The Influence of History

Note the "62" on this image from the Navy.mil announcement - has sanity finally returned to USN hull numbers? With the recently announced selection of the Fincantieri offering for the United States Navy's (USN) FFG(X) program, we now have enough knowledge of what the future USS Constellation will look like to post a notional missile loadout page. Now, the Constellation-class remains very much a paper design and will not join the fleet until at least 2026, so this post is even more speculative than my other missile loadouts posts . However, the result of the FFG(X) program has several unique aspects to its armament that are worth discussing. We now know that the planned armament of the Constellation-class will consist of a 32-cell Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) forward, four quad canister launchers for the RGM-184 Naval Strike Missile (NSM) amidships, and a 21-cell box launcher for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) aft. This is a considerable quantity and v...

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...

Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7) under construction at Bath Iron Works in 1976 The United States Navy's Littoral Combat Ship program has come under extreme criticism from every side. Personally, I find much of the vitriol to be incredibly shallow and misinformed and believe that the program is actually a worthy endeavor. However, there is one clear failing of the program that I have seen virtually no comment on - it's glacial build rate. I have touched on the topic of the slow procurement of modern systems before, in my post comparing the production of the F-35 Lighting and the F/A-18 Super Hornet , and I believe it is important to come back to it in regards to the LCS program. It is well known be anyone with even a passing familiarity with shipbuilding that protracted construction of limited quantities inevitably drives up costs. However, in all the discussion of the possible reasons behind the price tag of LCS (which I personally believe is far from being as outrageous as ma...

The recent United States Navy Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal has unleashed the usual flurry of articles analyzing and discussing its ramifications. However, while the vast majority of these have focused on the same details, particularly the proposed early retirement of USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) and the introduction of large unmanned surface vessels, I will instead point out various minor pieces of information that have caught my eye. Missiles The greatest change is that antiship missiles are indeed back with a vengeance. In FY20, the Navy is proposing to procure no fewer than 216 antiship missiles of 5 different types and has stated a desire for an overall inventory of over 2000 dedicated antiship missiles. This is quite obviously aimed at the rapidly growing Chinese Navy. However, by my rough estimation, this is actually enough weapons to sink every non-US warship in the word twice over. Tomahawk Tomahawk production is restarting after a lapsing for FY19. A total of 180 weapon...

As the US Navy's FFG(X) program heats up, I've been digging through the Navy's FY19 budget submission to get an idea of various costs trade offs involved in designing a modern "medium end" warship. While none of the information that I have found is particularly revolutionary, I thought I would post my conclusions were still worth posting. Today, the Navy only has two active production lines for surface combatants - the DDG-51 Flight III  Arleigh Burke  and the LCS Flight II Freedom / Independence . However, since these two designs are on opposite ends of the spectrum (one widely acknowledged as the most capable warship in the world and the other routinely criticized for its lack of capability), comparing them directly is remarkably valuable. A DDG-51 Flight III has an official Gross Unit Cost of $1,747 million while an LCS Flight II is $565 million (all figures in this post are an average of the 7 DDG or 6 LCS in FY17-19). However, the actual amount spent p...