US Navy shipbuilding has been a shitshow ever since NAVSEA stopped doing the design work in house. The last new major ship class designed the old way was the DDG-51 class.
US Navy scuttles Constellation frigate program for being too slow for tomorrow's threats
The US Navy is scrapping an entire shipbuilding program in an effort to find alternatives that can be delivered faster to counter expected threats. Announced on social media site X by Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, the decision means the Constellation class of frigates will be limited to the two ships currently under …
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Thursday 27th November 2025 14:01 GMT CountCadaver
Re: Another MAGA decision....
*IFV - infantry fighting vehicle - similar but different, APC - armoured personnel carrier - carries more troops but way less lightly armed - usually a couple of heavy machine guns at most Vs 30/40/50mm auto cannon on IFV
While also rejecting the very capable Swedish CV-90 for *reasons*
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:05 GMT Wang Cores
Nine years and only two frigates built.
Also highly customized so they don't share the same supply chain with the FREMMs which they were based off of. If any ship program was going to be a success, this was one of the best candidates but spitefulness is just being put in all forms of US institutions apparently.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 16:14 GMT Doctor Syntax
Not so much spitefulness by the sound of it, more like the old inability of manglers everywhere to start demanding changes after a design is agreed. Just go back to the original plan and then fire every official who demands a change. In fact, be pre-emptive and fire all those who demanded the changes last time around.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:24 GMT EvilDrSmith
Destroyers for bases in reverse?
In 1940, the UK got 50 old USN destroyers in return for basing rights for the US in British-owned territory.
Maybe we could offer them our old Type 23's, as we replace them with the new Type 26's, in some similar sort of deal?
Though after today, I don't think we want bases, just hard cash...
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 16:49 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Destroyers for bases in reverse?
We scrapped the last Type 23 that went into Life-Extension, after inspecting it and finding that the cost was up around £100m! Type 23 were excellent ships, but the idea at the time was to build them relatively cheaply, for a hull life of only twenty years, because that way we could just keep producing them to keep the industrial base in working order, until we got a new design, then start building that. Rather than just not buying any new ASW ships for twenty years, and then wondering why we were running out of ships!
This generation of British politicians (from both major parties) have actually understood that mistake and made some quite good decisions to fix it, in the last ten years. Not sure if the next generation will manage to live up to the same standard though. People are actually quite good at learning lessons, but also sadly very good at forgetting them again.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:25 GMT IGotOut
You know what they really need...
... modularity!
Have one hull with loads of swappable containerised components that they can quickly swap out. Use untested advanced propulsion units and untested hull designs.
Then lay down billions of dollars for a shit load of these before even the first sea trials.
Maybe call them the Littoral Combat Ships.
Sure they'll be a roaring success.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 10:52 GMT LogicGate
Re: You know what they really need...
And there must be hangar space for E-VTOLs and jetpacks.
The ships must also have masculine names like Hulk and He-Man, while at the same time the interior should contain as much faux gold paint and marble as possible, and the captain must have full time access to a make-up studio.
Finally they must be built in Red states like Arizona or Utah, preferrably by Republican donor owned companies.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:36 GMT Pascal Monett
"Announced on social media site X"
So, Twitter is now the official communication arm of the US Government. Musk must be creaming his pants.
Whatever happened to official channels ? Like an announcement from the White House Spokesperson ?
Oh yeah, silly me, she's just there to defend whatever bullshit the orange shitgibbon has just flung out. This is actual technical news. Not in her job description.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 17:32 GMT Claptrap314
Re: "Announced on social media site X"
The whole "Defense" thing was a politically correct post-WWI bit of nonsense. It frankly hurt morale, and needed to be changed back to the original "War Department". But there was a cost to the change, and it isn't super-clear that the benefit actually exceeded the cost.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:37 GMT I ain't Spartacus
This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
Whatever this decision is actually for, it's not about speeding up deliveries of greatly needed ships to the fleet. If that were the case, they'd have an alternative ready and would be able to say exactly what that alternative is, and at least roughly what the timeline would be.
They've fucked this program up, but that doesn't mean that it's unfixably fucked up, just that it's over time and over budget. So the question is not, what should we have done to get this right 6 years ago when we agreed this process. The question is, what should we do now? First ship is due by 2030. Can they get anything built faster, by any other means? That seems incredibly unlikely - to actually impossible. Therefore the only viable choice was to go with what they've got, and finish it off.
It is amazing on how many levels everyone has fucked up though.
Fincantieri appear to have promised that they could meet US damage control and ship-survivability requirements with relative ease. That was clearly something between wishful thinking and a massive lie. And it does make you wonder exactly how safe Italian designs are? The Italian Navy aren't losing ships every day, but there's been incredibly little serious naval conflict since WWII - and so very few people have got actual experience. The Royal Navy learnt some painful lessons in the Falklands - and so have much tougher rules for ship design nowadays. We bought the Iver Huitfeld design off the Danes, in order to turn it into Type 31, and apparently much of the work was bringing the design up to acceptable safety standards for the RN (although it was also an experimental modular ship design that turned out to be too ambitious and was removed). After the failure of the Iver Huitfeld in combat in the Red Sea - the Danes are now looking at downgrading them to long-range patrol frigates, and buying the Type 31 design back off us - although those failure were the combat management system, weapons and sensor integration - rather than the ship itself. I'm still rather confused as to why they seem to be saying they can't fix it. In the Red Sea they found that trying to fire the weapons took the radar off-line - thus meaning they had to resort to shooting down a missile with the canons, in electro-optical targetting mode, and worse, were using post expiration-date ammunition, much of which exploded as soon as it left the gun barrel.
I've read suggestions from several different sources that the US Navy wanted to go with Type 26 because it mostly met US safety standards, and so "all" they'd have to do is change every single weapons system and sensor on the ship. With FREMM, they've had to change every single weapons system, every sensor and re-design the internal bulkheads and sub-division and lengthen the ship in order to fit all the extra VLS cells that they want (although that last bit was at least well-understood beforehand).
The other reason for all the changes is that the Navy told porkies to Congress, or at least told them what they wanted to hear, because no off-the-shelf design actually existed. Or in fact, could exist. But they needed new ships that were cheaper than Arleigh Burkes, and also required smaller crews. And who manages the budget?
Thus we get to Congress. Oh dear God! Congress! They forced the Navy to not take Type 26, because it wasn't finished yet. As opposed to using an off-the-shelf design that didn't exist either... They made them build it in a shipyard that doesn't have a deep enough channel to get to the sea. So the ship is having to be built without a bow sonar, even though it's supposed to be a specialist ASW ship. It's got the best towed sonar available, but nonetheless...
There's a law against buying ships from abroad. So that's out. The law mandates that all ships comply with their damage standards. So buying a foreign off-the-shelf design is also out. They're also mandated to use mostly US weapons. So again, off-the-shelf is much harder. Congress also made them re-design Constellation again, ships from 3 onwards have to be able to carry Tomahawk and SM6, which means more strike length Mk41 VLS, rather than the shorter ones used for the ESSM SAMs they were planning to use.
I'd say Congress are the worst problem here, not the Navy. But it could be they're both as bad as each other? And the contractors shouldn't get off lightly either.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 19:54 GMT thames
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
Canada chose the Type 26 over the FREMM because it wanted the best there was and was willing to pay for it. It was what the RCN wanted from the beginning and they were willing to write the rules to allow the Type 26 to be considered "off the shelf" even though construction hadn't started yet in the UK, they had that much confidence in the UK's ability to design ships. All of the ship designs looked at by Canada were European by the way, the US had absolutely nothing that was worth considering. The US have fallen quite badly behind in terms of naval ship design and construction methods.
The US chose the FREMM because they wanted something cheap and off the shelf to put into production immediately to fill the yawning void in their fleet. They need something cheap enough to be built in numbers that could be sent to secondary areas, as the Burke class and its planned successor were seen as too expensive to be used anywhere except as part of their front line fleet.
The British Type 31 with an Mk41 launch system and ESSM missiles instead of Sea Ceptor would be pretty much what the US were originally looking for before they decided to change everything.
US naval shipbuilding is an utter shambles, with major problems in their frigate, icebreaker, and submarine programs. They recently bought an icebreaker design from Canada and Finland to reboot their disastrous icebreaker program, we'll have to see if they completely stuff that up by redesigning everything as well. Australia's plans to buy some second hand US nuclear submarines to fill in the gap until the AUKUS subs hit the water are in severe doubt as the US cannot currently build submarines fast enough to replace the ones that they have to retire due to age, so they may have none to spare when the time comes.
By cancelling the Constellation class ships the US are simply digging themselves deeper into a hole they are already shoulder deep in, as they have nothing ready to replace it with.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 23:55 GMT mcswell
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
You guys (thames and not-spartacus) seem pretty knowledgeable. I served on an Adams-class destroyer (Goldsborough, DDG-20), and while they served well, I'm aware of two major problems: the 1200 psi steam plants were too hard to maintain (too complicated and using boiler controls that didn't hold up under at-sea conditions), and aluminum superstructures (which I'm told were an issue). The Arleigh Burke DDGs were designed, I assume, to fix at least the former problem; did it? What was the next generation of DDG-like ships supposed to fix, and did they?
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Thursday 27th November 2025 01:34 GMT thames
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
All or nearly all new frigates and destroyers are powered by either a combination of diesel and gas turbine, or just diesel. The ships cruise on diesel for economical operation and gas turbines are fired up for high speed operation. The newest ones tend to have an electric drive system, where the diesels and gas turbines drive generators and the generators feed electric motors which turn the propellers. Any engine or combination of them can feed any electric motor. On the slightly older ones the gas turbines may be able to be coupled directly to the propeller shafts when needed instead of going through the electric drive system, but they only are used when high speed is needed.
The replacements for the Burke class destroyers will look fairly similar to the Constellation class ships, but much bigger and with more vertical launch cells for missiles.
The differences between ships these days are mainly in the details. These include things like damage control and fire fighting arrangements, size of magazines, and the electronics fitted. The combat systems can cost more than the rest of the ship put together.
The Burke replacement will apparently displace about 14,500 tons and have 96 vertical launch cells, as compared to half that displacement and a third of the number of vertical launch cells for the Constellation class.
The Constellations were supposed to be an off the shelf quick fix for the failed LCS program. However, the US ended up making so many changes that only about 15 percent of the original FREMM design was left by the time they were done with it. This sort of defeats the whole purpose.
Because the Burkes (and planned replacements) are so large and expensive, the US wanted a smaller frigate to give them the numbers to cover places in the world where attention is needed but the threat level is lower. They also wanted them quickly to make up for the time lost pursuing the LCS dead end.
It's hard to say where things are going now, unless someone has a replacement already lined up which is ready to build. Given how that sort of thing tends to leak in the US, I would be very surprised if that were the case however.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 08:47 GMT collinsl
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
True, but in WW2 those ships would have also had extensive armour and 6 to 8 inch guns numbering from 6 to 12 (roughly from memory), plus very large and cumbersome fire direction equipment including early RADAR sets which took up a lot of internal volume with their computing equipment (such as it was at the time). The crew was also usually a lot larger as you needed more extensive teams to man the guns (both primary, secondary, and anti-aircraft) and run more cumbersome and finnicky engineering equipment.
These days a lot of internal volume is taken up by "optional" spaces - spaces where you can fit containerised silos for missiles, spaces for mission-specific equipment, spaces to fit marines/soldiers/police if required (police for anti-drug-smuggling operations etc), and spaces for future systems which haven't been designed yet but which may be fitted in the future (this lesson was well learned from WW2 and subsequent years when ships were too small to retrofit technological advances), and spaces for aircraft.
Automation has done away with a lot of the previous crew requirements - the Queen Elizabeth class carriers of the UK for example use automation extensively in the magazines meaning they're mostly unmanned now, saving dozens to hundreds of crew over older US designs where these stores are handled manually. And of course on smaller ships missiles are stored in their firing position so don't require handling at all at sea, and the primary gun mounts are usually automatic.
So whilst the ships may be the same size, they're packing a much bigger punch now than their predecessors but the crew is a similar size to an old destroyer.
Plus things have always been classified oddly, ever since people started changing the definition of what a "ship of the line" was in the 1700s.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 11:30 GMT Like a badger
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
An honest question, is there any frigate design* in the NATO navies that is modern, affordable, reliable, well armed, effective in intended roles, and could be more widely adopted without all the usual messing around and idiot spec changes that cause massive cost over-runs?
Seems to me that most of the defence budget gets spent on costly design changes and first builds, ensuring that the assets delivered are poor, and cost per unit high. And that's multiplied by the fact that so many western aligned countries keep trying to design and build their own, or even when they buy the design in, still keep on meddling.
* Or indeed any class of naval vessel.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 12:09 GMT EvilDrSmith
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
yes..well sort-of.
Firstly, the 'affordable' is a subjective term, and 'effective in intended roles' is a key point, since different navies have different priorities and require their warships to be able to do specific tasks which the navy next door doesn't need/want to do.
The UK has the Type 25 which seems to be at the top end of capability, and appears to have been designed to allow for some flexibility of equipment/weapon fit out, comes close to your requirement, meeting the needs of RN and Royal Norwegian Navy in original configuration, and seemingly easily modified to meet Australian and Canadian needs too. However. 'top end' means costly, so not affordable to all.
At lower capability, the UK has the Type 31 (Babcock's Arrowhead 140). These are being built to a budget - rarely a good thing, but this seems to be the exception, since that tight budget limit seems to have ensured the MoD can't continuously try to change the design, and make the ships late and expensive. These are obviously less capable than the type 25, but can do most everything that the RN (or any other Navy) needs a Frigate to do, day-in and day-out - noting that most navies are not actually fighting wars day-in and day-out. And they are a lot cheaper.
But there are a number of alternate 'lower end' frigate / corvette designs available that are equally as good, depending on what your navy's precise requirements are. FREMM is reckoned to be a fundamentally good design.
The French have a shiny-new design (FDI), which is one of four (?) contenders for the Swedish new frigate (along with the Type 31) - and I read somewhere that Denmark are also looking for a new frigate and may combine their requirements with the Swedes to provide for a common fleet.
There is at least one Spanish shipyard that produces a range of designs, who are also in the running for the Swedish order.
So, for most navies and most tasks, there are actually a fair number of perfectly viable candidates.
Part of the issue is individual fit out, making sure weapons, sensors and other systems are common across an individual navy's wider fleet.
A lot of the issue is politics. We want to do a deal with country X not Y, and we want to build the ships ourselves in our shipyards, and give orders to system suppliers in our own country, etc.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 13:07 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
Like a badger,
Problem, it's horses for courses. You complain about design changes leading to more expense. But if you buy my frigate with my preferred choice of diesel engines then you now have to retrain all your engineers to maintain both my diesels and your current diesels. And now need two supply chains. So it's probably cheaper to standardise on yours, and change the design. Same with radars, torpedoes, missiles, decoys, deck guns, combat systems and a host of other stuff.
At this point, pause in sympathy with the poor Ukrainian engineers - who have a nightmare of everyone else's hand-me-down equipment, plus a bunch of old Soviet stuff to maintain.
This is one of the big problems for Australia. They destroyed their submarine program with France (Attack class) because they've standardised on US systems. Plus they wanted a nuclear hull with an AIP propulsion system from a different French sub. Plus the French promised them lots of workshare and then kept reducing that, until Australia was going to only get 30% of the build. That's program killing technical risk, and I doubt the French were ever being honest about the risks. But now they're taking a UK design with some parts being common between US, UK and them. So are the Royal Navy going to have to change to US combat systems to suit the Aussies (which then won't match with our other boats) or will the Aussies have a separate set-up on a class with only 5 Aussie and 8-12 UK boats? Making it fire both Spearfish and Mk48 torpedoes should be relatively easy - it's likely to use UK sonar. Difficult.
Norway have 4 frigates. Which they're planning to replace, not being happy after one of them sank. I'm not sure if this was design or operator error, but it's controversial. So perhaps they're less concerned about supply chains and interoperability, seeing as they're getting rid of the old. Though they have other missile boats and subs. But also they live next door to the UK. So they've bought Type 26 in its entirety and plan to actually join our program. So I think they're signing up for the same training, upgrade and maintenance program as us. That's what they've said they want anyway, nothing's signed yet. Maybe this is a model for Australia, who are getting rid of the Collins class subs - but equally they want to buy 3 used US subs at which point having one CMS (combat management system) makes more sense.
In the end, you pays your money and you takes your choice.
But there's plenty of stuff to buy. Italy or France just keep building cheap-ish frigates, and will sell you one of their own Navy's cheaper ships and just take the replacement from the yards - a pure off-the-shelf deal. You can always upgrade them later. Upgradeability is why ships keep getting bigger. Steel and air are cheap, so make it bigger, you can fit more in later. French FDI or Italian upgradeable patrol frigate for cheaps, FREMM variants for better.
Britain has the Type 26 - £750m a ship but absolutely top ASW (anti-sub) combatant that's got decent AAW (anti-air) capabilities. Or the general purpose Type 31 (£150m each - but that's a lie as the MOD are providing many of the combat systems directly), plus it's immediately going to require upgrades once built - but they wanted them built quick and worry about the rest later. Poland are buying a high-end air defence variant of this, the Miecznik class. Denmark and Sweden are looking at it.
Spain have a mix of frigates that are decent options to buy. And you can buy from Germany. Spain and Germany use lots of US systems and weapons. Italy and France are standardised on Aster surface-to-air missiles and more European weapons. Britain the same, and us and Italy are starting to converge on things like CAMM (Sea Ceptor) SAMs.
However it is complicated. And generating outrage by calling people stupid and/or corrupt for making perfectly sensible, but expensive, decisions is far too easy and gets far too many likes. Plus up-front cost is often a poor guide for systems that are going to be in service for 20-40 years - and the supply-chains and training pipelines that are required to support them.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 15:11 GMT Like a badger
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
"And now need two supply chains. So it's probably cheaper to standardise on yours, and change the design......And generating outrage by calling people stupid and/or corrupt for making perfectly sensible, but expensive, decisions is far too easy and gets far too many likes. Plus up-front cost is often a poor guide for systems that are going to be in service for 20-40 years - and the supply-chains and training pipelines that are required to support them"
That's all logical and well argued, but leaves us not that much further forward in terms of (for the most part) bloody expensive weapons, delivered late, often with fundamental flaws or capability gaps and with little commonality with likely co-combatants. During peacetime having overly expensive weapons is merely a cosmetic problem - the government just cut the number bought to control costs, payoff the deaf squaddies, and the military get fewer toys to churn up Salisbury Plain (or scare the rabbits around Spadeadam, or the fish off Aberporth, as appropriate). But as you're well aware, our governments are wakening up to the need to have bigger and more capable militaries against the possibility of a hot war, and in that case it does actually matter how quickly assets can be built, and how many their unit cost. I take on board the challenges of value-share when buying from another nation, but we've seen that effectively solved several times on big ticket defence programmes.
And generating outrage by calling people stupid and/or corrupt for making perfectly sensible, but expensive, decisions is far too easy and gets far too many likes.
I don't think I've made any accusations of corruption. My first job after graduation was working in MoD, that was a loooonnnggggg time ago, but to judge by all recent defence procurement and the outrageous size of MoD little has changed. Individually I'd hope that everybody in MoD is competent and has the best of intentions, but collectively they have been consistently associated with poor outcomes. Asserting that "it is complicated" may be correct, but that's not an explanation or a justification for those poor outcomes.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 17:30 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
Like a badger,
I don't think I've made any accusations of corruption.
Sorry, didn't accuse you, and didn't mean you to get the impression that I had. I just get frustrated with the comments you do see on this thread, and I've seen on others reading about this story of, "oh this is easy. Just do this thing." Which in most cases is buy Korean/Japanese/Italian ship without ordering it, which would be illegal, because Congress have mandated all sorts of standards and have a buy American act etc.
Even the more logical, "just build the Canadian River Class (their Type 26)", would still mean lots of work and delays. Almost certainly more delay than finishing the Constitution class. What they've basically had to do is a design, not quite from scratch, to make the quart (of all the stuff they want and the pork barrel politics they practise) fit into the pint pot of the FREMM design.
but leaves us not that much further forward in terms of (for the most part) bloody expensive weapons, delivered late, often with fundamental flaws or capability gaps and with little commonality with likely co-combatants
I heard an interview with a defence journalist who got a visit to a Chinese Type 54 (I think) frigate. He said that he walked in from the helicopter pad, through the hangar, through a watertight door (into the lower level of the superstructure) and walked all the way to the prow of the ship with not a single watertight door in evidence after that. Also after the hangar there was a boat bay, where they'd got a fuel tank for the boats and an ASW torpedo launcher (with reloads) and not a single firefighting device in the compartment. Plus storing your boat fuel with your torpedoes. There's not been a lot of naval combat since WWII, and I think a lot of navies have forgotten some vital lessons about the importance of this sort of stuff.
Similarly the Russian army still operate the T72. Designed to be cheap, and accept the fact that it was a deathtrap, with limited crew survivability if it took a hit. Fine for a two week victory over NATO in the 1970s, when you had an army of 3 million and the result was probably a nuclear holocaust anyway. Not so useful to a modern Russian army of only about 400,000 that was about to invade Ukraine and fight a 3 year (and counting) war.
Sometimes you have to spend money to keep your guys alive. Possibly the Chinese see those whole ship's crews as expendable - although even with their vast population, demographics are turning against them, and they'd do well to care about their people. Morale also has an effect on combat - giving your crews a bit more hope of survival can be a good thing.
I do share your frustration with defence procurement. But I also think some of these problems are inevitable. If you want to counteract an enemy that have little care for human life (even that of their own soldiers) and outnumber you, then your best bet is to have technically superior weapons. But to do that, you're demanding technological development, to order. And that rarely happens without delays and cost over-runs.
Also, standardising on weapons is very difficult in a democracy. We've been allies with the US for ages. They'll happily sell us weapons, but they'll move heaven and earth, and pay three times the amount, to buy only US stuff - rather than buy from us. And I don't see how we fix that, because it's a fundamental flaw of democracy. France and Germany are the same, and our ministers get in trouble when they buy foreign. Short of NATO becoming a country, that's hard to fix. Norway have just done it with Type 26, though the paperwork ain't signed yet - and there's still a chance for our politicians (or theirs) to fuck it up. They're literally just buying our ships, buying our weapons and not changing anything - so we can fight, upgrade and train together. But then look at Eurofighter, where Italy, Germany and Spain refused to go for the cool new radar that we wanted. So we had to wait an extra 5-10 years for the upgraded AESA radar (being out of date lost a few foreign sales too), and now we've got two. Because Germany and Spain have decided on a cheaper option than Britain, and Italy only signed on a couple of years ago, after we'd done the R&D.
The Gulf War and Ukraine show that even the previous two generations of weapons mostly worked as advertised though. And things like F-35 keep winning acquisition competitions, which suggest that they are as good as advertised, even if vastly over-budget.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 11:46 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
So whilst the ships may be the same size, they're packing a much bigger punch now than their predecessors but the crew is a similar size to an old destroyer.
Plus things have always been classified oddly, ever since people started changing the definition of what a "ship of the line" was in the 1700s.
I had an interesting chat with a frigate captain who explained ships now are (or were) defined more by role rather than class. So RN frigates primarily ASW and destroyers anti-air. But demands are changing, ie from wiki on the Constellation program-
The U.S. Navy would like for the ship to be able to:
Destroy surface ships over the horizon,
Detect enemy submarines,
Defend convoy ships,
Employ active and passive electronic warfare systems,
Defend against swarming small boat attacks.
So a little bit of everything. Then how that fits with all the demands being placed on warships, so fleet escort duty or just doing all the other duties like drug interdiction, anti-piracy, freedom of navigation etc etc.. Which at least for the RN means the ships we have are spread rather thin, especially given the way our 'leaders' are busily creating threats, and not giving our miltaries the resources they need to counter all those.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 12:30 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
thames,
I think the other reason for building a frigate is that many US yards can't build something as big as a Burke. Let alone a 14,000 tonne replacement. So they need something smaller, to get more hulls in the water.
They also need more ASW. I think you suggested that Type 31 would suit the US in an earlier post. But they want an ASW ship. Which makes sense, as our threat is mostly Russia plus everything else - unless we expand our area of operations to seriously confront China. But for the US they've got to deal with both Russia, and the much bigger threat of China - both of which have large submarine fleets - plus everything else. The sub threat in most of the world is much lower, unless you're fighting NATO or India.
That leaves the US with very few options. LCS is too noisy for ASW, and not really for blue water work. They can't build many more Arleigh Burke than they already are. Buying anything else "off-the-shelf" would be a sick joke. It's illegal to buy foreign ships, and Congress doesn't strike me as likely to get together in a spirit of cooperation to pass laws to change this, plus they'd also have to change the buy American laws, the damage control laws etc.
Constellation is the only chance to get ships into the water in numbers, in any reasonable time. So I guess the administration will just do some hand-waving, say something about missiles and B21, then wander off whistling quietly to themselves and leave it to the next administration to pick up the pieces.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 12:18 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
mcswell,
The US went further than anyone else in high pressure steam, from the 1920s and kept it up into the 60s at least. Very successfully in general. I guess they pushed too far with the Adams class? The Royal Navy didn't, because the big gain is more efficiency (the higher the pressure the higher the temperature) the downside is complication. Efficiency means better fuel economy for a US Navy expecting to cross the Pacific and fight a war with Japan. Into the Cold War, all their operational areas were thousands of miles from their home ports. Whereas the Royal Navy had bases everywhere - so went for easier/cheaper maintenance and having to make more fuel stops in friendly ports.
The Germans in WWII also went for high pressure steam, but couldn't get it to work. And ended up with a fleet of unreliable, top-heavy destroyers that were at permanent risk of capsizing in bad weather and couldn't use half their weaponry when the sea was rough. "Fortunately", they lost a third of those destroyers in the Battle of Norway and were forced to build cheaper 1,500 tonne torpedo boats that were actually rather decent, normal sized, destroyers.
Nowadays, as thames says, it's marine diesels and gas turbines, with the brave people having those but using them to run electric drives. The RN had some problems with this on Type 45 (now fixed). But Type 31 is diesel-only for cheapness. Constellation will have diesel electric combined with direct drive from the gas turbine - this is because the electric propulsion is much quieter at slow speeds, ideal for anti-submarine work. Arleigh Burke have all the sensors for good ASW performance, but aren't very quiet (I don't think they have rafted machinery) and they don't have quiet electric motors for slow speed cruising. LCS have water jets, which are apparently very noisy - and make them unsuitable for ASW work. Noise puts you in danger of detection, plus your own noise could mask the submarine's noise.
Finally, on aluminium superstructures - these melt at lower temperature than steel. USS Belknap collided with USS John F. Kennedy and caught fire. The superstructure collapsed: There's a picture early in this wiki article. Hence the USN changed its rules.
HMS Sheffield suffered some extra casualties, because in order to save weight they'd used aluminium ladders. Some people were unable to escape to the deck because these ladders melted in the fire, after it was hit by an Exocet in 1982.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 08:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
They might need to repeat the FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry program, updated for current need: cheap, built to cost, build fast (fix later), multiple shipyards, using predominantly off-the-shelf systems. And this time, allowing foreign shipyards to get involved. However, mistakes not to repeat would be not allowing sufficient space and weight for upgrades and maybe skip the aluminium (sorry, aluminum for those across the pond) superstructure. And make sure the flight deck is big enough - you don't wan't to have to cut the back end off to take a new class of helo. And, though it would be more limited in capacity, don't skimp on Combat System *quality* either - Mk 92 was a dog of a system. Plus plan for technology insertion (which is fairly common in DDG51 and later designs anyway but wasn't around in the early days of FFG7). Worry about making it better when the ship is in service (that may not be ideal, but beggars can't be choosers). It's been a perennial problem of USN, UK RN, Australian RAN and a few other navies for years - aiming for perfection on paper while putting nothing in the water.
Of course there's risk the other way. The Spruance class had all the space and weight margins in the world but was too expensive to upgrade. It was one enormous hull just to be a twin helo and towed-array platform (they really didn't need more 5in guns in the fleet, that being the only other fleet contribution). An Independence class LCS hull could have done pretty much the same job with a few tweaks.
I know some people promote "modularity" but care to be taken there: the costs of modular systems hardly ever come in lower than fully-populated/permanent systems over the full lifecycle. Modularity in terms of commonality across the fleet is good, though - standardise on strike length VLS but vary the number of cells, fewer T/R modules in sensors (lower power) but the same digital back-end, one CIWS or RAM launcher vs two, fewer consoles but the same type, pump and motor models that can serve in multiple roles, and so on.
I concluded about two decades ago that specialising surface combatants was a pointless and too-costly endeavour. Specialist ships have a role: mine warfare, seabed warfare, support vessels, inshore or coastal patrol craft, icebreakers, survey vessels, amphibs, carriers. But for surface combatants just standardise on two hull designs - medium and large - and maximise commonality of fit where possible. Then just keep pumping them out with programmed technology insertion. With that steady state of production, and predictability of design effort, efficiency can be achieved, supply chains and training pipelines can stabilise and the warfighting commanders know what they're going to have.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 12:50 GMT Ossi
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
"I've read suggestions from several different sources that the US Navy wanted to go with Type 26 because it mostly met US safety standards, and so "all" they'd have to do is change every single weapons system and sensor on the ship". Canada's basically already done the work with its Type 26s, with US sensors and weapons, so there's an under construction design out there under which already meets most of the US Navy's requirements. Surely there's someone in the US Navy that realises this? No?
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Thursday 27th November 2025 13:22 GMT Like a badger
Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet
Surely there's someone in the US Navy that realises this?
Of course there are many people, but not with the influence to change much. It's the same with the UK and other countries' crap defence procurement - there's actually lots of people who know their stuff even in the much maligned DoD, MoD and similar - but they get held back by colleagues who don't know their stuff (or more likely can't de-prioritise their own functional interests when needed) and even more problematic, the decisions ultimately get made by politicians who know nothing of any value or relevance.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 15:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
You have got to be shitting me
Now there are two early production fucking unicorns that the Navy has to deploy and pretend to use until things quiet down enough for them to mothball both of them before disposal?!?
Better to scrap the whole fucking works. No doubt the damn constellations don't have much in common parts and maintenance wise with any other fucking ship in this stupid fucking Navy.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 17:56 GMT Like a badger
Re: You have got to be shitting me
Hey! Credit it where it's due, they did stop this programme early - the Zumwalt class only got canned after they'd built three.
Enthusiasts of linear projections can forecast that the Constellation programme requirements will be folded into the DDGX programme (replacing the Arleigh Burkes), and that itself will be canned after one has been built. It's almost like US defence policy is being dictated by an enemy power.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 13:30 GMT Like a badger
Re: You have got to be shitting me
Does this mean the Navy will soon be building negative numbers of ships ?
The LCS should count as negative ships.
And will they be able to do that on time ?
No. Over budget, late, didn't work. And started as small, simple, cheap, modular, quick to build, and ended up none of those things.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 16:22 GMT phuzz
Inter-service rivalry
Clearly the US Navy didn't want to be upstaged by the US Air Force's KC-X shitshow, (wherein they took about twenty years to build aerial refuelling tankers, because they had to keep re-running the competition until Boeing won). Or the Joint Strike Fighter program which started in the late 1990's to replace a bunch of other procurement projects that hadn't gone anywhere, and took twenty years to got at least ten times over it's budget of $200 BILLION. Or maybe the US Army's Ground Combat Vehicle program, which spent a billion dollars to deliver nothing, following up on the complete failure of the Future Combat Systems project. The current boondoggle is called the Next Generation Combat Vehicle program, and is set to run until 2035, and the same companies from the last two projects will be given even more money to come up with more designs which will probably never be built.
Honestly, the US Marines need to come up with a way to waste a truly monumentally huge amount of money, because they're really dropping behind the other services in terms of procurement fuckups.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 18:00 GMT Like a badger
Re: Inter-service rivalry
Honestly, the US Marines need to come up with a way to waste a truly monumentally huge amount of money, because they're really dropping behind the other services in terms of procurement fuckups.
USM could sign up for the General Dynamics Ajax fighting vehicle, and buy a share of the ignominy and incompetence? Britain has proved it's over-budget and unfit for service. Add in some USM specifics to ensure continued cost overruns and that will become the Marines' monumental waste project.
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Wednesday 26th November 2025 18:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
I changed it ...
The littoral combat ships have been an utter disaster and a complete waste of money. Neither the Freedom nor the Independence class have met even their basic operational requirements. 5 of the Freedoms have already been retired after less than 20 years service, and two of the independence class after less than 17 years. In addition, the Zumwalts have been a horribly expensive failure as well as being unreliable.
Unfortunately the US has caught the UK disease of wanting to fiddle with a perfectly good design.
Lengthening a modern ship design hull is relatively easy with modern CAD system but it's all of the detail parts that rack the costs up massiviely. I've personally seen this down to the level of changing the locks on cabin doors (not even watertight doors), the design of chairs used in the combat information centre and even the specification of mattresses, never mind operational equipment.
Pork barrel poitics is definitely part of it but the US "not invented here" syndrome is another.
It's the same disease on both sides of the pond, as the UK MOD will fiddle endlessly with designs adding cost and extending project timescales.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 12:37 GMT SkippyBing
Re: I changed it ...
'changing the locks on cabin doors (not even watertight doors), the design of chairs used in the combat information centre and even the specification of mattresses'
A lot of those changes will be to match what the rest of the fleet has as someone will have told them they need to minimise the number of lines of inventory to save money, without looking at the bigger picture.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 13:17 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: I changed it ...
You have to specify everything. You need fireproof mattresses and duvets, for example.
I spent 6 months arguing with London Underground about some 24 litre £10 plastic water tanks once. This is because they were going in a piece of kit in an underground station and they have a limit of how many grammes of plastic they're allowed per m³ of area under ground. Read about the deaths from smoke in the King's Cross fire and you'll understand where those rules come from. The answer was to either get rid of some plastic bits from other plant or spend a few thousand quid custom making the plastic tanks out of steel, or finding an off-the-shelf steel tank and re-designing our product to fit it.
Fire kills ships. And crews. Navies, or at least good ones, really care about this.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 00:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
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Thursday 27th November 2025 13:19 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: This sounds like a job...
If Perun had to do a separate video on every military procurement disaster he'd have to quit his job and become a full-time Youtuber. Plus he'd also have to clone himself several times, in order to keep up with demand.
Plus, have you no care for the poor guy's mental health?
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Thursday 27th November 2025 03:35 GMT Gary Stewart
Waste a lot, want a lot (more)
All this comes as no surprise. I remember when many years ago the navy "lost" 240 ships, they had no idea where they were. The US military and its best buds the military industrial complex and most members of congress has for decades been the top US agency for waste, fraud and abuse. They have failed 7 audits in a row and promise to pass one if I remember correctly in 2029, good luck with that. So why did DOGE dodge them completely? Could it be the at minimum $6 billion in military contracts that Elon's companies (mostly SpaceX but there are others) have? Waste? Fraud? Abuse?
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Thursday 27th November 2025 09:36 GMT Xalran
They wanted cheap and fast...
... At least that's what they said...
But to have cheap and fast, they should have kept the FREMM hull the way it was, just replacing the European military equipment by it's 'Murican counterpart.
Noooo, they completely changed the ship to the point that it was basically a brand new ship bigger than the FREMM.
(removing the sonar dome, because the shipwyards are on the lakes and the dome would hit the bottom before even reaching the sea was just the smallest change)
It's a bit like the carmakers that keeps spewing supposedly updated versions of their best cars (Fiat 500 & Panda, VW Bettle, Mini, Renault R4 & R5, ...).
Except that they have nothing in common with the originals, and they are all way larger, more expensive (and heavier) than the originals...
Which defeat why the originals were hits. (small but big enough, cheap, and light)
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Thursday 27th November 2025 13:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: They wanted cheap and fast...
"the carmakers that keeps spewing supposedly updated versions of their best cars "
When it comes to the cars on your list, and in particular the Renault 4 and 5 (and fiat 500), they are not pretending to be the original car - they are up to date electric cars with nothing in common with the original design except a vague shape.
There are good reasons not to be using the original car designs, the current models can actually travel at motorway speeds in a non-terrifying way, unlike their earliest ancestors, and are a lot safer than the original designs in a crash.
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Thursday 27th November 2025 18:01 GMT Excused Boots
Now hands up, I’ve never served and hence have zero first hand experience of this; but it does seem to me that from the moment you design a new warship, tank whenever, by the time the first one is launched, rolls of the production line, technically it is obsolete, yes? And fiddling with the specs mid way just seems to exacerbate the delays.
So would it not be better to agree on, say a ship design, size, weapon systems* etc. and just stick with it - yes it may, technically, be obsolete the moment it is launched, but your potential adversaries are in exactly the same situation.
So once a design is locked down, production starts and isn’t changed, your potential adversary launches a ship which is ‘on-paper’ superior, except you have three of your design in service while they only have one, and it’s basically a prototype. In a shooting situation, who is going to prevail?
* yes, hence a degree of modularisation, you design it in such a way that the weapons system can be swopped out for something which is compatible. Which means that, hypothetically, ten years later it can be swopped out for ‘missile system 1’ which fits without modifications or ‘missile system 2’ which is superior but doesn’t fit, and needs a significant rebuild of the ship. So you have a choice, option two gives you superior killing power, but option one, means you actually have a ship on operational duty and not stuck in port?
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Thursday 27th November 2025 18:36 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
> by the time the first one is launched, rolls of the production line, technically it is obsolete, yes?
Yes, but hopefully so is the opposition kit
Refitting with new tech is standard, it's a little easier with ships because you have lots of space and mass. Much easier to weld a new missile system to a frigate than add a 3rd gun deck to a jet fighter
Several of the US battleships in the Iraq Adventures were from WWII
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
