FFG(X)

What strikes me is though reducing size of ship by a third they are ditching the Bofors 57mm with its small 6 lb shell and upgunning to either the 76 or 127mm main gun.
 
Cordy said:
What strikes me is though reducing size of ship by a third they are ditching the Bofors 57mm with its small 6 lb shell and upgunning to either the 76 or 127mm main gun.
Click to expand...
Not that strange, French and Italian FREMMs have 76mm and 127mm guns respectively, and are shorter than the Constellation-class.
 
When you can cut range you can have alot of fun with weight and balancing by the reduce fuel load.

And Greece really dont need to travel far from its own Ports to deal with the usual suspect Greece generally deal with.
 
Firefinder said:
When you can cut range you can have alot of fun with weight and balancing by the reduce fuel load.

And Greece really dont need to travel far from its own Ports to deal with the usual suspect Greece generally deal with.
Click to expand...
I think this is our winner.

Smaller fuel tanks and food stores.
 
Lc89 said:
www.twz.com

Does The Navy's New Constellation Class Frigate Have Enough Vertical Launch Cells?

Recent events in the Red Sea again raise questions about whether 32 vertical launch cells is adequate for the Constellation class frigates.
www.twz.com www.twz.com
Click to expand...

This is a sort of absurd article that basically ends up complaining that one FFG won't be able to do the same missile defense mission as three DDGs and a carrier air wing. Oh, and they think that the FFGs will be expected to do ballistic missile defense using SM-6 (or even SM-2 Block IIIC).

It also has weird comments like "it was assumed" that the FFGs would use tactical-length VLS. Except that Fincantierri confirmed the use of strike-length Mk41 at SAS last year, which took me about 5 minutes to find.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/comments/12eol6e/_/jfbun0w
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/comments/12eol6e/comment/jfbun0w/


Edit: The weird keeps piling up. The article hypothesizes that FFG-62 might get some hypothetical successor to VL ASROC (the Navy has expressed no intention to replace VLA any time soon). And LRASM-SL (again, the USN is not interested, at least in the near term, and 16 NSM seems like plenty for this ship)

And they complain that the FFG-62s have a smaller gun than the "standard FREMM" -- yeah, but the FREMMs that have a 5-inch gun also have only 16 VLS. Make up your mind, folks!
 
Last edited:
Given the Navy success virtualizing AEGIS, a virtual TTWCS would certainly be in the realm of the possible. Main hangup might be that Navy's still trying to push money into TLAM replacement, money they won't want redirected to TLAM issues. If the UK or Aussies get behind the idea, though, it could move with a little speed.
 
Moose said:
Given the Navy success virtualizing AEGIS, a virtual TTWCS would certainly be in the realm of the possible. Main hangup might be that Navy's still trying to push money into TLAM replacement, money they won't want redirected to TLAM issues. If the UK or Aussies get behind the idea, though, it could move with a little speed.
Click to expand...
Well one also could make the virtual TTWCS work with the future TLAM replacement. Could make fleet wide Integration easier.
 
TomS said:
This is a sort of absurd article that basically ends up complaining that one FFG won't be able to do the same missile defense mission as three DDGs and a carrier air wing. Oh, and they think that the FFGs will be expected to do ballistic missile defense using SM-6 (or even SM-2 Block IIIC).

It also has weird comments like "it was assumed" that the FFGs would use tactical-length VLS. Except that Fincantierri confirmed the use of strike-length Mk41 at SAS last year, which took me about 5 minutes to find.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/comments/12eol6e/_/jfbun0w
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/comments/12eol6e/comment/jfbun0w/


Edit: The weird keeps piling up. The article hypothesizes that FFG-62 might get some hypothetical successor to VL ASROC (the Navy has expressed no intention to replace VLA any time soon). And LRASM-SL (again, the USN is not interested, at least in the near term, and 16 NSM seems like plenty for this ship)

And they complain that the FFG-62s have a smaller gun than the "standard FREMM" -- yeah, but the FREMMs that have a 5-inch gun also have only 16 VLS. Make up your mind, folks!
Click to expand...

Agreed, what an infuriating article.

We're never going to have the necessary hulls for an affordable global presence if every ship is a multi-role super cruiser. We need a convoy escort ship, and one that we can build in numbers. and that doesn't overload the cost by having a massive crew trained for a gazillion missions.

32 VLS should be plenty. 20 SM-2/6s and 12x4 ESSMs should be plenty to do the red sea convoy escort work.

The real challenge is that we don't seem to be able to respond to these strikes in a timely fashion (< 48 hrs, preferably tomahawks on target in 8), but that seems to mostly be a political preference.
 
zevets said:
We're never going to have the necessary hulls for an affordable global presence if every ship is a multi-role super cruiser. We need a convoy escort ship, and one that we can build in numbers. and that doesn't overload the cost by having a massive crew trained for a gazillion missions.
Click to expand...
I'm starting to think that we need to set the next flight of FFGs up as dual crew ships.

How does that work?

Gold Crew takes the ship for 3 months, goes from the East Coast into the Red Sea and around to Dubai. Change crews in Dubai, spend a month+ with both crews on hand plus shipyard workers doing all the stuff that normally takes ~6 months in the yards after a 6 month deployment. Blue crew then takes the ship for 3 months in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, maybe into the Med or over to India for something. Crew change in Dubai again, 1 month in refit, Gold crew takes the ship for 3 months back to the East Coast. Crew change in home port this time, still only 1 month or so for refit, Blue Crew takes ship out for the months and the cycle repeats.

That changes your ship availability from roughly 33% to 75%, and you're already on-scene for most of it. But you need twice as many people and the ships themselves need to be designed around that idea. Pulling systems that would probably fail in the next deployment.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm starting to think that we need to set the next flight of FFGs up as dual crew ships.

How does that work?
Click to expand...

It doesn't (if we're in a world where we are cost-limited).

Crews and operations and maintenance costs are an overwhelming part of the budget. Then you want your escort frigates largely in port, doing maintenance and training missions, with morale and retention high (hence the nicer crew conditions in FFG-62). Then you surge deploy during a period of crisis.
 
zevets said:
It doesn't (if we're in a world where we are cost-limited).

Crews and operations and maintenance costs are an overwhelming part of the budget. Then you want your escort frigates largely in port, doing maintenance and training missions, with morale and retention high (hence the nicer crew conditions in FFG-62). Then you surge deploy during a period of crisis.
Click to expand...
You need the crews and ships at sea, not in port, though.

Dual crewing also means you need less than half as many ships overall. Instead of needing 3 hulls to have one ship at sea, you will have 3 ships at sea for every 4 hulls you have. Say for argument that you need 30 of these convoy escorts at sea. Single crewed, you need 90 hulls in the fleet. Dual crewed you need 40 hulls, and 80 crews. Fewer ships, fewer crews in total.
 
I don't think we're facing a scenario where sustained ships in the water is a deciding metric.

The china fight will be fast - with the majority of losses occurring in the opening weeks/months of the fight - so those second crews aren't deploying at all, unless we have a lot of hulls, but if we have a lot of hulls, we cannot afford to sail them all the time. Once shit kicks off, everything goes to sea, and there, hull count, not crew size matters.

In a limited conflict, like the current Iran/Yemen fight, the goal is monetary and political cost management, aiming towards a return to peace. If you're using your entire fleet for extended periods of time, you've lost. To prevent that, you use your main fleet to conduct the actual strikes against land-based targets, while FFGs protect convoys at a minimum cost.
 
Scott Kenny said:
You need the crews and ships at sea, not in port, though.

Dual crewing also means you need less than half as many ships overall. Instead of needing 3 hulls to have one ship at sea, you will have 3 ships at sea for every 4 hulls you have. Say for argument that you need 30 of these convoy escorts at sea. Single crewed, you need 90 hulls in the fleet. Dual crewed you need 40 hulls, and 80 crews. Fewer ships, fewer crews in total.
Click to expand...
Issue is that doesnt work for none specialized ships.

The Navy tried it it four different times, twice on the Spruances.

End result?

A 4 year old ship that looks and runs like a 40 year old one. Part of the the Spraunces were retired so soon even after the refits was because the duel crew deals ran them out.

The two crews just didn't care for their vessels, didn't have pride or feel of ownership. So they did not take care of them with all that implied. Then the training and proficiently suffered, being way way lower then the standards so that you had a barely train crew who just failed in exercises.

It just did not work.

Its not like subs where you can have two crews to allow a boomer to sit out for 18 months at a time, those things get fucking babied and spend bout as long in drydock after each rotation. The Navy do not fuck those maintenance schedules and just keep them doing their thing.

The surface fleet hasn't had that luxury for SEVERAL Decades now. They are aways be pulled for some fresh hell with maintenance being push back and the like.

It a case of it works well there but works like hell over there due to operational differences.
 
Firefinder said:
Issue is that doesnt work for none specialized ships.

The Navy tried it it four different times, twice on the Spruances.

End result?

A 4 year old ship that looks and runs like a 40 year old one. Part of the the Spraunces were retired so soon even after the refits was because the duel crew deals ran them out.

The two crews just didn't care for their vessels, didn't have pride or feel of ownership. So they did not take care of them with all that implied. Then the training and proficiently suffered, being way way lower then the standards so that you had a barely train crew who just failed in exercises.

It just did not work.
Click to expand...
That is a severe failure at the command leadership level, not of the concept itself.

The time the Navy did it on some FFGs in the early 00s, they had 3 crews from other ships that they rotated on. The crew basically parked and decommed their last boat and met the experiment boat in Dubai. They didn't have two crews who each owned that ship, who had worked side by side fixing things before they went out to sea.

Now, I'm not going to deny that come the last week or so of a patrol, some things get turned into "an other crew problem" and the on-crew stops caring as long as it's not a safety item. Those issues usually get sent to the other crew and shipyard as a work item message.


Firefinder said:
Its not like subs where you can have two crews to allow a boomer to sit out for 18 months at a time, those things get fucking babied and spend bout as long in drydock after each rotation. The Navy do not fuck those maintenance schedules and just keep them doing their thing.

The surface fleet hasn't had that luxury for SEVERAL Decades now. They are aways be pulled for some fresh hell with maintenance being push back and the like.

It a case of it works well there but works like hell over there due to operational differences.
Click to expand...
Nope, it is ONE MONTH in refit between patrols for the boomers. Drydock every third patrol or so, unless something goes horribly sideways like shaft going bad, or some assholes on the other coast deferring maintenance until it took those boats some 2-3 weeks extra in port for several years to get everything caught up and them able to just go out on schedule. (I really hope that went to an Admiral's Mast, those bastards...)

Had patrols on every other boat go out early, stay out late, because boat-from-other-coast was broken. Again. Was within sight of the Hood Canal Bridge when we got a message and had to turn around for another week at sea because boat-from-other-coast was broken. Again. Captain informed everyone that there would be no drills, no bullshit, and even Nonquals were allowed a movie (Captain was pissed).

And yes, I remember reading with glee that they sent Naval Reactors Himself out to 7th Fleet after their collisions. Sad to see that Big Navy has continued to ignore the recommendations.
 
H_K said:
Interestingly, half of the French FREMMs are dual crewed… seems to be working OK.

Are any other NATO frigates/destroyers dual crewed?
Click to expand...

Thanks for that; I was unaware anyone besides the USN SSBN/SSGN community did that. I too would be interested to know if any other naval organizations dual crewed, even the SSBNs of other nations.
 
Josh_TN said:
Thanks for that; I was unaware anyone besides the USN SSBN/SSGN community did that. I too would be interested to know if any other naval organizations dual crewed, even the SSBNs of other nations.
Click to expand...
UKRN does dual crew their boomers, "Port" and "Starboard" crews instead of Blue and Gold IIRC.

In all honesty, I'm surprised that the Russians and Chinese apparently don't dual-crew their boomers. As I've mentioned, you get a lot more time at sea with two crews than with one, which means you need fewer subs and missiles to load them with to keep the same amount of coverage.
 
Scott Kenny said:
UKRN does dual crew their boomers, "Port" and "Starboard" crews instead of Blue and Gold IIRC.

In all honesty, I'm surprised that the Russians and Chinese apparently don't dual-crew their boomers. As I've mentioned, you get a lot more time at sea with two crews than with one, which means you need fewer subs and missiles to load them with to keep the same amount of coverage.
Click to expand...

I suspect there are doctrinal or political reasons involved. Or perhaps more mundane maintenance ones.

How about the French?
 
Josh_TN said:
I suspect there are doctrinal or political reasons involved. Or perhaps more mundane maintenance ones.

How about the French?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure about the French. Given the small number of SSBNs they have, I'd suspect dual crewing, but I don't know. On the other hand, their reactors need to be refueled often due to running on low enriched uranium, which could mean single crews. Haven't found anywhere that says one way or the other.
 
Hicks said:
France does dual crew too its SSBNs (Blue and Red) :
Click to expand...
Not just the SSBNs. The SSNs, some FREMMs and many smaller patrol/support ships are also dual crewed… this practice seems to be very prevalent in the French Navy.

SSBNs: 6 crews for 3 subs (4th SSBN in refit)
SSNs: 10 crews for 5 subs (6th SSN in refit)
FREMM ASW: 10 crews for 6 frigates (ie. 4 dual crews, 2 single crews)

Other dual crews:
3 patrol boats: 3 OPV54
9 support ships: 4 Loire-class BSAM, 4 d’Entrecasteaux-class BSAOM, and the Astrolabe polar support ship
1 hydrographic ship: Beautemps Beaupre
1 intelligence gathering ship: Dupuy de Lome
 
Germany also does it on its F-125, K130 and 212A.
Called the „Mehrbesatzungskonzept“ 2 Crews are used which should switch every 4 month.
 
Last edited:
Inside Defense

Navy budget reflects delays in Constellation-class frigate program​

By Nick Wilson / March 12, 2024
The lead ship in the Constellation-class frigate program, FFG-62, is now expected to deliver in December 2027, according to the Navy's fiscal year 2025 budget documents , a 15-month delay compared to the September 2026 date listed in the prior year's budget. The delivery schedule for the follow-on vessel Congress (FFG-63) and the remaining hulls are “under review,” budget documents indicate. While FFG-63 is officially forecast to deliver in January 2028 -- four months later than the FY-24 budget’s forecast...
Click to expand...

Only one ship in the FY2025 budget.
 
Cordy said:
Inside Defense

Navy budget reflects delays in Constellation-class frigate program​



Only one ship in the FY2025 budget.
Click to expand...


As the delays are being blamed for a labor shortage, there is not much sense in paying for two ships when he yard barely has capacity for one.

Also, it's been widely reported, that after the LCS fiasco, Congress wants to make sure working ships are delivered before bringing another builder into the picture and ramping up production.
 
Jimmo952 said:
As the delays are being blamed for a labor shortage, there is not much sense in paying for two ships when he yard barely has capacity for one.

Also, it's been widely reported, that after the LCS fiasco, Congress wants to make sure working ships are delivered before bringing another builder into the picture and ramping up production.
Click to expand...
The Navy FY2025 plan is to decommission 19 ships and procure only 6, the battle force fleet gets ever smaller so would have thought Navy would be pushing very hard to increase the number of frigates.

USNI March 11, New Navy Budget Seeks 6 Battle Force Ships, Decommissions 19 Hulls in FY 2025​

 
I think the RN's been effectively dual-crewing the minesweeping force in the Persian Gulf for a few years, but that might be longer crew cycles than you normally see. Far cheaper to fly out a new crew and fly the old one back than sail one MH back to the UK and another from UK to UAE.
 
TomS said:
And they complain that the FFG-62s have a smaller gun than the "standard FREMM
Click to expand...

Is there such a beast as a 'standard' FREMM? I think it's 3 French variants (ASW with A43, ASW with A50, FREDA), and 4 Italian (GP, ASW, GP-e, FREMM Evo), the Egyptian and Tunisian FR-ASW variants don't have A70 for MdCN and have different electronic fits, not sure it the Egyptian It-GP variants have a significantly different fit, but they probably have the same Egyptian satcomms as their Fr-ASW. US of course has a completely different spec, and Indonesia's likely to end up being different again.
 
Cordy said:
The Navy FY2025 plan is to decommission 19 ships and procure only 6, the battle force fleet gets ever smaller so would have thought Navy would be pushing very hard to increase the number of frigates.

USNI March 11, New Navy Budget Seeks 6 Battle Force Ships, Decommissions 19 Hulls in FY 2025​

Click to expand...
There are issues producing the frigates, including labor shortages, so it would be premature to ramp up the program when it is likely the yard cannot build more anyway. I believe the choice to buy only one Virginia was similarly driven by infrastructure, not financial issues: there is a huge backlog of work on already purchased new submarines and submarines awaiting refit. So spending more money on buying one is not actually going to produce a new submarine right now.
 
Cordy said:
The Navy FY2025 plan is to decommission 19 ships and procure only 6, the battle force fleet gets ever smaller so would have thought Navy would be pushing very hard to increase the number of frigates.

USNI March 11, New Navy Budget Seeks 6 Battle Force Ships, Decommissions 19 Hulls in FY 2025​

Click to expand...
No matter how hard the Navy pushes, if the yards don't have the bodies to produce the man-hours of work the USN won't get another ship.
 
NavalNews write up on the Navy FY2025 budget request

US Navy Requests Lowest Number Of Ships To Date For FY 2025
The US Navy’s latest budget request marks a new low in terms of ship buys for the service...
13 Mar 2024
The US Navy has requested six battle force ships in its Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget, making the request one of the lowest numbers ever requested by the service in recent years.

Though in dollar terms the shipbuilding budget of $32.4 Bn is at a near recent record high and still the fleet numbers will continue to decline, if the trend continues of ever more costly ships will we see procurement of ships drop to three per year in the not too far future.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom