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Possible Contender For Future Frigate

tomahawk6

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The USN could use frigates to ease the demand for destroyers. I am not sure about this design I would like a design frpm Holland.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/05/18/could-this-be-the-new-us-navy-frigate-design/


The list of contenders is as follows.

https://navaltoday.com/2018/02/19/us-navy-awards-design-contracts-for-ffgx-frigate/

The US Navy has selected five contenders for its FFG(X) future frigate program and awarded them conceptual design contracts on February 16.
The selected companies are Austal and Lockheed Martin with their adaptations of littoral combat ship designs, Huntington Ingalls Industries with its offshore patrol cutter-based frigate design, Fincantieri Marinette Marine with the FREMM frigate-based bid and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works who has teamed with Navantia to propose a design based on Navantia’s Aegis

Edit:  Edited the title

Milnet Staff
 
Well,Tomahawk6,ain't gonna happen(design from The Netherlands),since the LCF isn't in it,didn't even compete,and our new Frigates(GP,but primairly ASW)are still in the final design stages.First ship will enter service somewhere around 2023-25.  :whistle:
 
Note Type 26 not qualified for USN's FFG(X):
BAE Systems Quashes Hopes of Type 26 Entry in FFG(X) Contest

BAE Systems has told USNI News that it would be “delighted” to enter its Type 26 Global Combat Ship in the FFG(X) future frigate competition – if the Navy scraps the requirement for a proven hull design.

The U.K. shipbuilder has taken a close interest in the small surface combatant program, prompting speculation that the United States might join Britain, Australia and Canada in acquiring versions of the Type 26 platform.

On Thursday, however, as the Navy released a final FFG(X) request for proposals, the company confirmed that it will not be submitting blueprints for the 492-foot, 8,000 -ton Type 26 unless the contest is opened up to designs that have not yet been proven at sea. Such a U-turn is not expected [emphasis added].

“Following a detailed assessment of the US Navy’s requirements for its FFG(X) frigate, program we chose not to participate and will continue to focus on delivering on our commitments to the U.K., Australian and Canadian navies,” a BAE Systems spokesperson said.

“We would be delighted to re-engage with the U.S. Navy should its requirements change.”

The Royal Navy is slated to receive eight City-class Type 26s optimized for anti-submarine warfare, with BAE Systems securing an order worth $4.7 billion (U.S. dollars) for the first three ships in July 2017.

Lead ship HMS Glasgow is now under construction in Scotland. Float-out is expected in late 2021, followed by fitting out, acceptance by the Royal Navy in 2025 and entry into operational service in 2027, according to information provided to Parliament.

Such a leisurely schedule – which has been dictated by funding constraints within the UK Ministry of Defence – means the ship has no chance of demonstrating its capabilities within the timeframe required by the U.S. Navy, which plans to select the FFG(X) detail design in Fiscal Year 2020.

Australia is buying up to nine modified Type 26s frigates, to be known as the Hunter class, and in February the Canadian government announced that it would acquire 15 Type 26s, with Lockheed Martin as prime contractor, in a through-life program worth about $45 billion.

Ottawa’s decision was engulfed in controversy when one of the losing bidders complained that the Type 26 failed to meet speed and other requirements imposed by the Royal Canadian Navy. Notably, critics accused procurement officials of reversing an earlier commitment to only consider proven vessel designs.

Asked if the U.S. Navy saw any advantages in procuring the same platform as Australia, Canada and Britain, Alan Baribeau, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command, told USNI News, “the Navy sees benefit of a competitively awarded design that meets cost, schedule and technical requirements of the FFG(X) program.”

“To promote and provide for full and open competition, the Navy will consider any hull form — foreign and domestic — that meets the requirements, will be built in a U.S. shipyard and has a parent design that has been through production and demonstrated (full scale) at sea,” Baribeau continued.

“As part of the program, the Navy has specified what combat system elements will be required on FFG(X) to maximize capability, interoperability and commonality, and to reduce development, integration, support and future modernizations costs.”

Baribeau confirmed that the FFG(X) Program Office had discussed the Type 26 design with BAE Systems, and that the company participated in an industry day in 2017.

“If the Type 26 can meet the requirements in the FFG(X) Request for Proposal, they [BAE Systems] can submit a bid that will be evaluated as a part of the competition,” he added.

Four companies are expected to submit bids – Austal USA, Fincantieri Marine, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding – with deadlines of August 22 for technical proposals and September 26 for pricing proposals.

[RN Type 26:
Hunter_Class_FFG_pic-1.jpg

Hunter-class version of BAE Type 26 frigate. BAE artist rendering

https://news.usni.org/2019/06/21/bae-systems-quashes-hopes-of-type-26-entry-in-ffgx-contest

For comparison the Type 26 for RCN:

canadian-surface-combatant-ship_large-635x357.jpg

An artist's rendering of the Type 26 Global Combat Ship, Lockheed Martin's proposed design for Canada's multi-billion fleet of new warships. (BAE Systems Inc. / Lockheed Martin Canada)

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/06/21/canadian-surface-combatant-pbo-updated-estimate/

Plus, note AEGIS, VLS, also "government-furnished equipment" which I believe is not included in the production cost estimates in the piece:

Navy Issues Final RFP for FFG(X) Next-Generation Frigate
https://news.usni.org/2019/06/20/navy-issues-final-rfp-for-ffgx-next-generation-frigate

Mark
Ottawa
 
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28611/congresss-meddling-could-begin-to-sink-the-navys-frigate-program

I recommend reading the attached paper from DoD.
Interesting statement regarding increased costs and delivery time if some components are to be sourced in US.
 
USN hoping to speed up, maybe spread out, FFG(X) new frigates program:

Navy Readies To Buy New Frigates As Industrial Base Wobbles
The Navy will recompete the program after the first 10 ships are under contract, leading to a new award and another bite at the apple for the bidders who lost out the first time around.

The Navy will award the first contract for an ambitious new class of frigates in the coming days, several sources with knowledge of the plan said, speeding up a program that wasn’t slated to get underway until later this year.

After the first award for ten ships, the Navy will launch a new competition for the next ten, possibly splitting the class and giving other shipbuilders another bite at the apple.

Moving forward the buy of the first of what should be 20 frigates serves more than one purpose. It locks in place one of the service’s top priorities while also pushing work to the winning shipbuilder months ahead of the original schedule, just as the Pentagon worries about the cratering of global manufacturing supply chains as a result to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The country’s largest shipbuilders are competing for the $1.2 billion first ship, with the price settling in at a projected $900 to $950 million per ship after that.

In the running are Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is thought to be offering a more lethal version of its national security cutter. There’s also a joint effort between Navantia and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works with a version of its F-100 design already in use by the Spanish navy. Fincantieri Marinette Marine is offering a version of its FREMM frigate in use by the Italian navy. Finally, Austal is trying with a version of its aluminum trimaran Littoral Combat Ship.

Fincantieri and Lockheed also make a version of the LCS, but decided not to submit it to the competition.

Hanging over any new start shipbuilding program however is the specter of the long-troubled LCS, a vessel still working to find a role and mission within the fleet. Despite its problems, the Navy has ordered 38 of them but is walking away from the class to pursue the new frigate.

Unveiling the fiscal 2021 budget earlier this year, Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, acknowledged “we don’t want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” on the frigate effort, despite speeding up the initial award.

Plans call for the FFG(X) to be a small, multi-mission ship loaded out with the Aegis combat system, 32 vertical launch cells and the new SPY-6 radar system.

The ship will be smaller than the Arleigh Burke destroyer, the Navy’s current workhorse, but outfitted with more power generation capabilities and advanced electronic warfare systems, along with radar and anti-submarine warfare gear
[emphasis added].

Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez said in an email that the frigate “will provide increased range, endurance and survivability over previous small surface combatants,” as well as improvements in surface warfare, electromagnetic maneuver warfare and air warfare, “with design flexibility for future growth.”

That’s a lot of capability to fit in a relatively small package at less than $1 billion per ship. But the Navy’s top brass and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have declared the fleet needs to be faster, lighter, more maneuverable and more numerous to meet the challenges of modern Chinese and Russian navies.

“It’s clear they need fewer large surface combatants and more smaller surface combatants,” a congressional source told me. “But whether the frigate is considered by the Secretary of Defense as being small enough” is an open question
[emphasis added].

Getting the frigate in place early will provide some stability in an uncertain time for the Navy and its industrial base. The service’s long-term plans were thrown into flux in February when Secretary Mark Esper held up the release of the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan and the long-awaited Integrated Force Structure Assessment (INFSA), after he found the Navy’s draft wanting. He assigned Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist to lead a group through a months-long review of the plans before making them public this summer.

In a letter to the House Armed Services Committee, Esper said he wants the force to grow larger than the much-discussed 355 ship fleet Navy leaders have long aspired to, with many of those new ships being smaller than the ones currently at sea, and many others unmanned [emphasis added].

“Three months ago, I would have said, ‘oh yeah they’re gonna want to build more than 20’” frigates,” the congressional source said. “But now with the intervention of the Secretary of Defense it’s unclear. Maybe he’s fine with just 20, and he wants them to build a lot more of something that’s considerably smaller still.”

Two of the shipbuilders competing, Fincantieri in Wisconsin and Austal in Alabama have a lot riding on the contract, as their big-ticket work on LCS runs out in coming years. Huntington’s yards are somewhat protected because it is the only shipbuilder in America capable of building aircraft carriers, and has two more Ford-class big decks to build over the next decade, along with large amphibious ships.

Lawmakers in Wisconsin, well aware of what’s at stake, sent a letter to President Trump earlier this year promoting the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard as best suited for the work.

“We have witnessed what the loss of opportunity does to the Midwest,” the letter said. “When industry departs, so does hope.” Wrapping up the pitch for close to $20 billion worth of work over the 20 ship contract, the senators concluded by telling the president his “leadership and attention to this opportunity is vital.”

There is no indication that any political weight is being put on the Navy in awarding the contract, but in an election year, with an industrial base staggering through supply chain meltdowns, the frigate contract is looming large.
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-readies-to-buy-new-frigates-as-industrial-base-wobbles/

Mark
Ottawa
 
And we have an FFG(X) winner, Fincantieri FREMM! Note that Wisconsin is a crucial state for Trump's re-election. Whole procurement process as warp speed compared to that for RCN's CSC, USN will get first ship before we will from Irving. Sad:

The US Navy selects Fincantieri design for next-generation frigate

The U.S. Navy’s newest surface combatant has Italian heritage, the Navy announced Thursday.

In a major win for Wisconsin’s Marinette Marine shipyard, the Navy selected Fincantieri’s so-called FREMM design, an acronym that stands for “European multi-purpose frigate,” in its original Italian. The shipyard, which is also on the hook for building the remaining mono-hull littoral combat ships and a frigate version of it for Saudi Arabia, is now a major player in U.S. Navy shipbuilding.

The detailed design and construction contract, worth $795.1 million, covers the design work and the first ship, as well as options for up to nine others. The total value of the contract if all options are exercised will be $5.58 billion. The contract is expected to be rebid after the first 10 ships [emphasis added].

The Navy is providing a significant portion of government furnished equipment, including a variant of the AN/SPY-6 radar [CSC will have SPY-7, I have no idea if difference is significant https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2019/11/lockheed-martin-latest-solid-state-radar-now-designated-an-spy-7v1/ ] destined for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers under construction, and those costs are not included in the $5.58 billion [emphasis added, a factor that makes it so hard to compare with our costs per ship].

Fincantieri campaigned hard to win the contract, bringing the FREMM to the United States to show it off and work with U.S. ships off the coast. The victory beats out challenges from Huntington Ingalls Industries, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works with Navantia’s F100 design, and Austal USA with an up-gunned version of its trimaran littoral combat ship.

According to the the Navy 2021 budget documents, the service is planing for it to take six years to complete design and construction of the ship, which should be finished in 2026.

The second frigate is expected to be ordered in April 2021, and from there it should be delivered about five and a half years after the award date.

Put another way, the first ship should be delivered to the fleet in July 2026, and the second about three months later [emphasis added].

The FFG(X) is supposed to be a small, multi-mission ship with a modified version of Raytheon’s SPY-6 radar destined for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Combat System, as well as some point defense systems and 32 vertical launch cells for about half the cost of a DDG [emphasis added].

Of course, without knowing which ship the Navy intends to buy and what the final detailed designs look like, firm price estimates are impossible, but the Pentagon has some projections.

The first ship ordered in 2020 is expected to cost $1.28 billion, according to budget documents.

The buy was supposed to be one ship in FY20, then two vessels every year until the full 20-ship buy was complete. But the Navy wanted to make sure it staggered the buy more responsibly, said Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, in his rollout of the 2021 budget earlier this year.

"We don’t want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” Crites said. "As it is, we’re going to have eight frigates under construction when we deliver the first one in 2026.

“Right now we’ll award one later this year, wand the plan is for one next year but that will get looked at. Then we’ll ramp up to two to three, with nine in the [future-year defense program].”
https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/04/30/the-us-navy-selects-fincantieri-design-for-next-generation-frigate/

MFLKWICLTBGI3O6H6AGCS2HI34.jpg

The Italian FREMM Alpino underway off the coast of Virginia during its 2018 deployment to the East Coast. (Staff photo by David B. Larter)

Mark
Ottawa

 
Good explanation of USN shipbuilding costs vs gov't furnished equipment, accounted for separately from actual shipbuilding--as far as I understand we include the costs of both the building and the defence equipment in RCN costs:

America’s New Frigate Will Blow Through Cost Estimates

With the selection of a FREMM (Fregata Europea Multi-Missione) Frigate as the basis for the U.S. Navy’s future small combatant, the Navy’s surface community is justifiably happy to have a ship it understands—a basic “monohull with margin”—entering the fleet.

But now, after the contract is signed, the U.S. Navy needs to shift from the contentment of awarding the “right” shipbuilder’s hull and get about the hard work of keeping the program alive.

And that means being brutally honest about cost and schedule.

If the past is any guide, America’s FREMM Frigate will cost far more than estimated, and likely enter the fleet late, too.

Set Realistic Expectations:

Nothing sinks a new shipbuilding program faster than propagating unrealistic expectations about platform schedule and price.

Some post-award optimism is OK. Upon announcing the U.S. Navy’s future frigate design last month, James Geurts, the Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, chortled over the compressed timeline, saying his program “was able to accelerate almost six years as compared to normal shipbuilding programs.” The Navy announced that the follow-on, per-ship cost dropped from $800-950 million to $781 million.

A little bit of exuberance about schedule and cost right now is fine, but it is worth remembering that America’s “next-gen” frigate program is far from the norm in naval shipbuilding. With the FREMM—the winning design—the Navy picked a platform whose conceptual “clean sheet” origin can be traced all the way back to 1985, in an effort to build a common frigate for NATO countries.

In short, a lot of work has already been done to define the FREMM, and with over fifteen FREMM variants in service for four other navies, a good amount of risk has already been driven out of the platform. Progress, right now, should be fast and cheap.

But that will change.

Expect Delay:

As any new U.S. naval shipbuilding program has shifted from “best-case” PowerPoint slides to actual production, delay has been the norm. Delay, in this case, will lead to both political and national security upheaval.

The new frigates must deliver on time. The shipbuilder, Fincantieri, is set to deliver the first frigate in 2026, just as the first of America’s mainstream fleet of Arleigh Burke class destroyers reach the end of their 35-year service lives. Burke retirements ramp up quickly; by 2028, four to five Burkes a year will be aging out of the fleet. That’s when America’s new frigates will needed in real numbers [emphasis added].

National security aside, delay could lead to a political confrontation as well. With the prospect of delays likely to really start manifesting themselves sometime in 2023, the next Administration will need to move quickly to address any delays in schedule or new procurement strategies.

Expect Cost Overruns:

Right now, the Navy is sounding confident about cost, estimating that the average price per hull (the basic components of the ship without the warfighting gear included) will be about $781 million dollars apiece.

But that price is only about $110 million dollars more than the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter, a far smaller and less sophisticated vessel. Accounting for the FREMM’s greater size, additional structural requirements and overall hull strengthening needs, the additional $110 million in the frigate budget will be asked to do an enormous amount. The estimate seems, at best, optimistic
[emphasis added].

Naval shipbuilding observers are already sounding the alarm. After the award, Ronald O’Rourke, the dean of naval shipbuilding with the Congressional Research Service, dove into the Navy’s cost estimates. Using the general rule of thumb that, in naval shipbuilding, unit procurement costs are “more or less proportional to their displacements,” O’Rourke wondered how the new FREMM frigate—a ship that is about 76% of a Flight III Arleigh Burke class destroyer’s displacement (or size)— can be estimated to cost about 49% less.

O’Rourke believes the first new frigates will cost somewhere in the vicinity of $1.47 million.

It would not be a surprise to see the new frigates will settle into a per-hull cost of more than a billion dollars apiece—more than half of what the Navy pays for a brand new Flight III Arleigh Burke Destroyer today. The FREMM is a good hullform, but the secret sauce for the FREMM will be what gets put into it—the combat system, the sensors, the launchers and other “government-furnished equipment”. So, once the shipyard delivers the basic platform—the hull, the mechanical gear to drive the hull and the electrical services—then the government can then add in whatever it wishes.

With the first FREMM, at least $400 million will go towards warfighting gear. The Navy, of course, is already likely eying the FREMM’s commodious margin for additional warfighting capability—all at additional cost
[emphasis added].

Now, the tactic of loosely disassociating warfighting gear from the basic hull cost is smart. Once the base hull is approved and passes various tests, then, on a flexible, commodious ship like the FREMM, the Navy can make additions and variations relatively easily. The shipbuilder, Fincantieri, likely made the potential for easy enhancement/modification of the proposed frigate quite plain in their pitch to Navy buyers.

This, of course, is where shipbuilding gets tricky. If the shipbuilder runs into problems with cost on an easily-upgraded ship, it is far simpler for the Navy to short needed “government-furnished equipment” and allow the shipyard to deliver a functional but “bare-bones” hull seemingly “at cost”. In essence, the Navy gets a workable hull, but it is an incomplete warship, unready for warfighting. The idea would be, that, at later refits—and at a likely higher cost—the missing capability can be added in. But those refits don’t hit the all-important shipbuilding account, and the Navy dodges an embarrassing budget bullet [emphasis added].

That’s just how business is done at the waterfront.

No More “Business As Usual”

But the Navy is running out of time for “business as usual” shipbuilding. China’s relentless maritime expansionism demands that America’s future naval ships be built on time and on budget. The new frigates cannot be delivered late and over-budget, only to sit around, working their leisurely way towards full combat capability sometime around 2030.

Good estimates matter. The decision-makers who developed the current frigate cost estimates will largely be gone by 2026. If their estimates turned out to be wrong, they won’t care. They did their job—developing an estimate that magically priced out the new frigate to barely half the cost of a brand new Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyer.

There is no penalty for low-balling a procurement estimate.

Poor early-procurement estimating, however, does come back to haunt America. Price and schedule blowouts in naval shipbuilding make for good press, and long-time shipbuilding observers like Bloomberg’s Anthony Capaccio will always be ready to highlight any perceived failings. It’s terrible for any shipbuilding program to endure. Budget and schedule missteps on such high-profile projects also diminish the Nation, leaving both friends and rivals to question the Navy’s competence. Each blowout on a Navy hull allows China’s low-cost but less-than-perfect shipbuilders to look better in comparison.

Beating the original estimate is a big deal. If the Navy had the guts to say—at this early stage—that their new frigate would likely cost about as much as an early-flight Arleigh Burke destroyer, and then, in a few years, ended up beating that estimate, it would do a lot for America, the Navy and the new frigate program itself.

But then again, if naval estimators came out a few years ago and declared outright that the new frigate would likely cost about 1.5 billion dollars, America’s new frigate would have ended up being a de-scoped, simplified Arleigh Burke variant.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2020/05/11/americas-new-frigate-will-blow-through-cost-estimates/#5e59d41d7218

Mark
Ottawa
 
It's almost like the FREMM is publically marketed at much lower then actual or something.  How does that $30B no bid offer seem now?
 
Well there is that  ;)


The USN also has a horrible habit of trying to make every single ship crammed with state of the art everything, even if it's purpose doesn't require it.  They will probably blow their own budget sky high by trying to make the FREMM a mini AB, rather than just equipping it like a frigate & allowing it to take the work load off of Burke's currently doing tasks they don't need to be doing.


I see it as what you said...FREMM offering coming in with some additional costs down the road, but also the USN shooting itself in the foot.
 
Why not subtract a few hull numbers and build a lot of Light Frigates or Corvettes based on the NSC (USCG) or a Sa'ar 6?
 
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