Ah, I remember that one of the modifications that ruined Constellation program was thinking it had not enough VLS cells. And installing more would require making a lot more space in the ship, rearrange a ton of different pipes and modules. The shipyard was receiving 3 changes per day and driven to the brink of insanity... I mean... aren't frigates supposed to be used for menial tasks? It shouldn't be doing the work of destroyers.
Part of issue with that is nobody knows what are the different roles anymore
What is a corvette vs a frigate vs a destroyer so you don’t have clear markers of what each is meant to do so it all gets really fuzzy
Even less helped that the navy itself seem to have no actual clue about what they actually want and definitely don’t have the discipline to not let good idea fairy screw it all up
They've gotten used to only having Burkes on hand for any given task.
It's like someone who has only ever used a lump hammer being asked to buy a ball-pein hammer and coming back from the shop with a disturbingly large claw hammer. Or something.
Using Burkes for everything introduces a lot of additional costs. The whole point of the constellation program is to build a new frigate cheaply and quickly, but all those modifications made it expensive and overdue.
They still could have just put Burke weapons on a Zumwatt hull to make a Burke replacement because the hull worked, but USN being USN cancelled the whole program
I mean the AGS worked seemingly as well it just required a lot of ships to make it in anyway cost effective the mistake was going for such a high capability system that it was physically impossible to have it use anything but the most unique expensive ammo (also seemingly not designing any kind of AA ammunition which to make makes more sense for a long range gun like this)
omg we're literally becoming the GCW-era Galactic Empire. "Of course we decided to use 3 destroyers for search and recovery in the middle of nowhere. What else would you send? There's like a million of them just laying around."
Yeah that’s true, back in the day a destroyer is a small fast ship designed for fleet and torpedo work ~ 1500 tons, a torpedo boat is a significantly cut down destroyer >900 tons, an escort destroyer is a cheap destroyer limited for convoy work, often slower, ~1200 tons, a sloop is a ship the same size and capability but with a civilian engine to increase range, decrease cost, and adhere to treaties, “not designed” for more than 21 knots, a frigate is a sloop built to civilian standards, ~1200, and a corvette is the cheapest possible ship to do the sloop’s job >1000 tons, usually one propellor. With a few exceptions these all have good reasonable definitions and a degree of limit on feature creep (though it did happen) it’s only significantly into the cold war that issues show up
Yea it all got vary strange not helped by the USN in the early Cold War deciding to call stuff frigates form what I can tell was just nostalgia then switching name to destroyer leaders then cruisers and making a mess of the entire naming scheme (then they made LCS which is a stupid term no matter)
While outside US you got the more British frigate Idea I’ll call it of the low cost escort ship then being mixed with the idea of the destroyer becoming your back pocket cruiser (lineage from the tribals and darings) to go and do your more serious showing the flag/diplomatic missions
Then with smaller fleet sizes you need ships to be able to do simply more stuff which in any realistic scenario will result in a bigger ship overall then a need to be able to actually get out there and cover all the areas needed require bigger as well
And now you have a situation where destroyer/frigates are doing traditional cruiser missions while being the size of a treaty era cruiser and it’s all just weird messing up the names with the names at this point feeling both detached from any sense of size/form or usage
, And now you have a situation where destroyer/frigates are doing traditional cruiser missions while being the size of a treaty era cruiser and it’s all just weird messing up the names with the names at this point feeling both detached from any sense of size/form or usage
Thing is that you can make it work quite well for 99% of situations. It's basically what the Dutch navy has been doing since the early 1900, especially regarding subs.
The thing is that you still need several sub-categories regarding the frigates where they shine in one goal.
And we know the USN can do this, because they ended up building the America class this way. Some of them have a well deck and emphasize amphibious assault, some have no well deck and a larger hangar to emphasize sea control and strike missions. Sure it was accidental, and it reduces flexibility, but you know what's less flexible? No ship.
Almost. "Torpedo boats" were first, "Torpedo boat destroyers" were a specific to counter to them so instead of "torpedo boat is a significantly cut down destroyer", "destroyer is a significantly beefed up torpedo boat" is more apt.
I’m pulling the numbers from the 1940’s, at that point torpedo boats are just small destroyers while motor torpedo boats are speedboats with torpedoes. Had I been pulling from the 1910’s I would have worded things differently
Can you provide a reference for "a torpedo boat is a significantly cut down destroyer >900 tons"? I would like to learn more as I am not familiar with them.
The most famous of the ship classes was the Italian spica class and its successors, the ships of the type were generally armed like a destroyer except with the guns shrunk (4 inch ish) and they usually weren’t big enough for as many torpedoes as a torpedo heavy fleet destroyer, in the case of the spica’s it was a single quad mount. I don’t believe the Americans or British built any similar ships (unless you want to count the hunt subclass with like two torpedoes total but I wouldn’t) and I’ve no idea on the French or the japenese but I know the Germans did have ships they called torpedo boats but I’m not sure they fit either the loose definition I offered here nor the one in the London naval treaties as the Germans tended to make overweight ships
The Spica is certainly an interesting ship class and fits your definition of a cut down destroyer but it seems like the exception, not the rule. As you say yourself it does not seem like other naval powers like the US, UK, or Germany built anything like it.
Those three countries all coalesce around torpedo boats as small, fast attack craft with torpedoes as their primary armament. Famous examples include the US PT boats, German Schnellboot, and UK MTB.
Using the Spica to generalize and define all torpedo boats is like saying a destroyer is a cut down aircraft carrier and citing the JMSDF Izumo class as an example.
A, I do mention that the Germans also build the ships, B; it’s a term I am pulling from the London naval treaty but I stretched it, bumping up the tonnage a bit, C; I specifically mention that motor torpedo boats are different.
Easy
Frigate is a warship sized equipped and armed just barely enough to have a chance to find sink and survive counterfire from russian hunter killer nuclear submarine if it stumbles upon one.
Problem is that role now requires an vastly more effective air defense suite to protect against anti-ship missiles than it did in the 70s or early 80s. You could get away with an "ASW only" frigate back in the day in a way you really can't anymore. The price of admission has simply gone up.
Yes.
It takes over a dozen VLS and a decently sized ship to contain it on top of lighter air/missile defence missiles, CIWS, obviously sensors and other stuff to defend against one rudsian submarine antiship missile salvo.
Either you have it or that ship is going down within 15 minutes of a hot war.
Yes
You need to be air defence frigate to do ASW stuff and be ASW frigate in this economy, even if build from scratch to be quiet hull optimised for ASW frigate like British type 26 City class.
Back in the 1970s or early 1980s, only the West and the USSR could make compact turbojet engines (PRC was building Termit variants with rocket propulsion) but when the Soviet designers wanted to put effective guidance system on them the result was huge and expensive (Soviet computers were the largest in the world, as the local would say), only warranting large surface combatants as targets.
Nowadays both small turbofans and compact active radar guidance with smart programmed target selection is, well, 1980s tech available to literally every country building their naval ships, and subsonic ASMs with them cost very little compared to a ship
Still feels a bit meaningless though it’s at least a metric to work with those says nothing about the role of the ship and has the issue of frigates like the type 26 which are vastly different in the ASW capability’s to something like a constellation, Mogami or stuff like that
If they have just enough to deal with them why are they meant to be hunting subs?
Not meaning it as an insult to your answer as said in another reply I think the entire naming scheme has gone so far out of any usable metric that any name is basically useless at this point
Yes you are absolutely right.
Old books and names are useless, historical like dragoons and nobody is talking about it.
Type 26 City class Anti Submarine Warfare frigate build from scratch to be antisubmarine focused with quiet hull quiet propulsion optimised for slow stalking etc has so many vls and radar so good because it needs these to have a fighting chance of fending of cornered Oskar or Severodvinsk class missile salvo with CAMM spam counterfire.
Eh 24 MK41 and 48 CAMM cells doesn’t inspire massive confidence unless the UK adopts whatever comes out of the CAMM-MR program (I have so much copium invested in that program)
24 MK41 and 48 CAMM is a pretty sizeable loadout for a frigate. It's also not like the Russians are known for their surface fleet and most land based anti ship missiles aren't going to be in range of type 26 patrolling the GIUK gap or north sea, whereas any air launched anti ship missiles are also going to mean putting a lot of very expensive air assets at risk flying that deep into NATO territory.
I mean it’s a decent amount but type 26 is fairly big and the design could definitely physically accommodate 48 VLS cells up front replacing the CAMM cells with I imagine some design changes to handle the weight in that area
So just define it for yourself. Destroyer is a large multi role surface combatant. Frigate is primarily ASW with secondary surface and land attack capability.
French navy like all other navies knows that first and foremost you need to be an Air defence frigate to have a fighting chance against any russian hunter killer submarine antiship missile salvo.
If you cannot do that you need at all times to be within shouting distance from a minimum (yup, that is right) Air defence frigate.
Seems to be a general problem with US military procurement. Every plane has to be a fighter, bomber, AWACS, UAV, operate from continental and forward bases, carriers and LSDs. Every gun has to be a squad machine gun, a sniper rifle, grenade launcher and carbine. Every ship has to do ASW, anti-surface, air defense, naval bombardment, operate in carrier strike groups and alone, in brown, green and blue waters.
The idea is that, by making one system fill every role, you save money. But in reality, you just get a chimera that's usually way over-designed for most of the intended roles and you have to buy a potential AEGIS-cruiser for its mine-clearing capabilities.
See it makes sense like this:
Nobody really knows where we're fighting next, or what the meta will be. No one wants to bet it all on Battleships and dick measuring, only for carriers to be it again. Given the extreme scope of the USN, this is especially bad.
We know there'll be subs, destroyers, missiles, we know radar and advanced targeting is going to be used.
At this point there's so many ways to sink a boat it's almost comical.
Well that could be done but not on a size or displacement that allows the smaller shipyards to actually build the things the burks are the size they are for a reason
It reminds me of the early Age of Sail when you had a whole bunch of different ship types that all theoretically had different designs and roles but were used interchangeably. I wonder if something like the RN rating system 2 electric boogaloo will also come out of it as a similar "fix".
Maybe that was during a time period of basically only 2 ways to fight so it all became about the different scale of ships and in some ways where they could go and fight effectively
Im not sure if such a thing could be done nowadays though it might fit a bit better the trying to use design names which have quite specific uses for their design but now are completely different
Big Navy wants a Burke with 60% the manning requirements. NAVSEA says that's not really feasible. The Flags agree. Then the good idea fairy a perfectly servicable frigate into cancelation.
all the navy wants is a ship half the size of a burke with exactly the same survivability and armament and capability as a burke. is that really too much to ask for?
Hon.\nEstly, that would probably be the best option.Just because the japanese tend to use a lot of american systems and their indigenous build systems are actually pretty solid
We want an off the shelf design but it needs to have <5% part and system commonality with the off the shelf design. This isn't difficult, it's just a bespoke off the shelf design. Oh and it needs to be half the cost and built in the past. Why is this so hard?
And we need to cut the red tape and buy ships from nations that haven’t forgotten how to build them. France, Italy, South Korea, Japan. We need to outsource to all of them.
Per Drachinifel's destroyer development series, trying to stick everything under (as well as a portion of) the sun onto a small surface combatant had been USN pastime between ww1 and ww2, we're just in the middle of spec writers taking inspiration from good old days.
There's a particularly ridiculous conspiracy theory thing that goes around about the Navy operating a secret space program (one of like, a dozen just counting the humans) with interplanetary travel and warp drives and shit called SOLAR WARDEN. I've heard three ship names associated with it: USS Arnold Sommerfeld, USS Hillenkoetter, and the one that completely blows up any possible suspension of disbelief, USS Curtis E. LeMay. Hillenkoetter was at least an Admiral before becoming CIA director, Sommerfeld was a physicist with a whole Wikipedia list of things named after him and worked with every big name in 20th century physics, but it'll be a cold day in hell before the Navy names something after a Strategic Air Command general.
Oh, this is a whole allegedly-real megaconspiracy thing. It's got Mars colonies, time-traveling psychic supersoldiers, a "sixth through ninth density Sphere Being Alliance", space Nazis, Blue Avians, ancient human breakaway civilizations...total rabbit hole of crazy.
One of the "wide range of missions" is battle group ASW escort, which typically means running ahead of the battle group. Sonars can't hear at high speeds so you have to alternate between sprinting and listening.
~30 kts is more like the industry standard, except that LCS actually went for the absurd target of 40+ kn (in reality, up to 45-47 kn) with more SHP than a ~8000 tons Burke, which contributes to a lot of problem with the program. The Saudi took notes of this and drop the spec back to around 30 kn for their version of the Freedom Class
one of the 2 Zumwalt classes(because the Zumwalt class was actually 2 different ships) attempted to achieve the absurd speed requirement using a really complex but powerful diesel-electric system and the end result was a ship that couldn't achieve 20 knots because one part or another of the engine was always broken and could only fixed by civilian subcontractors back in port. this caused the other Zumwalt to be favoured more despite the other Zumwalt having issues with cracks forming in the hull within the first 6 months of service.
edit: crap I got mixed up with the two LCS classes, my apologies
While you are kinda right about there being 2 Zumwalts, both DD(X) (what actually became the Zumwalts) and CG(X) (canceled before any ships made) were supposed to be based on the same hull. What you are describing however, are the LCS. The Freedom class was the one with the super complex engine issues, I believe it was specifically the gearbox combining them that was the part constantly breaking down. The Independence class was the one suffering from hull cracking issues.
It’s all fun and games until your hear the nonsense some of the shit big coast guard talks about.
Let’s just say ive heard more than once about wanting nuke powered assets mostly around the ice breaker class but still
The last thing the government needs to give us is a god damn nuke. I promise you my Aux department would be trying to see how close we could get to the thing before we started to feel funny
I can’t even get people to understand why we require rounds in spaces that have raw water being pumped through it 24/7. They just think nothing bad will happen
The fact that our whole fleet isn't nuclear powered demonstrates a shameful lack of commitment. All ships in the formation should be capable of 80 knots.
The base Legend-class cutter still displaces more than the Perry-class frigate, and its probably gonna get heavier as a frigate. And yet with presumably only 16 VLS cells its gonna carry way less Standard missiles than the Perry.
And with 16 VLS cells while the Alvaro De Bazans at almost half the displacement get 48. Luckily it's just for low intensity combat while our previous low intensity combat frigates the F125s are too underarmed to fight even the houthis.
It's for ASW and has two RAM launchers in addition to the 16 VLS cells. That's more than enough for self defense.
The actual air defence frigates are the class coming after it with 96 VLS cells (and two RAM launchers). The German navy is also procuring arsenal ships to balance out any other restrictions in magazine depth.
It does not have a hull sonar and a towed sonar is just a possible mission module (if that ever materializes before the whole project is cancelled), that does not exactly scream ASW to me. With the "new" threat levels it is maybe what the F125 should have been, but certainly not a main surface combatant. Low-medium intensity conflicts are certainly way more frequently mentioned in documents and texts about the ships than ASW is. AFAIK the VLS cells are also the compact variant, so ESSM only, nothing with longer range.
This isn't the 1960s or 70s anymore, hull sonar is useless against even semi modern submarines. It will have a towed sonar and multiple ASW helicopters. And the only things strike length VLS cells would enable are Tomahawk, SM-3 and SM-6, none of which are needed.
Because Germany has a very unique way of building frigates, on account of having very unique demands when it comes to the navy. Those ships are specialized to the point where the list of nations that would do well using them is very short.
I don’t see why we couldn’t modify the Burke design to be of similar size to the Tico’s and borrow some design elements from the Ford class of carriers. But bureaucracy, corruption, and stagnation really screws everything.
I chose the Burke class because we are still producing
them and the parts should still be available. The US navy has a lack of multicellular missile launchers especially compared to the PLAN.
So a ship with a large enough power plant to affix as many anti missile defenses as needed with spare power for possible future upgrades.
I also chose to mention the Tico’s because they were designed with large missile magazines and once the navy either has to retire them or they get sunk the navy will no longer have as much missile firing capacity unless somehow the shipyards can spit out 50-75 Burkes within the next 5 years.
I believe the DDG(X) hull is heavily based on the zumwalt, and is for all intents and purposes a cruiser if you consider its displacement and the fact that it's being billed as a Tico replacement.
But this is USN procurement we're talking about so I'm sure the first one will enter service briskly in 2069.
Because the issue isn’t the big surface combatants those are relatively fine
What’s needed is small stuff so that you aren’t sending a burk to literally everting plus a lot of the shipyards capacity for America can’t build something on the scale of the burks they need something smaller which you know important if America is looking to match the shipbuilding capacity of the Chinese
Issue is... even the yards that do build burks are struggling with manpower. Its not just the USN being dumb and fucking over designs thats the problem. US shipbuilding itself is giga fucked.
Because more flavors of Burke would probably make the entire maintenance structure leave in mass.
What we are seeing is decades of technical debt and personel loss from the end of cold war. The Tico (and therefore Burke) powerplant and drive line are updated 1980s state of the art on massaged 1960s hull forms.
What the USN really needs is a unified modern powerplant and drive line solution, but good luck getting anyone O6/Gs-15 and up to agree on what that should look like...
Don't tell the Americans that the Europeans have a larger surface fleet than US Navy and the Europeans haven't even started building up their navies like we have to start protecting the trade route to Asia with European warships.
Honestly, why not. If it needs to be interoperable, it might as well actually be interoperable with the american fleet than another heavily modified fremm clone. They basically want to use it as a more offensive cutter anyways, and the coasty boat actually exists.
Why don't they just get the Type 26 frigate? It has more VLS and is used by a navy with similar requirements, and probably the only reason it wasn't the Constellation-class' hull was because it wasn't ready at the time, which it is now.
It wasnt built yet meaning it couldnt meet the "proven" design requirement. An American Type 26 would face the same problems anyway just look at the Australian Hunter Class. Delayed to 2034 due to design kinks/changes. Added 32 VLS and a massive radar really good for the large Pacific waters.
IRRC, the problem with Fremm is that it would either have to be built in Europe, which contradicts explicit U.S. goals to restore U.S. ship building capabilities, or it would go to larger us shipyards, which already have work, with projects like the constellation class aiming to give work to smaller scale yards.
I don’t know naval procurement that well though, could be wrong
Ok here’s the bit I don’t understand: if the USN is still going to build two of them - presumably meaning that they will have to complete the design work (the problematically expensive part) anyway - then surely it would make sense just to continue the constellation class? Unless they are planning to massively drop the spec on those two (to what I can only imagine is a similar spec to an up-gunned NSC)?
USN is going to do a surprised Pikachu face when they are at war with China, and the only strategic option they have is to sail the main carrier force right next to Chinese cost to force a decisive battle. They'll have to do it because without frigates any strategy that is more complex will make USN to divide their forces too much since destroyers will have to be allocated for escort duties.
Ah, I remember that one of the modifications that ruined Constellation program was thinking it had not enough VLS cells. And installing more would require making a lot more space in the ship, rearrange a ton of different pipes and modules. The shipyard was receiving 3 changes per day and driven to the brink of insanity... I mean... aren't frigates supposed to be used for menial tasks? It shouldn't be doing the work of destroyers.
Part of issue with that is nobody knows what are the different roles anymore
What is a corvette vs a frigate vs a destroyer so you don’t have clear markers of what each is meant to do so it all gets really fuzzy
Even less helped that the navy itself seem to have no actual clue about what they actually want and definitely don’t have the discipline to not let good idea fairy screw it all up
They've gotten used to only having Burkes on hand for any given task.
It's like someone who has only ever used a lump hammer being asked to buy a ball-pein hammer and coming back from the shop with a disturbingly large claw hammer. Or something.
Using Burkes for everything introduces a lot of additional costs. The whole point of the constellation program is to build a new frigate cheaply and quickly, but all those modifications made it expensive and overdue.
im bummed the Zumwalt didn't work out, was really looking forward to railguns
They still could have just put Burke weapons on a Zumwatt hull to make a Burke replacement because the hull worked, but USN being USN cancelled the whole program
But rail guns….
I mean the AGS worked seemingly as well it just required a lot of ships to make it in anyway cost effective the mistake was going for such a high capability system that it was physically impossible to have it use anything but the most unique expensive ammo (also seemingly not designing any kind of AA ammunition which to make makes more sense for a long range gun like this)
Well the problem was that they didn't need 30+ 20k tonnes coast bombardment cruiser. USN has needed a Burke replacement since back then tho
omg we're literally becoming the GCW-era Galactic Empire. "Of course we decided to use 3 destroyers for search and recovery in the middle of nowhere. What else would you send? There's like a million of them just laying around."
Well as a german the answer is easy. They are all frigates. See no problem anymore.
Genius German efficiency wins again
Why is your frigate launching planes?
Uh aktually the F-35B uses a fan to lift into the air it is a helicopter
Nippon logic
2+4 treaties forbade us from building aircraft carriers. They never said anything about flight deck frigates, though...
It’s not a carrier, it’s just a very large frigate with a completely flat deck and the superstructure is all on the starboard side.
Why would it not, given its flight-decks?
The Neo Imperial Japanese Nav...er Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces classifies these as destroyers. Makes sense. /s
Yeah that’s true, back in the day a destroyer is a small fast ship designed for fleet and torpedo work ~ 1500 tons, a torpedo boat is a significantly cut down destroyer >900 tons, an escort destroyer is a cheap destroyer limited for convoy work, often slower, ~1200 tons, a sloop is a ship the same size and capability but with a civilian engine to increase range, decrease cost, and adhere to treaties, “not designed” for more than 21 knots, a frigate is a sloop built to civilian standards, ~1200, and a corvette is the cheapest possible ship to do the sloop’s job >1000 tons, usually one propellor. With a few exceptions these all have good reasonable definitions and a degree of limit on feature creep (though it did happen) it’s only significantly into the cold war that issues show up
Yea it all got vary strange not helped by the USN in the early Cold War deciding to call stuff frigates form what I can tell was just nostalgia then switching name to destroyer leaders then cruisers and making a mess of the entire naming scheme (then they made LCS which is a stupid term no matter)
While outside US you got the more British frigate Idea I’ll call it of the low cost escort ship then being mixed with the idea of the destroyer becoming your back pocket cruiser (lineage from the tribals and darings) to go and do your more serious showing the flag/diplomatic missions
Then with smaller fleet sizes you need ships to be able to do simply more stuff which in any realistic scenario will result in a bigger ship overall then a need to be able to actually get out there and cover all the areas needed require bigger as well
And now you have a situation where destroyer/frigates are doing traditional cruiser missions while being the size of a treaty era cruiser and it’s all just weird messing up the names with the names at this point feeling both detached from any sense of size/form or usage
Thing is that you can make it work quite well for 99% of situations. It's basically what the Dutch navy has been doing since the early 1900, especially regarding subs.
The thing is that you still need several sub-categories regarding the frigates where they shine in one goal.
And we know the USN can do this, because they ended up building the America class this way. Some of them have a well deck and emphasize amphibious assault, some have no well deck and a larger hangar to emphasize sea control and strike missions. Sure it was accidental, and it reduces flexibility, but you know what's less flexible? No ship.
Government agencies like 3-letter acronyms way too much where sometimes one word could do (and the corporate world as well)
SOP, DDX, FFG, BMX, FBI, DOD, AFO, ATO, NSA, KPI, OPE, CTO, ATF...
Almost. "Torpedo boats" were first, "Torpedo boat destroyers" were a specific to counter to them so instead of "torpedo boat is a significantly cut down destroyer", "destroyer is a significantly beefed up torpedo boat" is more apt.
I’m pulling the numbers from the 1940’s, at that point torpedo boats are just small destroyers while motor torpedo boats are speedboats with torpedoes. Had I been pulling from the 1910’s I would have worded things differently
Can you provide a reference for "a torpedo boat is a significantly cut down destroyer >900 tons"? I would like to learn more as I am not familiar with them.
The most famous of the ship classes was the Italian spica class and its successors, the ships of the type were generally armed like a destroyer except with the guns shrunk (4 inch ish) and they usually weren’t big enough for as many torpedoes as a torpedo heavy fleet destroyer, in the case of the spica’s it was a single quad mount. I don’t believe the Americans or British built any similar ships (unless you want to count the hunt subclass with like two torpedoes total but I wouldn’t) and I’ve no idea on the French or the japenese but I know the Germans did have ships they called torpedo boats but I’m not sure they fit either the loose definition I offered here nor the one in the London naval treaties as the Germans tended to make overweight ships
The Spica is certainly an interesting ship class and fits your definition of a cut down destroyer but it seems like the exception, not the rule. As you say yourself it does not seem like other naval powers like the US, UK, or Germany built anything like it.
Those three countries all coalesce around torpedo boats as small, fast attack craft with torpedoes as their primary armament. Famous examples include the US PT boats, German Schnellboot, and UK MTB.
Using the Spica to generalize and define all torpedo boats is like saying a destroyer is a cut down aircraft carrier and citing the JMSDF Izumo class as an example.
A, I do mention that the Germans also build the ships, B; it’s a term I am pulling from the London naval treaty but I stretched it, bumping up the tonnage a bit, C; I specifically mention that motor torpedo boats are different.
Easy Frigate is a warship sized equipped and armed just barely enough to have a chance to find sink and survive counterfire from russian hunter killer nuclear submarine if it stumbles upon one.
Problem is that role now requires an vastly more effective air defense suite to protect against anti-ship missiles than it did in the 70s or early 80s. You could get away with an "ASW only" frigate back in the day in a way you really can't anymore. The price of admission has simply gone up.
Yes. It takes over a dozen VLS and a decently sized ship to contain it on top of lighter air/missile defence missiles, CIWS, obviously sensors and other stuff to defend against one rudsian submarine antiship missile salvo. Either you have it or that ship is going down within 15 minutes of a hot war. Yes You need to be air defence frigate to do ASW stuff and be ASW frigate in this economy, even if build from scratch to be quiet hull optimised for ASW frigate like British type 26 City class.
Yep.
You aren't going to "hedgehog" a modern sub.
You're barely going to be able to OTS torpedo one.
ASW is a standoff mission, but one that needs AAW coverage to complete.
Back in the 1970s or early 1980s, only the West and the USSR could make compact turbojet engines (PRC was building Termit variants with rocket propulsion) but when the Soviet designers wanted to put effective guidance system on them the result was huge and expensive (Soviet computers were the largest in the world, as the local would say), only warranting large surface combatants as targets.
Nowadays both small turbofans and compact active radar guidance with smart programmed target selection is, well, 1980s tech available to literally every country building their naval ships, and subsonic ASMs with them cost very little compared to a ship
Hear me out, remote controlled, low-material cost ships. Is they sink? They sink. Big woop.
Still feels a bit meaningless though it’s at least a metric to work with those says nothing about the role of the ship and has the issue of frigates like the type 26 which are vastly different in the ASW capability’s to something like a constellation, Mogami or stuff like that
If they have just enough to deal with them why are they meant to be hunting subs?
Not meaning it as an insult to your answer as said in another reply I think the entire naming scheme has gone so far out of any usable metric that any name is basically useless at this point
Yes you are absolutely right. Old books and names are useless, historical like dragoons and nobody is talking about it. Type 26 City class Anti Submarine Warfare frigate build from scratch to be antisubmarine focused with quiet hull quiet propulsion optimised for slow stalking etc has so many vls and radar so good because it needs these to have a fighting chance of fending of cornered Oskar or Severodvinsk class missile salvo with CAMM spam counterfire.
Eh 24 MK41 and 48 CAMM cells doesn’t inspire massive confidence unless the UK adopts whatever comes out of the CAMM-MR program (I have so much copium invested in that program)
24 MK41 and 48 CAMM is a pretty sizeable loadout for a frigate. It's also not like the Russians are known for their surface fleet and most land based anti ship missiles aren't going to be in range of type 26 patrolling the GIUK gap or north sea, whereas any air launched anti ship missiles are also going to mean putting a lot of very expensive air assets at risk flying that deep into NATO territory.
I mean it’s a decent amount but type 26 is fairly big and the design could definitely physically accommodate 48 VLS cells up front replacing the CAMM cells with I imagine some design changes to handle the weight in that area
It’s not bad but not what the design could of had
So just define it for yourself. Destroyer is a large multi role surface combatant. Frigate is primarily ASW with secondary surface and land attack capability.
Other navies manage the split in classification.
In some navies, a frigate can also be mostly an air-defence ship like in the French navy.
Everything is a frigate for France, they don't call any of their surface combatants destroyers.
French navy like all other navies knows that first and foremost you need to be an Air defence frigate to have a fighting chance against any russian hunter killer submarine antiship missile salvo. If you cannot do that you need at all times to be within shouting distance from a minimum (yup, that is right) Air defence frigate.
Seems to be a general problem with US military procurement. Every plane has to be a fighter, bomber, AWACS, UAV, operate from continental and forward bases, carriers and LSDs. Every gun has to be a squad machine gun, a sniper rifle, grenade launcher and carbine. Every ship has to do ASW, anti-surface, air defense, naval bombardment, operate in carrier strike groups and alone, in brown, green and blue waters.
The idea is that, by making one system fill every role, you save money. But in reality, you just get a chimera that's usually way over-designed for most of the intended roles and you have to buy a potential AEGIS-cruiser for its mine-clearing capabilities.
especially stupid when the USN is one of the few navies in the world that has more than enough money to invest in more specialised roles.
See it makes sense like this: Nobody really knows where we're fighting next, or what the meta will be. No one wants to bet it all on Battleships and dick measuring, only for carriers to be it again. Given the extreme scope of the USN, this is especially bad.
We know there'll be subs, destroyers, missiles, we know radar and advanced targeting is going to be used.
At this point there's so many ways to sink a boat it's almost comical.
The navy basically just wants Arleigh-Burke 2, but knows Congress won’t let them so they need to label it something else.
Well that could be done but not on a size or displacement that allows the smaller shipyards to actually build the things the burks are the size they are for a reason
It reminds me of the early Age of Sail when you had a whole bunch of different ship types that all theoretically had different designs and roles but were used interchangeably. I wonder if something like the RN rating system 2 electric boogaloo will also come out of it as a similar "fix".
Maybe that was during a time period of basically only 2 ways to fight so it all became about the different scale of ships and in some ways where they could go and fight effectively
Im not sure if such a thing could be done nowadays though it might fit a bit better the trying to use design names which have quite specific uses for their design but now are completely different
Big Navy wants a Burke with 60% the manning requirements. NAVSEA says that's not really feasible. The Flags agree. Then the good idea fairy a perfectly servicable frigate into cancelation.
Agile software development applied to shipbuilding. What could go wrong?
Hotfix is just welding innit?
"Hey let's change the engine. It's just like an LS swap, right?"
Applying it to maintenance as well?
all the navy wants is a ship half the size of a burke with exactly the same survivability and armament and capability as a burke. is that really too much to ask for?
No, it's not, so they also want it cheap.
And 20 built yesterday.
"What? A frigate shouldn't have a displacement of 11,000 tons and have 92 VLS cells?" -German Naval Procurement Office
Indecisive clients drive me up the fucking wall. Those poor designers and builders.
Right but they are trying to cram as much into those things as they can.
Right now, the navy needs hulls in the water right now.Because we have nothing suitable for an intermediary between the burke and no bost
This is the answer.
something akin to the Mogami would be perfect
Hon.\nEstly, that would probably be the best option.Just because the japanese tend to use a lot of american systems and their indigenous build systems are actually pretty solid
Can we fit a bunch more modifications to it, though?
We want an off the shelf design but it needs to have <5% part and system commonality with the off the shelf design. This isn't difficult, it's just a bespoke off the shelf design. Oh and it needs to be half the cost and built in the past. Why is this so hard?
Just rename it the "Waifu Class"... US Sailors would be signing up in droves to be on it. Western Asian Improved Frigate Upgrade.
So they could have built an unaltered FREMM.
Everyone one of those hulls will need logistics maintenance fuel etc and they are shit. These are going to drain your money for fuck all benefit.
Could have simply finished the constellation class, mandating no more changes
And we need to cut the red tape and buy ships from nations that haven’t forgotten how to build them. France, Italy, South Korea, Japan. We need to outsource to all of them.
They're doing the reverse of what the PLAN have done with the Type 054A being converted to a coast guard cutter
It's because of the bonkers requirement for the frigates to keep up with a nuclear aircraft carrier going full whack in the Pacific.
Those mfs go "in excess of 30 knots".
That then compromises either armour or armament as you need to keep the weight manageable to maintain the bonkers speed requirement.
Hence LCS and FREMM.
Agreed, bonkers is the correct term for it.
In their own words:
If they want them to be where the big ships aren't why is it so important that they must always be able to be where the big ships are?
Per Drachinifel's destroyer development series, trying to stick everything under (as well as a portion of) the sun onto a small surface combatant had been USN pastime between ww1 and ww2, we're just in the middle of spec writers taking inspiration from good old days.
Just one more spec bro!
99% of botched programs stop one requirement revision away from success or something.
It always seems to curve back to "time for a new flight of Burkes" rather than actually building something new.
At this rate the US Navy's first space combatant will be a Burke with rockets strapped to it.
There's a particularly ridiculous conspiracy theory thing that goes around about the Navy operating a secret space program (one of like, a dozen just counting the humans) with interplanetary travel and warp drives and shit called SOLAR WARDEN. I've heard three ship names associated with it: USS Arnold Sommerfeld, USS Hillenkoetter, and the one that completely blows up any possible suspension of disbelief, USS Curtis E. LeMay. Hillenkoetter was at least an Admiral before becoming CIA director, Sommerfeld was a physicist with a whole Wikipedia list of things named after him and worked with every big name in 20th century physics, but it'll be a cold day in hell before the Navy names something after a Strategic Air Command general.
There is a SciFi book series by that title about a secret alien-fighting branch of the US military.
Oh, this is a whole allegedly-real megaconspiracy thing. It's got Mars colonies, time-traveling psychic supersoldiers, a "sixth through ninth density Sphere Being Alliance", space Nazis, Blue Avians, ancient human breakaway civilizations...total rabbit hole of crazy.
Actually sounds kinda funny
One of the "wide range of missions" is battle group ASW escort, which typically means running ahead of the battle group. Sonars can't hear at high speeds so you have to alternate between sprinting and listening.
~30 kts is more like the industry standard, except that LCS actually went for the absurd target of 40+ kn (in reality, up to 45-47 kn) with more SHP than a ~8000 tons Burke, which contributes to a lot of problem with the program. The Saudi took notes of this and drop the spec back to around 30 kn for their version of the Freedom Class
Who would have guessed the LCS would absolutely drink through their fuel supply at 40+ kn?
Eh as my physics teacher used to say "You may ignore friction"
You mean 30 kilotons, right?
30 kilotons of thrust it is
NAVAL ORION DRIVE SUPREMACY!
If we cant outrun the Shimakaze (41 kts) from the 40s, what is even the point
Laughs in Le Terrible (45 kts)
one of the 2 Zumwalt classes(because the Zumwalt class was actually 2 different ships) attempted to achieve the absurd speed requirement using a really complex but powerful diesel-electric system and the end result was a ship that couldn't achieve 20 knots because one part or another of the engine was always broken and could only fixed by civilian subcontractors back in port. this caused the other Zumwalt to be favoured more despite the other Zumwalt having issues with cracks forming in the hull within the first 6 months of service.
edit: crap I got mixed up with the two LCS classes, my apologies
Zumwalt? Are you talking about the Freedom and Independence class LCS?
100% sounds like LCS debacle
While you are kinda right about there being 2 Zumwalts, both DD(X) (what actually became the Zumwalts) and CG(X) (canceled before any ships made) were supposed to be based on the same hull. What you are describing however, are the LCS. The Freedom class was the one with the super complex engine issues, I believe it was specifically the gearbox combining them that was the part constantly breaking down. The Independence class was the one suffering from hull cracking issues.
shit you're right, theres so many USN fuckups I get em confused with each other.
the solution is nuclear frigates then ;)
No, the frigate being towed by the carrier
“Bridge, tow watch”
“Tow watch, bridge, go ahead”
“Ya uhh…bridge, tow watch, line is 6 o’clock, HEAVY. FUCKING. STRAIN!!!
No, the air force needs giant blimps that carries frigates for the navy.
So, a nuclear Piasecki PA-97 Helistat?
Doesn't need to be nuclear, just find a way to convert the entire US navy's fury at having the air force carry their ships around for them.
Prydwen
ASW stealth blimps
Based
Just turn the frigate into a towed sonar so the carrier can have ASW
Or replace every ship in the CSG with another Gerald R Ford and fill 2 of them with helicopters instead.
Easy and cheap solution to the Pacific issue.
It’s all fun and games until your hear the nonsense some of the shit big coast guard talks about.
Let’s just say ive heard more than once about wanting nuke powered assets mostly around the ice breaker class but still
The last thing the government needs to give us is a god damn nuke. I promise you my Aux department would be trying to see how close we could get to the thing before we started to feel funny
I can’t even get people to understand why we require rounds in spaces that have raw water being pumped through it 24/7. They just think nothing bad will happen
Honestly, I think the coast guard should have nuclear ice breakers. Russia has eight of them. We cannot allow a nuclear ice breaker gap !
I mean, isn't that pretty much A Gang on any ship
We’re a different breed for sure
We should put wings and nuclear powered turbofans on the frigates then, and we can have an aerial fleet
The fact that our whole fleet isn't nuclear powered demonstrates a shameful lack of commitment. All ships in the formation should be capable of 80 knots.
sounds like we need nuclear powered frigates
Not sure if this is a hot take or not
But the differences between the constellation and FFX sounds like the constellation is a “heavy” frigate and the ffx is a “light” frigate
Excellent point.
Constellation as a heavy frigate? Just as the founding fathers intended.
The base Legend-class cutter still displaces more than the Perry-class frigate, and its probably gonna get heavier as a frigate. And yet with presumably only 16 VLS cells its gonna carry way less Standard missiles than the Perry.
Could they try making it of aluminum or would that put us back where we started?
I don't think the Navy has any more appetite for ships that crack at Sea State 5.
Why not ask the Germans for help? I thought frigates were their kind of thing
Yes, our next one is gonna be 11.000t in displacement. We make the largest small surface combatants in the world.
That's one frigate for the price of two, perfect!
German efficiency.
They should make it a catamaran and let it undock the two hulls from each other. Two frigates in one!
And with 16 VLS cells while the Alvaro De Bazans at almost half the displacement get 48. Luckily it's just for low intensity combat while our previous low intensity combat frigates the F125s are too underarmed to fight even the houthis.
It's for ASW and has two RAM launchers in addition to the 16 VLS cells. That's more than enough for self defense.
The actual air defence frigates are the class coming after it with 96 VLS cells (and two RAM launchers). The German navy is also procuring arsenal ships to balance out any other restrictions in magazine depth.
It does not have a hull sonar and a towed sonar is just a possible mission module (if that ever materializes before the whole project is cancelled), that does not exactly scream ASW to me. With the "new" threat levels it is maybe what the F125 should have been, but certainly not a main surface combatant. Low-medium intensity conflicts are certainly way more frequently mentioned in documents and texts about the ships than ASW is. AFAIK the VLS cells are also the compact variant, so ESSM only, nothing with longer range.
This isn't the 1960s or 70s anymore, hull sonar is useless against even semi modern submarines. It will have a towed sonar and multiple ASW helicopters. And the only things strike length VLS cells would enable are Tomahawk, SM-3 and SM-6, none of which are needed.
I guess all those East German electronics developers became naval engineers after reunification.
I’d say ask the South Koreans.
Because Germany has a very unique way of building frigates, on account of having very unique demands when it comes to the navy. Those ships are specialized to the point where the list of nations that would do well using them is very short.
May as well call it the Cancellation class at this point
Time for the return of the escort carrier?
Clearly it should be all Iowa hulls with different weapon configurations. Good luck not having enough VLS on all that real estate.
Smh if they want more VLS cells just fill a cargo ship with them and then have a bunch of smallish actual navy ships for your scouting
I don’t see why we couldn’t modify the Burke design to be of similar size to the Tico’s and borrow some design elements from the Ford class of carriers. But bureaucracy, corruption, and stagnation really screws everything.
I chose the Burke class because we are still producing them and the parts should still be available. The US navy has a lack of multicellular missile launchers especially compared to the PLAN.
So a ship with a large enough power plant to affix as many anti missile defenses as needed with spare power for possible future upgrades.
I also chose to mention the Tico’s because they were designed with large missile magazines and once the navy either has to retire them or they get sunk the navy will no longer have as much missile firing capacity unless somehow the shipyards can spit out 50-75 Burkes within the next 5 years.
That’s a cruiser bud, we want small boat, not bigger boat.
Besides, the zumwalt is a great hull for a cruiser. If we needed more cruisers, we should just build more zumwalts and call them cruisers.
I believe the DDG(X) hull is heavily based on the zumwalt, and is for all intents and purposes a cruiser if you consider its displacement and the fact that it's being billed as a Tico replacement.
But this is USN procurement we're talking about so I'm sure the first one will enter service briskly in 2069.
there were plans to first build zumwalts with guns as fire support and later as missle cruisers but guns didn't work so everything got cancelled
Because the issue isn’t the big surface combatants those are relatively fine
What’s needed is small stuff so that you aren’t sending a burk to literally everting plus a lot of the shipyards capacity for America can’t build something on the scale of the burks they need something smaller which you know important if America is looking to match the shipbuilding capacity of the Chinese
But China couldn't build a huge navy if the Untied Spades just ordered 5000 destroyer hulls from their shipyards
They're tied up with our orders, we're saving money, and there's still ample room for domestic fuck-ups when it comes to the weapon systems
Unless you're automating the living shit out of your destroyer, how are you manning those?
The entire US Navy, including the reserve, would serve aboard a ship
As God intended it
Sounds like a very current admin solution.
Issue is... even the yards that do build burks are struggling with manpower. Its not just the USN being dumb and fucking over designs thats the problem. US shipbuilding itself is giga fucked.
Do you want a bigger Burke, as a frigate? Are you German by chance?
Destroyer? Cruiser? Battleship? I only know Fregatten.
Because more flavors of Burke would probably make the entire maintenance structure leave in mass.
What we are seeing is decades of technical debt and personel loss from the end of cold war. The Tico (and therefore Burke) powerplant and drive line are updated 1980s state of the art on massaged 1960s hull forms.
What the USN really needs is a unified modern powerplant and drive line solution, but good luck getting anyone O6/Gs-15 and up to agree on what that should look like...
Why is America so stupid?
Because the good idea fairy has to attack every project
Decades of complacency, corruption, and MBA culture throughout our industrial and political leadership
Don't tell the Americans that the Europeans have a larger surface fleet than US Navy and the Europeans haven't even started building up their navies like we have to start protecting the trade route to Asia with European warships.
I mean... You're talking about combining what, the next five largest navies into one?
I mean... Yeah. That would be bigger.
Honestly, why not. If it needs to be interoperable, it might as well actually be interoperable with the american fleet than another heavily modified fremm clone. They basically want to use it as a more offensive cutter anyways, and the coasty boat actually exists.
one must imagine INDOPACOM happy
Why don't they just get the Type 26 frigate? It has more VLS and is used by a navy with similar requirements, and probably the only reason it wasn't the Constellation-class' hull was because it wasn't ready at the time, which it is now.
It wasnt built yet meaning it couldnt meet the "proven" design requirement. An American Type 26 would face the same problems anyway just look at the Australian Hunter Class. Delayed to 2034 due to design kinks/changes. Added 32 VLS and a massive radar really good for the large Pacific waters.
IRRC, the problem with Fremm is that it would either have to be built in Europe, which contradicts explicit U.S. goals to restore U.S. ship building capabilities, or it would go to larger us shipyards, which already have work, with projects like the constellation class aiming to give work to smaller scale yards.
I don’t know naval procurement that well though, could be wrong
NAVSEA is currently the greatest adversary of the US Navy change my mind
Ok here’s the bit I don’t understand: if the USN is still going to build two of them - presumably meaning that they will have to complete the design work (the problematically expensive part) anyway - then surely it would make sense just to continue the constellation class? Unless they are planning to massively drop the spec on those two (to what I can only imagine is a similar spec to an up-gunned NSC)?
USN is going to do a surprised Pikachu face when they are at war with China, and the only strategic option they have is to sail the main carrier force right next to Chinese cost to force a decisive battle. They'll have to do it because without frigates any strategy that is more complex will make USN to divide their forces too much since destroyers will have to be allocated for escort duties.