It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Overhauls are my review of the 45th Infantry Division Museum, Commercial Aviation Part 1 and for 2024 Navy Day 2024, Quanticle's review of Party on the Bridge and the 2024 USNI Sale.
Comments
FYI your link to Quanticle's book review went instead to the Navy Day poster.
Went to the correct page for me.
That's because I fixed it.
The guy at wwii after wwii has an article on the one thing that bean hasn't talked about with the IOWAs: attempts to turn them into carriers/assault ships
https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/ideas-for-mixing-aviation-with-the-iowa-class-battleships/
A thing I didn't appreciate mentioned here (which bean may have mentioned) was how close to end of service life the IOWAs were at decomm (probably a decade or so).
Did US Navy just cancelled the Constellation class and all their frigates efforts?
@Blackshoe
Wasn't that SYWTBABB Leftovers part 2 or maybe 3?
@StupidBro
No, they just cancelled most of it. They're still building the first two ships, which is worse. I expect to have something up Sunday.
@bean
Sorry, so they build first two ships to eat all the cost of developing the Constellation and then they do not buy the class? I know that new SecNav is living proof that the Gauss curve has a left tail, but this is like WTF?
Yep. That's the plan. This is why the SecNav should have more qualifications than owning a rowboat.
@bean
Ok, and is it possible to find any doctrine what the US Navy actually plans to do for the things Contellation should have done? Like ASW, Pacific convoy protection, air defence of USMC McLungs, or front combat in South east Asia? (I can imagine the latest could be done by drones, but not the three before.) Does the US Navy has any plan, because I failed to find any, except some "Golden fleet" and it looks like complete Sci-Fi (20 000 tonnes capital ships etc.). Can be publically find any plan how the US want their navy to look like?
So is the plan to just buy incrementally better Burkes from now until the singularity?
@StupidBro
You assume they've thought that far ahead. I see no evidence of that.
@redRover
Optimistic of you to think we have a plan.
https://www.twz.com/sea/navy-sinks-the-constellation-class-frigate-program
Article suggestion: What's the way forward and was this a good decision? The Navy just does not normally cancel ship classes. The last time was 2008 (they built 35 lcs so that doesn't really count).
I would say it is not a problem that they cancelled a ship class, but that they cancelled Constellation class. That ship was a panic buy after the US Navy find out that the Arleigh Burke is problematic for convoy protection. It is very hard to hunt submarines when your Gas turbines can be heard by anyone in 50 miles radius. Also the fact that the submarines always knew where all the Burkes are is main think responsible for headlines: "-(insert NATO country here)- sunk the carrier during a naval exercise." So for ASW protection you are dependent on allies.
The current administration was saying they will run the military as a business, which is not a great idea, but that would have not been a terible one. But in the end they run the military as a PRIVATE EQUITY FUND. They just look at a spreadsheets and say this projects are over the budget and delayed so we will scrap them. But that is a typical survivor bias done by PE funds. Often, when there is a program, that is over budget and delayed and the company let it live, it is because it is completely essential. F-35, E-7 Wedgetail, Constellation, Columbia live/lived because they are essential. The problem is, that you can not sell armed forces to your own buyout fund for inflated price.
If the Constellation class was primarily designed for ASW, they probably would not have removed the hull mounted sonar.
@Kit
About hull mounted sonar, when it might look unlogical for ASW warship, that was actually necessary. For hull mounted sonar to be usefull at FREMM it needed a lot of very heavy silencing equipment and they had needed to cut a lot of weight at the front because of heavier US systems. Constellation is mainly for protection of ships at deep sea so the hull mounted sonar is not a essential capability.
@StupidBro
If they removed the hull mounted sonar, and the silencing equipment ... that still doesn't sound like an ASW optimized ship. Even in the deep ocean.
@Kit
And what better existing ship design would you take for oceanic ASW? (excluding Type-26, that was not proven design when FREMM was selected)
@StupidBro
I'm not sure there is a great answer. But the original Fremm design would probably work better than after it was modified. It literally has an ASW variant.
The Fridtjof Nansen class is a Norwegian frigate. It uses a SPY-1 radar, Mk 41 MLS cells and LM2500 engines (all of course American). It cost about $400M in 2009 so it's not super expensive. Just one helicopter though.
@Kit
The original FREMM is great, but the problem is that you would need to have european radars and EW and to be fair that would be probably nightmare to instal AEGIS on it. The thing that drove up the weight at the front was installation of AEGIS capable radars.
Fridtjof Nansen is version of hugely succesfull F-100 spanish frigate family. They bid for Constellation with Australian Hobart version, but the frigates are to noisy for ASW. Now there is a quiet version of F-100 for ASW (Bonifaz), but back then it was not a "proven design".
Even if you would run the program now and say "I want modern CODLAG/IEP oceanic frigate for ASW and convoy escort capable of AEGIS" you are left with Spanish Bonifaz and Canadian River. And both are equiped with AN/SPY-7, something the US Navy did not want. So even now there is not a great answer.
@Kit
The problem with the Nansen is that someone had run into one the previous year and the ship sunk. Rumor at the time had that as one of the reasons that the Bath/F100 design didn't get picked.
Worth pointing out that the original FREMM apparently didn't meet US shock hardening standards, and neither Fincantieri nor NAVSEA realized this until it was way too late. I have a fully worked-out version of this coming soon.
I feel like a Burke Flight III (Light) might be the most feasible to actually get built, sadly enough. Take a Flight III, and strip it down to be be fitted for, but instead with. So, it doesn't have the full up SPY-6(V)1, but rather a 9 RMA version (not a (V)3, because 4 faces, not 3, because it's a Burke still). No hull sonar, but still have the bulb there so it can be fitted if necessary. Just a forward Mk41 VLS, and leaving the aft empty (or the reverse?). After all, steel is cheap and air is free. So cut down the fit to match the Constellation class. We already know the Burke meets US damage control requirements.
@CmdrKien
How much money would you save up on 2.5 billion ship if you cut couple of Mk.41 VLS, radar antenas and hull mounted sonar?
Even if it did save a fair bit of money, the US system basically leaves us with no way to avoid it mission-creeping back to a full Burke. And I don't know how much money it would actually save. I remember hearing that a DD non-G version was proposed, but it was something like 11 of those for 10 of the DDG version, so the thing died.
Semi-random question, but why don’t the LHA’s have decks that overhang the hull to get more flight deck space, à la the CVNs? It seems like it would be a cheap way to get more capability and ease marshaling of aircraft and embarking the Marines.
I can easily see why they don’t have overhangs on surface combatants, or the LPDs, but for the LHAs it odd. Their decks are (I assume) above the waves, and they don’t have to worry about such a high protrusion hitting the dock or wharf. I’m sure there is some stability constraint, but it doesn’t seem like it would be a huge deal if the deck was just the flight surface without expanding the hangar deck and hull width.
I can see two major reasons:
There isn’t a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of bigger flight decks. The ships have a full row of landing spots to port, and another row to starboard interrupted by the island. Making it meaningfully bigger is going to require a lot of overhang, and the weight is high enough that, yeah, that’s going to have a major stability impact.
The existing beam is 106′, which is not coincidentally the old Panamax limit. Being able to go through the canal is really useful, and only worth sacrificing for a really big increase in capability, as happened with the carriers.
@bean:
That's actually kinda the point of my idea: Can't keep them from wanting to mission creep it up to a regular Burke, but can placate them with: "If we need to, we can upfit it to be exactly like a regular Burke, but we build it with the reduce fit, and we can actually build them."
@CmdrKien
Your intuition is valid, but you kinda do not understand why Burkes are expensive to build. It is not the Mk.41 VLS, or the arrays it is all that they need for this to work. There needs to be extreme power generation, lot of wiring, the ship is extremely complicated. You need massive datacenters, cooling, control systems, etc. And this whole needs to be manufactured to crazy high US survivable standars. The whole system cost a lot, not the endpoints.
The problem is that it is hard to scale it back: Is it really better to design new cheaper control system or just put there the better, already working expensive one? Will you design completely new simplier and less capable wiring configuration (which will be less work for electritians), or you just put there the ones that are on the Burke now?
It is common to not fully equip ships, but usually not from the reason that buying the equipment would be expensive. I try to display it on European navies.
Crew-Every FREMM frigate could have all the equipment of the ASW, Air defence and General puropse versions. But why? They would not have the crew big enought to do all these three jobs.
Maintenance- Take the spanish Alvaro de Bazan, it has place for Meroka CIWS, actually spanish even have many of these systems in reserve. But why to have them on the ship? They already have ESSM for air defence. But just imagine the price of maintenance for a 12 barell gun after a month in Northern atlantic...
You are out of missiles- Take e.g. Fridtjof Nansen frigate. It was designed for 32 VLS, it has 8. It should had ASROC, SM-2 and quadpacked ESSM. Norway did not have the money for installation of the ASROC and SM-2 so why to have 1280 slots for ESSMs on your frigates when you bought 200 ESSMs.
As you can see, none of this reasons is currently present at US Navy, so why not to put 96 VLS on it since the day one?