I just hope that these are still multi mission capable ships. They seem to be powerful anti surface ship and anti submarine platforms. But what about air defense? Certainly that would be a mission these ships would be expected to carry out as well. These frigates are exactly what the Navy said it was not building mini destroyers. But that is not an issue so long as all the capabilities are needed.
It was never produced in the US before either. The LCS offerings, however, already have most of the US GFE already well integrated into their hulls, with years of operating experience, and both variants have existing hot production lines in the USA. Meaning the costs will be far more predictable and the production schedule far more reliable. The problem with the Conny design is that it fits exactly into the anti-sweet spot of surface combatant design.
The LCS designs come in at around 3, to 4, tons — a perfect frigate size — and would have cost less than half of what a Connie costs, but provide exactly the same weapons and sensors, and BETTER aviation capability, especially on the Indy class design with its huge flight deck and hangar bay.
The Navy needs to ignore the destroyer mafia and the ship hating trolls, and get back to the business of designing and building and operating cost effective ships, which they are certainly NOT doing with the Conny class of frigate. It is the perfect gun weapon for a modern surface combatant. Guns are useful only against small surface vessels, and against incoming aircraft and missiles.
The extreme high rate of fire of the 57 mm gun over rounds per minute — at least ten times the firing rate of our 5 inch naval guns , combined with multiple precision guided munitions with multi-targeting modes, both IR imaging and laser guided will put far more rounds into the target than any other naval gun in history. A single round from a precision guided, blast-frag warhead with proximity fuse, has been proven time and time again to completely take out a small attack craft with a single round.
Small attack craft are the primary threats to surface warships today. Given that it is the USN, most likely it is designed to sink at any moment. Go troll someplace else. So why call it a Frigate? Before we give this to the Taliban, we should at least have the courtesy to ask them what they want on it. From the mids frigates which more closely resembled the traditional sailing frigate were built with steam engines and screw propellers. These " screw frigates ", built first of wood and later of iron, continued to perform the traditional role of the frigate until late in the 19th century.
From , armour was added to ships based on existing frigate and ship of the line designs. The additional weight of the armour on these first ironclad warships meant that they could have only one gun deck, and they were technically frigates, even though they were more powerful than existing ships-of-the-line and occupied the same strategic role.
The phrase "armoured frigate" remained in use for some time to denote a sail-equipped, broadside-firing type of ironclad.
After , the term "frigate" fell out of use. Vessels with armoured sides were designated as " battleships " or " armoured cruisers ", while " protected cruisers " only possessed an armoured deck, and unarmoured vessels, including frigates and sloops, were classified as "unprotected cruisers".
Modern frigates are related to earlier frigates only by name. The term "frigate" was readopted during World War II by the Royal Navy to describe an anti-submarine escort vessel that was larger than a corvette , smaller than a destroyer , and were about equal in size and capability with the American destroyer escort.
Anti-submarine escorts had previously been classified as sloops by the Royal Navy, and the Black Swan-class sloops of —45 were as large as the new types of frigate, and more heavily armed. The frigate was introduced to remedy some of the shortcomings inherent in the corvette design: limited armament, a hull form not suited to open-ocean work, a single shaft which limited speed and maneuverability, and a lack of range.
The frigate was designed and built to the same mercantile construction standards scantlings as the corvette, allowing manufacture by yards unused to warship construction.
The first frigates of the River class were essentially two sets of corvette machinery in one larger hull, armed with the latest Hedgehog anti-submarine weapon. The frigate possessed less offensive firepower and speed than a destroyer , but such qualities were not required for anti-submarine warfare. Submarines were slow while submerged, and ASDIC sets did not operate effectively at speeds of over 20 knots.
Rather, the frigate was an austere and weatherly vessel suitable for mass-construction and fitted with the latest innovations in anti-submarine warfare. As the frigate was intended purely for convoy duties, and not to deploy with the fleet, it had limited range and speed. The contemporaneous German Flottenbegleiter "fleet escorts" , also known as "F-Boats" were essentially frigates.
Because of the Treaty of Versailles their displacement was officially limited to tons, although in reality they exceeded this by about tons. F-boats had two stacks and two mm gun turrets. The design was flawed because of its narrow beam, sharp bow and unreliable high pressure steam turbines. F-boats were succeeded in operational duties by Type 35 and Elbing class torpedo boats.
Flottenbegleiter remained in service as advanced training vessels. It was not until the Royal Navy's Bay class of that a British design classified as a "frigate" was produced for fleet use, although it still suffered from limited speed. These anti-aircraft frigates, built on incomplete Loch-class frigate hulls, were similar to the United States Navy ' s destroyer escorts DE , although the latter had greater speed and offensive armament to better suit them to fleet deployments.
The destroyer escort concept came from design studies by the General Board of the United States Navy in , as modified by requirements established by a British commission in [8] prior to the American entry into the war, for deep-water escorts. The American-built destroyer escorts serving in the British Royal Navy were rated as Captain-class frigates. The U. Navy ' s two Canadian-built Asheville -class and 96 British-influenced, American-built Tacoma -class frigates that followed originally were classified as "patrol gunboats " PG in the U.
Navy but on 15 April were all reclassified as patrol frigates PF. Moored on the Thames Embankment in London are two surviving Royal Navy anti-submarine sloops, which are the predecessors of the WW2 frigates:.
The introduction of the surface-to-air missile after the Second World War made relatively small ships effective for anti-aircraft warfare: the "guided missile frigate. From the s to the s, the United States Navy commissioned ships classed as guided missile frigates which were actually anti-aircraft warfare cruisers built on destroyer -style hulls.
Some of these ships—the Bainbridge , Truxtun , California and Virginia classes—were nuclear-powered. These "frigates" were roughly mid-way in size between cruisers and destroyers. This was similar to the use of the term "frigate" during the age of sail during which it referred to a medium-sized warship, but it was inconsistent with conventions used by other contemporary navies which regarded frigates as being smaller than destroyers.
During the ship reclassification , the large American frigates were redesignated as cruisers or destroyers, while ocean escorts the American classification for ships smaller than destroyers were renamed as frigates. One of the most successful post designs was the British Leander -class frigate , which was used by several navies. Laid down in , the Leanders were based on the previous Type 12 anti-submarine frigate but equipped for anti-aircraft use as well.
They were used by the UK into the s, at which point some were sold onto other navies. The Leander design, or improved versions of it, were licence-built for other navies.
Nearly all modern frigates are equipped with some form of offensive or defensive missiles, and as such are rated as guided-missile frigates FFG. Improvements in surface-to-air missiles e. The Royal Navy Type 61 Salisbury class were "air direction" frigates equipped to track aircraft. It doesn't mean single function. I just did an entire post of this. Thus, your example of optics for soldiers, which is supposed to demonstrate the folly of single role, actually perfectly supports single role.
The single role of the infantryman is to destroy the enemy in one-on-one combat most commonly using a rifle but including other weapons. Thus, providing improved optics simply enhances the ability of the infantryman to perform his single role! Please go back and reread the single role post. The fact that dentist assistants, S3 clerks, and just about every single non-combat MOS has them, is a waste of money. Purple Calico: Ironically, if your combat support MOS are your shit hit the fan reserve, it makes sense to give them red dots.
Going from iron sights to an Aimpoint is like going from grainy black and white to p HD color. The red dot makes life a lot easier for the user and means that your combat support troops who haven't been regularly getting as much trigger time as your combat MOS troops will be a bit more effective in combat.
Consider all the times the cooks and bakers platoon and HQ staff have been pressed into serving as base defenders in the Pacific War and in Vietnam. The combat kit of a common American soldier is the kit of most other nations' special forces. Wild Goose Ironic, no. Theoretical, yes. As an NCO that has overseen training troops from BMI to being the Range safety officer in charge, the M68 is a decent tool, when properly zeroed and maintained, which it rarely is.
It takes 58 rounds to qualify, so: I've trained and overseen active duty, non-combat MOS's that see as little as once in 3 years of actually firing their weapons at a range. Their knowledge of their weapon, let alone on how to properly zero the M68, was extremely limited. The fact that we're spending comparatively small amounts for all this equipment then while not training our soldiers in its use, is my justification for not buying it for everyone.
Why buy something, regardless of how good an idea it seems on paper, if we don't regularly train people to use it? We waste so much time training on extraneous BS that it's not funny. And yet spend little enough time training on what's truly important that it makes one weep. TRAIN them yearly. How long will it take compared to all the nonsense BS they're subjected to now? Replace BS with useful stuff, for once in the last half-century?
For ships, it would be useful for every ship to be able to defend itself from a missile or aircraft with a bomb , stream a Nixie, or fire a torpedo back down the incoming torpedo's azimuth, just to keep the shooter busy.
Adding an optic to an infantryman's weapon fully supports their primary purpose. Adding torpedoes to an amphib or carrier does nothing to support the primary function and just adds cost.
There are other ships whose job it is to deal with the subs. At least overarming frigates is an American tradition. I believe the Brits complained quite a bit about over-armed and larger the USS Constitution was compared to theirs at the time. Ironically those 6 original frigates met your 3rd definition as they were the closest we do for capital ships In the early days of the US Navy. Unfortunately your third definition makes sense for a small European power. But not for the USN.
SigInt capability is a great use for smaller ships either as a primary function or, depending on cost and impact, a secondary one. I've done a post or two in the past on alternative uses for the LCS and that was, indeed, one of them. Peruse the archives and you'll eventually stumble across it - and think of all you'll learn while you're looking! Really good comment! The damned LCS really ought to be some sort of frigate given its size. When I saw the original "Streetfighter" concept, I said, "Yes!
Especially now that it's damned near both toothless and defenseless. So do you not feel that an ASW-centric frigate is worthwhile or did I misunderstand? But have we heard any actual plans and specs for it?? Could it be an ASW focused ship or is it going to be another multi mission, overly expensive, unriskable platform??
There is no more ReForGer, so no reason for those frigates. Now, there might be other requirements that can be met by a frigate, but they should be spelled out and a ship designed for them.
We need an X to replace our old X is rarely sensible The ASW needs of a convoy in the Atlantic are unlikely to be similar to those of a battlegroup in the Pacific, they might be do different as to require entirely different ships. I absolutely see no need whatsoever for a multi-role frigate a mini-Burke and I've done posts on this. I see no need for even an ASW focused frigate although this would be a better choice than a multi-role frigate. What I see a need for is a small, cheap, expendable ASW corvette.
For a better overall explanation, see the Fleet Structure page, tabbed in the main menu at the top of this page. Umm, a ship to escort resupply ships across the Pacific is definitely needed.
If not right now, then within a few years. Serious threats exist from submarines, long-range bombers, and if it works after the first salvo a complex ISR-A2AD network of sensor and long-range missile platforms. Even a small group of up-gunned and up-hulled ASW-focused frigates probably would need to be paired with another, more capable vessel to provide additional survivability.
If not, we probably need more. As CNO regularly points out, anything you want to have play tag with submarines needs to do so economically.
That means high kill or mission kill probability against a sub, low attrition, and low cost. At the same time, you're never going to get cost low enough - even for a corvette - to accept losing these and their convoy to mid-scale missile saturation attacks. That said, I think both are great concepts. No enemy we're talking about China, right?
Even with a sub or two loose in the open ocean, the odds of the sub locating a convoy within weapon range is very low. Thus, without doing anything at all in the way of escort, most convoys would be safe. Of course, the threat increases as the convoy gets closer to China.
A convoy from Pearl to Guam would need some corvettes and a couple destroyers see the Fleet Structure page. Must Read Astute vs Virginia: Which navy has the best nuclear attack submarine? Despite its impressive size, the Zumwalt-class destroyer can travel up to 30kn, slightly slower than the smaller Sovremenny and Daring classes, which have an average of 32kn.
The Zumwalt class is still as fast — if not faster — than most frigate classes. Weapons and EW capabilities vary based on roles Unsurprisingly, both frigates and destroyers are armed with the latest weapons and defence systems, which are vital for carrying out their escort and protect roles.
ASW-enhanced frigates come with helipads and hangars that accommodate helicopters capable of identifying and attacking nuclear submarines using torpedoes and depth charges. The Duke class is equipped with two twin Sting Ray torpedo tubes and can accommodate either a Westland Lynx helicopter armed with two torpedoes or a Westland Merlin with four torpedoes. Cost differences between frigates and destroyers It is very difficult to pinpoint the unit prices of certain classes of ship, let alone types of ships.
However, here are some estimates of the most expensive vessels.
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