Your point about requirements discipline resonates strongly with me. I find myself thinking back to my undergraduate dissertation — written when the Oliver Hazard Perry class was still new, which tells you something about how long I’ve been turning these questions over — in which I examined naval procurement through the lens of strategy and the military-industrial complex. What stayed with me then, and remains with me now, is how rarely the failure lies in engineering capability and how often it lies in organisational discipline at the requirements stage. A lot seems to have changed and not in a good way since that time.
The Constellation class is an instructive case in point. Without wishing to be uncharitable to the decision-makers involved, the procurement narrative reads less like rigorous capability definition and more like the exercise of an unconstrained wish list — each stakeholder adding incremental requirements without a sufficiently robust mechanism to challenge, validate, or refuse them. I’ve spent time teaching project management to engineers from a commercial perspective, and the principle I return to most consistently is deceptively simple: identify your customer requirements, validate them ruthlessly, and then hold the line. Not because engineers don’t know best in their domain, but because without that discipline the brief expands, timelines stretch, and budgets collapse — and the platform that eventually emerges bears only a passing resemblance to what operational need actually demanded.
The LCS story follows a similar arc. The underlying concept had genuine intellectual coherence and operational promise. But promise without constraint is not a programme — it’s an aspiration. The discipline of understanding purpose, validating requirements, and respecting budget envelopes isn’t a bureaucratic formality; it is the engineering and strategic process. Strip it out and you don’t just get cost overruns. You get ships that don’t fully serve the people who sail them. That, to my mind, is where these failures become more than financial — they become a failure of duty to the crews who operate whatever compromised platform eventually reaches the fleet.
I think you’re exactly right on where the real issue sits. It isn’t about whether we can build something. It’s once we decide what to build, can we have the discipline to hold to it. That’s the hard part, and it’s where things tend to go off the rails.
Your point about the brief expanding over time is spot on. Once that starts, it’s very difficult to recover, and you end up exactly where you described… with a ship that doesn’t quite match the original operational need.
I think that last point you made is the most important one. This isn’t just about cost or schedule. At the end of the day, someone has to take that ship to sea and rely on it. If we don’t get the requirements right at the start, and build to them, we’re not just creating a procurement problem, we’re creating an operational one.
You don't understand what's been going on with the USN anymore than the other guy did. A lot of what's been going on with the navy is being driven not by the navy but by Congress. I've said to you a couple of times why I don't think your ideas have a real chance in the real world. I say that not because I'm a doomer, but because of experiences I've had in the real world.
It was CONGRESS that wanted two giant guns on the Zumwalts. They wanted a cheaper 'battleship', forcing the USN to turn its Spruance replacement into something it wasn't. It was CONGRESS that subsequently changed its mind and decided that sending billion dollar ships to do shore-bombardment is stupid. Congress, far more than USN malfeasance killed Zumwalt.
Congress continued to purchase two versions of the LCS and the USN basically had to justify it because two powerful legislators wanted ships built in their districts. At the same time, Congress was happy to kill underperforming mission modules needed to make those ships viable.
It's CONGRESS that doesn't really like single-purpose ships. That's key. Minesweepers and ASW-only frigates don't work well when you're facing the appropriations committee. Nor will your 'attack cruiser' and 'air defense' cruiser fair very well either.
Thanks for this — it’s a genuine corrective and I want to engage with it properly rather than defensively.
The Congressional dimension is well taken. The Zumwalt case makes the point cleanly: the shore bombardment requirement, the subsequent abandonment of the Advanced Gun System, and the dual-vendor LCS arrangement driven by constituency interests in Wisconsin and Alabama are all documented examples of procurement being shaped by political architecture rather than operational need. Military procurement is after all always as political as it is strategic, and that point deserved more prominence than it got.
On the Constellation, the Fincantieri framing is interesting and the underlying mechanism is believable — it’s consistent with how competitive government contracting goes wrong, and it sounds like you may have some relevant experience there. The Navy Secretary’s own Senate testimony confirms the contract was underbid, and the GAO record shows design commonality with the original FREMM collapsed from around 85 percent to under 15 percent. Something clearly broke badly in the gap between what was priced and what compliance actually required.
On the gentleman’s agreement specifically, I’ll simply say I haven’t come across evidence for it, and a quick look didn’t turn any up. That may not mean much, but I’d be cautious about leaning on it too heavily — particularly given that the downstream risk of that kind of informal understanding, if it existed and broke down, ultimately falls on the crews who serve in whatever platform emerges from those decisions.
I’d also suggest the two framings aren’t mutually exclusive. Congressional interference and requirements discipline failure are frequently the same problem at different levels of the system — whether the pressure comes from a programme office, a contractor’s bid strategy, or an appropriations committee, the result is a platform that drifts from what was actually needed. That was the point I was reaching for, even if I didn’t locate it precisely enough first time around.
Nope. The Constellation is not requirements creep. It's the issue of an inexperienced/naive contractor bidding on a program with a government they had no experience doing business with.
The spec for the Constellation requires US Navy Damage Control Standards, Mk-41 VLS, and EASR radar. Fincantieri made a 'gentelman's agreement' that those requirements would be waived, allowing it to basically build a FREMM with Mk-41 VLS instead of SYLVER.
I too have worked in industry. I have worked for a company that made a similar 'gentleman's agreement' in order to underbid a program and get the work. We also got burned, when the people on the government side who made that agreement retired/resigned/moved on, and the next crew refused to honor that 'gentleman's agreement'.
Constellation is not so much an exercise in 'not sticking to the plan' so much as it is an exercise in a Congress/Executive that didn't understand the risks of what they told the uniformed service to do and a contractor that thought they could lowball to get the work and succeed.
I agree, Congress absolutely does have a hand in outcomes. Political pressure, industrial base concerns, and appropriations realities all push programs in directions that don’t always align cleanly with operational need. It’s also clear from the recent changes being made in the department of the Navy (the creation of the new Program Executive Offices, for example) show that the system we were using had proven inadequate.
Where I’d push back is on treating that as separate from requirements discipline, or as an alternative explanation. In practice, they tend to be the same problem expressed at different points in the system.
If Congress pushes for certain capabilities, quantities, or industrial outcomes, those pressures are still translated into requirements. When that discipline breaks down, whether the pressure originated in a program office, a contractor bid, or on Capitol Hill, you end up with exactly the kind of drift we’re talking about. It’s a systemic issue through the whole system.
On Constellation specifically, I think your point about contractor behavior and underbidding is part of the picture. But even there, the outcome still reflects a gap between what was specified, what was priced, and what was ultimately required. That’s a requirements and acquisition alignment problem, regardless of where the initial pressure came from.
On the question of single-purpose ships, I’d agree that political survivability matters. But I don’t think the choice is between “pure single-mission” and “everything ships.” What tends to work best are platforms with a clear primary role, supported by secondary capabilities, rather than trying to optimize for every mission at once. That’s where cost and complexity start to run away.
So I don’t see this as Congress versus the Navy, or contractor versus requirements. It’s a system where pressure enters from multiple directions, and if there isn’t discipline at the requirements level to absorb and shape that pressure, the program drifts.
We don't actually have an "Everything" ship. I think that's where you're mistaken. Burkes haven't had ASW capability since the restart of the line and their ASW capability at the beginning was really vestigial if anything. The size and cost of the Burke is driven not by trying to be 'everything' but by going for maximum performance. It's not a requirements creep problem. The Burkes are very focused ships.
And as far as there being multiple problems in procurement, the dominant push is Congress. Not the Navy. Not even the executive branch. This goes all the way back to the original six frigates and hasn't changed in the intervening two-hundred years. Unless you fix the congressional urge to meddle, you will never fix procurement.
I'll give you an example. The USN had worked a deal with Boeing and Northrop for a multi-year buy of the Super-Hornet. Congress would bless off on a fixed price over a number of years and the USN would get discounted Hornets. Congress refused to agree to the terms because... they wouldn't get to meddle every year. So we bought Super Hornets at the usual cost because Congress likes to meddle.
I’d agree that the current model DDG-51 has a clear primary role in air defense, but it’s also carrying strike, BMD, and ASW capabilities to varying degrees.
On the ASW point specifically, I wouldn’t go as far as saying the Burke lacks that capability. The DOT&E FY2024 Annual Report US Navy DDG-5 shows Flight III carrying the SQQ-89 undersea warfare suite, including hull sonar, a towed array, embarked MH-60R helicopters, torpedoes, and ASROC. It may not be optimized in the same way as a dedicated ASW platform, but it’s clearly part of the ship’s role.
On Congress, I think you’re right that it’s a major driver. Where I’d still disagree is on treating it as the only meaningful one.
Congress applies pressure, but that pressure still has to be translated into requirements, accepted in contracts, and managed through programs. If discipline holds at those points, the outcome looks very different than if it doesn’t.
That’s why I keep coming back to it as a system problem rather than a single source problem.
I agree that Congress needs fixing as well. Discipline is required at all levels.
I'm going to start out by challenging your premise of the 'single purpose ship' as being the defining factor of whether or not a ship will succeed or fail. A lot of the ships you propose as being 'single purpose' were not single purpose at all. FREMM is classed as a 'destroyer' according to NATO and French standards (which is why they have 'D' prefixes in the Marine Nationale). This is because they are 'balanced ASW, AAW, ASuW ships able to do all roles well. FDI is also classed as a destroyer in French service for the same reason. They are not, in fact, single purpose ships. They're more multi-purpose actually than a Burke is (Burkes lost their towed array long ago and are ineffective ASW ships).
Here's what you really want to do, if you want to 'fix' the US Navy. You've already somewhat gone down this road with your hardware choices in your various articles. What you actually want to do is set a budget bogey for each ship and ruthlessly constrain the hardware BOM to meet that price point. Your suggestion of limiting your destroyers to EASR instead of the full SPY-6 is an example of doing just that. Limiting the ships to less than the Burkes' magazine depth also will go a long way towards limiting cost. This is not changing requirements, by the way. It's basically just limiting the solution to something 'affordable'. That's why we added the -C to SWaP to make it SWaP-C. Size, weight, power, and Cost as variables in design.
A putative Frigate, for example, since this is your frigate article could be limited to rotating SPY-6/EASR (single face, 9-element SPY-6 on a rotating platform).
The Euro-ships 'work' because they are ruthlessly cost-controlled. The FDI doesn't have expensive electric drive, as an example. They don't use expensive gas turbines.
This is the real key to getting costs down. You have to accept that your solution is going to be 'good enough' rather than top of the line. Just remember, that does come with other costs that are not strictly in dollar amounts.
I don’t disagree with the importance of cost discipline.
Where I’d connect that back to what I’ve been describing is that the primary mission focus is one of the tools that enforces that discipline.
I agree that ships like FREMM and FDI aren’t single-purpose in a literal sense. They’re balanced ships. The difference is that they’re still bounded in how far they try to optimize across all mission areas. That’s part of why the cost stays under control. What I’m trying to avoid is the point where multiple mission areas are treated as co-equal design drivers.
Your SWaP-C point gets right to the same issue from another direction. If cost is a fixed constraint, then the solution has to be bounded. You can’t optimize everything.
So I don’t see it as single-purpose versus multi-purpose so much as how tightly the design is constrained. And I agree, there are trade offs. What we can’t do is let perfect become the enemy of good enough.
So, I'm going to add one last thing to this discussion thread. A lot of the readers here misunderstand why USN ships are what they are. It's got nothing to do with 'not knowing what we want' or being 'unable to nail down the requirements'. The issue is that the USN, like the US Army and USAF, pursues PERFORMANCE above cost and, unfortunately, even above schedule sometimes.
USN ships are sized to support the most powerful sensors money can buy and the biggest magazines money can buy. This is why the idea of 'just buy country x's ship' doesn't really work. Those ships are built to a BUDGET rather than to a performance metric, which is why you have Type 23 frigates being built with an 18-year lifespan. The UK shaved a few pounds sterling with that move, even though it bit them really hard in the end.
In the end, in spite of its age, a Burke with SPY-1 is still one of the most formidable platforms in the world, when many of its contemporaries around the world have already retired. The USN bought the biggest sensor it could get and wrapped the biggest ship and magazine combo it could around that sensor.
What you are pursuing here in these pages is not 'wrong' but it is diametrically opposed to this philosophy. You are pursuing a 'meh' sensor fit with a 'meh' weapons fit--neither bad nor outstanding--in the name of economy. It's a strategy the same as any real-world strategy, but it forgets how we got here.
When the Burke was designed, we were facing a foe who could muster dozens of bombers all firing supersonic cruise missiles in a saturation attack that could even potentially be coupled with SSGNs doing the same. The only way to survive that was: biggest sensor, deepest magazines.
We are currently facing an adversary who is mustering hordes anti-ship ballistic and hypersonic missiles for a massed saturation attack coupled with bombers and even carrier-aviation doing the same thing. 'Meh' sensors and 'meh' weapons magazines may not be your optimal choice here.
I think that’s a fair description of how the Navy has approached ship design, and why ships like the Burke look the way they do. The Cold War environment you’re describing demanded exactly that approach. Large sensors, deep magazines, and the ability to handle saturation attacks were not optional, they were required. The Burke is a product of that environment, and it has been very successful in that role.
Where I’d diverge is on whether that model, applied across the entire force, is sufficient for the environment we’re moving into.
I’m not arguing that high-end capability doesn’t matter. It does. We still need ships built around the most capable sensors and the deepest magazines we can field. That requirement hasn’t gone away. The question is whether every ship needs to be built to that standard, or whether we need a mix of platforms that allow us to distribute capability across the fleet.
If every ship is built around the highest-end sensor and the largest magazine, the result is a smaller number of very capable ships. That creates its own set of risks, particularly in terms of coverage, presence, and the ability to absorb losses in a high-end fight.
I also wouldn’t characterize EASR as a “meh” sensor. It’s part of the SPY-6 family, just in a smaller configuration. That’s a question of scale, not quality. It doesn’t match the full SPY-6 array on a Flight III Burke, but it’s still a modern AESA radar with solid performance. The question is whether every ship needs the largest sensor we can build, or whether there’s a place for right-sized systems that support the ship’s role within a larger force.
What I’m proposing isn’t to replace high-end platforms with “good enough” ones. It’s to complement them. The Burkes will be in business in the fleet for years to come. Plans exist to refit Flight IIA with SPY-6 radars. Working alongside these refit ships, the Flight III ships, and the proposed cruiser (which I planned to carry a SPY-6 much larger than what is on flight III), ships with more limited sensors and magazines can still contribute meaningfully—particularly in roles like ASW, escort, and distributed operations—while allowing the highest-end assets to be concentrated where they’re most needed.
In a saturation environment, I do not think it will just be the capability of an individual ship that matters, but the capability of the entire force working together—how many sensors you have, how many interceptors you can bring to bear, and how broadly you can distribute them.
That’s the balance I’m trying to get at. Not abandoning performance, but pairing it with sufficient scale to matter in the fight we’re likely to face.
Agree that every ship doesn't need full SPY-6. I think one of the places where Connie went wrong was in trying to fit three-face EASR, when, to your point, a rotating sensor for a patrol/ASW boat would have been 'good enough'. I think that's why current Pentagon leadership complained that they were trying to build a crappier DDG instead of building an ASW boat.
My concern is that your proposed structure doesn't necessarily have enough of those ships to cover all the bases. One of the reasons I don't like your two-cruiser approach is that it dilutes the cruiser force, when those are the hulls that would be most pressed in a peer-scenario.
Picture this: We're deploying as many CSGs as we can. Each of those CSGs needs a proper AAW cruiser. We also need to hold back cruisers to defend places like Guam and Yokosuka because these are targets. If we are building two types of cruiser, with one sub-optimized for AAW/ABM work, do we end up with enough ships optimized for AAW/ABM work to fill all those spots?
I'd prefer, were I doing your concept, to put the strike role on USVs and focus the cruisers on AAW/ABM. Then your conceptual destroyers could focus on just AAW with EASR and maybe a limited defense against Chinese hypersonics coming from their Type055s and Type052s.
This force would look like 20ish cruisers with the larger SPY-6. 30-50ish destroyers with 3-faced EASR.
60ish FFGs with rotating EASR or perhaps an even simpler radar and super-quiet electric drive.
A fleet of maybe 32 USVs with flat decks capable of carrying six-eight Mk-70 containers to be just swapped out at sea.
I agree that the AAW/ABM requirement is one of the hardest to satisfy, especially once you start thinking in terms of actual wartime assignments rather than just total hull numbers on paper. Carrier groups certainly need those ships. I think that key fixed positions like Guam and Yokosuka need them as well… along with shore based defenses. That demand signal is real.
On Constellation, I think your point is a good one. Trying to give it a three-face EASR did push it toward becoming a lesser destroyer rather than a more focused ASW escort. That is exactly the kind of drift I’ve been arguing against in a frigate.
I do like your idea of putting a lot of the strike burden onto USVs, and I think there’s a lot of merit to it.
Where I would still be cautious is in making the cruiser force too single-threaded, because there is still value in having some larger surface combatants with meaningful offensive striking power of their own, rather than relying entirely on distributed platforms for that role.
I think we are not very far apart on the design of USVs… I will have more on that in a future issue.
I want to say this, and it's not meant as a dig on you. You seem to have a predilection for reaching for a foreign design when there are plenty of 'good' designs in the states. You seem, like so many, to fall in the trap of believing that 'country x' has it right or 'country y' is doing good things.
The reality is that ships are built to a need and budget. The Mogami, for example, is built basically to act as a secondary line of defense against what used to be known as 'crossing targets'. Basically, one of their jobs is to shoot down leakers heading for the flagship. They're design is meant to deal with short-range deployments within the manpower limits of the JMSDF. Ie, they are not designed for 4-8 month deployments on the far side of the ocean. 90 people on a ship trying to keep her running for 8 months at a time doesn't work so well. We saw that on the LCS, which tried to adopt a similar minimal manning philosophy.
Forget the Constellation. You'd do better theorizing what your ideal destroyer would be. Forget the QEs. You'd be better off theorizing what an ideal 'conventionally powered carrier' would be for your ideas of a 'gap-filler' ship. All these foreign ships are good ships when they're functioning in the roles their designers intended. Trying to push them into a role in a foreign navy requires that navy to basically adopt the methods and operating concepts of the source navy for that ship to work optimally.
But the USN doesn't need a 'crossing targets' anti-leaker ship. We need a robust frigate capable of being at sea for 8 months at a time with sufficient crew to keep her running.
I don't take it as a dig. One of the reasons I write this is to promote debate and discussion.
And, it is true that I feel that when an existing design can fill a gap in an efficient manner, that avenue should be looked at.
I also I feel that to say that I am against good domestic designs is an overstatement.
The cruiser designs I proposed are to be entirely domestic designs. If I had an overall predilection for foreign designs, I would have suggested teaming up with the Japanese on their new Aegis Afloat/Guided Missile Cruisers. But I didn't, because I truly think we can do better on that design.
I suggest the Constellation be a destroyer not because it was based on a foreign design... at only, I think off the top of my head it's down to only 15% commonality with the parent design, now, from a planned 15% difference... that isn't even really a foreign design anymore, and the changes to make a DDG out of it will likely diverge them from the parent event more. I suggest it because so much work has already been done on the design that it can become a destroyer for the size I propose at a much lower cost than any other avenue that I can see.
I also suggested clearly in the article that the primary push for frigates is for a domestically designed and produced design in very large numbers. They will be the backbone of the frigate fleet.
I get it. I was one of the people who was REALLY disappointed in seeing the Constellation go down in flames. However, given how hard it is to get a program canceled by the DoD instead of having Congress pull the plug, this thing would truly have had to be rabid-dog-off-the-chain bad.
Having taken a look at the layout of the ship in question and all the mods needed to make it viable for what you're suggesting, it really challenges your cost-saving mantra to try and save Connie. And even then... you end up with the thing you're advocating against: a multi-purpose ship that's really expensive when a simpler design would be better. That's why I said you should just lay out what you think is the best ship and not try and borrow somebody else's crap. Make it what you think it ought to be.
Basically, what I proposed turning the FFG-62 into is the basic outline for what I feel we need in a destroyer. Escort focused, multi-mission capable if need be, and at that price point.
If a clean sheet design, or your Spruance based design below can be made to work at that price point, then they are certainly worth exploring as well.
Going with your single-purpose concept, a destroyer should be a direct-drive ship. No hybrid-electric drive, as that ups the cost. A 'frigate' that's focused on ASW ideally should be electric drive with a very good sonar. I'd go the opposite direction in your model. I'd strip out all the US crap that made Connie fail and return to the FREMM root. That gives you a 6000ish ton ship with a simple radar (rotating-EASR at the top of the existing FREMM mast), minimal VLS tubes (some FREMMs come with just 16 tubes) and whisper-quiet electric drive. Pursue your stretched FDI or something similar in size and scope for your destroyer.
You're kind of defeating your own point here. The FF(X) is actually the ship you want. The National Security Cutter was designed to accommodate 16 Mk41 VLS in the space where the 'shelf' exists. The reason the 'shelf' is there is in fact to extend that fitted-for-not-with space so that those cells would be 'strike length' rather than 'tactical length' without the module jutting out of the deck plating.
The space where the former interceptor boat and its pals used to sit was intended by Ingalls to fit a CAPTAS sonar. And it has been stated in other forums that, for a 'direct drive' boat (ie no electric drive) the NSC is pretty quiet already.
If we're 'reusing stuff' and going with hot production lines, the FF(X) makes far more sense than repurposing somebody else's crap.
The FDI is limited to 27 knots. There is no way to make that ship faster. Nor will it take US sensors as its engineering spaces are limited. You'd be looking at another Constellation. Euro-ships are designed to be sailed until obsolescence, not upgraded. There's nothing wrong with this philosophy, but it doesn't fit what you want to do.
The Mogami is a throw-away ship for a country that doesn't sail very far from its own borders. It's design to basically be abandoned when it takes a hit. Again, there's nothing wrong with this philosophy, but it doesn't work as well for the USN, where you are likely to be on the far side of the ocean from home when/if something happens.
I also thought about your continuing attempt to reuse the Constellation. I would suggest that a better approach would be a reuse of the Spruance Hull. This hull already meets USN damage control requirements. It has robust sea-keeping, and it has space for 64 VLS cells up front without a 'stretch'.
What you would need to do is:
1.) Shorten the ship by eliminating the aft space where the Sea-Sparrow mount and its magazine exist. There is a gas-turbine generator here, but for what you want to do, that doesn't matter.
2.) Replace the aft 5 inch gun and its magazine with a space for CAPTAS.
3.) Uprate the remaining two gas-turbine generators with the 4Mw versions. This ups your electrical power to 8 Mw over the original 6 that these ships had, supporting EASR, which seems to be the biggest radar you want to have.
Thus, you end up with a ship that has 64 VLS, is smaller and theoretically cheaper than a Flight 3 Burke, and you're not fighting an architecture that was not designed for upgrade (FREMM).
As an aside, your ideas don't work with current USN loadouts of weapons as you end up with TLAM, TASM, and SM2 fighting for space in the magazines. However, if you were to use the PAC-3 in its 'quad-packable' version, the math works better without assuming robot ships that may or may not be functional in a high-end version.
On the FF(X) front, I agree the hull itself has potential. In fact, I had hoped when it was announced that the Navy was shifting away from the Constellation, I honestly expected, and was excited by, the idea that they might use the NSC hull as a basis… because it did have the space for the systems you mentioned. .
If you take that platform and fit it with a VLS, a full ASW suite, and build it around a defined mission, it would be a strong design, and if that is what was developed to be the frigate that filled the domestically built frigate in my proposal, I think it would be a strong design that hit all my criteria… 16 cell VLS, helo capability, sonar, ASW torpedoes, the works, and would be fully worthy of an FFG hull designation.
The issue I have with the FF(X), as it currently stands, is that it is not that ship. Nowhere in anything yet released has the Navy discussed fielding it with a VLS or a fixed ASW suite. The emphasis is on modular payloads and flexibility, which puts it back into the same trade space we saw with LCS. That’s where I think it diverges from what a focused combatant needs to be.
On the foreign designs, I agree they come with tradeoffs, but I still feel they can help us get the numbers up and provide useful service. And again, the bulk of the frigates would be a domestic design.
On the Spruance-based concept, I like that approach. The Spruance-class hull is a good one, and your proposed modifications are logical and sound. That kind of design could produce a very capable ship without some of the risks we’ve seen in recent programs.
On the magazine point, I agree that loadout discipline matters. That’s part of why I’ve been deliberate about limiting VLS count in the concept. Once you expand that space, the pressure to fill it with additional mission sets follows very quickly. As far as how the ships are loaded, I think that overall we need to examine how loadouts are planned, especially as USVs start to become part of the fleet. I think your earlier idea of having them primarily carry the strike weapons was a good one, for example, and that would allow escorts to carry more defensive weapons.
So if the cost numbers work out at a similar price point for your Spruance-based design, I think it could work.
France, for example, is currently building five FDI frigates for itself and four for Greece, and Naval Group has stated a goal of producing two per year while actively working to increase that rate.
Japan is in a similar position. The Mogami-class production line has been designed for higher output, with plans to build 12 improved “06FFM” units over five years, alongside potential export work.
So there isn’t a lot of idle capacity, but there is a demonstrated ability to produce at scale, and to expand that production when needed.
Given that, I do think an initial run of ten is feasible, particularly if it’s treated as a priority program and scheduled accordingly.
Nope. There is no spare capacity in France or Japan to build anything for the USN in a timeframe where this would be useful. Japan is already committed to building upgraded Mogamis for themselves and Australia, with a potential contract for New Zealand in the offing. The Mogamis take about 2-2.5 years to build. The upgraded version will likely be a 3 year build. They will not be able to support us.
FDI is build in a single build hall and takes 2-2.5ish years for building and fitting out. The French have their contract (still need 4 more). They have the Greek contract. They are working on getting the Swedish contract for 2-4ish ships. So no real space there for at least 6-8 years.
Even if you could get Congress to build such a complex ship in a foreign yard, nobody really has space to do it. The West collectively let its shipyards shut down.
Far more likely would be Austal's new 3-ship steel shop or to go back to Marinette who have 4-6 building slots depending on ship size.
I think you’re right that there isn’t idle capacity sitting open in France or Japan. The current build queues are real, and the timelines you’re pointing to are part of the picture.
Where I am going to say nope to your nope is on treating that capacity as fixed, or on viewing this as a question of whether there’s an empty slot available today.
France, for example, is producing two FDI per year. That’s a demonstrated level of throughput. The question is less about idle space and more about whether that production can be expanded, reprioritized, or sequenced if a program is treated as a priority.
France has done this before. A FREMM originally intended for its own navy was redirected to Egypt and delivered on an accelerated timeline. That doesn’t mean capacity is freely available, but it does show that production can be reprioritized when the demand signal is strong enough.
More importantly, this isn’t being proposed as a replacement for U.S. shipbuilding. It’s a bridging approach.
The intent is to get additional hulls in the water as quickly as possible while the U.S. rebuilds its ability to produce ships at scale. Even if foreign production takes two to three years per hull, that timeline still has to be weighed against the delays and instability we’ve seen in recent domestic programs.
On the domestic side, I agree those yards are part of the equation. The plan is to proceed to build, at scale, a new US design in those yards. Buying the 10 ships from an ally is about accelerating growth of the fleet, not simple outsourcing. Given that, I don’t see this as a question of “foreign versus domestic.” It’s a question of how to increase total shipbuilding capacity in a way that produces usable ships on a relevant timeline.
You're better off driving that demand signal here rather than trying to get other nations to rework their build schedules when they're just as screwed up as we are. Ie there's only so long France is going to delay building FDIs. The Lafayettes are getting really long in the tooth.
As previously stated, Austal is building capacity. Marinette already built capacity. If the USN can constrain the size of the ship, as you are clearly trying to do with the suggestions you're making, that opens up a range of possibilities we already have for some of our needs. With all build slots in Marinette and Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin (Yeah, I look at this a lot for some reason), Marinette could probably build 4-6 ships of the size of an FF(X) or 2 the size of a FREMM in accelerated fashion. Austal's new facility could do 3. Ingalls claims they can squeeze in one. That could be anywhere from 8-10 ships of the size of a FREMM or smaller laid down at one time while still leaving Austal able to build three of something else.
And if we do just that---offer these ships to Austal or Marinette, both yards still have facilities to expand.
20% of all ship workers in Korea are foreigners . The foreign ship building will not work as the interest groups affected are not something any president can offend.
I think those constraints exist, but they aren’t absolute. We’re already building USCG icebreakers in Finland, so there is precedent for working with allied shipyards when it makes sense, and the push back against doing so has been limited.
I was leaning towards Japan or France instead of South Korea myself.
Icebreakers don't have super-classified weapons or Combat Information Centers to worry about. So, yeah, this is basically a non-starter for anything that's not an Auxiliary.
Oh, and just because they're 'allies' doesn't mean that we can freely do work with them. Israeli representatives are often kept isolated from primary working spaces when they visit US Contractors due to a tendency for them to attempt espionage. Even though they are nominal US Allies. The French are much the same. Israel's Litening pod is a basically a copy of the American LANTIRN targeting pod.
I don’t think it’s accurate to treat work with allies as a total non-starter.
The U.S. routinely cooperates with allied nations on complex defense programs, including ships, aircraft, and weapons systems. Those efforts come with constraints, but they’re managed, not avoided entirely.
So I agree the security piece has to be handled carefully. I don’t see it as disqualifying, though. It’s another factor that has to be accounted for in how the program is structured.
Can it work? Yeah. Should you do it? With what I know now from experience working with foreign vendors, I'd run (screaming) from foreign collabs. They rarely work as well as you'd like, and they really can drive the cost up on your program and do a number on schedule. Something like Babcock UK's 'Arrowhead Factory" where they give you the TDP and you build it to suit using tools they sell you in your own country is a better version of foreign Collab. Buy a lot somewhere along one of the US coastlines, setup the Arrowhead Factory and get to work. That, I think, would work better than foreign outsourcing from a logistics/schedule constraint.
The Knox is an interesting one. They were the last U.S. escorts built with a conventional steam turbine propulsion plant, and lightly armed for their size. I tend to think of the class less as a failure and more as the last phase in a transition from old to new.
They were very much optimized for a specific mission set, and the technology changed around them, their design limitations drug them down. Being followed by the FFG-7 class doesn’t help. Having the next class be viewed as so successful with the new power plant and technology certainly cast a shadow over them.
I'm curious about what the institutional opposition to a moderate tonnage, not overly complex, ASW frigate is? (Assuming the USN would already have one if there wasn't opposition).
It seems obvious that this is exactly the ship type the USN needs, and has needed for some time. But I'm an outsider and a hobbyist, there is definitely a lot I don't know.
I think what happened is that the multi-purpose bug bit the Navy pretty hard.
There’s actually a pretty clear statement of that thinking from the time. The old Navy Fact File on the frigates, from right about when they were being decommissioned, notes that “The Surface Combatant Force Requirement Study does not define any need for a single mission ship such as the frigate…” That mindset really pushed things away from a more focused ASW platform.
There are other factors as well — requirements growth, acquisition dynamics, industrial base — but I think that initial move away from a single, defined mission is a big part of it.
I do agree with you, though. A more focused, moderate-tonnage ASW frigate is something the Navy has needed for quite a while.
As I keep telling you, getting 'single purpose' ships through is very difficult. There's a reason the F-22 is technically the F/A-22, though that is not often advertised anymore. Lockheed and the USAF stuffed a couple of JDAMS into its belly so it would be easier for Congress to accept it.
The USN went through a process of basically chopping every single-purpose airframe on the carrier decks from their roster in the late 90s. This was done because they weren't going to get funding for dedicated air-refuelers and ASW planes.
Money isn't infinite.
More to the point, FDI is a multi-purpose ship. It is not, in fact, a single-purpose ship. Nor is Mogami. The issue is not 'getting bit by the multipurpose' bug. The issue is being realistic about levels of firepower and sensor performance
Burke's size, for example, is not driven by being 'multi-purpose'. It is driven because SPY-1 required Megawatts of electricity, cooling, and massive structural strength to support the arrays up high on the ship. You need a certain beam and length for that. Also, at that time, there was the issue of Soviet saturation attacks, so the magazines were sized accordingly.
Burke had no helo-hangars. It's helo-deck was an afterthought. She was very single-purpose---Air Defense. The Ticonderogas were terrible sea-boats being very wet forward and being very 'tippy' because the Spruance hull was overloaded toting SPY-1 and Aegis. The Burke was the response.
I don’t feel having a primary focus rules out secondary capabilities. The frigate concept I discussed carries ESSM for air defense, NSM for anti-ship, and a gun. It can defend itself and contribute in other areas. The difference is that those are supporting roles, not co-equal design drivers.
Once multiple mission areas are treated as primary, that’s when the demands on sensors, power, magazines, and cost all start to grow at the same time.
That’s the distinction I’m trying to make.
Total random aside, since you mentioned the Burkes and Ticos topic... what are your thoughts on the Cruiser Baseline study NAVSEA did?
Ok, so we're going to disagree on what Burke's primary mission areas are. Burke was designed in a time when Soviet Saturation attacks were the thing and ABM work wasn't even considered possible. Also, at the time, carrying TLAMS in VLS cells wasn't really a thing. TLAMs went in box-launchers scattered on the deck, so Burke's 'strike role' wasn't even considered.
There's a fascinating site that shows what the Burke's loadouts were over the years. The early years were literally swarms of SM2s of various flavors. The ridiculous performance (for its time) of the SPY-1/Aegis combo and the creation of Vertical Launch for Tomahawk is what led to the later proliferation of roles that you're talking about.
With that said, the USN failed back to Ticonderoga because they couldn't get a proper cruiser-scale ship to carry SPY-1. Congress balked at the cost. Tico was never really satisfactory since it was essentially a destroyer that was supposed to carry SPY-1 and a smaller set of launchers.
Now, how do I feel about the Cruiser Baseline study?
I'm a person who believes the US should have overmatch vs. our adversaries. If that requires spending oodles of cash to get the best kit, I'm fine with that. I believe the USN needs a cruiser with: SPY-6 V1 (37 element array version), 128 VLS cells to give us overmatch over the Renhai class cruisers, and enough MWatts in the engineering spaces to enable them to carry some kind of Directed Energy weapon for leakers.
For me, there's trade-space around those numbers. E.g. I don't care if there's no 5" popgun on the bow. I can accept 112 VLS cells, but I wouldn't go below that. But SPY-6 V1 with sufficient sea-keeping to handle the Pacific will drive you towards something in the realm of 13000 tons anyways simply due to power demands.
I think that’s a fair read on how the Burke evolved and why it looks the way it does today. I agree that the early Flight I ships were much more tightly aligned to the AAW mission. But with Flight IIA and the addition of the hangars, you can see the shift happening. I think the retirement of the Spruances and their 61 VLS cells loaded with Tomahawks pushed the strike role onto the Burkes even more.
At that point, though, the Burke isn’t just filling an air defense role anymore. That’s less about the original design intent and more about how the fleet evolved as other platforms left service.
On the cruiser side, I understand the argument for overmatch. I was tempted by the idea of modifying the Burkes to a standard similar to (but not the exact design) of the South Korean Sejong the Great-class… in a lot of ways they remind me of the cruiser baseline design, though not as large (If I recall the cruiser baseline was around 13,000 tons), as they are in essence cruisers. Which is why I was curious what you thought about the baseline study. After a lot of thought, I chose the clean sheet idea focused on the larger radar and detection capability to overmatch the Renhai in that aspect, and then use a more distributed force of shooters for the CG.
I think if we had built ships to the Cruiser Baseline study when the study was done, we’d be in a better spot right now than we are.
Your point about requirements discipline resonates strongly with me. I find myself thinking back to my undergraduate dissertation — written when the Oliver Hazard Perry class was still new, which tells you something about how long I’ve been turning these questions over — in which I examined naval procurement through the lens of strategy and the military-industrial complex. What stayed with me then, and remains with me now, is how rarely the failure lies in engineering capability and how often it lies in organisational discipline at the requirements stage. A lot seems to have changed and not in a good way since that time.
The Constellation class is an instructive case in point. Without wishing to be uncharitable to the decision-makers involved, the procurement narrative reads less like rigorous capability definition and more like the exercise of an unconstrained wish list — each stakeholder adding incremental requirements without a sufficiently robust mechanism to challenge, validate, or refuse them. I’ve spent time teaching project management to engineers from a commercial perspective, and the principle I return to most consistently is deceptively simple: identify your customer requirements, validate them ruthlessly, and then hold the line. Not because engineers don’t know best in their domain, but because without that discipline the brief expands, timelines stretch, and budgets collapse — and the platform that eventually emerges bears only a passing resemblance to what operational need actually demanded.
The LCS story follows a similar arc. The underlying concept had genuine intellectual coherence and operational promise. But promise without constraint is not a programme — it’s an aspiration. The discipline of understanding purpose, validating requirements, and respecting budget envelopes isn’t a bureaucratic formality; it is the engineering and strategic process. Strip it out and you don’t just get cost overruns. You get ships that don’t fully serve the people who sail them. That, to my mind, is where these failures become more than financial — they become a failure of duty to the crews who operate whatever compromised platform eventually reaches the fleet.
I think you’re exactly right on where the real issue sits. It isn’t about whether we can build something. It’s once we decide what to build, can we have the discipline to hold to it. That’s the hard part, and it’s where things tend to go off the rails.
Your point about the brief expanding over time is spot on. Once that starts, it’s very difficult to recover, and you end up exactly where you described… with a ship that doesn’t quite match the original operational need.
I think that last point you made is the most important one. This isn’t just about cost or schedule. At the end of the day, someone has to take that ship to sea and rely on it. If we don’t get the requirements right at the start, and build to them, we’re not just creating a procurement problem, we’re creating an operational one.
Thanks for reading!
You don't understand what's been going on with the USN anymore than the other guy did. A lot of what's been going on with the navy is being driven not by the navy but by Congress. I've said to you a couple of times why I don't think your ideas have a real chance in the real world. I say that not because I'm a doomer, but because of experiences I've had in the real world.
It was CONGRESS that wanted two giant guns on the Zumwalts. They wanted a cheaper 'battleship', forcing the USN to turn its Spruance replacement into something it wasn't. It was CONGRESS that subsequently changed its mind and decided that sending billion dollar ships to do shore-bombardment is stupid. Congress, far more than USN malfeasance killed Zumwalt.
Congress continued to purchase two versions of the LCS and the USN basically had to justify it because two powerful legislators wanted ships built in their districts. At the same time, Congress was happy to kill underperforming mission modules needed to make those ships viable.
It's CONGRESS that doesn't really like single-purpose ships. That's key. Minesweepers and ASW-only frigates don't work well when you're facing the appropriations committee. Nor will your 'attack cruiser' and 'air defense' cruiser fair very well either.
🙏🤓🫡
Thanks for this — it’s a genuine corrective and I want to engage with it properly rather than defensively.
The Congressional dimension is well taken. The Zumwalt case makes the point cleanly: the shore bombardment requirement, the subsequent abandonment of the Advanced Gun System, and the dual-vendor LCS arrangement driven by constituency interests in Wisconsin and Alabama are all documented examples of procurement being shaped by political architecture rather than operational need. Military procurement is after all always as political as it is strategic, and that point deserved more prominence than it got.
On the Constellation, the Fincantieri framing is interesting and the underlying mechanism is believable — it’s consistent with how competitive government contracting goes wrong, and it sounds like you may have some relevant experience there. The Navy Secretary’s own Senate testimony confirms the contract was underbid, and the GAO record shows design commonality with the original FREMM collapsed from around 85 percent to under 15 percent. Something clearly broke badly in the gap between what was priced and what compliance actually required.
On the gentleman’s agreement specifically, I’ll simply say I haven’t come across evidence for it, and a quick look didn’t turn any up. That may not mean much, but I’d be cautious about leaning on it too heavily — particularly given that the downstream risk of that kind of informal understanding, if it existed and broke down, ultimately falls on the crews who serve in whatever platform emerges from those decisions.
I’d also suggest the two framings aren’t mutually exclusive. Congressional interference and requirements discipline failure are frequently the same problem at different levels of the system — whether the pressure comes from a programme office, a contractor’s bid strategy, or an appropriations committee, the result is a platform that drifts from what was actually needed. That was the point I was reaching for, even if I didn’t locate it precisely enough first time around.
Nope. The Constellation is not requirements creep. It's the issue of an inexperienced/naive contractor bidding on a program with a government they had no experience doing business with.
The spec for the Constellation requires US Navy Damage Control Standards, Mk-41 VLS, and EASR radar. Fincantieri made a 'gentelman's agreement' that those requirements would be waived, allowing it to basically build a FREMM with Mk-41 VLS instead of SYLVER.
I too have worked in industry. I have worked for a company that made a similar 'gentleman's agreement' in order to underbid a program and get the work. We also got burned, when the people on the government side who made that agreement retired/resigned/moved on, and the next crew refused to honor that 'gentleman's agreement'.
Constellation is not so much an exercise in 'not sticking to the plan' so much as it is an exercise in a Congress/Executive that didn't understand the risks of what they told the uniformed service to do and a contractor that thought they could lowball to get the work and succeed.
I agree, Congress absolutely does have a hand in outcomes. Political pressure, industrial base concerns, and appropriations realities all push programs in directions that don’t always align cleanly with operational need. It’s also clear from the recent changes being made in the department of the Navy (the creation of the new Program Executive Offices, for example) show that the system we were using had proven inadequate.
Where I’d push back is on treating that as separate from requirements discipline, or as an alternative explanation. In practice, they tend to be the same problem expressed at different points in the system.
If Congress pushes for certain capabilities, quantities, or industrial outcomes, those pressures are still translated into requirements. When that discipline breaks down, whether the pressure originated in a program office, a contractor bid, or on Capitol Hill, you end up with exactly the kind of drift we’re talking about. It’s a systemic issue through the whole system.
On Constellation specifically, I think your point about contractor behavior and underbidding is part of the picture. But even there, the outcome still reflects a gap between what was specified, what was priced, and what was ultimately required. That’s a requirements and acquisition alignment problem, regardless of where the initial pressure came from.
On the question of single-purpose ships, I’d agree that political survivability matters. But I don’t think the choice is between “pure single-mission” and “everything ships.” What tends to work best are platforms with a clear primary role, supported by secondary capabilities, rather than trying to optimize for every mission at once. That’s where cost and complexity start to run away.
So I don’t see this as Congress versus the Navy, or contractor versus requirements. It’s a system where pressure enters from multiple directions, and if there isn’t discipline at the requirements level to absorb and shape that pressure, the program drifts.
Thanks for reading.
We don't actually have an "Everything" ship. I think that's where you're mistaken. Burkes haven't had ASW capability since the restart of the line and their ASW capability at the beginning was really vestigial if anything. The size and cost of the Burke is driven not by trying to be 'everything' but by going for maximum performance. It's not a requirements creep problem. The Burkes are very focused ships.
And as far as there being multiple problems in procurement, the dominant push is Congress. Not the Navy. Not even the executive branch. This goes all the way back to the original six frigates and hasn't changed in the intervening two-hundred years. Unless you fix the congressional urge to meddle, you will never fix procurement.
I'll give you an example. The USN had worked a deal with Boeing and Northrop for a multi-year buy of the Super-Hornet. Congress would bless off on a fixed price over a number of years and the USN would get discounted Hornets. Congress refused to agree to the terms because... they wouldn't get to meddle every year. So we bought Super Hornets at the usual cost because Congress likes to meddle.
I’d agree that the current model DDG-51 has a clear primary role in air defense, but it’s also carrying strike, BMD, and ASW capabilities to varying degrees.
On the ASW point specifically, I wouldn’t go as far as saying the Burke lacks that capability. The DOT&E FY2024 Annual Report US Navy DDG-5 shows Flight III carrying the SQQ-89 undersea warfare suite, including hull sonar, a towed array, embarked MH-60R helicopters, torpedoes, and ASROC. It may not be optimized in the same way as a dedicated ASW platform, but it’s clearly part of the ship’s role.
On Congress, I think you’re right that it’s a major driver. Where I’d still disagree is on treating it as the only meaningful one.
Congress applies pressure, but that pressure still has to be translated into requirements, accepted in contracts, and managed through programs. If discipline holds at those points, the outcome looks very different than if it doesn’t.
That’s why I keep coming back to it as a system problem rather than a single source problem.
I agree that Congress needs fixing as well. Discipline is required at all levels.
Thanks for reading.
I'm going to start out by challenging your premise of the 'single purpose ship' as being the defining factor of whether or not a ship will succeed or fail. A lot of the ships you propose as being 'single purpose' were not single purpose at all. FREMM is classed as a 'destroyer' according to NATO and French standards (which is why they have 'D' prefixes in the Marine Nationale). This is because they are 'balanced ASW, AAW, ASuW ships able to do all roles well. FDI is also classed as a destroyer in French service for the same reason. They are not, in fact, single purpose ships. They're more multi-purpose actually than a Burke is (Burkes lost their towed array long ago and are ineffective ASW ships).
Here's what you really want to do, if you want to 'fix' the US Navy. You've already somewhat gone down this road with your hardware choices in your various articles. What you actually want to do is set a budget bogey for each ship and ruthlessly constrain the hardware BOM to meet that price point. Your suggestion of limiting your destroyers to EASR instead of the full SPY-6 is an example of doing just that. Limiting the ships to less than the Burkes' magazine depth also will go a long way towards limiting cost. This is not changing requirements, by the way. It's basically just limiting the solution to something 'affordable'. That's why we added the -C to SWaP to make it SWaP-C. Size, weight, power, and Cost as variables in design.
A putative Frigate, for example, since this is your frigate article could be limited to rotating SPY-6/EASR (single face, 9-element SPY-6 on a rotating platform).
The Euro-ships 'work' because they are ruthlessly cost-controlled. The FDI doesn't have expensive electric drive, as an example. They don't use expensive gas turbines.
This is the real key to getting costs down. You have to accept that your solution is going to be 'good enough' rather than top of the line. Just remember, that does come with other costs that are not strictly in dollar amounts.
I don’t disagree with the importance of cost discipline.
Where I’d connect that back to what I’ve been describing is that the primary mission focus is one of the tools that enforces that discipline.
I agree that ships like FREMM and FDI aren’t single-purpose in a literal sense. They’re balanced ships. The difference is that they’re still bounded in how far they try to optimize across all mission areas. That’s part of why the cost stays under control. What I’m trying to avoid is the point where multiple mission areas are treated as co-equal design drivers.
Your SWaP-C point gets right to the same issue from another direction. If cost is a fixed constraint, then the solution has to be bounded. You can’t optimize everything.
So I don’t see it as single-purpose versus multi-purpose so much as how tightly the design is constrained. And I agree, there are trade offs. What we can’t do is let perfect become the enemy of good enough.
Thanks for reading!
So, I'm going to add one last thing to this discussion thread. A lot of the readers here misunderstand why USN ships are what they are. It's got nothing to do with 'not knowing what we want' or being 'unable to nail down the requirements'. The issue is that the USN, like the US Army and USAF, pursues PERFORMANCE above cost and, unfortunately, even above schedule sometimes.
USN ships are sized to support the most powerful sensors money can buy and the biggest magazines money can buy. This is why the idea of 'just buy country x's ship' doesn't really work. Those ships are built to a BUDGET rather than to a performance metric, which is why you have Type 23 frigates being built with an 18-year lifespan. The UK shaved a few pounds sterling with that move, even though it bit them really hard in the end.
In the end, in spite of its age, a Burke with SPY-1 is still one of the most formidable platforms in the world, when many of its contemporaries around the world have already retired. The USN bought the biggest sensor it could get and wrapped the biggest ship and magazine combo it could around that sensor.
What you are pursuing here in these pages is not 'wrong' but it is diametrically opposed to this philosophy. You are pursuing a 'meh' sensor fit with a 'meh' weapons fit--neither bad nor outstanding--in the name of economy. It's a strategy the same as any real-world strategy, but it forgets how we got here.
When the Burke was designed, we were facing a foe who could muster dozens of bombers all firing supersonic cruise missiles in a saturation attack that could even potentially be coupled with SSGNs doing the same. The only way to survive that was: biggest sensor, deepest magazines.
We are currently facing an adversary who is mustering hordes anti-ship ballistic and hypersonic missiles for a massed saturation attack coupled with bombers and even carrier-aviation doing the same thing. 'Meh' sensors and 'meh' weapons magazines may not be your optimal choice here.
I think that’s a fair description of how the Navy has approached ship design, and why ships like the Burke look the way they do. The Cold War environment you’re describing demanded exactly that approach. Large sensors, deep magazines, and the ability to handle saturation attacks were not optional, they were required. The Burke is a product of that environment, and it has been very successful in that role.
Where I’d diverge is on whether that model, applied across the entire force, is sufficient for the environment we’re moving into.
I’m not arguing that high-end capability doesn’t matter. It does. We still need ships built around the most capable sensors and the deepest magazines we can field. That requirement hasn’t gone away. The question is whether every ship needs to be built to that standard, or whether we need a mix of platforms that allow us to distribute capability across the fleet.
If every ship is built around the highest-end sensor and the largest magazine, the result is a smaller number of very capable ships. That creates its own set of risks, particularly in terms of coverage, presence, and the ability to absorb losses in a high-end fight.
I also wouldn’t characterize EASR as a “meh” sensor. It’s part of the SPY-6 family, just in a smaller configuration. That’s a question of scale, not quality. It doesn’t match the full SPY-6 array on a Flight III Burke, but it’s still a modern AESA radar with solid performance. The question is whether every ship needs the largest sensor we can build, or whether there’s a place for right-sized systems that support the ship’s role within a larger force.
What I’m proposing isn’t to replace high-end platforms with “good enough” ones. It’s to complement them. The Burkes will be in business in the fleet for years to come. Plans exist to refit Flight IIA with SPY-6 radars. Working alongside these refit ships, the Flight III ships, and the proposed cruiser (which I planned to carry a SPY-6 much larger than what is on flight III), ships with more limited sensors and magazines can still contribute meaningfully—particularly in roles like ASW, escort, and distributed operations—while allowing the highest-end assets to be concentrated where they’re most needed.
In a saturation environment, I do not think it will just be the capability of an individual ship that matters, but the capability of the entire force working together—how many sensors you have, how many interceptors you can bring to bear, and how broadly you can distribute them.
That’s the balance I’m trying to get at. Not abandoning performance, but pairing it with sufficient scale to matter in the fight we’re likely to face.
Thanks for reading.
Agree that every ship doesn't need full SPY-6. I think one of the places where Connie went wrong was in trying to fit three-face EASR, when, to your point, a rotating sensor for a patrol/ASW boat would have been 'good enough'. I think that's why current Pentagon leadership complained that they were trying to build a crappier DDG instead of building an ASW boat.
My concern is that your proposed structure doesn't necessarily have enough of those ships to cover all the bases. One of the reasons I don't like your two-cruiser approach is that it dilutes the cruiser force, when those are the hulls that would be most pressed in a peer-scenario.
Picture this: We're deploying as many CSGs as we can. Each of those CSGs needs a proper AAW cruiser. We also need to hold back cruisers to defend places like Guam and Yokosuka because these are targets. If we are building two types of cruiser, with one sub-optimized for AAW/ABM work, do we end up with enough ships optimized for AAW/ABM work to fill all those spots?
I'd prefer, were I doing your concept, to put the strike role on USVs and focus the cruisers on AAW/ABM. Then your conceptual destroyers could focus on just AAW with EASR and maybe a limited defense against Chinese hypersonics coming from their Type055s and Type052s.
This force would look like 20ish cruisers with the larger SPY-6. 30-50ish destroyers with 3-faced EASR.
60ish FFGs with rotating EASR or perhaps an even simpler radar and super-quiet electric drive.
A fleet of maybe 32 USVs with flat decks capable of carrying six-eight Mk-70 containers to be just swapped out at sea.
Oh, and I can get on board with additional frigates. I was initially thinking 50ish.. but 60 is a good number, too.
I agree that the AAW/ABM requirement is one of the hardest to satisfy, especially once you start thinking in terms of actual wartime assignments rather than just total hull numbers on paper. Carrier groups certainly need those ships. I think that key fixed positions like Guam and Yokosuka need them as well… along with shore based defenses. That demand signal is real.
On Constellation, I think your point is a good one. Trying to give it a three-face EASR did push it toward becoming a lesser destroyer rather than a more focused ASW escort. That is exactly the kind of drift I’ve been arguing against in a frigate.
I do like your idea of putting a lot of the strike burden onto USVs, and I think there’s a lot of merit to it.
Where I would still be cautious is in making the cruiser force too single-threaded, because there is still value in having some larger surface combatants with meaningful offensive striking power of their own, rather than relying entirely on distributed platforms for that role.
I think we are not very far apart on the design of USVs… I will have more on that in a future issue.
Thanks for reading!
I want to say this, and it's not meant as a dig on you. You seem to have a predilection for reaching for a foreign design when there are plenty of 'good' designs in the states. You seem, like so many, to fall in the trap of believing that 'country x' has it right or 'country y' is doing good things.
The reality is that ships are built to a need and budget. The Mogami, for example, is built basically to act as a secondary line of defense against what used to be known as 'crossing targets'. Basically, one of their jobs is to shoot down leakers heading for the flagship. They're design is meant to deal with short-range deployments within the manpower limits of the JMSDF. Ie, they are not designed for 4-8 month deployments on the far side of the ocean. 90 people on a ship trying to keep her running for 8 months at a time doesn't work so well. We saw that on the LCS, which tried to adopt a similar minimal manning philosophy.
Forget the Constellation. You'd do better theorizing what your ideal destroyer would be. Forget the QEs. You'd be better off theorizing what an ideal 'conventionally powered carrier' would be for your ideas of a 'gap-filler' ship. All these foreign ships are good ships when they're functioning in the roles their designers intended. Trying to push them into a role in a foreign navy requires that navy to basically adopt the methods and operating concepts of the source navy for that ship to work optimally.
But the USN doesn't need a 'crossing targets' anti-leaker ship. We need a robust frigate capable of being at sea for 8 months at a time with sufficient crew to keep her running.
I don't take it as a dig. One of the reasons I write this is to promote debate and discussion.
And, it is true that I feel that when an existing design can fill a gap in an efficient manner, that avenue should be looked at.
I also I feel that to say that I am against good domestic designs is an overstatement.
The cruiser designs I proposed are to be entirely domestic designs. If I had an overall predilection for foreign designs, I would have suggested teaming up with the Japanese on their new Aegis Afloat/Guided Missile Cruisers. But I didn't, because I truly think we can do better on that design.
I suggest the Constellation be a destroyer not because it was based on a foreign design... at only, I think off the top of my head it's down to only 15% commonality with the parent design, now, from a planned 15% difference... that isn't even really a foreign design anymore, and the changes to make a DDG out of it will likely diverge them from the parent event more. I suggest it because so much work has already been done on the design that it can become a destroyer for the size I propose at a much lower cost than any other avenue that I can see.
I also suggested clearly in the article that the primary push for frigates is for a domestically designed and produced design in very large numbers. They will be the backbone of the frigate fleet.
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I get it. I was one of the people who was REALLY disappointed in seeing the Constellation go down in flames. However, given how hard it is to get a program canceled by the DoD instead of having Congress pull the plug, this thing would truly have had to be rabid-dog-off-the-chain bad.
Having taken a look at the layout of the ship in question and all the mods needed to make it viable for what you're suggesting, it really challenges your cost-saving mantra to try and save Connie. And even then... you end up with the thing you're advocating against: a multi-purpose ship that's really expensive when a simpler design would be better. That's why I said you should just lay out what you think is the best ship and not try and borrow somebody else's crap. Make it what you think it ought to be.
I can understand that point of view, too.
Basically, what I proposed turning the FFG-62 into is the basic outline for what I feel we need in a destroyer. Escort focused, multi-mission capable if need be, and at that price point.
If a clean sheet design, or your Spruance based design below can be made to work at that price point, then they are certainly worth exploring as well.
Thanks for reading.
Going with your single-purpose concept, a destroyer should be a direct-drive ship. No hybrid-electric drive, as that ups the cost. A 'frigate' that's focused on ASW ideally should be electric drive with a very good sonar. I'd go the opposite direction in your model. I'd strip out all the US crap that made Connie fail and return to the FREMM root. That gives you a 6000ish ton ship with a simple radar (rotating-EASR at the top of the existing FREMM mast), minimal VLS tubes (some FREMMs come with just 16 tubes) and whisper-quiet electric drive. Pursue your stretched FDI or something similar in size and scope for your destroyer.
You're kind of defeating your own point here. The FF(X) is actually the ship you want. The National Security Cutter was designed to accommodate 16 Mk41 VLS in the space where the 'shelf' exists. The reason the 'shelf' is there is in fact to extend that fitted-for-not-with space so that those cells would be 'strike length' rather than 'tactical length' without the module jutting out of the deck plating.
The space where the former interceptor boat and its pals used to sit was intended by Ingalls to fit a CAPTAS sonar. And it has been stated in other forums that, for a 'direct drive' boat (ie no electric drive) the NSC is pretty quiet already.
If we're 'reusing stuff' and going with hot production lines, the FF(X) makes far more sense than repurposing somebody else's crap.
The FDI is limited to 27 knots. There is no way to make that ship faster. Nor will it take US sensors as its engineering spaces are limited. You'd be looking at another Constellation. Euro-ships are designed to be sailed until obsolescence, not upgraded. There's nothing wrong with this philosophy, but it doesn't fit what you want to do.
The Mogami is a throw-away ship for a country that doesn't sail very far from its own borders. It's design to basically be abandoned when it takes a hit. Again, there's nothing wrong with this philosophy, but it doesn't work as well for the USN, where you are likely to be on the far side of the ocean from home when/if something happens.
I also thought about your continuing attempt to reuse the Constellation. I would suggest that a better approach would be a reuse of the Spruance Hull. This hull already meets USN damage control requirements. It has robust sea-keeping, and it has space for 64 VLS cells up front without a 'stretch'.
What you would need to do is:
1.) Shorten the ship by eliminating the aft space where the Sea-Sparrow mount and its magazine exist. There is a gas-turbine generator here, but for what you want to do, that doesn't matter.
2.) Replace the aft 5 inch gun and its magazine with a space for CAPTAS.
3.) Uprate the remaining two gas-turbine generators with the 4Mw versions. This ups your electrical power to 8 Mw over the original 6 that these ships had, supporting EASR, which seems to be the biggest radar you want to have.
Thus, you end up with a ship that has 64 VLS, is smaller and theoretically cheaper than a Flight 3 Burke, and you're not fighting an architecture that was not designed for upgrade (FREMM).
As an aside, your ideas don't work with current USN loadouts of weapons as you end up with TLAM, TASM, and SM2 fighting for space in the magazines. However, if you were to use the PAC-3 in its 'quad-packable' version, the math works better without assuming robot ships that may or may not be functional in a high-end version.
On the FF(X) front, I agree the hull itself has potential. In fact, I had hoped when it was announced that the Navy was shifting away from the Constellation, I honestly expected, and was excited by, the idea that they might use the NSC hull as a basis… because it did have the space for the systems you mentioned. .
If you take that platform and fit it with a VLS, a full ASW suite, and build it around a defined mission, it would be a strong design, and if that is what was developed to be the frigate that filled the domestically built frigate in my proposal, I think it would be a strong design that hit all my criteria… 16 cell VLS, helo capability, sonar, ASW torpedoes, the works, and would be fully worthy of an FFG hull designation.
The issue I have with the FF(X), as it currently stands, is that it is not that ship. Nowhere in anything yet released has the Navy discussed fielding it with a VLS or a fixed ASW suite. The emphasis is on modular payloads and flexibility, which puts it back into the same trade space we saw with LCS. That’s where I think it diverges from what a focused combatant needs to be.
On the foreign designs, I agree they come with tradeoffs, but I still feel they can help us get the numbers up and provide useful service. And again, the bulk of the frigates would be a domestic design.
On the Spruance-based concept, I like that approach. The Spruance-class hull is a good one, and your proposed modifications are logical and sound. That kind of design could produce a very capable ship without some of the risks we’ve seen in recent programs.
On the magazine point, I agree that loadout discipline matters. That’s part of why I’ve been deliberate about limiting VLS count in the concept. Once you expand that space, the pressure to fill it with additional mission sets follows very quickly. As far as how the ships are loaded, I think that overall we need to examine how loadouts are planned, especially as USVs start to become part of the fleet. I think your earlier idea of having them primarily carry the strike weapons was a good one, for example, and that would allow escorts to carry more defensive weapons.
So if the cost numbers work out at a similar price point for your Spruance-based design, I think it could work.
Thanks for reading!
Great post - thank you for sharing it.
Do you know if French or Japanese naval shipyards have the necessary spare capacity to construct the initial run of - say - ten of these frigates?
(If I’m understanding your suggestion correctly.)
I appreciate that.
France, for example, is currently building five FDI frigates for itself and four for Greece, and Naval Group has stated a goal of producing two per year while actively working to increase that rate.
Japan is in a similar position. The Mogami-class production line has been designed for higher output, with plans to build 12 improved “06FFM” units over five years, alongside potential export work.
So there isn’t a lot of idle capacity, but there is a demonstrated ability to produce at scale, and to expand that production when needed.
Given that, I do think an initial run of ten is feasible, particularly if it’s treated as a priority program and scheduled accordingly.
Thanks for reading.
Nope. There is no spare capacity in France or Japan to build anything for the USN in a timeframe where this would be useful. Japan is already committed to building upgraded Mogamis for themselves and Australia, with a potential contract for New Zealand in the offing. The Mogamis take about 2-2.5 years to build. The upgraded version will likely be a 3 year build. They will not be able to support us.
FDI is build in a single build hall and takes 2-2.5ish years for building and fitting out. The French have their contract (still need 4 more). They have the Greek contract. They are working on getting the Swedish contract for 2-4ish ships. So no real space there for at least 6-8 years.
Even if you could get Congress to build such a complex ship in a foreign yard, nobody really has space to do it. The West collectively let its shipyards shut down.
Far more likely would be Austal's new 3-ship steel shop or to go back to Marinette who have 4-6 building slots depending on ship size.
I think you’re right that there isn’t idle capacity sitting open in France or Japan. The current build queues are real, and the timelines you’re pointing to are part of the picture.
Where I am going to say nope to your nope is on treating that capacity as fixed, or on viewing this as a question of whether there’s an empty slot available today.
France, for example, is producing two FDI per year. That’s a demonstrated level of throughput. The question is less about idle space and more about whether that production can be expanded, reprioritized, or sequenced if a program is treated as a priority.
France has done this before. A FREMM originally intended for its own navy was redirected to Egypt and delivered on an accelerated timeline. That doesn’t mean capacity is freely available, but it does show that production can be reprioritized when the demand signal is strong enough.
More importantly, this isn’t being proposed as a replacement for U.S. shipbuilding. It’s a bridging approach.
The intent is to get additional hulls in the water as quickly as possible while the U.S. rebuilds its ability to produce ships at scale. Even if foreign production takes two to three years per hull, that timeline still has to be weighed against the delays and instability we’ve seen in recent domestic programs.
On the domestic side, I agree those yards are part of the equation. The plan is to proceed to build, at scale, a new US design in those yards. Buying the 10 ships from an ally is about accelerating growth of the fleet, not simple outsourcing. Given that, I don’t see this as a question of “foreign versus domestic.” It’s a question of how to increase total shipbuilding capacity in a way that produces usable ships on a relevant timeline.
Thanks for reading
You're better off driving that demand signal here rather than trying to get other nations to rework their build schedules when they're just as screwed up as we are. Ie there's only so long France is going to delay building FDIs. The Lafayettes are getting really long in the tooth.
As previously stated, Austal is building capacity. Marinette already built capacity. If the USN can constrain the size of the ship, as you are clearly trying to do with the suggestions you're making, that opens up a range of possibilities we already have for some of our needs. With all build slots in Marinette and Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin (Yeah, I look at this a lot for some reason), Marinette could probably build 4-6 ships of the size of an FF(X) or 2 the size of a FREMM in accelerated fashion. Austal's new facility could do 3. Ingalls claims they can squeeze in one. That could be anywhere from 8-10 ships of the size of a FREMM or smaller laid down at one time while still leaving Austal able to build three of something else.
And if we do just that---offer these ships to Austal or Marinette, both yards still have facilities to expand.
20% of all ship workers in Korea are foreigners . The foreign ship building will not work as the interest groups affected are not something any president can offend.
I think those constraints exist, but they aren’t absolute. We’re already building USCG icebreakers in Finland, so there is precedent for working with allied shipyards when it makes sense, and the push back against doing so has been limited.
I was leaning towards Japan or France instead of South Korea myself.
Thanks for reading.
Icebreakers don't have super-classified weapons or Combat Information Centers to worry about. So, yeah, this is basically a non-starter for anything that's not an Auxiliary.
Oh, and just because they're 'allies' doesn't mean that we can freely do work with them. Israeli representatives are often kept isolated from primary working spaces when they visit US Contractors due to a tendency for them to attempt espionage. Even though they are nominal US Allies. The French are much the same. Israel's Litening pod is a basically a copy of the American LANTIRN targeting pod.
I don’t think it’s accurate to treat work with allies as a total non-starter.
The U.S. routinely cooperates with allied nations on complex defense programs, including ships, aircraft, and weapons systems. Those efforts come with constraints, but they’re managed, not avoided entirely.
So I agree the security piece has to be handled carefully. I don’t see it as disqualifying, though. It’s another factor that has to be accounted for in how the program is structured.
Can it work? Yeah. Should you do it? With what I know now from experience working with foreign vendors, I'd run (screaming) from foreign collabs. They rarely work as well as you'd like, and they really can drive the cost up on your program and do a number on schedule. Something like Babcock UK's 'Arrowhead Factory" where they give you the TDP and you build it to suit using tools they sell you in your own country is a better version of foreign Collab. Buy a lot somewhere along one of the US coastlines, setup the Arrowhead Factory and get to work. That, I think, would work better than foreign outsourcing from a logistics/schedule constraint.
I notice the Knox class DE, later changed to FF, is rarely discussed. It too was a failed design. Just my humble opinion.
The Knox is an interesting one. They were the last U.S. escorts built with a conventional steam turbine propulsion plant, and lightly armed for their size. I tend to think of the class less as a failure and more as the last phase in a transition from old to new.
They were very much optimized for a specific mission set, and the technology changed around them, their design limitations drug them down. Being followed by the FFG-7 class doesn’t help. Having the next class be viewed as so successful with the new power plant and technology certainly cast a shadow over them.
Thanks for reading!
I'm curious about what the institutional opposition to a moderate tonnage, not overly complex, ASW frigate is? (Assuming the USN would already have one if there wasn't opposition).
It seems obvious that this is exactly the ship type the USN needs, and has needed for some time. But I'm an outsider and a hobbyist, there is definitely a lot I don't know.
I think what happened is that the multi-purpose bug bit the Navy pretty hard.
There’s actually a pretty clear statement of that thinking from the time. The old Navy Fact File on the frigates, from right about when they were being decommissioned, notes that “The Surface Combatant Force Requirement Study does not define any need for a single mission ship such as the frigate…” That mindset really pushed things away from a more focused ASW platform.
There are other factors as well — requirements growth, acquisition dynamics, industrial base — but I think that initial move away from a single, defined mission is a big part of it.
I do agree with you, though. A more focused, moderate-tonnage ASW frigate is something the Navy has needed for quite a while.
Thanks for reading!
As I keep telling you, getting 'single purpose' ships through is very difficult. There's a reason the F-22 is technically the F/A-22, though that is not often advertised anymore. Lockheed and the USAF stuffed a couple of JDAMS into its belly so it would be easier for Congress to accept it.
The USN went through a process of basically chopping every single-purpose airframe on the carrier decks from their roster in the late 90s. This was done because they weren't going to get funding for dedicated air-refuelers and ASW planes.
Money isn't infinite.
More to the point, FDI is a multi-purpose ship. It is not, in fact, a single-purpose ship. Nor is Mogami. The issue is not 'getting bit by the multipurpose' bug. The issue is being realistic about levels of firepower and sensor performance
Burke's size, for example, is not driven by being 'multi-purpose'. It is driven because SPY-1 required Megawatts of electricity, cooling, and massive structural strength to support the arrays up high on the ship. You need a certain beam and length for that. Also, at that time, there was the issue of Soviet saturation attacks, so the magazines were sized accordingly.
Burke had no helo-hangars. It's helo-deck was an afterthought. She was very single-purpose---Air Defense. The Ticonderogas were terrible sea-boats being very wet forward and being very 'tippy' because the Spruance hull was overloaded toting SPY-1 and Aegis. The Burke was the response.
I don’t feel having a primary focus rules out secondary capabilities. The frigate concept I discussed carries ESSM for air defense, NSM for anti-ship, and a gun. It can defend itself and contribute in other areas. The difference is that those are supporting roles, not co-equal design drivers.
Once multiple mission areas are treated as primary, that’s when the demands on sensors, power, magazines, and cost all start to grow at the same time.
That’s the distinction I’m trying to make.
Total random aside, since you mentioned the Burkes and Ticos topic... what are your thoughts on the Cruiser Baseline study NAVSEA did?
-Thanks for reading.
Ok, so we're going to disagree on what Burke's primary mission areas are. Burke was designed in a time when Soviet Saturation attacks were the thing and ABM work wasn't even considered possible. Also, at the time, carrying TLAMS in VLS cells wasn't really a thing. TLAMs went in box-launchers scattered on the deck, so Burke's 'strike role' wasn't even considered.
There's a fascinating site that shows what the Burke's loadouts were over the years. The early years were literally swarms of SM2s of various flavors. The ridiculous performance (for its time) of the SPY-1/Aegis combo and the creation of Vertical Launch for Tomahawk is what led to the later proliferation of roles that you're talking about.
With that said, the USN failed back to Ticonderoga because they couldn't get a proper cruiser-scale ship to carry SPY-1. Congress balked at the cost. Tico was never really satisfactory since it was essentially a destroyer that was supposed to carry SPY-1 and a smaller set of launchers.
Now, how do I feel about the Cruiser Baseline study?
I'm a person who believes the US should have overmatch vs. our adversaries. If that requires spending oodles of cash to get the best kit, I'm fine with that. I believe the USN needs a cruiser with: SPY-6 V1 (37 element array version), 128 VLS cells to give us overmatch over the Renhai class cruisers, and enough MWatts in the engineering spaces to enable them to carry some kind of Directed Energy weapon for leakers.
For me, there's trade-space around those numbers. E.g. I don't care if there's no 5" popgun on the bow. I can accept 112 VLS cells, but I wouldn't go below that. But SPY-6 V1 with sufficient sea-keeping to handle the Pacific will drive you towards something in the realm of 13000 tons anyways simply due to power demands.
I think that’s a fair read on how the Burke evolved and why it looks the way it does today. I agree that the early Flight I ships were much more tightly aligned to the AAW mission. But with Flight IIA and the addition of the hangars, you can see the shift happening. I think the retirement of the Spruances and their 61 VLS cells loaded with Tomahawks pushed the strike role onto the Burkes even more.
At that point, though, the Burke isn’t just filling an air defense role anymore. That’s less about the original design intent and more about how the fleet evolved as other platforms left service.
On the cruiser side, I understand the argument for overmatch. I was tempted by the idea of modifying the Burkes to a standard similar to (but not the exact design) of the South Korean Sejong the Great-class… in a lot of ways they remind me of the cruiser baseline design, though not as large (If I recall the cruiser baseline was around 13,000 tons), as they are in essence cruisers. Which is why I was curious what you thought about the baseline study. After a lot of thought, I chose the clean sheet idea focused on the larger radar and detection capability to overmatch the Renhai in that aspect, and then use a more distributed force of shooters for the CG.
I think if we had built ships to the Cruiser Baseline study when the study was done, we’d be in a better spot right now than we are.
Missed opportunity, to be sure.
Thanks for reading