Finally…

The Navy has come to its senses in design…

The U.S. Navy’s next-generation frigate, the Constellation class, is a do-or-die effort for the service and a critical test of its return to building ships around existing technologies rather than designing them around technologies in development.

Full article, HERE.

This would put the Navy back in the surface ASW game, which has been bifurcated between missions for the DDGs, forcing them to either do ASW or BMD, as they can’t do both at the same time.

The REAL question is will the incoming administration kill it before it’s ever built. We know they don’t like the military in any way, shape, form, or faction.

Comments

Finally… — 18 Comments

  1. Kamala said “They should not Stop” when referring to BLM/Antifa destruction through out country over the summer. Also promoted bailing out the Anarchist. That is clear incitement of violence.!

    If you were awake and noticed that the media, or for that matter NOT ONE SINGLE DEMOCRATIC POLITICIAN had ever to this very day condemned Antifa/BlM riots where more ppl were killed and cities Burnt. The FBI moving fast on arrest. John Sullivan was arrested & the one inside filming capital. Also big influencer of Antifa / BLM. In addition NYS Supreme Court Judge, Son arrested for capital riot and him and his father are registered Democrats. So this is classic false flag. Real supporters were still with the POTUS while the capital police let ppl in.

    I encourage all Trump Supporters to hold your heads up high, and be proud of what President Trump ha accomplished over the past four years, for the American People. While cancel culture kicks into high gear, and blacklisting of our names for future employment is underway, stay strong, and we will all prevail! A great Republican Senator messaged me tonight—I wanted to share, because it holds true for each and everyone of you in the Trump Administration, and at agencies across the entire federal government: “I appreciate your service over four long, tough years. Hold your head high for what you accomplished during a very consequential time.” Agreed, so true! Each and everyone of you have made a significant difference—and history along the way

  2. Meh.

    When USN surface warfare designs start looking like an 80s-era Soviet ship, bristling with more firepower hanging onto the deck space than an Ed “Big Daddy” Roth Rat Fink version of an FFG/DDG/CG, then I’ll believe they’re serious.

    When they spend more time and money on recruiting, training, maintenance, and war stores than they do on diversity awareness and gender confusion counselling and sexual reassignment surgery, and stop trying to make solar-powered aircraft carriers armed only with bubble blowers, with their mess decks converted into bouncy ball room safe spaces bathed in a miasma of sugarplum- and strawberry-scented patchouli with New Age trance music playing on the 1MC, they actually will be serious about being a fighting force.

    If it wasn’t for the residual effect of Tom Cruise/Jerry Bruckheimer movies and Tom Clancy books, no one would go near the entire service, except former Catholic priests and Boy Scout leaders cruising for dates.

    We had a world-beating Navy once; I really hope we do again someday. For the foreseeable future, they should just admit the obvious, rename it the Rustbucket Regatta, and hang old tires off the scuppers for the next affirmative action OOD who crashes into yet another ship, pier, rock, dock, pelican, porpoise, or anything else too slow to get out of the way. My main source of puzzlement for the last 10 years has been to wonder why in hell Big Blue even bothers to put windows on the bridge in the first place, and how long will it be before legal blindness isn’t merely non-disqualifying for Quartermaster ratings and deck lookouts, but obligatory.

    It probably also wouldn’t hurt if Congress forced the Navy to mandatorily always have less serving admirals than it has actual ships, as those two lines will criss-cross in the next decade or so, and not in the good way.

    Just saying.

  3. That’s a sweet CGI of the USS I Can’t Breathe!

    Do you think the new regime will get a better SecNav than Obama’s Ray Mabus? To steal a line from Fight Club, “at least he was trying to hit bottom”.
    I can only imagine what new depths will be plumbed with the incoming bunch.

  4. Someday the Navy will need to put steel on a target again and the planes will be busy protecting the fleet. A heavy cruiser or battleship would come in mighty handy then.

    • Or a missile arsenal ship.

      The Italian FREMM is armed with a really nice automatic 76mm gun, capable of air, sea and land attack. With a really nice round designed for swarms of small craft or drones.

      So, of course, we go with a 57mm gun.

      Dammit!

  5. All- Thanks for the comments. Yes, it is a simpler design, but after the failures in both LCS and Zumwalt classes with too much new tech, this is a (to me) refreshing change. And Frigates have a place in the CSG, especially with the loss of the mid-battlespace ASW capability. ASW is more important open ocean than people think, especially with the Chinese and Russian submarine expansions underway.

    Posted from my iPhone.

  6. Hey Old NFO;

    I hate to say it, but I don’t look impressed……I expected more guns, more ASROCs more defensive armaments’. granted I’m an army guy but the older frigates look more intimidating than that rendering does.

  7. Since my sole naval experience was going to Europe on a troopship, I will take your knowledgeable word. Given the incoming turds, fat chance of anything good ending in the hands of our sailors.

  8. Fletcher class DDs from WWII.
    Put turrets from a M109 A7 Paladin 155mm self propelled gun on it.
    Of course the incoming regime will buy factory second ships from Chinese shipyards.

    • This is still the same navy that refused to make a 6″/155mm gun work without spending more than a million dollars per round.

  9. Bob- It’s got VLAs which can be ‘configured’ with multiple weapons. 🙂

    WSF- Point!

    Stretch- Probably… sigh

  10. NFO, I hate the idea of my eldest serving under the command of these communist millionaires.

    I tell him, “Salute the flag, not the man.”

    Or something like that.

  11. Will Biden kill it? He’ll probably give the technology to China… if he hasn’t already done so…

  12. IIRC from my time spent as a DOD contractor working on the old Mk-92 FCS, the old Perry-class FFG’s had a better suite of armament on them. Sad.