FF-21 Frigate design from Newport News and Ingalls

[JAZZ]

In earl-mid 1990's both Newport News and Ingalls designed export designs for Frigates. Orginally competing to meet a requirement by UAE.

There is an artists impression in Janes defence weekly 15 January 1994 P24, that showed the Ingalls design...I have a veryu poor photo copy, does anyone have a chance to scan the orginal in and post it here?

Thanks in advance

 

[TinWing]

In earl-mid 1990's both Newport News and Ingalls designed export designs for Frigates. Orginally competing to meet a requirement by UAE.

There is an artists impression in Janes defence weekly 15 January 1994 P24, that showed the Ingalls design...I have a veryu poor photo copy, does anyone have a chance to scan the orginal in and post it here?

Thanks in advance

There actually were 3 distinct Newport News FF-21 frigate designs, ranging from 125 meters down to corvette size.

Litton Ingalls had an entirely similar, but distinct family of vessels of which the Sa'ar V was the smallest member.

 

[TinWing]

The first FF-21 design appeared in about 1991-92, and featured a 106.3 meter overall length with an overall full load displacment just under 3,000 tons. An article fully outlining this design appeared in the May, 1994 issue of Naval Engineers Journal.

To make things even more confusing, there appear to be two separate FF-21 variants listed in a Forecast International report from August, 1997 that detailed two further versions, a "light frigate" of 1,950 tons and a "heavy frigate" or 3,870 tons.

The report only illustrates the "light frigate:"

I still don't know what the larger, 125 meter "heavy" frigate looks like, but this should fill in some of the other details.

http://www.forecastinternational.com/archive/ws/ws11315.htm

 

[TinWing]

The below attachment is an profile drawing of the 106.3 meter/3,000 ton FF-21 outlined in May, 1994 NEJ.

 

[Triton]

Another artist's impression of the Newport News FF 21.

Outboard profile of FF-21.

Larger versions of the previously posted artist impressions.

 

[Eagle2009]

Is it just me, or does this proposal look VERY similar to the US-built Sa'ar-5 class frigate?

EDIT: Ha, Just read where TinWing said the Sa'ar-V was a member of this "family"..answers my question.

 

[TomS]

EDIT: Ha, Just read where TinWing said the Sa'ar-V was a member of this "family"..answers my question.

Not exactly. As TinWing said, the FF-21 was a Newport News design; Sa'ar V was part of the competing family of ships by Litton Ingalls.

The similarities are mostly down to having similar objectives and similar available technology. I'd bet both teams had access to the same RCS estimating tools, for example, which would explain why the signature reduction features look so much alike.

 

[ChLeSt42]

Having previewed the previous, although old threads, I feel that I must put a couple of facts right.
Firstly, the programme had been around is some shape and form for many years, but it was not until late 1996 that NN decided to take the plunge and bring in qualified frigate design folks. I, along with several other Canadians, who all had recent frigate design and construction experience - CPF, got called in to help them out of a quandary, that of the vessel being too heavy and expensive for the proposed mission profile. I must add, this is the American way of ship design as I learnt my lessons on the DDG 51 in Bath - over designed and bullet proof at the cost of payload. Nothing wrong with that just that a bigger platform is require to carry the load, as was proven on the DDG 51 which started off at 6800 tons and ended up around 9500 tons.....and to date is still growing!!!!
Having arrived at Newport News on the 11th Dec 1996 I was presented with a General Arrangement dwg of what I could only describe as a fair attempt to down scale from carriers to frigates!!!!
Once the group was in place, we decided to start from a blank sheet rather than rework the existing model, we eventually after weeks designed a vessel of approx. 2500 tons that would be the foundation for a family of vessels ranging up to 8,50 tons - destroyer.
this whole programme was a FMS sponsored attempt to get into the foreign frigate market that basically failed due to the yard not listening to possible future clients who had shown interest initially.
I left the project in Sept '97 to head to Germany on another Frigate programme for Norway, at this time the design was going through several iterations in an attempt to catch the attention of the UAE - nothing came of that either.

 

[H_K]

Thanks @ChLeSt42. How did the NN 2,500t design you worked on in 1997 compare to the 3,000t NN design from 1994? And to current designs in the same size range? (E.g. Sigma 10514, Gowind 2500, Milgem etc?)

 

[ChLeSt42]

Thanks @ChLeSt42. How did the NN 2,500t design you worked on in 1997 compare to the 3,000t NN design from 1994? And to current designs in the same size range? (E.g. Sigma 10514, Gowind 2500, Milgem etc?)

Sorry for the delay in responding to your question. the N.N version was a completely clean sheet, we did not plagiarize any of the current designs whilst generating our vessel, saying that, using the CPF as a guideline for certain aspects enabled us to complete the initial design in record time. We were not allowed to interrogate the previous design, guess they were embarrassed with it!!!!
Although the vessel was designed around the LM 2500 - 28 series, the design was flexible enough to have a variety of propulsion units installed including MAN diesels or RR turbines.
We never did a comparison to the other vessels mentioned, maybe this was done after I left the team.

 

[H_K]

Thanks @ChLeSt42. I guess what I was looking for was some details on the 1997 design’s overarching design philosophy. Every design should have a “unique value proposition” that differentiates it from other contemporary ships of the same size. Was there one in this case, and what was it?

(The other ships I mentioned, Sigma, Gowind, Milgem didn’t exist in 1997… so was wondering if you also had a point of view on how these more recent designs compare to what you were trying to achieve)

 

[TomS]

Thanks @ChLeSt42. I guess what I was looking for was some details on the 1997 design’s overarching design philosophy. Every design should have a “unique value proposition” that differentiates it from other contemporary ships of the same size. Was there one in this case, and what was it?

(The other ships I mentioned, Sigma, Gowind, Milgem didn’t exist in 1997… so was wondering if you also had a point of view on how these more recent designs compare to what you were trying to achieve)

I have that article from the May 1994 Naval Engineers Journal that TinWing mentioned back in 2007 -- "The Design of the FF-21 Multi-Mission Frigate" by Leonid Afanasieff (John J McMullen Associates) and John P. Mabry (Newport News Shipbuilding). It's basically an advertising piece, so not very critical, but it does provide a fair amount of information in terms of hull shape, weights, stability, etc.

I can't post the whole thing for copyright reasons, but I'm happy to pull out information if people are interested. Might be a few days, since I have a big work project early this week. But if you want some specific info, ask and I'll see if it's in there.

 

[H_K]

I have that article from the May 1994 Naval Engineers Journal that TinWing mentioned back in 2007 -- "The Design of the FF-21 Multi-Mission Frigate”

I have that article… was able to find it via Google. My interest was more in the 1997 design, which must have been quite different if the design team was told NOT to reuse any of the earlier design!

 

[TomS]

I have that article from the May 1994 Naval Engineers Journal that TinWing mentioned back in 2007 -- "The Design of the FF-21 Multi-Mission Frigate”

I have that article… was able to find it via Google. My interest was more in the 1997 design, which must have been quite different if the design team was told NOT to reuse any of the earlier design!

Cool. I'll poke through my files -- I have have one or two later documents as well.

 

[that_person]

So to get a timescale of FF-21’s relation to the SC-21 program, FF-21 seems to have been started sometime between 1991 and 1992, some 2-3 years before SC-21 was authorized. I believe SC-21 concluded in April of 1997, and if @ChLeSt42 was brought in by NNS in 1997, that means it outlasted SC-21. With that in mind, I’m going to theorize that the clean slate design was to design something based on the findings of SC-21 and be more in line with the Navy’s thinking. I don’t understand why this would be a FMS-sponsored program though. It should be noted LCS emerged sometime between 2001 and 2003.

 

[TomS]

So to get a timescale of FF-21’s relation to the SC-21 program, FF-21 seems to have been started sometime between 1991 and 1992, some 2-3 years before SC-21 was authorized. I believe SC-21 concluded in April of 1997, and if @ChLeSt42 was brought in by NNS in 1997, that means it outlasted SC-21. With that in mind, I’m going to theorize that the clean slate design was to design something based on the findings of SC-21 and be more in line with the Navy’s thinking. I don’t understand why this would be a FMS-sponsored program though. It should be noted LCS emerged sometime between 2001 and 2003.

The USN really never had an interest in FF-21.

I suspect the reworking had to do with some prospective client (likely Saudi Arabia) asking for survivability standards closer to those of the USN.

 

[CIC-TAO]

what's this?
AA or ASW?

 

[M. A. Rozon]

what's this?
AA or ASW?

View attachment 695067

Just guessing but it looks like RAM.

 

[TomS]

what's this?
AA or ASW?

View attachment 695067

RAM Alternate Launching System, two 5-round pods of Rolling Airframe Missile.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/rolling-airframe-missile-launcher-concepts.40488/post-563356

 

[Odysseus1980]

Newport News Markets Frigate Design To World

Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp., Newport News, Va., recently unveiled a new frigate design which it plans to offer to the worldwide mili

magazines.marinelink.com

Here has some information about the FF-21.

 

[that_person]

This is the Forecast International article mentioned above. The old link died. The NEJ article (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1994.tb02848.x) can be found if you know where to look.