We can’t build a boat, ship, or coracle to save our lives.
We can’t build a boat, ship, or coracle to save our lives.
From USNI News:
The lead ship in a new class of guided-missile frigates for the U.S. Navy may be up to three years late, USNI News has learned.
Constellation (FFG-62), under construction at Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, may not deliver to the fleet until 2029, three years later than the original 2026 delivery goal, according to a service shipbuilding review.
The program’s delay came to light as part of the 45-day shipbuilding review that Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro ordered earlier this year. In addition to the frigate delay, the Navy confirmed delays in delivering aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-80), the lead boat for the Columbia-class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, and the Virginia-class attack boats.
In a one-page summary of the review, the service cited lead ship problems like design maturation, supply chain issues, and difficulty finding skilled workers as factors in the program delays.
On the one hand, these delays are nothing new for the Navy. Every ship, especially new classes, has experienced some delays. These are complicated, bespoke war machines. The point of the Constellation class of frigates, however, was that we were to use an established blueprint (the FREMM design) and then tack on the bits and pieces that make a vessel worthy of “USS.” But somewhere along the line, the Navy got in its mind that this was a Lamborghini option menu (whatever the customer wants) instead of a Ferrari (take it or leave it).
What started as 85 percent commonality with the FREMM is now a mere 15 percent. I’m reminded of a starving man sending back a double cheeseburger because it didn’t have a pickle like he asked.
While the design was based on a long-serving warship, design agent Gibbs & Cox heavily modified the FREMM design to meet NAVSEA requirements, like tougher survivability standards than those of European navies, Navy officials have told USNI News.
At one point the Constellation design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM design, but the alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent, a person familiar with the changes told USNI News.
While it’s kind of the Navy to be looking out for the crew with the survivability standards (assuming the standards actually offer a benefit), the rest of the fleet could really use a heap of frigates right now. The Navy burned the past 20 years on the customization screen that was the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), and with those ships essentially launching straight into the scrapyard, we don’t have a surplus of small, flexible surface combatants with which to face the threat challenges of today.
Steven Wills, in an interview for National Review magazine, was adamant about just how great a priority the small boys (frigates) are when asked what it is he most wants for today’s Navy. He said:
I would want 20 frigates in the water as quickly as possible. Having a smaller fleet and continuing to abuse it by driving it past its maintenance dates hurts everything — it hurts people, it hurts readiness, it hurts equipment. Our fleet in the post–Cold War era has become somewhat imbalanced toward more high-end vessels. During the Cold War, we had what was called a high–low mix, which has since faded away. The DDG-51 [Arleigh Burke class] and the nuclear submarines, for instance, are terrific warships, but they’re expensive. You can’t have an entire force of Ferraris; you’ve got to have some Ford F-150 trucks — basic vehicles that do basic things. If we’re going to sustain these deployments to forward locations — the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, and the Indo-Pacific — 300 ships are just not enough.
The Navy needs seaworthy hulls today. Whatever we can do — lease or build overseas — to relieve the load that the destroyers have had to onload in the absence of a frigate group, is crucial for American seapower and the continuation of the free flow of peoples and goods across the world’s oceans. The LCS was a jobs program for Marinette, Wis., and Mobile, Ala. To alter only a little a line from Captain John Paul Jones, “I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail for I intend to go in harm’s way.” The Constellation class needs to be a defense program. Get them built wherever we can find men and steel.