The Future United States Navy Surface Fleet (2020-2040)

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Future Arleigh Burke, Ticonderoga, DDG-1000, LCS, FFG(X) numbers

With the US Navy's fiscal year 2021 budget proposal being recently released, combined with the latest news that the USN has dropped its previous plan to extended the service lives of its cruisers and destroyers to a historically unrealistic 45+ years, I thought I'd put up a quick post showing the likely future of the USN's surface fleet.

Before delving deeper into the above graph, I should first make clear that the budget documents only give (somewhat) hard numbers on annual deliveries out to around FY2027, and everything past FY2031 is entirely my own projection. The assumptions I made are that CG/DDG retire after 35 years, LCS last 30 years, DDG and FFG production both stabilize at 2 ships annually, that 22 Arleigh Burke Flight III are procured to replace the Ticonderoga-class 1 for 1, and that the Future Surface Combatant phase in mirrors the planned LCS to FFG(X) transition. However, different assumptions will not change the overall shape of the future force too much.

Slow Growth Predicted

The most important take-away is that the surface fleet should continue growing, ending up at around 130 ships in 2040 from the 108 ships it ended 2019 with. Even under more pessimistic assumptions than I made, the final fleet should still be larger than what it is today. Under optimistic (but realistic) assumptions, the surface force could feasibly hit 150 or more ships.

The second thing that the graph shows is the importance of LCS. Even under the truncated 35-ship buy, LCS is going to make up roughly a quarter of the surface fleet for the coming decades. No matter what your feelings are on this controversial program, it is vital that LCS is fully supported because without it, growth is effectively impossible and the surface navy will shrink.

The third point is how the impending decommissioning of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and early Arleigh Burke-class destroyers will interact with the upcoming Flight III Arleigh Burke and FFG(X) programs. As can be seen, the USN is going to be losing older Aegis ships far too fast for Flight III production to replace them all. This effectively means that the Flight III is going to become replacements for the Ticonderoga-class, while the Flight I/II Arleigh Burke's are going to be replaced by FFG(X). When (if) the Future Surface Combatant comes on line in the mid-2030's, it will be arriving just before the Flight IIA Arleigh Burkes begin leaving the fleet. This suggests that FSC might well be a destroyer rather than the large cruiser many people are currently imagining (edit - with the release of the DDG(X) concept, it appears that this prediction was accurate).

Changing Capabilities

Although these changes might appear to be a clear downgrade (a 122-cell VLS cruiser being replaced by a 96-cell VLS destroyer, and a 90-cell VLS destroyer being replaced by a 32-cell VLS frigate), in actuality the situation is not so clear-cut. The AN/SPY-6(V)1 radar on the Flight III offers vastly superior performance to the AN/SPY-1B on the Ticonderoga-class, while the AN/SPY-6(V)2 on FFG(X) promises equal performance to the AN/SPY-1D on the Flight I/II. Further, FFG(X) will have a helicopter hangar and VDS, two vital capabilities the Flight I/II lacks.

While the loss of VLS cells will be an issue, it is already somewhat mitigated by technology. When the Ticonderoga-class and Arleigh Burke-class were being designed, they were armed with single-purpose weapons. Today, weapons are increasingly multipurpose (eg SM-6 and SM-2 Block IIIC being capable against air and sea targets, or Tomahawk Block V and Naval Strike Missile being capable against land and sea targets), meaning a smaller variety of missiles needs to be carried. Further, ESSM shows that each cell can now hold multiple missiles with similar performance to older full-size weapons. Finally, if lasers and guided shells work out, these weapons will further decrease the required number of missiles.

One interesting side effect of the changes to the fleet is that right now the USN has a single tier of surface combatants - all the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers a have effectively the same combat systems and LCS is just beginning operations. In the future, this will shift to a three-tier fleet. At the lowest tier there will be LCS with its self-defense systems. Above that will be the AN/SPY-1 Aegis ships, the Zumwalt-class, and FFG(X) with their basic area defense systems. And finally, at the top will be the AN/SPY-6 Aegis ships (both Flight III and upgraded Flight IIA ships with AN/SPY-6(V)4), with their extremely powerful area defense systems.

All in all, the future of the USN surface fleet is anything but bleak. Although it will require some changes in thinking to best accommodate the new fleet architecture, the USN surface forces should come out of the upcoming decades stronger than ever. However, this is all of course subject to change depending on the results of the upcoming Force Structure Assessment, the whims of Congress, and the changing strategic needs of the nation.

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