Constellation: Frigate Antigone

hard to feel the anger through the sadness

Some posts are just painful for me to type out. They are posts I try to find excuses not to write, mostly self-serving. That isn’t fair to my readers or myself.

Being that I mentioned it at the end of yesterday’s Midrats Podcast, I don’t think I have a choice. I have to criticize one of my darlings.

This isn’t some recent obsession, or a passion of the moment thing—no.

A few years ago a long held wish of mine was made flesh. Big Navy, mostly, did what I wanted it to do in response to the exceptionally sub-optimal Little Crappy Ship parade of failure.

As not everyone has been reading my stuff since 2004, let me give the new readers the executive summary about my desire for a new frigate…the requirement destroyed by The Smartest People in the Room™ during the Age of Transformation.

What did I want done? It goes back ~18 years ago. I started to get a feel for it in February of 2007 and March of 2007.

Regulars on the Front Porch remember that we made this recommendation first in December of 2007 that manifested 13 years later:

In 2020 the Navy announced that it had selected the European multi-mission-frigate design, which is currently operated by four other nations, for modification and construction in the United States. Currently ten ships are planned, but there are clear indications that the number of Constellation-class frigates (as the category has been named) will grow considerably.

As a matter of fact, let's look back at how I started a October of 2007 post.

Let me beat that drum a little harder - license build a EuroFrigate NOW!!! Do it while we still have time - time to keep the Fleet numbers treading water and have enough shipyards open.

A revolutionary project on PPT is just that - on PPT. An evolutionary project (see pre-WWII Cruiser development and the history of Carrier development as an example) results in ships pier-side and ships underway. Good officers have bought the line over this decade that LCS with all its toys will let them cover 10x more water than the old Spru-cans did - and do it better? ADS was to be one of the keys in doing this.

We have put all our eggs in that gilded crap-basket of an LCS - thanks to Sid, we have the proof much of the oversold ASW capability increase portion has gone poof. With ADS gone we now have, well, an poorly configured, expensive, undermanned Corvette.

The final form of Plan Salamander came together about 2010:

Fast track a true multi-mission EuroFrigate design to be license built here for a run of no less than 12 and no more than 24 ships until a domestic design comes on line as the DDG replacement. NANSEN or ABSALOM would be a nice start. Not perfect - but good.

…and then I stewed for most of the second decade of this century until it was announced that we were, finally, going to pursue Plan Salamander for frigates.

I knew right away where we should go, and in 2018, I outlined what I wanted to see,

As I have been a fan of the FREMM frigate since 2009, no shock to readers that I was quite happy it made the final-5 for FFG(X).

On so many levels it is the right choice – but the greatest advantage it has is the minimal program risk. We threw away almost two decades on vapor-ware, personality based wishing, and blinkered programmatic inertia that were the cornerstones of the Age of Transformationalism that begat our port-and-starboard albatrosses; LCS & DDG-1000.

Then, we finally got there.

A couple of years later, almost five years ago when we selected what would become the Constellation Class Frigate, I thought we had finally done the right thing:

A solid multi-mission frigate has been a hole in our fleet for way too long. I think it is a good bet we’ve made the right call.

It was the right call. All that remained was execution.

Plan Salamander was rather simple:

1. Pick a proven Eurofrigate design.

2. License build here.

3. Build a few dozen while we design their replacement.

Unfortunately, our Navy never held accountable those people, processes, and systems that begat LCS, DDG-1000, and CG(X). We never reminded the system that is supported the operational side, not the other way around. We remained a slave to our own servant.

Leaders did not lead.

This is not the fault of industry. This is all Big Navy and its culture of unaccountability, janissaric bureaucracy, and distraction.

Behold the wages of sin!

Via Alistair MacDonald and Gordon Lubold in the WSJ:

Physical construction began in mid-2022, and after more than 2½ years, the project is only 10% complete, according to a person familiar with the timeline.

At this pace, including the two years of design time before building began, the ship will be completed in a total of nine years—around twice as long as it took an Italian shipyard to build the vessels it is based on. The Constellation, the first in what is expected to be around 20 to be built, is projected to cost at least $600 million more than its original estimate of $1.3 billion.

This next part hurts…because I remember when the world bought and even license built US designed frigates and destroyers.

The Constellation’s slow production and extra costs help explain why almost nobody wants to buy new American warships—even as allies clamor for U.S. fighter jets and other weapons.

We can’t continue to permit the present system we have to exist. Everything it touches becomes a joke.

China years ago leapfrogged America in making naval craft faster and for less money. From 2014 to 2023, China’s navy launched 157 ships while the U.S. launched 67, according to independent defense analyst Tom Shugart. The Chinese fleet is now the world’s largest, although the U.S. Navy says the quality of its ships are still better.

Are they? Who wants to put the latest LCS off the production line against the PLAN’s new Type 054B frigate?

Most countries are faster at building. Of 20 different frigates made recently or set for completion soon in 10 different countries, all but one were or will be built in less time than the U.S.’s Constellation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Frigates are the medium-size warships used for submarine warfare and escorting larger ships, among other tasks. U.S. construction of destroyers, the larger, heavily armed warships, is also slower than other countries.

Our response/excuse? Get out your bullsh1t bingo card.

A spokeswoman for the Naval Sea Systems Command, the department that deals with shipbuilding, said nearly all the changes made to the Constellation happened during its design rather than construction. “Any modifications made during the design phase have been to enhance the lethality, survivability, and fleet commonality of the frigate for U.S. Navy operations,” she said.

No one, rightfully, believes this.

This is the core of the problem, a complete lack of discipline.

The Navy has made so many changes in the Constellation that a ship that was supposed to share 85% of the design of its Italian parent now has just 15% in common, according to Eric Labs, senior analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons at the Congressional Budget Office.

“We have an insatiable demand for capabilities at times…we struggle to say stop,” said Brett Seidle, civilian deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, at a congressional hearing this month.

We didn’t pick the best path to success, intentionally.

Seidle defended the Navy and U.S. shipbuilders, despite the delays. “U.S. shipbuilders continue to produce the highest quality, safest and most advanced warships on the globe,” he said.

True, but also irrelevant to the mission at hand.

We wasted a generation with the failed LCS program. We needed hulls in the water, in number, now. Not perfect hulls, but good hulls. We did not need, for this class, “the safest and most advanced”, we shot that bolt with the failure of LCS. Now we need the basic “good enough” while we work on the luxury “highest quality, safest and most advanced”.

Leadership did not pull in the leash and remind everyone of the mission. Instead, they pretended like we had all the time and money in the world.

Some shipyards said the Navy can be overly bureaucratic and that it makes too many decisions by committee. They complain that U.S. officials are slow to approve new equipment.

On the Constellation, multiple rounds of review by the Navy to approve technical requirements led to extreme slowdowns in construction, said Shelby Oakley, a director in the GAO. In one example, Fincantieri had to respond to over 170 critical comments from the Navy on one—out of hundreds—of supporting documents vetted by the military.

“The Navy peeled back the onion and realized how far the design was from meeting the Navy’s standards, and had to take a strategic pause to try and right the ship,” said Oakley.

None of that, really, was “required.” These are not Newtonian laws. These are our “standards” designed for different times and expectations.

…and don’t get me started again in putting a 57mm gun on a platform designed for a 5”.

In general, this is the sad result of every CNO since Mullen to let our demonstrated failed system of designing and running warship programs to continue without root and branch reform. Specifically this is a failure of every SECNAV and CNO since 2018 to stare at THEIR bureaucracy and tell them, “This is not a new design to be made in a bed of time, money, and luxury. This is a stop-gap emergency requirement. Changes from the Franco-Italian FREMM are to be an exception, not a rule. Compromises from what we may find in an US designed frigate are to be expected and will be done. We can start work on the replacement for our FREMM that addresses your concerns, but you will not spot-weld them on to this class of frigate.”

Anyway, we have what we have. We need them to displace water sooner more than later.

Pray for DDG(X).

h/t Gordon.