actualy how about we just cut the back and front off and put in AB in the middle. Should be mutch easier xD
 

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