Navy Acquisition Failures

The Constellation class frigate is next.

The U.S. Navy has two workable surface combatant and three disappointments. It’s not as ugly as the situation with Fat Amy, the nickname Air Force and Navy pilots have bestowed on the F-35, but we are going to waste some money here.

Attention Conservation Notice:

I am a bit of a acquisition & doctrine nerd. If you’re not into it, feel free to go about your business.

The Good:

The Arleigh Burke class destroyers, now 74 in number, are an the workhorse of the fleet. There are ten building right now and another eight on order. They range from 8,300 to 9,700 tons displacement and their primary weapons are 90 or 96 vertical launch cells. Those cells contain a variety of missiles for anti-aircraft, anti-satellite, anti-submarine, and land attack duties. There’s a medium range SAM called the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile that comes in a four pack that fits into the larger missile tubes.

We started with 27 Ticonderoga class cruisers, which are just a bit larger than the Arleigh Burke destroyers, and quite similarly equipped. They’re cruisers because they have room for an admiral’s staff and can serve as flagships for larger formations. The final 22 also pack a heftier punch than the destroyers, with 122 VLS cells. The first five had limited missile capacity. The only serious long term complaint about them was metal fatigue in their aluminum superstructure. Only nine remain in service.

The Bad:

The Navy has just three of the planned 32 White Elephant Zumwalt class stealth destroyers. They’re all around 16,000 tons, the first one is pretty stealthy, cost overruns got the second and third conventional steel superstructures instead of composite, in an attempt to save a wildly over budget program. They have 80 VLS cells that take the same missiles as the others, but they replaced the 5” (127mm) guns we’ve used for the last century with a pair of fancy 155mm. Their new guns can’t use the same ammo as the Army/Marine weapons, their smart rounds edged up to the million dollar mark, and then they got cancelled.

We have two classes of Littoral Combat Ships, which the crews deride as Little Crappy Ships. They are 2,500 to 3,500 ton displacement corvettes. This means no vertical launch tubes, limited air defense capability, limited anti-ship capability. All new ships have teething pain, this collection of two very different classes is seen as having birth defects. They’re getting retired WAY early, but politics has kept some of them building despite their poor results.

The Uncertain:

Having been stung by the big stealth destroyer AND the little corvettes, the Navy got all conservative and multinational, deciding to get a frigate based on the proven FREMM design used by France and Italy. The 7,300 ton Constellation class sounds like a worthy successor to the long retired late Cold War 4,500 ton Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates. The planned 32 tube VLS system gives the Constellation a third the punch of an Arleigh Burke, the diminutive 57mm main gun is one good thing that came out of the LCS, and they’ll tentatively have 16 smaller deck launched anti-ship missiles, we used to use the Harpoon, but it’ll likely be Naval Strike Missiles.

That is IF they ever get built. Putting the guy behind the LCS program in charge of this was a ballsy move. Things weren’t looking so good before Trump took office and with the anti-NATO rhetoric, I expect this program to collapse. We can pay 80% of the cost of an Arleigh Burkes for five ships with one third of the missile capacity, or we can build four well known performers. I can’t imagine we’ll piss away more than six or eight billion before Congress has had enough.