I am somewhat (okay, ever-so-slightly) hopeful the new SECNAV can lightoff the appropriate boilers.
"Phelan has averaged a yard visit about every 11 days since becoming the Navy’s top civilian. This time, the global tour brought Phelan and White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought to the South Korean-owned Hanwha Philly Shipyard adjacent to the old Philadelphia Navy Yard."
Right now we'd just screw up the Mogami and waste more time and money. We need a real transparent overview of where we are at, what will change and why it should work. Once we have that happening for existing programs we can get serious about buddying up.
I am also going to toss out a hated idea. We can also see how Marinette does on the Saudi ships and see if they might have designed a semi-useful alternative. Its going to be more different from an LCS than I think is commonly understood.
If Austal weren't so busy I'd jump for more LCS-2 and to keep sending ideas and money to Capt. Matthew Lehmann, program manager of the LCS Mission Modules. (Former skipper of Giffords first deployment)
You could either have the Japanese build them for us or post guards from the Army with air patrols from USAF to keep the USN grubby hands out of the yard and designers. Oh and all the draftsmen/workers are sequestered until the ships start rolling off the lines. Then take the admirals first borns hostage and tell that 'you can repair the ships as need but you can NOT modify them without congressional permission. That MIGHT resolve. :)
My one concern with the decision is the manning level of the Mogami, according to Australian Defense Magazine - 90 for it, v. 120 for the MEKO and 170 for their current Anzac class frigate. I’m sure everyone is patting themselves on the back for being better able to buy a ship that reflects the country’s declining birth rate (along with most other countries), but a smaller crew also means fewer people available to fight the ship after damage.
The argument (and it isn't a bad one) is that if a frigate gets caught in a heavy fight, it's screwed. Build it with more than enough survivability for the crew to abandon ship, you start getting into "let's just get a destroyer instead". So make it with some self-defense against missiles, but not enough to start jacking up the price in construction, operations, and personnel. For most wars, 5 frigates beat 2 destroyers. Even the glorious Flight III Burke.
Everyone always thinks about DC and not day to day life. A few extra bodies come in useful during replenishment, dockside or underway. People get sick and go ashore awhile. People like to get schools, or take leave. A certain portion of ship's company has that whole maternity thingy. Ship's company has to do ship's maintenance while running and navigating the ship.
A small surfeit is good. Has everyone forgot why there are supernumeraries listed in duty section watchbills?
When I was in pre-comm detail for DD-973, I learned that the true number of bodies onboard required to fill the WQS Bill was determined by the number of cleaning stations.
Well, we are talking about Australia... Which exports iron ore and coal, and imports steel. Which exports oil & nat-gas, and imports refined products and chemicals.
Many smart people Down Under... But many sociological mysteries as well.
They design good ships themselves, but even some of what they build has been offshored to find the labor at a competitive price. Austal seems to be building almost only naval ships in Australia now with the commercial stuff built in Vietnam and Philippines.
It’s all part of the religion of free trade. Why does your country need a steel mill or refinery when China can make those products so much cheaper. By that logic Australia has magnificent beaches so it should concentrate on hospitality.
I will tell convey your words to the people of Youngstown, Ohio Bethlehem, PA, Baltimore, MD Gary, IN Rochester, NY etc on how much better off and freer they are thanks to low prices at Wal Mart.
The answer is that a planned economy run by a committee cannot outperform a free market. The answer to improving the lot of the majority of the population is individual and economic liberty. Free trade is just free enterprise. Mercantilism, Trump’s ideology, like communism fails. Without free trade, America is doomed.
I think you should look for a mean between extreme. There are things that government can do. FDR built dams. Ike built highways. JFK sent men to the moon. Etc. and there are things that government does not do well. Education Housing. Etc.
As for Trump he wants to reindustrialize America because transforming raw materials into finished products is where real wealth is created and that cannot be done without tariffs. I think Alexander Hamilton and Abe Lincoln would agree with Trump.
Even Adam Smith admitted that pure free trade was a bad idea, if for no other reason than national security, and if you look at early American economic history we had both protectionist and revenue tariffs from the beginning and did just fine--and I say this as someone who favors free trade.
They do build their own ships. They are choosing to buy these from the Japanese to save time and money on a design, as well as to cement diplomatic relations and military interoperability.
Isn't it nice when a country's politicians and policymakers who deal with naval matters actually know something about... well, ships & stuff? When they're not just winging it after a briefing by some 26-yr old staffer. Not making decisions controlled by bumper stickers.
Per Cdr Sal's navalist point, USA used to be like that... Say what you will about, eg, FDR (that he was an economic ignoramus in many ways), but he did undserstand ships. FDR was a ship modeler in his youth, as one can see in many examples at his library in Hyde Park; a self-taught naval architect in some ways. He was a scholar of the US Navy in the Civil War, whose Operation Anaconda was the strategic DNA for the submarine war contra Japan in WWII. In his young adulthood, FDR strove to be much like "Uncle Teddy" (aka Theodore), hence the tenure as Assistant Secnav under President Wilson, and a massive, Big Navy learning curve to the young Columbia Law grad who didn't like practicing law. Later, as president, people joked (rooted in truth) that the US Navy had "two Secretaries of the Navy." ie, Frank Knox had FDR looking over his shoulder.
Post-FDR, Eisenhower wasn't a Navy guy (obviously), but he sure understood logistics, which was good enough. Then came Navy-guy Presidents... Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter... And Reagan-Bush41 knew a few Navy things as well.
Point is... For the past century & more, USA has been blessed by leadership who had a decent grasp of naval matters. But the last 33 yrs or so? Ugh. And it shows.
The last President who actually served in a serious military was GHW Bush. Clinton didn't count because he was a nuc. GW Bush was in the Air Guard, but that's quite different from any flavor of the REAL Air Force.
Clinton? ROTC until he was within sight of graduation, then became a CO.
Biden? Asthma as a kid. Trump? Flat feet. LightBringer? Please.
Carter was a Nuc. Clinton was draft dodger. Trump had bone spurs. At the time, that was a disqualifying condition. I have bone spurs in my feet now that would have kept me out in the early 70s.
Bush flew some rather dangerous AC while in the Air Guard. The 102 and 106 did not have good safety records. He did volunteer for 'nam as well. Air Guard units flew in 'nam, and many, particularly transport squadrons, were flying in and out of 'nam on a regular basis.
Yes, what I said. BTW, I was active US Air Force for 8 years then Army Guard for two, and Air Guard for another 22. I know how much the Air Guard is like the 'real air force' wherever it may be (It wasn't ATC when I first joined, and it wasn't TAC when I was in F4 transition, and is sure as hell wasn't USAFE or SAC (Vandenberg).
The 90s were the end of history when we could sit back and enjoy our peace dividend. Liberal democracy and the free market has triumphed. No other ways were even feasible. Who needed a large Navy?
Looks good. We should build these on the west coast, and unmodified 5" gun FREMMs on the east coast. Don't let the Navy take yet another good design and ruin it.
As a beekeeper, when someone mention drone I think male honeybee - a single purpose caste solely focused on tracking down a virgin queen and transferring genetic material. The problem with the term drone is the reference point of the reader. When you say "torpedo" to any Navy veteran there is no need for disambiguation - they don't think of a small cold cut sandwich first.
Very true, but again a sailor would understand the context and know the difference between a mine, a spar torpedo, and a free running torpedo. The average Congresscritter hears the term "drone" and who knows what their first mental picture is. It may be a quadcopter taking pictures over their neighbor's fence, funning lights in the sky in New Jersey, MQ-1's, or Ukrainian exploding Sea Doos.
Fully agreed that a regional neighbour is much better than half the world away. But I didn't think about Germany exposure to Chine, even more to the point.
The FRG had relations with the Red Chinese during the 60s while my father was stationed in Germany. All the fireworks we wasted money on came from Red China. We were getting pretty big stuff over there that could not be legally bought in the US.
I'm jealous. But If we ordered 25 or more. The Japanese would sensibly want to build the first 5 in Japan in order to get the requirements locked in. Then we would insist on multiple changes and that they split the rest of the work between 435 Congressional districts. It would cost us a fortune just on micromanaging Congressional junkets alone. The Japanese would eventually get frustrated with change orders and dump the contract. We have to reform ourselves first.
Perhaps we should publicly fire a bunch of people at NavSea for "Loss of Confidence". Then start auditing bank accounts in all contract issuing Government departments and Congress itself - especially Congress. How is it that if you sink or damage a ship you're likely to be fired? But if you sink a project you get promoted.
SeaRAM is very suboptimal. when it comes to Electronic Support integration. I'd like to know what electronic warfare system they have on board and why they don't just wire the RAM to that--assuming that there is some middleware solution that can align the ELNOTs in the SeaRAM to whatever nomenclature / classification system the Mitsubishi uses. Going forward, every ship in the Navy should get out of the SeaRAM business. Don't be fooled by the R2D2 dome--the performance of the RAM's ES sensor (requiring initialization) dwarfs any kinematic data that it gets from the radar. Full EW integration to the SLQ-32v(whatever) is the way.
that's really neat. The idea of adding AESA radar faces to the CIWS gun is really something, although I'd have to learn more about exactly what kind of arrays they are, if they are employing digital beam forming / radar modular assemblies like the SPY-6, and what kind of new ammunition they are planning. The biggest challenge with respect to the current CIWS Blk1B is that the ammunition is electrically primed, so you have to set HERO in order to reload the gun--which is usually a 45 minute+ evolution. If we have expanded the magazine / improved the Pk of the weapon (and reduced the number of rounds fired per burst), then we might have a more viable weapon. Additionally, adding a few AESA faces comes with a penalty in space, weight, power and cooling that would have to be factored in to existing ship design (probably resulting in a new class). Finally, I'd like to know what band the AESA radars are for the purposes of destructive interference mitigation.
One minor correction. There are two countries pursuing licensed production of a US-designed ship (FFG 62). There is potentially a third. Obviously these won't come to pass if the US cancels its own purchase.
I say kill the current franken FREMM aka the Constellation and make a DIRECT deal with Japan for those frigates. Make a trade deal with Japan that they can't turn down such as Free Trade and zero tariffs in return for making the Mogami-class Frigate for the US Navy. I would put a clause that any design changes to the Mogami-class Frigate, the US Navy would have to get Congressional approval in both the house and senate Armed Services Committee and Congress has to approve those design changes. That way it would stop NAVSEA Cold from fucking up the frigate. If we do get it, it should be built under US Supervision in Japan.
I got that reference.
Kill the current Constellation, replace with these.
AND DON'T F[CK WITH THE DESIGN. IF THERE NEED TO BE CHANGES, HAVE THE JAPANESE MAKE THEM!
Maybe our new CNO has the cojones to make that decision…
I gotta tell you, you’re singing my tune. I’d buy 25 of these from the Japanese if I could. As is.
And I don’t know a single thing about real shipbuilding.
It’s just that I have zero faith in the Pentagon in designing a ship, even after decades of development and design of new ships during the Cold War
What happened to the employees post 1990?!!!
Build 25 of these frigates as is.
I am somewhat (okay, ever-so-slightly) hopeful the new SECNAV can lightoff the appropriate boilers.
"Phelan has averaged a yard visit about every 11 days since becoming the Navy’s top civilian. This time, the global tour brought Phelan and White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought to the South Korean-owned Hanwha Philly Shipyard adjacent to the old Philadelphia Navy Yard."
https://news.usni.org/2025/08/01/secnav-phelan-on-shipbuilding-we-have-to-get-urgency-into-the-system
You know a lot of politicians taking tours of factories changing much?
They need to go back to Boyd, but they hated him in the USAF because he denied the golden ladder on the aircraft.
change the markings on the gear and build'em
At least it starts with more US gear than Fremm.
I'm inclined to endorse that. Can that decision be taken, or are we stuck with whatever the Connies end up being?
Right now we'd just screw up the Mogami and waste more time and money. We need a real transparent overview of where we are at, what will change and why it should work. Once we have that happening for existing programs we can get serious about buddying up.
I am also going to toss out a hated idea. We can also see how Marinette does on the Saudi ships and see if they might have designed a semi-useful alternative. Its going to be more different from an LCS than I think is commonly understood.
If Austal weren't so busy I'd jump for more LCS-2 and to keep sending ideas and money to Capt. Matthew Lehmann, program manager of the LCS Mission Modules. (Former skipper of Giffords first deployment)
You could either have the Japanese build them for us or post guards from the Army with air patrols from USAF to keep the USN grubby hands out of the yard and designers. Oh and all the draftsmen/workers are sequestered until the ships start rolling off the lines. Then take the admirals first borns hostage and tell that 'you can repair the ships as need but you can NOT modify them without congressional permission. That MIGHT resolve. :)
How do we make a PowerPoint presentation so glitzy that admirals will love it?
Sigh..................... could have been us...............
My one concern with the decision is the manning level of the Mogami, according to Australian Defense Magazine - 90 for it, v. 120 for the MEKO and 170 for their current Anzac class frigate. I’m sure everyone is patting themselves on the back for being better able to buy a ship that reflects the country’s declining birth rate (along with most other countries), but a smaller crew also means fewer people available to fight the ship after damage.
The argument (and it isn't a bad one) is that if a frigate gets caught in a heavy fight, it's screwed. Build it with more than enough survivability for the crew to abandon ship, you start getting into "let's just get a destroyer instead". So make it with some self-defense against missiles, but not enough to start jacking up the price in construction, operations, and personnel. For most wars, 5 frigates beat 2 destroyers. Even the glorious Flight III Burke.
Everyone always thinks about DC and not day to day life. A few extra bodies come in useful during replenishment, dockside or underway. People get sick and go ashore awhile. People like to get schools, or take leave. A certain portion of ship's company has that whole maternity thingy. Ship's company has to do ship's maintenance while running and navigating the ship.
A small surfeit is good. Has everyone forgot why there are supernumeraries listed in duty section watchbills?
Don't forget the collateral duties either.
Well, perhaps we will simply have to dispense with the Pronouns, email signature and starlink receiver control officers and crews.
When I was in pre-comm detail for DD-973, I learned that the true number of bodies onboard required to fill the WQS Bill was determined by the number of cleaning stations.
he smart attacker will use ballistic and cruise missiles simo, likely with UAVs if possible. And from multiple directions.
Fair enough, but are they buying enough to be able to gang up on a greater threat? If not, this is just a slower rate of military decay.
Make sense.
Good choice if they won't build their own ships.
Well, we are talking about Australia... Which exports iron ore and coal, and imports steel. Which exports oil & nat-gas, and imports refined products and chemicals.
Many smart people Down Under... But many sociological mysteries as well.
Then why can't the good strong Australian people and rich in material get to it and build some ships?
I think the Japanese ships are first class choices for Australia.
The USA has a problem designing and building good war ships too.
Adam Smith explains it all. Take some time and read “The Wealth of Nations.”
I will, Thanks!
They have on Amazon for $19.98 for anyone who wishes to read this.
You can skip the part about the corn laws, if it gets too boring.
If you read the deal some of these will be built in Australia. Likely most.
They design good ships themselves, but even some of what they build has been offshored to find the labor at a competitive price. Austal seems to be building almost only naval ships in Australia now with the commercial stuff built in Vietnam and Philippines.
That is good Intel Thanks!
They just reorg'ed themselves into an Australian defense company officially. https://maritime-executive.com/article/austal-launches-defense-shipbuilding-australia-with-government-nod
The Japanese are supposed to build the first 2-3 units, the rest to be built in Oz.
Basically, they don't have enough population.
That doesn't explain why Australia has no oil refineries, or steel production, or, or...
https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.0075868,137.586035,3748m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDgwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyalla_Steelworks
It’s all part of the religion of free trade. Why does your country need a steel mill or refinery when China can make those products so much cheaper. By that logic Australia has magnificent beaches so it should concentrate on hospitality.
Free trade is not a religion, it’s the path to economic success, and individual liberty. It literally leads to the wealth of nations.
I will tell convey your words to the people of Youngstown, Ohio Bethlehem, PA, Baltimore, MD Gary, IN Rochester, NY etc on how much better off and freer they are thanks to low prices at Wal Mart.
Why doesn’t communism work?
The answer is that a planned economy run by a committee cannot outperform a free market. The answer to improving the lot of the majority of the population is individual and economic liberty. Free trade is just free enterprise. Mercantilism, Trump’s ideology, like communism fails. Without free trade, America is doomed.
I think you should look for a mean between extreme. There are things that government can do. FDR built dams. Ike built highways. JFK sent men to the moon. Etc. and there are things that government does not do well. Education Housing. Etc.
As for Trump he wants to reindustrialize America because transforming raw materials into finished products is where real wealth is created and that cannot be done without tariffs. I think Alexander Hamilton and Abe Lincoln would agree with Trump.
Even Adam Smith admitted that pure free trade was a bad idea, if for no other reason than national security, and if you look at early American economic history we had both protectionist and revenue tariffs from the beginning and did just fine--and I say this as someone who favors free trade.
*Fair* trade is the path to economic success, not free trade.
with the first three ships to be built in Japan and the remainder to be built in Western Australia…
Outstanding!
They do build their own ships. They are choosing to buy these from the Japanese to save time and money on a design, as well as to cement diplomatic relations and military interoperability.
That Japanese frigate is great and has apparently performed flawlessly but what it really needs is ...
...US Navy admirals being placed on the Retired List.
Looks good. I hope the only changes are labeling in English IAW RAN requirements, and to the combat system for the surface-to-surface missile battery.
The Japanese defense ecosystem has smaller numbers and higher expenses than ours.
Isn't it nice when a country's politicians and policymakers who deal with naval matters actually know something about... well, ships & stuff? When they're not just winging it after a briefing by some 26-yr old staffer. Not making decisions controlled by bumper stickers.
Per Cdr Sal's navalist point, USA used to be like that... Say what you will about, eg, FDR (that he was an economic ignoramus in many ways), but he did undserstand ships. FDR was a ship modeler in his youth, as one can see in many examples at his library in Hyde Park; a self-taught naval architect in some ways. He was a scholar of the US Navy in the Civil War, whose Operation Anaconda was the strategic DNA for the submarine war contra Japan in WWII. In his young adulthood, FDR strove to be much like "Uncle Teddy" (aka Theodore), hence the tenure as Assistant Secnav under President Wilson, and a massive, Big Navy learning curve to the young Columbia Law grad who didn't like practicing law. Later, as president, people joked (rooted in truth) that the US Navy had "two Secretaries of the Navy." ie, Frank Knox had FDR looking over his shoulder.
Post-FDR, Eisenhower wasn't a Navy guy (obviously), but he sure understood logistics, which was good enough. Then came Navy-guy Presidents... Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter... And Reagan-Bush41 knew a few Navy things as well.
Point is... For the past century & more, USA has been blessed by leadership who had a decent grasp of naval matters. But the last 33 yrs or so? Ugh. And it shows.
That's pretty much the entire political/elite decision maker class.
The last President who actually served in a serious military was GHW Bush. Clinton didn't count because he was a nuc. GW Bush was in the Air Guard, but that's quite different from any flavor of the REAL Air Force.
Clinton? ROTC until he was within sight of graduation, then became a CO.
Biden? Asthma as a kid. Trump? Flat feet. LightBringer? Please.
Carter was a Nuc. Clinton was draft dodger. Trump had bone spurs. At the time, that was a disqualifying condition. I have bone spurs in my feet now that would have kept me out in the early 70s.
Bush flew some rather dangerous AC while in the Air Guard. The 102 and 106 did not have good safety records. He did volunteer for 'nam as well. Air Guard units flew in 'nam, and many, particularly transport squadrons, were flying in and out of 'nam on a regular basis.
Yes, what I said. BTW, I was active US Air Force for 8 years then Army Guard for two, and Air Guard for another 22. I know how much the Air Guard is like the 'real air force' wherever it may be (It wasn't ATC when I first joined, and it wasn't TAC when I was in F4 transition, and is sure as hell wasn't USAFE or SAC (Vandenberg).
Certainly not SAC. My father hated SAC and LeMay.
The 90s were the end of history when we could sit back and enjoy our peace dividend. Liberal democracy and the free market has triumphed. No other ways were even feasible. Who needed a large Navy?
Looks good. We should build these on the west coast, and unmodified 5" gun FREMMs on the east coast. Don't let the Navy take yet another good design and ruin it.
What’s the difference between a drone and a torpedo?
Warhead size and the ocean being a noncompressible fluid.
A drone is an unmanned craft, no matter the medium. The Tomahawk is a drone, as is a guided torpedo.
As a beekeeper, when someone mention drone I think male honeybee - a single purpose caste solely focused on tracking down a virgin queen and transferring genetic material. The problem with the term drone is the reference point of the reader. When you say "torpedo" to any Navy veteran there is no need for disambiguation - they don't think of a small cold cut sandwich first.
Yeah but Farragut wasn't damning those torpedoes.
Very true, but again a sailor would understand the context and know the difference between a mine, a spar torpedo, and a free running torpedo. The average Congresscritter hears the term "drone" and who knows what their first mental picture is. It may be a quadcopter taking pictures over their neighbor's fence, funning lights in the sky in New Jersey, MQ-1's, or Ukrainian exploding Sea Doos.
or a V1 or V2
Fully agreed that a regional neighbour is much better than half the world away. But I didn't think about Germany exposure to Chine, even more to the point.
The FRG had relations with the Red Chinese during the 60s while my father was stationed in Germany. All the fireworks we wasted money on came from Red China. We were getting pretty big stuff over there that could not be legally bought in the US.
I'm jealous. But If we ordered 25 or more. The Japanese would sensibly want to build the first 5 in Japan in order to get the requirements locked in. Then we would insist on multiple changes and that they split the rest of the work between 435 Congressional districts. It would cost us a fortune just on micromanaging Congressional junkets alone. The Japanese would eventually get frustrated with change orders and dump the contract. We have to reform ourselves first.
Perhaps we should publicly fire a bunch of people at NavSea for "Loss of Confidence". Then start auditing bank accounts in all contract issuing Government departments and Congress itself - especially Congress. How is it that if you sink or damage a ship you're likely to be fired? But if you sink a project you get promoted.
Warped priorities is how that happens.
SeaRAM is very suboptimal. when it comes to Electronic Support integration. I'd like to know what electronic warfare system they have on board and why they don't just wire the RAM to that--assuming that there is some middleware solution that can align the ELNOTs in the SeaRAM to whatever nomenclature / classification system the Mitsubishi uses. Going forward, every ship in the Navy should get out of the SeaRAM business. Don't be fooled by the R2D2 dome--the performance of the RAM's ES sensor (requiring initialization) dwarfs any kinematic data that it gets from the radar. Full EW integration to the SLQ-32v(whatever) is the way.
Any thoughts on the design of the new South Korean CIWS?
Not familiar with it!
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/06/lig-nex1-completes-construction-of-ciws-ii-mass-production-facility/
that's really neat. The idea of adding AESA radar faces to the CIWS gun is really something, although I'd have to learn more about exactly what kind of arrays they are, if they are employing digital beam forming / radar modular assemblies like the SPY-6, and what kind of new ammunition they are planning. The biggest challenge with respect to the current CIWS Blk1B is that the ammunition is electrically primed, so you have to set HERO in order to reload the gun--which is usually a 45 minute+ evolution. If we have expanded the magazine / improved the Pk of the weapon (and reduced the number of rounds fired per burst), then we might have a more viable weapon. Additionally, adding a few AESA faces comes with a penalty in space, weight, power and cooling that would have to be factored in to existing ship design (probably resulting in a new class). Finally, I'd like to know what band the AESA radars are for the purposes of destructive interference mitigation.
what I really love this for though is critical infrastructure defense. These things should LITTER the United States.
One minor correction. There are two countries pursuing licensed production of a US-designed ship (FFG 62). There is potentially a third. Obviously these won't come to pass if the US cancels its own purchase.
Why can't we have nice things, too? (Don't tell me...I know why! It's PMS 515.)
I say kill the current franken FREMM aka the Constellation and make a DIRECT deal with Japan for those frigates. Make a trade deal with Japan that they can't turn down such as Free Trade and zero tariffs in return for making the Mogami-class Frigate for the US Navy. I would put a clause that any design changes to the Mogami-class Frigate, the US Navy would have to get Congressional approval in both the house and senate Armed Services Committee and Congress has to approve those design changes. That way it would stop NAVSEA Cold from fucking up the frigate. If we do get it, it should be built under US Supervision in Japan.
And don't let NAVSEA screw with the published plans
Maybe let them pay their tariff directly in frigates when they can?
I would take that as a trade deal