FFG(X)

[Kat Tsun]

If so much work needed to be done it seems to me then that the USN is incapable of buying off-the-shelf, and any pretense of doing so was exactly that: A pretense.

Congress decided to hold the USN to what it said it had done, buy an existing design. Surely building should start soon, right? RIGHT?

Yeah, well like TomS said, the Navy's hands are tied. What are they gonna do? Say "no" to their bosses when they say "start building"?

Instead of letting the Navy just do its job, one it has gotten a bit rusty at so delays should be expected, they've been bearing down on admirals over delays. Congress is now going to make it illegal for it to pressure its own fleet to build ships faster I guess in a typical over correction, so there's that.

House poised to require '100 percent' ship design from Navy prior to construction - Breaking Defense

The more specific policy language would close apparent loopholes the Pentagon had been using and force a major change compared to how previous programs had been run.

breakingdefense.com

This will be interesting to see how it affects America's already sluggish shipbuilding as some level of concurrency is necessary to be fast.

 

[Hood]

I don't think you could ever call the Constellations "off the shelf", the differences were massively evident at the beginning of the programme. I doubt that there is any commonality at all in structure or systems by now.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I don't think you could ever call the Constellations "off the shelf", the differences were massively evident at the beginning of the programme. I doubt that there is any commonality at all in structure or systems by now.

I'd expect commonality in gross structures, but that's about it.

 

[Cordy]

I don't think you could ever call the Constellations "off the shelf", the differences were massively evident at the beginning of the programme. I doubt that there is any commonality at all in structure or systems by now.

Navy officials stated originally Constellation had 85% commonality with the Italian FREMM but that is now less than 15% so it has morphed into a totally different ship from when contract signed in April 2020 due to the 70+% changes and not a single one of the ships' Grand Modules design is as yet 100% complete - Grand Modules is new Navy obtuse terminology for Blocks in plain English. Congress mandated in 2020 that design must be "complete" before build, as the Navy didn't understand the meaning of the word "complete" in the FY2025 NDAA House legislators are changing the wording to "100% complete".

It’s a wonder how Fincantieri managed complete 3.6% construction let alone the 35.5% scheduled with not a single one of the 37 blocks design has yet to be completed four years after contract award.

As the new ship with all the Navy changes has seen a 10% weight growth its looking like a repeat of the LCS disaster.

 

[Kat Tsun]

As the new ship with all the Navy changes has seen a 10% weight growth its looking like a repeat of the LCS disaster.

Well, when you get the guys who did LCS-1 to do your frigate, your frigate will look like LCS-1.

 

[Jimmo952]

Well, when you get the guys who did LCS-1 to do your frigate, your frigate will look like LCS-1.

The LCS guys are retired by now. That the FFGX is also a problem points to an institutional/cultural issue.

 

[Firefinder]

FFS, the Virginia class was all designed on CAD and they walked a 6ft tall virtual sailor through the passageways before the first steel was cut for the hull.

Same for the Columbia class.

And it still took what? Nearly a year more to build the Virginia then it did the Texas. Eyeah that was cause of Issues they found in constuction they fix and input into the cad files

With Columbia having its own issues.

Lead Ships always take longer to build cause what works in Paper or Cad rarely works in real life.

All this is on the Yard to do with the Navy merely rubber stamping or rejecting it base on a multi volume list of regs and like.

Sticking 4 Aesa type radar faces on a design not original design for it was always going to cause problems. Those face are what? nearly 10 tons each dry? With them being neaely 30 foot above the surface? like 15 above the deck.

Thats alot of weight you need to balance and support on a design that never had it in ANY of its variations. Basically have redesign every structural member to take the weight and redesign where everything goes to ensure the balance is right. Then you need to factor innthe Cable runs, the cooling system, the data lines and all other fun stuff you need to ensure not only fit but is accessible for maintenance.

All that work is done by the Yards. Even in the days of BruShips the Yards engineers often moded the design to ensure it properly balanced and all the stuff fits.

Throw in the Yard under bidded like hell to get the contract? With the navy buying in cause congress whats shit cheap?

Plus the lack of workers?

Makes tge entire show look like a mess.

It may looks like they are just fooling around but once you actually look into the details and have a knowledge of how ship work?

You see that yhe Navy is doing everything it can to get a half decent ship that will not sink in the first storm it hits. Cause the Yard LIED to them and told them it be an easy cheap conversion. And by trying to fix the Mistakes made, makes them look like idiots. Which while partly true, never should have drop inhouse designers, they do have a method that works. With them try to leverage it to get a ship that will not capsize and operatable in, think its Sea State 7...

While the Yard also scrambling to fix themselves since they realize they but off more then they can chew. resulting in all types of fun delays we already went over.

So while the Navy may have several issues to fix causing delays.

The Yard is the sole cause of a large majority of the issues.

Thats before Congress sticks their amauter hour everything in it and cause even more issues in their ignorance.

 

[Scott Kenny]

And it still took what? Nearly a year more to build the Virginia then it did the Texas. Eyeah that was cause of Issues they found in constuction they fix and input into the cad files

Better comparison would be Virginia versus Hawaii, both completed at EB. NNS took a long time to figure out how to build submarines.

 

[timmymagic]

The US Navy has fallen victim to the British disease

‘Want of frigates’ is stamped upon my heart

www.telegraph.co.uk

To be honest this does happen, but often for good reasons. The same papers that criticise the MoD and DoD for doing this would also hammer them if 'x platform was purchased that couldn't communicate with y platform'....

Perhaps there needs to be a rule that there is an arbitrary percentage, say 10% of the value, that you can tinker with. Anything more than that and it goes back for approval and to see if building a new, homegrown, design makes more sense.

But there also needs to be a real acceptance that perfect is the enemy of good, and that sometimes the 80% solution is good enough...

 

[Kat Tsun]

The LCS guys are retired by now. That the FFGX is also a problem points to an institutional/cultural issue.

The "LCS guys" are the managers and marketers at FMM who told the Navy they could build LCS cheaply like a sea pickup truck. What did FMM guys tell the Navy about FREMM? Who, lacking internal development staff of sufficient quantity, took them at their word?

"100% complete prelim" will be interesting because you often have to go back and revisit these prelims during construction. What sort of magic law rituals will the Navy or contractors need to do if they find out they have to move a cable drop eight inches to the left to make space for a bulkhead because they had to make a duct a bit bigger? How many months will that take?

It will be a mess, over something that could have been solved by a brief few-months delay in the beginning, but is now a multi-year delay.

 

[Cordy]

To be honest this does happen, but often for good reasons. The same papers that criticise the MoD and DoD for doing this would also hammer them if 'x platform was purchased that couldn't communicate with y platform'....

Perhaps there needs to be a rule that there is an arbitrary percentage, say 10% of the value, that you can tinker with. Anything more than that and it goes back for approval and to see if building a new, homegrown, design makes more sense.

But there also needs to be a real acceptance that perfect is the enemy of good, and that sometimes the 80% solution is good enough...

Disagree as one the basic lessons learned from the successful Far East shipyards is you do not start build until the design is 100% complete, not 90% but 100% (often the last 10% is the hardest) and components are available. Fincantieri won the competition to build the Constellation to the Navy with a design that had 85% commonality with the Italian FREMM for 10 ships, its not as if the Navy did not know what they were buying as they had set the detailed specifications.

The GAO report was unsparing in laying the blame at the Navy’s feet for tinkering with the new ship’s design.

Congress in 2020 made it law that that Navy did not start build until design is complete which Navy willfully ignored, if you require changes for any reason you do it by iterative new buys and also have the discipline to off ramp any capabilities that present a risk to schedule.

As a result of the Navy never ending tinkering with the design its now four years after the contract award not one of the 39 Blocks designs is completed, delivery delayed by 3 years at best and the weight estimate has increased by more than 10% with the Navy now admitting that will result in reduced speed and assuming many tons of lead ballast will be required to maintain the ships stability, all ships grow in weight over the years, classic example is the Burke, that being the case the overweight Constellation looks like its lifetime will be short as it will not be able to incorporate future upgrades.

Reminds me of what the legendary Kelly Johnson of the Skunk Work fame said -
"Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."

 

[Rhinocrates]

Angry Planet has a look at the issue. I am not a lawyer, so make up your own mind.

Ships: America Doesn't Build Them Like It Used To (Or at All) | Angry Planet

America has the largest navy in the history of the world. It isn’t great at maintaining it.

shows.acast.com

Ships: America Doesn't Build Them Like It Used To (Or at All)​

•
Friday, May 31, 2024
A lot goes into keeping a navy afloat. There’s ship husbanding, maintenance, and buckets of haze gray. The U.S. used to be good at this, but it hasn’t been on an active war-footing for a long time and the manufacturing base that created its massive navy has seen better days. So what happens if there’s a war and America doesn’t have enough welders, let alone drydocks, to build out its fleets?

Gil Barndollar is a senior analyst at Defense Priorities and the co-author of a recent piece in Foreign Policy about America’s inability to build new ships. Barndollar sounds the alarm on a number of different issues facing the U.S. military: the recruitment crisis, manufacturing issues, and sailors pushed to the limits of their physical abilities.

We might even talk about arming container ships with missile batteries to augment existing forces.

The U.S. Navy Can’t Build Ships

Decades of deindustrialization and downsizing have left America without shipyards to build and maintain a fleet.

foreignpolicy.com

 

[Rhinocrates]

Speaking of procurement, Bill Sweetman's/Low Observable's thoughts of the F-35 might be applicable in principle as they are on the F-35 (although obviously the frigate isn't going to be VTOL, however cool that might be). I get the impression is that the overall principle is that limiting what changes you need to make is critical. Design creep is death, so start where you want to go.

Bill Sweetman shares 10 ways GCAP can avoid the hell of the F-35 project with little or no effort

You hear a lot of “the Global Combat Air Programme’s going to cost just as much and take as long as the F-35 has, so why bother?” Based on the work I did for TRILLION DOLLAR TRAINWRECK (now availab…

hushkit.net

 

[Shoes31]

The Yard is the sole cause of a large majority of the issues.

How is it the yards fault when originally it was expected that FFG(X) would share 85% parts commonalty, but because of the Navy moving goalposts and changing designs its now down to 15%? Seems to me that is an issue with the program managers, which is directed by the Navy, not the yard.

 

[bobbymike]

Where’s all this fancy “quantum AI digital engineering” whatever helping speed up weapon’s acquisition?

 

[Shoes31]

Where’s all this fancy “quantum AI digital engineering” whatever helping speed up weapon’s acquisition?

Yeah the Chinese are using AI to lay out the electrical schematics and place those pesky electrical outlets, why not us? There's an AI gap!

 

[Grey Havoc]

F-35, Israel win big in House appropriators' $833B draft defense bill - Breaking Defense

The HAC-D's version of the spending bill contains a heavy focus on culture war issues, but does increase spending for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Defense Innovation Unit.

breakingdefense.com

In shipbuilding, House appropriators funded two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, one San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, and one Virginia-class submarine — a notable difference from the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the defense policy bill, which authorized additional advanced procurement funding for a second ship.

In another significant omission, the spending bill and its summary do not lay out any funding for the Constellation-class frigate. The Navy requested about $1 billion in funds for the first ship in FY25, but it appears House appropriators may follow the HASC in zeroing out funding.

 

[Cordy]

The Italians have just placed an order for two of latest variation of FREMM EVO to bring to a total twelve ships in class, the parent design of Constellation, for Euro1.5 billion, approx. $800 million each to be del'd in '29 and '30 respectively. The FREMM EVO is 700t lighter than the Constellation and with only 16 VLS cells for Aster TBM missiles with X and C band radars, a HMS sonar and the same TAS the CAPTAS 4 plus mine avoidance sonars, main gun is the 127mm/64.

Why can the Italian Navy and industry organize delivery of ships on time and budget when US Navy just fails dismally with Constellation.

Orrizonte Sistemi Navali Signs €1.5 Billion Contract For Two “FREMM EVO” Frigates for the Italian Navy - Naval News

As part of the multi-year “FREMM” program aimed at the renewal of the Italian Navy's fleet through the construction of next-generation frigates, Orizzonte Sistemi Navali (OSN) has signed a contract worth approximately 1.5 billion euro with OCCAR for the construction of two new FREMM frigates of...

www.navalnews.com

 

[MihoshiK]

The Italians have just placed an order for two of latest variation of FREMM EVO to bring to a total twelve ships in class, the parent design of Constellation, for Euro1.5 billion, approx. $800 million each to be del'd in '29 and '30 respectively. The FREMM EVO is 700t lighter than the Constellation and with only 16 VLS cells for Aster TBM missiles with X and C band radars, a HMS sonar and the same TAS the CAPTAS 4 plus mine avoidance sonars, main gun is the 127mm/64.

Why can the Italian Navy and industry organize delivery of ships on time and budget when US Navy just fails dismally with Constellation.

Orrizonte Sistemi Navali Signs €1.5 Billion Contract For Two “FREMM EVO” Frigates for the Italian Navy - Naval News

As part of the multi-year “FREMM” program aimed at the renewal of the Italian Navy's fleet through the construction of next-generation frigates, Orizzonte Sistemi Navali (OSN) has signed a contract worth approximately 1.5 billion euro with OCCAR for the construction of two new FREMM frigates of...

www.navalnews.com

Because the USN told everyone that they were going to buy off-the-shelf, went through all of the rigamarole to have a competition, selected a design… And then proceeded to thoroughly fuck it up, because they didn’t want an off-the-shelf design, because nothing conformed to USN standards.

USN should have bitten the bullet and either had a clean-sheet design (LOL), or accepted the standards and fittings of the original design.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Because the USN told everyone that they were going to buy off-the-shelf, went through all of the rigamarole to have a competition, selected a design… And then proceeded to thoroughly fuck it up, because they didn’t want an off-the-shelf design, because nothing conformed to USN standards.

USN should have bitten the bullet and either had a clean-sheet design (LOL), or accepted the standards and fittings of the original design.

Admittedly, some of what the USN is changing is the survivability measures.

Because let's face it, NOBODY wants the bad guys to get an easy "We sank a US warship!!!"

The USN takes Damage Control very, very seriously. As a student at Sub School, we got run through their Wet trainer. It's a room that is roughly the size and shape of a 640-class Main Seawater bay, because that has the most water pipes running through it. The doors and windows are suspiciously well-sealed with huge amounts of silicone caulk. The water for that trainer comes from the river on base and is stored in an enormous, insulated above-ground tank. That water runs between 40 and 60 deg F. And since the flooding trainer has simulated cracks from 8"-12" pipe flanges and even a blown Main Seawater pump that can fill the 3-story room in 5 minutes flat, you spend much of that day roughly neck deep in water. The water comes in at fire hose pressures. Or higher, since the USN hooked up a few of the spare trim and drain pumps they took out of old subs to that trainer. Those pumps will deliver 250 gallons per minute against full sea pressure at test depth(!). We use them to feed the fire main.

 

[MihoshiK]

Admittedly, some of what the USN is changing is the survivability measures.

Because let's face it, NOBODY wants the bad guys to get an easy "We sank a US warship!!!"

The USN takes Damage Control very, very seriously. As a student at Sub School, we got run through their Wet trainer. It's a room that is roughly the size and shape of a 640-class Main Seawater bay, because that has the most water pipes running through it. The doors and windows are suspiciously well-sealed with huge amounts of silicone caulk. The water for that trainer comes from the river on base and is stored in an enormous, insulated above-ground tank. That water runs between 40 and 60 deg F. And since the flooding trainer has simulated cracks from 8"-12" pipe flanges and even a blown Main Seawater pump that can fill the 3-story room in 5 minutes flat, you spend much of that day roughly neck deep in water. The water comes in at fire hose pressures. Or higher, since the USN hooked up a few of the spare trim and drain pumps they took out of old subs to that trainer. Those pumps will deliver 250 gallons per minute against full sea pressure at test depth(!). We use them to feed the fire main.

As I said, do a clean sheet design or buy an existing design and accept that not everyone is as anal as you. Don't lie about this being a quick and easy buy because it's off-the-shelf.

 

[Scott Kenny]

As I said, do a clean sheet design or buy an existing design and accept that not everyone is as anal as you. Don't lie about this being a quick and easy buy because it's off-the-shelf.

Do you think that the American public would accept the reduced survival standards?

 

[Josh_TN]

Do you think that the American public would accept the reduced survival standards?

Yes, because they probably have no idea they exist.

At some point the total lack of hulls reduces the survival of the fleet as well.

 

[Cordy]

Admittedly, some of what the USN is changing is the survivability measures.

Because let's face it, NOBODY wants the bad guys to get an easy "We sank a US warship!!!"

The USN takes Damage Control very, very seriously. As a student at Sub School, we got run through their Wet trainer. It's a room that is roughly the size and shape of a 640-class Main Seawater bay, because that has the most water pipes running through it. The doors and windows are suspiciously well-sealed with huge amounts of silicone caulk. The water for that trainer comes from the river on base and is stored in an enormous, insulated above-ground tank. That water runs between 40 and 60 deg F. And since the flooding trainer has simulated cracks from 8"-12" pipe flanges and even a blown Main Seawater pump that can fill the 3-story room in 5 minutes flat, you spend much of that day roughly neck deep in water. The water comes in at fire hose pressures. Or higher, since the USN hooked up a few of the spare trim and drain pumps they took out of old subs to that trainer. Those pumps will deliver 250 gallons per minute against full sea pressure at test depth(!). We use them to feed the fire main.

When Fincantieri made their bid they changed the Italian FREMM design by adding an additional 300t in part no doubt to fully meet the USN Level II OPNAV survivability standards for frigates as specified in the Navy RFQ.
As the recent GAO report made clear it was the Navy continuously changing the specifications ever since leading to an unstable design from the contract award that have driven the current major problems of the 3 year delay and overweight and the resulting cutting of funding by Congress.

 

[totallyaverage]

Because the USN told everyone that they were going to buy off-the-shelf, went through all of the rigamarole to have a competition, selected a design… And then proceeded to thoroughly fuck it up, because they didn’t want an off-the-shelf design, because nothing conformed to USN standards.

USN should have bitten the bullet and either had a clean-sheet design (LOL), or accepted the standards and fittings of the original design.

FFG(X) was literally never referred to as an off the shelf program, it was always going to be a significant revision of a parent design in order to fit US systems and meet US survivability requirements. The alternatives you propose have their own problems, buying a foreign design that doesn't meet requirements would be a non starter, and a clean sheet design would have pushed the start of the program years to the right.

And while the design changes have been a major contribution to the delays, the biggest source of schedule growth is that FMM is overloaded with the last LCS work, building MMSC for Saudi Arabia, and is undergoing major yard revisions. In addition, the company has had major problems hiring and retaining talent in Wisconsin.

 

[Scott Kenny]

As the recent GAO report made clear it was the Navy continuously changing the specifications ever since leading to an unstable design from the contract award that have driven the current major problems of the 3 year delay and overweight and the resulting cutting of funding by Congress.

Ah, so USN being its stupid self as usual, then.

There's a reason pretty much every shipbuilder in the Great Lakes has straight up blacklisted the USN, and constantly changing designs is it.

Who do we need to shoot at BuShips to stop fucking around with the design and let the contractors just build a few, make mods in the next batch of a class?

 

[Ainen]

Do you think that the American public would accept the reduced survival standards?

Deep damage control effort only matters when you have enough ships around to let it happen.
Otherwise, it will be the other guy who sinks the Hornet. at best, because the ship may indeed be survivable enough for more interesting endings.
Speed of PLAN construction is astonishing - and USN relative numbers(surface combatants to protected units ratio) is already a one big trouble.
At this point, I honestly wonder who even escorts all the logistical traffic in Pacific simulations, much less trade of any kind.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Deep damage control effort only matters when you have enough ships around to let it happen.
Otherwise, it will be the other guy who sinks the Hornet. at best, because the ship may indeed be survivable enough for more interesting endings.
Speed of PLAN construction is astonishing - and USN relative numbers(surface combatants to protected units ratio) is already a one big trouble.
At this point, I honestly wonder who even escorts all the logistical traffic in Pacific simulations, much less trade of any kind.

Trade is likely going to stop entirely for the duration of the hostilities, at least across the Pacific. Because who wants to risk a ship when two major submarine powers declare Unrestricted Submarine Warfare?

Logistics is going to be an ugly question, I halfway suspect that any carrier group would withdraw when their supply ship ran empty, because there's not enough DDGs around to keep Logs ships from getting blown out of the water.

 

[Ainen]

Logistics is going to be an ugly question, I halfway suspect that any carrier group would withdraw when their supply ship ran empty, because there's not enough DDGs around to keep Logs ships from getting blown out of the water.

Yep. Like no matter how big the number of Burke series is - just CSGs and Amphibious groups alone eat it up tremendously.
I honestly wonder what's the plan.

 

[TomS]

main gun is the 127mm/64.

The model in the article seems to show two 76mm/62 Sovraponte guns, not a 127mm.

 

[Jimmo952]

The US has lost it's core competency in designing and building warships.

It's going to have to outsource more of it's ship design, construction and maintenance until it can get it back.

 

[that_person]

The US has lost it's core competency in designing and building warships.

It's going to have to outsource more of it's ship design, construction and maintenance until it can get it back.

I really don't know why you think we can't design new warships. From a technical standpoint, all of the Post-Cold War programs have worked just fine. All delays to Ford, the Zumwalts, and the LCS were due to political meddling. The Flight III redesign went just fine, on budget and on schedule, Virginia production is continuing just fine, I believe the Columbias are on budget, and DDG Mod 1.5 is working just fine. Not to mention all the amphib and auxiliary programs are coming along too. Explain your thinking.

 

[TomS]

One of the big problems seems to be simple lack of numbers across the industry. There just aren't enough skilled NavArchs and Maritime Engineers to do all the detailed design work on more than a few complex military projects at the same time.

 

[that_person]

One of the big problems seems to be simple lack of numbers across the industry. There just aren't enough skilled NavArchs and Maritime Engineers to do all the detailed design work on more than a few complex military projects at the same time.

I’m going to start college next fall, planning to major in naval architecture. Hopefully this trend will be reversed in the coming decade.

 

[donnage99]

All delays to Ford, the Zumwalts, and the LCS were due to political meddling. Not to mention all the amphib and auxiliary programs are coming along too. Explain your thinking.

Zumwalts yes, LCS and Fords - no. Also, marines new landing ship is facing significant cost increase and delay.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Admittedly, some of what the USN is changing is the survivability measures.

Because let's face it, NOBODY wants the bad guys to get an easy "We sank a US warship!!!"

Trouble is, the USN no longer has the luxury of time.

 

[Josh_TN]

FFGX happens when it happens. Nothing can speed the process now. At least Burke 3 and 2.0 projects seem to be running fine, though with a very dated propulsion/power platform.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Zumwalts yes, LCS and Fords - no. Also, marines new landing ship is facing significant cost increase and delay.

I'd argue that the LCS cost overruns were caused by political interference: that 40+knot high speed requirement that never had a reasoning attached to it. It was just a "wouldn't it be cool if we had a 400ft ship that did 40something knots?!? We could zoom in and out of the littorals like a ski boat!" The LCS are faster than a carrier in a sprint! Anything over a couple day's travel and the carrier wins, since the LCS would have to slow down to refuel.

And so the boats are massively over-engined, and the Freedom-class gearbox just could not handle the power and broke all the time. Indys went with hydrodynamic trickery of the trimaran hull to go fast on less horsepower so they're mechanically reliable, but the aluminum hull tends to crack where the trimaran pontoons join the main hull due to wave pounding and flexing. And that's a pain in the ass to fix. Stop drill the cracks, then figure out how to (or even whether to) reinforce the sections to make them more resistant to flexing or make those locations out of more flexible materials that won't crack.

Ford is first in class, those always cost more than you expect.

What's the reason for the cost increases for the LSMs? Significantly increased weapons and equipment needed to survive in the Pacific? Like SPY6, Aegis, and a 16- or 32-cell VLS? That's called, "yeah, we really goofed on the defensive requirements in the initial concept. We thought these could be escorted by DDGs, but the threat has gotten significantly greater than we originally thought and the ships need FFG protection levels all by themselves."

 

[Jimmo952]

I'd argue that the LCS cost overruns were caused by political interference: that 40+knot high speed requirement that never had a reasoning attached to it. It was just a "wouldn't it be cool if we had a 400ft ship that did 40something knots?!? We could zoom in and out of the littorals like a ski boat!" The LCS are faster than a carrier in a sprint! Anything over a couple day's travel and the carrier wins, since the LCS would have to slow down to refuel.

And so the boats are massively over-engined, and the Freedom-class gearbox just could not handle the power and broke all the time. Indys went with hydrodynamic trickery of the trimaran hull to go fast on less horsepower so they're mechanically reliable, but the aluminum hull tends to crack where the trimaran pontoons join the main hull due to wave pounding and flexing. And that's a pain in the ass to fix. Stop drill the cracks, then figure out how to (or even whether to) reinforce the sections to make them more resistant to flexing or make those locations out of more flexible materials that won't crack.

Ford is first in class, those always cost more than you expect.

What's the reason for the cost increases for the LSMs? Significantly increased weapons and equipment needed to survive in the Pacific? Like SPY6, Aegis, and a 16- or 32-cell VLS? That's called, "yeah, we really goofed on the defensive requirements in the initial concept. We thought these could be escorted by DDGs, but the threat has gotten significantly greater than we originally thought and the ships need FFG protection levels all by themselves."

The LCS requirements and concept of operations came from the Navy, not the politicians.

The Navy bares a lot of responsibility for what happened with that class of ships.

The Navy brass developed the requirements and sold Congess on the need for the ships. They doubled down multiple times when it was clear the class was in trouble.

The DDX was another ship with a questionable concept of operations, a lot of new, immature technology and a price tag that all but ensured it would never be built in numbers to replace the Burkes.

The Navy bares responsibility for that.

It's not that I have love for politicians but the Navy is the key party responsible for this mess.

 

[Ainen]

I'd argue that the LCS cost overruns were caused by political interference: that 40+knot high speed requirement that never had a reasoning attached to it.

Inshore operations, incl. against fast swarmey opponents in restricted/shallow waters, and dashing out from ASCM seeker search range.

You may laugh at either of those requirements, but Russian navy doesn't anymore.