The SteelNavy.Com Message Board: Re: Why USCGC Friedman was cancelled?

You need to study the realities of our shipyard abilities and capacities to better realize why we're making the choices we're making. What other nations are producing, or can produce (and the quantities they are producing them in) do not all fit with our system. One of the biggest reasons we've chosen this design is that the logistics and training systems for it are largely already in place. Creating a new ship does not just involve that vessel. A whole logistical pipeline which supports it must also be established. As the FREMM should have clearly demonstrated, one does not simply snap their fingers and incorporate "what others are building" which "better" fit our needs. We have a limited array of available hull types under construction, and with all the logistics in place. We selected the most suitable of those, not the "most suitable of all the world's designs" (which, as I have pointed out previously is most likely something very much like the Mogami. How fast do you think we can start building those?) Speed and cost trump (sorry) other concerns for this program. Your last paragraph pretty much nails it. We have to fix our shipbuilding industry. Simultaneously with that, we have to turn out a large number of small combatants. This is how that looks in the real world, not the realm of the hypothetical.

I wish Congress could get its act together and repeal Byrnes-Tollefson. Then, I wish we would immediately contract with Japan to buy Mogamis as fast as they can deliver. Another fantasy. "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." Reality is not so pretty.

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Between a weakly armed patrol frigate and a Arleigh Burke class destroyer, there are a lot of options, which could be cheaper than a Arleigh Burke. Most navies have such ships. The failure of the LCS program is the cause of the problem here.

A patrol frigate could replace a destroyer for patrol duties (as could an LCS, even those with the defective gearing), but the situation today is much more dangerous than 15 years ago. To use a warships against drug smugglers is anyway ridiculous. That is normally not a task for a navy (stopping drug smugglers on one route will anyway not solve any problem; the addicted in the US will buy drugs from other sources. Fentanyl is not even coming from South America). Today, Russia and especially China are a much bigger threat and ships have to be built with them in mind.

Therefore, adding at least a small VLS (for ESSM) and a sonar would better - even if at some point ocean-going unmanned vessels with ESSM and sonar will be available.

I still consider the decision to replace a class because of the delays with another one, which was also cancelled because of delays, to be very interesting politics... For both classes, the issue causing the delays (lack of skilled workers?) have to be solved.