THE NEW CLASS

 I read an article on the USN shipbuilding program and it covered the blisters and blemishes of the past 30 years fairly well but it missed out on the essential nature of weapons procurement that have not and never will simply go away.  We used to have a whole book of terms for what this process was called but ultimately what it started out with was a simple Mission Needs Statement. What do we need given the projected operational environment and the required operational capabilities? This was the malignant fail point on most weapon system procurement that failed to materialize.

Before adopting the clamor and babble of demanding a new ship because the old ones are simply falling apart it is first necessary to state the purpose for the ship and to lay out the specific requirements it must have if it is to be viable in meeting its purpose. This is where naval procurement keeps getting jammed up because we draft completely idiotic and meaningless mission needs statements based on some impossible and unworkable dream of blooming capabilities. This used to be referred to as bleeding edge design and it was fundamentally unworkable in this or any other environment.

What exactly and specifically do you want your new surface combatant to do? What are the Required Operational Capabilities and what is the Projected Operating Environment? If you simply look at those questions you can begin to see why the LCS, the DDGX, the CGX and the CVX were all impossibly stupid shipbuilding plans. 

One wonderful example of simply closing your eyes and screaming loudly in order to just get on with it is found in the old Mine battle force ships which, oddly enough, were designed, built and deployed to sweep or hunt mines in littoral seas or right off the enemy's coastline. They had all the defensive armament at their disposal that an early model B-17 bomber had in 1942 and their POE was well inside artillery range, anti-ship missile range, and the range of  enemy aircraft and of course enemy naval units. It was simply accepted that nobody was going to punt them into a place that they could not survive in because all those threats were neutralized by other means.

That must have been the assumption for the Littoral Combat Ships but nobody ever explained that to Congress or the Fleet Commanders who were expecting replacements for the long gone guided missile frigates. Nobody was able to comprehend that the replacement ships were in fact, completely useless at any of the ROC/POE missions of the guided missile frigate or the minesweepers. As I said above, ANYBODY who read the MNS and Operational Requirements could see this was not going to work. Ditto for the DDGX with it's simply impossible weapon system and the CGX for any number of flaws. The carrier is just a flat out waffle of irresponsibility in stating the need and building to requirement. What possible need was there for magnetic launch and elevators instead of tried and true systems for both?

Is ship's force going to be able to maintain the ships by design which means the necessary schools, test equipment and parts are in place? This has to be addressed up front because it is critical to the design of the ship. Is it really addressed?

Is there a system to counter drones? If there isn't, how do they operate in that environment?

Does the design now incorporate that all of our potential adversaries are going to have high side intelligence made available to them by the Russians since we broke every bit of  the old neutrality rules by furnishing Ukraine with all the means and methods of our intelligence during the current unpleasantness? The old classified nature of simple RORSAT and ELINT location data is now in the white world and any satellite could do it. That means that even a 3rd world adversary could have up to the minute location data on all of our warships. It is really easy these days to mate a warhead with a drone package and send it to latitude and longitude and use simple cheap radar to home on target.

In short, what does the now obviously classified ROC/POE say about the requirements that must be built into any future surface navy combatant worthy of the name? We don't need any more Dainty Class frigates or Fragile Class Destroyers. That era is long gone. We are back to needing something along the lines of the Fletcher Class or any of the late war classes of destroyers and destroyer escorts we put in harm's way.

It is not enough to bleat about needing ships if we don't actually have the requirements built in and program managers ready, able and empowered to build them to spec. It doesn't help at all to have shipyards so damned incompetent that literally everything they do requires enormous cost adjustments and triggers all kinds of 'economies' once the ship is in production. The shipyards in the US are dire places and it's no wonder bad designs go to them to die on the vine. Nothing flourishes in them.

USS Connole, covered in ice, entering a Boston shipyard.