I couldn’t agree with you more on the gun selection. A 5” or pair of 76mm make absolute sense. The 57mm is more suited to a patrol boat or unmanned vessel. I’ve looked at the Japanese BMD “Destroyer” and they might be on to something there.I haven’t seen enough to be on board yet. As to the Death Star comment; I call it Swiss Army knife syndrome. If you’ve ever owned one you know it kinda does things, not many well. I would like them to take an area like ASW and get some actual nuts and bolts ASW people to set them up with a list of capabilities that a ship MUST have to prosecute a submarine. Do the same thing for the other warfare areas. Figure out what areas cross over and which ones don’t. Make some decisions on what are must haves. Base the decisions on realistic expectations. No half-ass pie in sky allowed.
The risk models were obviously flawed. As it has been said the DDG-1000 is a ship looking for job. The gun, I would have rejected it out of hand, a 155mm gun that can’t fire common 155mm rounds in a pinch? No thank you. The carbon fiber deckhouse, nope. How do you fix it? How do bring in new equipment? You cut it, you weaken it, thats’s it. I know it’s for stealth right? You drive a 600’ long ship around blasting multi-megawatts of radar energy into the air and that’s stealthy? It really doesn’t seem like it will be all that helpful against various optical systems that are riding on the front of various weapons. Over the years various hull forms have been tried and after years of tweaking and adjustments for various reasons I fail to understand why these projects seem to be taking a clean sheet of paper approach discarding lessons learned in what appears to a profit only motive.
I was part of the DDG-1000 (then DDGX) concept design team. No, that is not a confession, because we naval architects glued together all of the requirements placed before us - but it does give me a place at the table when discussing design risks. As a point of reference for those who have never designed a ship, please note that any addition or subtraction of an installed system or major change thereto can have ripple effects far out of proportion to the size, weight, power, manning, and cooling numbers advertised by that object/system’s proponent. In other words, advocate numbers never foreshadow what ship designers may be forced to do in order to shoehorn that additional toy into the toy box.
Shortly after being assigned to the Northrop-Grumman team, I showed my boss an interesting number. In addition to the known solid physics of existing hardware, we initially had 23 acknowledged technical risk areas. If a person is the ultimate optimist and assumes a success rate of 90% for each technical risk, the odds of all those risks not coming up as failures is calculated as 0.90 raised to the 23rd power. Your calculator will tell you those odds are a bit less than 9%. A whole 9% chance you won’t have to throw away your design and start over. If you had only six risks with that degree of optimism, you will just barely clear a 50-50 chance of redesign.
So we had that major redesign. And some of those risks turned into failures even after the redesign. And all of the redesign meant delay and additional cost. The Navy spent over $3B in RDT&E money in dealing with risk items and redesign, only to end up with a ship that can’t afford ammunition for its main guns. The Navy could decide to impose only 2, 3, or 4 sizable technical risks on a new design, but that would run afoul of all the system program offices that need to prove their relevance and all of the Congressional offices pushing something from their districts.
And all of this is separate from the mathematical flaws in DoD’s method of risk evaluation and measurement. But that is a discussion for another day.
We've come a long way—in the wrong direction—since World War II. It's hard to believe that today's US Navy is the same US Navy that commissioned 507 destroyer escorts between 1943 and 1945—to mention just one item of a vast wartime construction program. Then of course money was no object and simplicity was the keynote, but even so the DEs were effective warships that gave good service during and after the war. It could well be said that the LCS is how the DE would have turned out if innovative people with cutting-edge ideas had been running the program.
I'd like to know who the effin FO idiot was who decided to undergun the FFG with a popgun. Madder than hell. Admiral Gilday, heads MUST roll on this. Set a standard, sir. Please.
I'm back because there is one other thing that CDR Sal didn't mention about the FFG(X). Design has a new, untested power system going in replacing the existing system. What could possibly go wrong?
“…you must minimized overall risk by at least starting with known systems, weapons, and manning concepts that will ride in that hull.” ? ? ? . . . How about not SKIP THE LTBS/LBTES ? which is the investment for fixing problems in the system as they occur aboard ship, and is the primary improvement platform investment for Conditioned Based Maintenance Plus that must continue to evolve, and improve! What is the odds they will get a Hole-in-One [try] with their current track record?!
This building program is INDEED placing all their eggs in one basket, and BETTING THE HOUSE on success . . . when what we need is many platforms quickly that are at least as good as the frigate in a smaller package at a lower price. My money is still running a fool’s errand in hoping for a smaller Small Surface Combatant Sa’ar 6 like Aegis Destroyer Escort (U.S. Navy Aegis Destroyer Escort Facebook page applies).
Everyone tells me "The admirals have to have a ship to ride" . . . IMHO THEY HAVEN'T EARNED IT!
Re the 20kton "What do you mean we can't call it the Yamato class?" ships the JNSDF is building as Aegis-not-ashore national missile defense platforms - I do note one red flag waving wildly in that story:
"That is to say, due to the extensive use of automated equipments, the new ship is expected to carry only 110 crew members."
110 crew on a 20,000 ton ship is fine if it's disposable, but doing damage control on a hull of that displacement which comes under kinetic redesign, no matter the number of astromech droids assigned aboard, will be a bit spicy.
I equate the 57mm gun on the LCS and the FFG(X) instead of a 3-inch/76mm Oto Melara (see FFG-7-class) with taking Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum away and giving him a BB Gun. Poor choice there. The Burke's were/are ok for what they were initially for and for who. Losing the TICOs, we're going to losing more VLS cells then we are bringing into the fleet. Am I correct? Why would we send a $2.2B Burke or a $1B (?) Constellation to chase subs? Does the Navy have something against a corvette-sized vessel for ASW? A dedicated mission (ASW) ship to go find Captain Nemo and send him to Davey Jones locker such as the future Anti-Submarine Warfare Frigate being jointly by the Belgians and the Dutch?
Coming back around to the DDG(X). With the AGS quagmire behind us (I hope), would it not be prudent to add a second 5-inch gun to provide NGFS for the island-hopping Marines?
Now do SSN(X). Estimated $5.8B each in today's dollars?!!
I couldn’t agree with you more on the gun selection. A 5” or pair of 76mm make absolute sense. The 57mm is more suited to a patrol boat or unmanned vessel. I’ve looked at the Japanese BMD “Destroyer” and they might be on to something there.I haven’t seen enough to be on board yet. As to the Death Star comment; I call it Swiss Army knife syndrome. If you’ve ever owned one you know it kinda does things, not many well. I would like them to take an area like ASW and get some actual nuts and bolts ASW people to set them up with a list of capabilities that a ship MUST have to prosecute a submarine. Do the same thing for the other warfare areas. Figure out what areas cross over and which ones don’t. Make some decisions on what are must haves. Base the decisions on realistic expectations. No half-ass pie in sky allowed.
Please see my comment re: pie-in-the-sky.
The risk models were obviously flawed. As it has been said the DDG-1000 is a ship looking for job. The gun, I would have rejected it out of hand, a 155mm gun that can’t fire common 155mm rounds in a pinch? No thank you. The carbon fiber deckhouse, nope. How do you fix it? How do bring in new equipment? You cut it, you weaken it, thats’s it. I know it’s for stealth right? You drive a 600’ long ship around blasting multi-megawatts of radar energy into the air and that’s stealthy? It really doesn’t seem like it will be all that helpful against various optical systems that are riding on the front of various weapons. Over the years various hull forms have been tried and after years of tweaking and adjustments for various reasons I fail to understand why these projects seem to be taking a clean sheet of paper approach discarding lessons learned in what appears to a profit only motive.
I was part of the DDG-1000 (then DDGX) concept design team. No, that is not a confession, because we naval architects glued together all of the requirements placed before us - but it does give me a place at the table when discussing design risks. As a point of reference for those who have never designed a ship, please note that any addition or subtraction of an installed system or major change thereto can have ripple effects far out of proportion to the size, weight, power, manning, and cooling numbers advertised by that object/system’s proponent. In other words, advocate numbers never foreshadow what ship designers may be forced to do in order to shoehorn that additional toy into the toy box.
Shortly after being assigned to the Northrop-Grumman team, I showed my boss an interesting number. In addition to the known solid physics of existing hardware, we initially had 23 acknowledged technical risk areas. If a person is the ultimate optimist and assumes a success rate of 90% for each technical risk, the odds of all those risks not coming up as failures is calculated as 0.90 raised to the 23rd power. Your calculator will tell you those odds are a bit less than 9%. A whole 9% chance you won’t have to throw away your design and start over. If you had only six risks with that degree of optimism, you will just barely clear a 50-50 chance of redesign.
So we had that major redesign. And some of those risks turned into failures even after the redesign. And all of the redesign meant delay and additional cost. The Navy spent over $3B in RDT&E money in dealing with risk items and redesign, only to end up with a ship that can’t afford ammunition for its main guns. The Navy could decide to impose only 2, 3, or 4 sizable technical risks on a new design, but that would run afoul of all the system program offices that need to prove their relevance and all of the Congressional offices pushing something from their districts.
And all of this is separate from the mathematical flaws in DoD’s method of risk evaluation and measurement. But that is a discussion for another day.
We've come a long way—in the wrong direction—since World War II. It's hard to believe that today's US Navy is the same US Navy that commissioned 507 destroyer escorts between 1943 and 1945—to mention just one item of a vast wartime construction program. Then of course money was no object and simplicity was the keynote, but even so the DEs were effective warships that gave good service during and after the war. It could well be said that the LCS is how the DE would have turned out if innovative people with cutting-edge ideas had been running the program.
I'd like to know who the effin FO idiot was who decided to undergun the FFG with a popgun. Madder than hell. Admiral Gilday, heads MUST roll on this. Set a standard, sir. Please.
I'm back because there is one other thing that CDR Sal didn't mention about the FFG(X). Design has a new, untested power system going in replacing the existing system. What could possibly go wrong?
"agenda pimps" among the many zingers. ✊🇺🇸
Thank you for putting in words the unease I have been feeling for decades. I enjoy reading your thoughts and sharp observations
“…you must minimized overall risk by at least starting with known systems, weapons, and manning concepts that will ride in that hull.” ? ? ? . . . How about not SKIP THE LTBS/LBTES ? which is the investment for fixing problems in the system as they occur aboard ship, and is the primary improvement platform investment for Conditioned Based Maintenance Plus that must continue to evolve, and improve! What is the odds they will get a Hole-in-One [try] with their current track record?!
This building program is INDEED placing all their eggs in one basket, and BETTING THE HOUSE on success . . . when what we need is many platforms quickly that are at least as good as the frigate in a smaller package at a lower price. My money is still running a fool’s errand in hoping for a smaller Small Surface Combatant Sa’ar 6 like Aegis Destroyer Escort (U.S. Navy Aegis Destroyer Escort Facebook page applies).
Everyone tells me "The admirals have to have a ship to ride" . . . IMHO THEY HAVEN'T EARNED IT!
TORCH OUT
Re the 20kton "What do you mean we can't call it the Yamato class?" ships the JNSDF is building as Aegis-not-ashore national missile defense platforms - I do note one red flag waving wildly in that story:
"That is to say, due to the extensive use of automated equipments, the new ship is expected to carry only 110 crew members."
110 crew on a 20,000 ton ship is fine if it's disposable, but doing damage control on a hull of that displacement which comes under kinetic redesign, no matter the number of astromech droids assigned aboard, will be a bit spicy.
I equate the 57mm gun on the LCS and the FFG(X) instead of a 3-inch/76mm Oto Melara (see FFG-7-class) with taking Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum away and giving him a BB Gun. Poor choice there. The Burke's were/are ok for what they were initially for and for who. Losing the TICOs, we're going to losing more VLS cells then we are bringing into the fleet. Am I correct? Why would we send a $2.2B Burke or a $1B (?) Constellation to chase subs? Does the Navy have something against a corvette-sized vessel for ASW? A dedicated mission (ASW) ship to go find Captain Nemo and send him to Davey Jones locker such as the future Anti-Submarine Warfare Frigate being jointly by the Belgians and the Dutch?
Coming back around to the DDG(X). With the AGS quagmire behind us (I hope), would it not be prudent to add a second 5-inch gun to provide NGFS for the island-hopping Marines?