Waiting for our Frigate to Come in
a thin bench
Being that we know that the Constellation Class FFG is going to stop at just two ships and we’re waiting to see what the plans are for the “smaller than an Arleigh Burke Flight III” warship to displace water before the end of the decade, what other designs are close to displacing water that might be fun to argue about?
The end of last week saw some speculation that we could just “grey hull” the Legend Class USCG cutter, AKA National Security Cutter.
Well, I don’t know if that would look that good given recent news on Hull-11;
The Department of Homeland Security cancelled the stalled production of a 11th Legend-class National Security Cutter for the Coast Guard, citing a year-long delay in shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls’ projected completion date and cost overruns.
The cut will save $260 million while redirecting resources to other priority shipbuilding projects, likely the Polar Security Cutter program to replace the Coast’s Guard two aging icebreakers, and the Offshore Patrol Cutter.
Construction began in 2021 on the planned Coast Guard cutter Friedman and was to be completed in 2024, as the 11th in the class of 418’x54’, 4,500-ton vessels. Originally hailed by Coast Guard officials as “the largest and most technologically sophisticated” design in the fleet, the class has faced problems with spare parts supply.
“Huntington Ingalls owed us this cutter over a year ago,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in announcing the decision. “As the Trump administration is revitalizing the U.S. Coast Guard through Force Design 2028, we need to be smart with the American taxpayer’s money.”
“This project was over time and over budget. Now the money can be redirected to ensuring the Coast Guard remains the finest, most-capable maritime service in the world. I would like to extend my thanks to Huntington Ingalls for negotiating in good faith.”
Something has to show up and displace water, in numbers, in the next few years. I have absolutely no idea what it will be, but the LST we discussed last week isn’t it.
We just can’t build Arleigh Burke Flight III until the crack of doom (or perhaps we can), and DDG(X) is still vaporware. Unless we follow a series of compounding wrong decisions (again) that leads the US Navy by 2035 into irrelevancy, we have to get a new class of multi-purpose warships in the water to cover the lower-scale mission.
Let’s use the Legend Class as the top end of such a ship. She’s 4,500 tons.
I reserve the right to be wrong, but here are my top-5 planning assumptions as we wait for an official announcement:
The requirement still exists
We don’t have time for a clean sheet design
It has to be based on proven systems
It has to be less expensive than an Arleigh Burke & Constellation
It has to be “made in the USA”
It has to be produced in a variety of yards that are not presently at maximum capacity
There aren’t a lot of options out there.
Looking around at US designed smaller warships already under construction, what about Gibbs and Cox designs?
Well, they designed a light frigate for Taiwan,
… 115 meters long and have a displacement of 2,500-3,000 tons. They are classified as Tier 2 (or second class) combat ships and are set to become the workhorse of the Taiwanese Navy.
If we actually wanted a corvette-sized ship like LCS was supposed to be, somewhere around 3,000 tons, that would fit the bill.
What if we wanted more hulls than that is a smaller package? G&C has a downsized derivative of the frigate designed for Taiwan that would bring:
American design
US Navy toughness standards
40 years design life
88 meters
flight deck
utility working deck 20’ container spaces for modular mission packages
Sacrificed a helo hangar, but there she is below.
Me? I still want a FREMM-like capability, but I don’t think that is in the cards given my bullet points above.
The below from Naval News is worth a full listen, but let’s start at their corvette derivative.
If someone has other ideas, I’d love to hear them…but man, what a corner we’ve painted ourselves into.
This isn’t how a functioning sea power acts…but these are the fruits of a quarter century of poor management and worse leadership.
Step One is realizing a frigate will be a frigate, not a mini-Burke.
I'm in the build Arleigh Burke Flight IIIs until the crack of doom camp - at a rate of at least 4 per year. That will allow us to sort out the production and supply chain issues around building something at a plausible rate. After 5 years of that, we can consider introducing a 'new' design into the ecosystem.