The Influence of History

After the end of World War II, it was discovered that the pre-war types of naval ships were largely obsolete and did not reflect the new reality of warfare. Experiments eventually led to a new breed of large multirole missile ships in the 1950’s. Among United States and her allies these ships were known as “frigates” or “DLG’s,” but in the Soviet Union they were dubbed “large antisubmarine ships” (большие противолодочные корабли). The first of these large antisubmarine ships was Project 61, known to NATO as the Kashin -class cruisers. However, the early members of this class were actually commissioned as “patrol ships” (сторожевых корабли) before their classification was changed in 1966. Commissioned between 1962 and 1970, the 20 ships of Project 61 were contemporaries of the 20 American frigates of the Leahy , Bainbridge , Belknap , and Truxtun classes . Measuring 144 meters in length, Project 61 was significantly smaller than the 162 or 172 meters of the American ships. However...

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...

Since the end of the Cold War, the Chinese Navy has grown from an obsolete coast defense force into the second largest navy in the world. Now composed of every class of modern warship, including aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and guided missile destroyers, as well as the necessary auxiliaries needed to support them, the Chinese Navy has become a true blue water force seemingly overnight. However, a closer examination reveals that the growth of the Chinese Navy has actually been rather measured and may well be aiming for a smaller overall force than many estimate. For the purposes of this post, I'm only going to be covering the larger Chinese surface combatants because accurate numbers on their small combatants, submarines, and auxiliaries are simply not available. However, this may actually overestimate the Chinese expansion because the growth of their auxiliary and submarine fleets in particular have lagged behind that of their surface force. Naval Growth Lags Econ...

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...

The County-class destroyer HMS Glamorgan, which holds the dubious distinction of being the first and last ship to be damaged in the Falklands War The Falklands War is the only large-scale post-WWII naval campaign. So even though the technologies and tactics used are now somewhat dated, it remains one of the best resources for understanding modern naval warfare. During the conflict, the British lost 6 ships and had another 16 damaged (I will be using the British records for this post rather than the significantly higher Argentinian claims - this is not because the British are inherently more trustworthy, but because in every war the attacker's claims are always less accurate than the defender's). This post will aim to provide an overview of where these ships were and what they were doing when they were attacked to see if there are any patterns that can inform our understanding of naval warfare. The Opening Actions The Falklands War began on 2 April 1982, with the Argen...

The numerous rigs that defined ship type in the age of sail Today there is some confusion about how modern warships should be described. Terms such as "destroyer," "frigate," and "corvette" are commonly thrown around, but it is impossible to find any agreed upon definition as to what they actually mean. It becomes even more complicated when attempting to compare warships from multiple nations, such as the Franco-Italian  Horizon -class - which are known as "frigates" ( frégate ) by the French and "destroyers" ( cacciatorpediniere ) by the Italians, and are the product of the "Common Next Generation Frigate" program but have NATO "D" for destroyer hull numbers. However, before attempting to lay out a rational system for comparing modern warships, let us first briefly examine the history behind warship classifications. Beginning in ancient days with the development of dedicated warships, classification was large...

Among the greatest changes over the past year was the commissioning of the Royal Navy's second carrier,  Prince of Wales - an event   perhaps slightly overshadowed by the commissioning of the PLAN's second carrier, Shandong, just seven days later . As we begin the new year, it is a good time to assess the current naval balance of power. However, ranking navies is always a complex and subjective task as even something as simple as merely counting how many ships a navy has soon devolves into debates over what exactly constitutes a "ship" (just look at the never-ending battle over what should be included in the US Navy's official strength). Observing these debates, I have devised my own system for quantifying a navy's strength. This system classifies vessels into broad categories, assigning different (and admittedly somewhat arbitrary) points values for different types of ships. In order to avoid terminology debates, I have also used more generic labels (...