That is exactly the approach that was taken with LCS. Look what we got. The best ships we have built were built when BUSHIPS/NAVSEA was a well-administered, highly technical organization. Now, it is largely people by administrators who are led by people who worry too much about pleasing their seniors. The submariners have largely maintained a technical-truth organization in the midst of that chaos. Until another Arleigh Burke or Jim Doyle emerges to take technical and administrative control, things will not change.
The Combat Systems world still has remnants of that culture. While DDG-1000 and LCS were sucking the shipbuilding budgets dry, the Combat Systems people: moved Aegis and SSDS into Open Architecture; fielded COMBATS-21 (the best thing about LCS); upgraded the sensor suites across the fleet; fielded CEC; fielded quad-pack ESSM; fielded multiple vairants of SM-6; fielded multiple variants of SM-3; introduced digital signal processors in our radars; and converted the switchable AAW/BMD Aegis capability into a unified multimission combat system.
Combat Systems have not been the political football like the shipbuilding programs. Maybe there is a lesson there.
I hope I got the free link correct, but there is an article in this morning's paper related to the theme's of this post. Our government funded a scientific research ship. So does China. We just cut funding to ours, dispersed the highly trained crew, and removed the scientific equipment.
Dude, read the article, and Byron's post below. There are Americans who want to do great things. The folks that served on this research ship were there for reasons other than "graft."
Pure science is usually the first item on the politician's chopping block, yet often investment in pure science yields dividends which are incalculable. When your goal is to shrink the federal government so that it is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, you are not going to be able to man vessels whose mission is to expand our understanding of the world in which we live.
The hyper-partisan nature of our politics has lead to a situation where folks of one party cannot deal with those in the other party, and the result is that things that folks used to agree about, such as funding the JOIDES Resolution, or building naval ships in naval shipyards, become partisan talking point. I'm sure that somewhere some Member of Congress is bragging that they cut, "fraud, waste and abuse," by eliminating funding for a ship that was nothing but a "sinecure for a bunch of liberal democrat scientists."
Full disclosure: I'm a real, live, university-trained geologist, circa 1970s vintage. Pursued those studies pre-Navy; and still working in the arena now, post-Navy... Let me add that, per personal knowledge, JOIDES and DSD (see comment below) were not just about drilling holes in the ocean floor and looking at mud-lines and rock core. The program also conducted immense amounts of pure & applied oceanography. Lots of bottom mapping. Lots of water sampling. Water layers, salinity, temps, current flows, mass & energy data regarding circulation dynamics. Many of the current tracks for undersea cables, for example, were laid out based on original work performed by JOIDES. Same w many underwater pipelines. Just like old Army surveyors mapped routes for the US transcontinental railroads, the JOIDES program added immensely to the body of knowledge of the ocean floor, both in well traveled waters and in some of the most remote corners of the planet.
When I read the article I got angry. This is the same short-sighted nonsense that has effected the Navy. And when I read that some folks who worked on our ship were looking to sign on with China. . . .
Yup... China hires former fighter pilots. Why not former DSD personnel. Heck, about two yrs ago, no less than the chairman of the Harvard Dept of Chemistry was arrested and charged as a spy for China. Makes one wonder who/what was really behind USGovt decision to defund JOIDES.
This is a sad moment in so many ways... although many years in the making, considering the abysmal state of US science education and political jousting over $$ for important things, versus current fluff and fads. And believe me, this program was important. Looking back... JOIDES and the deep-sea-drilling program (DSD) had roots in the 1950s and kicked into gear in the 60s. (Note -- Even back then it took a decade or so to get things up and running.) In many ways, JOIDES and DSD were an oceanic version of the Apollo program, except the vectors were down into the earth's crust instead of up towards the moon.
.
Suffice to say that, early on -- 1960s/70s -- DSD was the scientific foundation of modern plate tectonic understanding. IOW, it took a serious study of the deep sea to begin to understand the "why" behind mountain ranges and much more. And this in turn has re-written every earth science book, in every respect, not just at sea but onshore as well. DSD has helped reveal all manner of earth structure... Seafloor spreading, composition of earth's crust, all sorts of advancements in mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, etc. Add in issues critical to US Navy, from seafloor charts to oceanic circulation to gravity maps (SSBN people take note). Then there's oil & gas. Mineral exploration. Better understanding of earthquakes and volcanoes. Oh, and consider all manner of "industrial" offshore drilling advancements that JOIDES and DSD helped along... positioning, station-keeping, drillpipe risers, drillbits, deep drilling tech like muds and well-logging.
.
Now... It's all tied up at the pier, while our Chinese counterparts run ads to hire the laid-off JOIDES crew. Sound familiar?
Too easy to go dead in the water with any kind of engineering casualty. Also requires tug support to enter/exit port. A decent ship handler on a twin-screw DD does not require the assist.
My first CO, of a single screw AFS, with a huge sail area, disproved the tug support part. He did things with that ship that I doubt most captains aboard Burkes today could...
Lots of single screw container ships with bow thruster. I have to think the same could work with a smaller, more maneuverable ship? I get why a retracting azipod won't necessarily accomplish the same thing.
FFG’s had 2 360 degrees trainable APUs and a controllable pitch propeller. There was virtually no maneuver that couldn’t be done. Tugs were not needed for mooring.
Good stuff, I have only one comment. Re: "Imagine how many more trained shipyard tradesmen we would have with the business the last quarter century upgrading our OHP like the Australians and Turks have. We would have that additional base of trained people to help build a fleet to meet the PRC challenge west of the International Date Line."
A revitalized ship building and repair force would not be created and can not be created by the addition of a good ship. The shipyards, public and private are in the shit storm they are in, because of other problems. From funding, to extremely toxic leadership, to unions that view saving the jobs of shitbags and perpetuating their own power as their only raison d'etre.
The shipyards public and private are in such deep do-do as to drive their best and brightest out in search of greener pastures. Those that stay, stay for one of three reasons: Golden Handcuffs (too close to retirement to throw it all away just because the place sucks) Insecurity (the knowledge that to get that good a pay you would have to move, and what if you don't get hired) or they're shitbags that are there because no one else would have them, and they can't be fired.
The problem with Golden handcuffs is that as soon as the guy can retire early, they will, and you watch all that expertise walk off into the sunset. Oh they might have stayed, under better care, but NOOOO. They've hit the point where the reduction in money from early retirement is worth it to escape the toxicity.
Ask me how I know, how my wife knows, how at least twenty friends know...
Hurts to say, but IMHO the last 20 years of NavSea leadership producing LCS and Zumwalt (and throw in taking 12 years and $15 billion for CVN 78} have been more successful at reducing the combat capability of the USN than anything the Chinese/Russians/Norks/Houthis/Iranians/DEI mafia- you name it - have been able to do.
Don't forget what we did with the last 2 classes of CGN's which were supposed to get AEGIS and were barely 20 years old when decommed. And could actually keep up with a CVN.. and weren't top heavy constantly listing Tico's. Tossing our Spru-can's just years after getting VLS upgrades was the epitome of dumb. We used to have some pretty innovative upgrade programs through the late 40's into the 60s and 70s and kept ships that should have been obsolete going probably a lot longer than one might have expected and capable. Certainly our Spru-cans with the fact they were built to deal with data systems and room for the wiring and the electrical systems in mind had another 15 or 20 left in them if they got proper keel up rebuilds. Think Guppy Program and FRAM programs of the old days. The NTU upgrades of the CG's that got decommed almost as fast as they finished. Bush 1 was too short sighted, Clinton admin trashed the Navy and our acquisition system and I will stand by that. Congress was asleep at the wheel and lacked foresight. Bush 2 was too busy with GWOT and some bad decisions there that we were a part of. 20/20 hindsight is pretty easy. I don't think we kept enough stuff in mothballs anymore to go back and consider reworking any of it. We are too busy sinking within a couple years or selling them off or scrapping.
Sal your points about LCS have sadly proven largely true over time and the Navy did a very poor job in thinking it could cram a whole bunch of new and untested stuff in a single generation of ship. The FFG's however had reached the end of the line and were not going to get rehabbed for a number of reasons. The SM-1 MR was obsolete, and the FFG combat system (CAS and STIR and even the CORT version) just was out of date in terms of its ability to track and engage any more than a handful of targets. The HM&E of the ship was running down as well, as they were built for at best a 25-year service life. Our European and other friends who got used FFG's dis not/do not deploy them as did the USN and who knows how "combat effective" they really are? One only needs to look at the failed deployment of the very cheap Danish Iver Huitfeldt frigate to the Red Sea to see what happens with "cheap" systems (Huitfeldt's combat system was never fully integrated and its weapons were unable to engage what its sensors reported.)
So again, I think you were right about LCS in the long rung but trying to make the FFG 7 a longer-lived platform was from my perspective (as a CSO on one in the late 1990's) not a valid choice either.
The first LCS laid down was the Freedom in 2005. The last FFG-7 variant laid down was Tian Dan in 2004. There was certainly a narrow window of opportunity to bend metal on an evolved Block. What there wasn't was the directive to do so. Was it a "valid" choice? That was for Congress to say.
There was such a window but the powers at be in the Navy were not interested in small ships of any kind. It was the time of the SC-21 family of ships (CGX and DDGX) and both were large ships. CNO Vern Clark was lucky to have even gotten LCS as a small ship (unlucky in retrospect for many reasons for sure.) CBO analyst Eric Labs wrote a report in 2003 that discusses the lack of interest in a frigate replacement for the FFG7.
"At present, the Navy’s force of surface combatants comprises 17 Spruance class destroyers, 27 Ticonderoga class cruisers, 33 Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, and 38 Arleigh Burke class destroyers. Although they continue to be adapted for other missions, those ships constitute the final Cold War generation of surface combatants designed for open-ocean naval warfare against the Soviet Union. The Navy proposes to introduce a new generation of surface combatants designed to confront new threats and perform new missions."
Smartest people in the room assumed that we would never, ever again be fighting an open ocean naval campaign. The Pacific is mighty open and blue the last time I checked. With that shift in thinking, leadership in the five sided pleasure palace placed a bet that the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans could be treated like the bathtub that is the Caribbean.
"The Navy’s transformation plan would retire all Spruance class destroyers and the first five Ticonderoga class cruisers by late 2006—well before the end of their expected service lives. It would also upgrade the combat systems and reliability of the remaining Ticonderogas and Perry class frigates. The Navy’s main focus, however, is on buying the DD(X) future destroyer, starting in 2005; the littoral combat ship (LCS), also starting in 2005; and the CG(X) future cruiser, beginning around 2014."
Well, here we are in 2024. Zumwalts and (graciously) Less than Capable Seaframes are essentially worthless and CG(X) was aborted faster than a fetus in a van outside the Chicago DNC convention.
"In the past year, senior Navy admirals have argued that they need 375 ships to perform all of the missions asked of the service. By far the biggest change in force goals is the increase in the desired number of surface combatants to 160."
Wow! 375? That kinda sounds like the PLAN fleet. This opus has aged very well.
"...the FFG's however had reached the end of the line and were not going to get rehabbed for a number of reasons. " --- Laz, in the name of all that is holy, they ARE RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU. They were "rehabbed" - just not by us. SM-1 MR works just fine in 2024 for almost everything thrown at ships in the Red Sea - especially with the radar the Turks put on their OHP ... not t mention the ESSM. Only real gap is anti-ASBM.
I had a daydream frigate that used the existing OHP hull and engineering plant (upgraded to support new systems ofc) That would have made it a mini-DDG using SPY-1F, SPQ-9B, CEC (all in an interior-accessible cone similar to an LPD-17 mast superstructure, but no radiating elements inside), 2 SPG-62 illuminators, a version of BL 7.1R/7.2B/BL8 or 9A (no need for BMD, but TDC would be nice), and an altered superstructure that incorporated radar low-observable concepts (possibly removing the 2 helo hangars in favor of an enlarged single), moved the gun where it belongs on the bow (and an upgrade to 120 RPM super-rapid), make it work with Mk 34 GFCS, and put a 32-cell VLS where the gun used to be. Keep CIWS, or replace with RAM/SEARAM fore and aft. Keep some kind of active EW capability. Upgrade Sonar with current SQQ-89 and maybe go to bow arrays.
Heck, now that we have the modular SPY-6 coming, we could put that on, properly sized.
Or we could pattern something after the Japanese Mogami class frigate (the stretched version), swap the 5"/54 for a 76/62 Super Rapido and give her a 32-cell VLS. Substitute SPY-6 for the Japanese phased array system and you would have a pretty decent warship that also had mission module capabilities at the same time
I'd rather increase the Mogami's 16 VLS cells to 32 cells and have the 76/62 than keep the 5"/54, especially for the mission that the frigate needs to do.
'Meanwhile, that high-maintenance “Dream Girl” we left her for turned into a gold-digging trainwreck who denuded our bank account, embarrassed us with our neighbors, and did little more than hang out all day on the couch because she, “Doesn’t feel up to doing anything.”
Hey! It's not all doom and gloom, her pimps made a fortune and retired comfortably.
If the SECNAV had the slightest bit of moral courage, he would recall ex-CNOs Mullen, Clark, et al., to active duty and censor them publicly for their negative impacts on naval readiness and national security. Of course, that won't happen, but a war with China will--and today's Sailors will pay with their lives for the unethical decisions made by these so-called leaders.
Sal I think that in retrospect you were right about many of the LCS challenges. Too much new and untested equipment in non-traditional hulls, with multiple crews and offboard maintenance....too much for the Navy or the acquisition system to handle. The FFG's though were old and beat up by US standards in the late 1990's. The MK-13 launcher weapons like SM-1 were just ineffective against modern weapons. I know, I got hammered by my FFG CO for not being able to shoot down a modern missile in 1998 with a modernized CORT frigate. Any modernized frigate today (Turkish and the now retired Australian ones) still had only a 1970's-era number of fire control channels to engage and shoot down missiles, even including CIWS as one of those. HM&E on frigates was as bad as that of the DD 963's. The 25-30 life span is a real thing and exceeding it is a costly endeavor. I would not want to be on a Turkish frigate today if it was sent to the Red Sea and asked to engage Houthi missiles and drones. So, I very respectfully disagree on the utility of the FFG-7 post 2003.
Then we will have to respectfully disagree. I spent 24 months on an FFG at the height of its capabilities (1997-1999,) and even with the CORT mod it was just not a viable AAW platform, and its HM&E was rapidly eroding. Lots of navies possess ships that steam from place to place but in fact have little real combat capability, even if they appear to be armed to the teeth.
For one of the few times in decades I am going to have to agree with Laz here. Those ships were rode hard and put away wet. Unless you are thinking of permanently assigning them to SNFM, I don't think you would have got much more out of them. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to trust them in the North Atlantic or most of the Pacific.
money, retirement jobs, gotta get next promotion have to please politicians wanting contracts in their districts...pick one
Rice Bowls, Rice Bowls Über alles!!!
If ever an American organization were a candidate for the vertical chop, our ship acquisition system is it.
That hurt to read. Especially the infrastructure part.
And… why…how are we making such a complete kludge of an *already existing frigate!*
Sometimes I think we should just tell Bath, maybe, “build us a frigate at this price point” and see what they come up with.
And… why…how are we making such a complete kludge of an *already existing frigate!* - 88,000 NAVSEA employees need to eat.
That is exactly the approach that was taken with LCS. Look what we got. The best ships we have built were built when BUSHIPS/NAVSEA was a well-administered, highly technical organization. Now, it is largely people by administrators who are led by people who worry too much about pleasing their seniors. The submariners have largely maintained a technical-truth organization in the midst of that chaos. Until another Arleigh Burke or Jim Doyle emerges to take technical and administrative control, things will not change.
The Combat Systems world still has remnants of that culture. While DDG-1000 and LCS were sucking the shipbuilding budgets dry, the Combat Systems people: moved Aegis and SSDS into Open Architecture; fielded COMBATS-21 (the best thing about LCS); upgraded the sensor suites across the fleet; fielded CEC; fielded quad-pack ESSM; fielded multiple vairants of SM-6; fielded multiple variants of SM-3; introduced digital signal processors in our radars; and converted the switchable AAW/BMD Aegis capability into a unified multimission combat system.
Combat Systems have not been the political football like the shipbuilding programs. Maybe there is a lesson there.
A bitter harvest indeed.
I hope I got the free link correct, but there is an article in this morning's paper related to the theme's of this post. Our government funded a scientific research ship. So does China. We just cut funding to ours, dispersed the highly trained crew, and removed the scientific equipment.
As a nation we are turning our backs to the ocean. That won't end well. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/science/drilling-ship-science-joides-resolution.html
"Care and feeding - and growing - your shipbuilding industry and infrastructure is, actually, a thing."
I keep telling you Tom, there's a solution. You just have to motivate the locals with a bit of graft.
Dude, read the article, and Byron's post below. There are Americans who want to do great things. The folks that served on this research ship were there for reasons other than "graft."
Pure science is usually the first item on the politician's chopping block, yet often investment in pure science yields dividends which are incalculable. When your goal is to shrink the federal government so that it is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, you are not going to be able to man vessels whose mission is to expand our understanding of the world in which we live.
The hyper-partisan nature of our politics has lead to a situation where folks of one party cannot deal with those in the other party, and the result is that things that folks used to agree about, such as funding the JOIDES Resolution, or building naval ships in naval shipyards, become partisan talking point. I'm sure that somewhere some Member of Congress is bragging that they cut, "fraud, waste and abuse," by eliminating funding for a ship that was nothing but a "sinecure for a bunch of liberal democrat scientists."
Full disclosure: I'm a real, live, university-trained geologist, circa 1970s vintage. Pursued those studies pre-Navy; and still working in the arena now, post-Navy... Let me add that, per personal knowledge, JOIDES and DSD (see comment below) were not just about drilling holes in the ocean floor and looking at mud-lines and rock core. The program also conducted immense amounts of pure & applied oceanography. Lots of bottom mapping. Lots of water sampling. Water layers, salinity, temps, current flows, mass & energy data regarding circulation dynamics. Many of the current tracks for undersea cables, for example, were laid out based on original work performed by JOIDES. Same w many underwater pipelines. Just like old Army surveyors mapped routes for the US transcontinental railroads, the JOIDES program added immensely to the body of knowledge of the ocean floor, both in well traveled waters and in some of the most remote corners of the planet.
When I read the article I got angry. This is the same short-sighted nonsense that has effected the Navy. And when I read that some folks who worked on our ship were looking to sign on with China. . . .
Yup... China hires former fighter pilots. Why not former DSD personnel. Heck, about two yrs ago, no less than the chairman of the Harvard Dept of Chemistry was arrested and charged as a spy for China. Makes one wonder who/what was really behind USGovt decision to defund JOIDES.
This is a sad moment in so many ways... although many years in the making, considering the abysmal state of US science education and political jousting over $$ for important things, versus current fluff and fads. And believe me, this program was important. Looking back... JOIDES and the deep-sea-drilling program (DSD) had roots in the 1950s and kicked into gear in the 60s. (Note -- Even back then it took a decade or so to get things up and running.) In many ways, JOIDES and DSD were an oceanic version of the Apollo program, except the vectors were down into the earth's crust instead of up towards the moon.
.
Suffice to say that, early on -- 1960s/70s -- DSD was the scientific foundation of modern plate tectonic understanding. IOW, it took a serious study of the deep sea to begin to understand the "why" behind mountain ranges and much more. And this in turn has re-written every earth science book, in every respect, not just at sea but onshore as well. DSD has helped reveal all manner of earth structure... Seafloor spreading, composition of earth's crust, all sorts of advancements in mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, etc. Add in issues critical to US Navy, from seafloor charts to oceanic circulation to gravity maps (SSBN people take note). Then there's oil & gas. Mineral exploration. Better understanding of earthquakes and volcanoes. Oh, and consider all manner of "industrial" offshore drilling advancements that JOIDES and DSD helped along... positioning, station-keeping, drillpipe risers, drillbits, deep drilling tech like muds and well-logging.
.
Now... It's all tied up at the pier, while our Chinese counterparts run ads to hire the laid-off JOIDES crew. Sound familiar?
Just wait until Thursday and you'll see why it's all been worthwhile...
Hopefully we will never build another single screw ship again.
The Navy has embraced single engine aircraft for airwings. Why not single screws for sea frames? /sarc
Too easy to go dead in the water with any kind of engineering casualty. Also requires tug support to enter/exit port. A decent ship handler on a twin-screw DD does not require the assist.
My first CO, of a single screw AFS, with a huge sail area, disproved the tug support part. He did things with that ship that I doubt most captains aboard Burkes today could...
Lots of single screw container ships with bow thruster. I have to think the same could work with a smaller, more maneuverable ship? I get why a retracting azipod won't necessarily accomplish the same thing.
Navy ships are not configured with bow thrusters. Perhaps they would add to their acoustic signature.
Nothing says they couldn't have a door to close up when not in use, similar to a torpedo tube. I'm sure at some point speed becomes relevant also.
FFG’s had 2 360 degrees trainable APUs and a controllable pitch propeller. There was virtually no maneuver that couldn’t be done. Tugs were not needed for mooring.
Good stuff, I have only one comment. Re: "Imagine how many more trained shipyard tradesmen we would have with the business the last quarter century upgrading our OHP like the Australians and Turks have. We would have that additional base of trained people to help build a fleet to meet the PRC challenge west of the International Date Line."
A revitalized ship building and repair force would not be created and can not be created by the addition of a good ship. The shipyards, public and private are in the shit storm they are in, because of other problems. From funding, to extremely toxic leadership, to unions that view saving the jobs of shitbags and perpetuating their own power as their only raison d'etre.
The shipyards public and private are in such deep do-do as to drive their best and brightest out in search of greener pastures. Those that stay, stay for one of three reasons: Golden Handcuffs (too close to retirement to throw it all away just because the place sucks) Insecurity (the knowledge that to get that good a pay you would have to move, and what if you don't get hired) or they're shitbags that are there because no one else would have them, and they can't be fired.
The problem with Golden handcuffs is that as soon as the guy can retire early, they will, and you watch all that expertise walk off into the sunset. Oh they might have stayed, under better care, but NOOOO. They've hit the point where the reduction in money from early retirement is worth it to escape the toxicity.
Ask me how I know, how my wife knows, how at least twenty friends know...
Hurts to say, but IMHO the last 20 years of NavSea leadership producing LCS and Zumwalt (and throw in taking 12 years and $15 billion for CVN 78} have been more successful at reducing the combat capability of the USN than anything the Chinese/Russians/Norks/Houthis/Iranians/DEI mafia- you name it - have been able to do.
Great article thanks, and don't get me started on what did to the Sprucans!!
That could be your first article on your own Substack.
I kinda want to...!!! Please...get started!!
It'll go hand in hand with my Tico "modernization" rant!!
Don't forget what we did with the last 2 classes of CGN's which were supposed to get AEGIS and were barely 20 years old when decommed. And could actually keep up with a CVN.. and weren't top heavy constantly listing Tico's. Tossing our Spru-can's just years after getting VLS upgrades was the epitome of dumb. We used to have some pretty innovative upgrade programs through the late 40's into the 60s and 70s and kept ships that should have been obsolete going probably a lot longer than one might have expected and capable. Certainly our Spru-cans with the fact they were built to deal with data systems and room for the wiring and the electrical systems in mind had another 15 or 20 left in them if they got proper keel up rebuilds. Think Guppy Program and FRAM programs of the old days. The NTU upgrades of the CG's that got decommed almost as fast as they finished. Bush 1 was too short sighted, Clinton admin trashed the Navy and our acquisition system and I will stand by that. Congress was asleep at the wheel and lacked foresight. Bush 2 was too busy with GWOT and some bad decisions there that we were a part of. 20/20 hindsight is pretty easy. I don't think we kept enough stuff in mothballs anymore to go back and consider reworking any of it. We are too busy sinking within a couple years or selling them off or scrapping.
Sal your points about LCS have sadly proven largely true over time and the Navy did a very poor job in thinking it could cram a whole bunch of new and untested stuff in a single generation of ship. The FFG's however had reached the end of the line and were not going to get rehabbed for a number of reasons. The SM-1 MR was obsolete, and the FFG combat system (CAS and STIR and even the CORT version) just was out of date in terms of its ability to track and engage any more than a handful of targets. The HM&E of the ship was running down as well, as they were built for at best a 25-year service life. Our European and other friends who got used FFG's dis not/do not deploy them as did the USN and who knows how "combat effective" they really are? One only needs to look at the failed deployment of the very cheap Danish Iver Huitfeldt frigate to the Red Sea to see what happens with "cheap" systems (Huitfeldt's combat system was never fully integrated and its weapons were unable to engage what its sensors reported.)
So again, I think you were right about LCS in the long rung but trying to make the FFG 7 a longer-lived platform was from my perspective (as a CSO on one in the late 1990's) not a valid choice either.
The first LCS laid down was the Freedom in 2005. The last FFG-7 variant laid down was Tian Dan in 2004. There was certainly a narrow window of opportunity to bend metal on an evolved Block. What there wasn't was the directive to do so. Was it a "valid" choice? That was for Congress to say.
There was such a window but the powers at be in the Navy were not interested in small ships of any kind. It was the time of the SC-21 family of ships (CGX and DDGX) and both were large ships. CNO Vern Clark was lucky to have even gotten LCS as a small ship (unlucky in retrospect for many reasons for sure.) CBO analyst Eric Labs wrote a report in 2003 that discusses the lack of interest in a frigate replacement for the FFG7.
This would be this absolutely brilliant report by Herr Doktor Eric J. Labs.
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/108th-congress-2003-2004/reports/04-07-navybrief.pdf
"At present, the Navy’s force of surface combatants comprises 17 Spruance class destroyers, 27 Ticonderoga class cruisers, 33 Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, and 38 Arleigh Burke class destroyers. Although they continue to be adapted for other missions, those ships constitute the final Cold War generation of surface combatants designed for open-ocean naval warfare against the Soviet Union. The Navy proposes to introduce a new generation of surface combatants designed to confront new threats and perform new missions."
Smartest people in the room assumed that we would never, ever again be fighting an open ocean naval campaign. The Pacific is mighty open and blue the last time I checked. With that shift in thinking, leadership in the five sided pleasure palace placed a bet that the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans could be treated like the bathtub that is the Caribbean.
"The Navy’s transformation plan would retire all Spruance class destroyers and the first five Ticonderoga class cruisers by late 2006—well before the end of their expected service lives. It would also upgrade the combat systems and reliability of the remaining Ticonderogas and Perry class frigates. The Navy’s main focus, however, is on buying the DD(X) future destroyer, starting in 2005; the littoral combat ship (LCS), also starting in 2005; and the CG(X) future cruiser, beginning around 2014."
Well, here we are in 2024. Zumwalts and (graciously) Less than Capable Seaframes are essentially worthless and CG(X) was aborted faster than a fetus in a van outside the Chicago DNC convention.
"In the past year, senior Navy admirals have argued that they need 375 ships to perform all of the missions asked of the service. By far the biggest change in force goals is the increase in the desired number of surface combatants to 160."
Wow! 375? That kinda sounds like the PLAN fleet. This opus has aged very well.
Its crazy to think any naval power isn't one generation away from obsolescence or being overcome by a rising power. History is filled with examples.
That's it.
"...the FFG's however had reached the end of the line and were not going to get rehabbed for a number of reasons. " --- Laz, in the name of all that is holy, they ARE RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU. They were "rehabbed" - just not by us. SM-1 MR works just fine in 2024 for almost everything thrown at ships in the Red Sea - especially with the radar the Turks put on their OHP ... not t mention the ESSM. Only real gap is anti-ASBM.
I had a daydream frigate that used the existing OHP hull and engineering plant (upgraded to support new systems ofc) That would have made it a mini-DDG using SPY-1F, SPQ-9B, CEC (all in an interior-accessible cone similar to an LPD-17 mast superstructure, but no radiating elements inside), 2 SPG-62 illuminators, a version of BL 7.1R/7.2B/BL8 or 9A (no need for BMD, but TDC would be nice), and an altered superstructure that incorporated radar low-observable concepts (possibly removing the 2 helo hangars in favor of an enlarged single), moved the gun where it belongs on the bow (and an upgrade to 120 RPM super-rapid), make it work with Mk 34 GFCS, and put a 32-cell VLS where the gun used to be. Keep CIWS, or replace with RAM/SEARAM fore and aft. Keep some kind of active EW capability. Upgrade Sonar with current SQQ-89 and maybe go to bow arrays.
Heck, now that we have the modular SPY-6 coming, we could put that on, properly sized.
Or we could pattern something after the Japanese Mogami class frigate (the stretched version), swap the 5"/54 for a 76/62 Super Rapido and give her a 32-cell VLS. Substitute SPY-6 for the Japanese phased array system and you would have a pretty decent warship that also had mission module capabilities at the same time
OKAY? :Hands all over the place:
Fuck it, *keep* the 5/54 (or 5/62!)
I'd rather increase the Mogami's 16 VLS cells to 32 cells and have the 76/62 than keep the 5"/54, especially for the mission that the frigate needs to do.
Fair. Super Rapido is a must then.
'Meanwhile, that high-maintenance “Dream Girl” we left her for turned into a gold-digging trainwreck who denuded our bank account, embarrassed us with our neighbors, and did little more than hang out all day on the couch because she, “Doesn’t feel up to doing anything.”
Hey! It's not all doom and gloom, her pimps made a fortune and retired comfortably.
Rice Bowls, Rice Bowls Über alles!!!
If the SECNAV had the slightest bit of moral courage, he would recall ex-CNOs Mullen, Clark, et al., to active duty and censor them publicly for their negative impacts on naval readiness and national security. Of course, that won't happen, but a war with China will--and today's Sailors will pay with their lives for the unethical decisions made by these so-called leaders.
No prior day is as important as tomorrow.
And the numerous apologists that kept supporting those programs, even when they knew better. Rice Bowls somewhere along the line.
As the saying goes: follow the money.
Sal I think that in retrospect you were right about many of the LCS challenges. Too much new and untested equipment in non-traditional hulls, with multiple crews and offboard maintenance....too much for the Navy or the acquisition system to handle. The FFG's though were old and beat up by US standards in the late 1990's. The MK-13 launcher weapons like SM-1 were just ineffective against modern weapons. I know, I got hammered by my FFG CO for not being able to shoot down a modern missile in 1998 with a modernized CORT frigate. Any modernized frigate today (Turkish and the now retired Australian ones) still had only a 1970's-era number of fire control channels to engage and shoot down missiles, even including CIWS as one of those. HM&E on frigates was as bad as that of the DD 963's. The 25-30 life span is a real thing and exceeding it is a costly endeavor. I would not want to be on a Turkish frigate today if it was sent to the Red Sea and asked to engage Houthi missiles and drones. So, I very respectfully disagree on the utility of the FFG-7 post 2003.
Read. The. Article. You're just plain wrong here.
Then we will have to respectfully disagree. I spent 24 months on an FFG at the height of its capabilities (1997-1999,) and even with the CORT mod it was just not a viable AAW platform, and its HM&E was rapidly eroding. Lots of navies possess ships that steam from place to place but in fact have little real combat capability, even if they appear to be armed to the teeth.
For one of the few times in decades I am going to have to agree with Laz here. Those ships were rode hard and put away wet. Unless you are thinking of permanently assigning them to SNFM, I don't think you would have got much more out of them. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to trust them in the North Atlantic or most of the Pacific.
Laz has a long history of that. Even his apologies are not apologies.
See Turkey. The Perry’s still have a ton of life in them.
oops, sorry for double post. My bad
Eloquently said and gut wrenching to accept. But here we are!!!