Where’s the Lethality?

Having failed so many times, the Navy’s primary shipbuilding criteria is no longer lethality (if it ever was in modern times) but the [incorrectly] perceived need to get hulls – any hulls – in the water as quickly as possible to stop the criticisms and fend off Congressional anger.  As Naval News website notes about the new frigate program,
 

… speed [of production] is now the primary factor driving the program.[1]

Speed of production.  Not firepower, not stealth, not lethality, not operational usefulness or anything else one might think would be of importance … just the speed with which hulls can be put in the water.  Why not just buy combat canoes?  We can get them in the water quickly.
 
The new Frigate’s armament will consist of a 57mm main cannon and a RAM launcher with 21 Rolling Airframe Missiles.  A payload space will be constructed (so much for no changes to the parent design!) at the stern of the ship capable of carrying 16 Naval Strike Missiles, 48 Hellfires, or other containerized weapons or modules.[1]
 
50-65 ships will be built …  So, we’re committing to a large production run before the first design is even finalized.  Does sound identical to the LCS?
 
The horrifying concern is that this level of armament relegates this vessel to the level of a patrol boat (and not a particularly impressive one at that!) and yet it will make up something like a third of our combat fleet.  Absorb that for a moment.  A third of the combat fleet will be patrol boats.  Add in the Navy’s desire for all manner of unmanned vessels and we’re looking at half or more of the fleet being nearly devoid of serious combat capability. 
 
Sure, the Navy will talk about future upgrades but when has that ever actually happened?  Ask the LCS how those future module upgrades that we were promised are coming along.
 
If I were China, I’d bankroll this program for the United States just to ensure we field a fleet of non-lethal ships!
 
 
____________________________________

 
[1]Naval News website, “New U.S Navy Frigate: FF(X) Program Specs Revealed”, Ethan Gossrow, 16-Jan-2026,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/01/new-u-s-navy-frigate-ffx-program-specs-revealed/

What’s Missing?

Here’s just a fun little thought exercise.  The fleet is decidedly unbalanced.  The only surface ship we have is the Burke class which is incapable of effective anti-surface or anti-submarine combat.  It’s a pure anti-air and Tomahawk land attack platform by capability and training.  The fleet is missing various types of ships with different capabilities and costs.
 
If you were the Chief of Naval Operations and had enough extra funding to build one additional ship type, what would it be, and why?
 
ComNavOps’ choice would be a small ASW corvette … or maybe a true destroyer like a modernized Fletcher … or maybe an 8” gunned cruiser … or maybe a Midway/Forrestal size carrier … or … 
 
Hmm, this may be harder than I thought to pick just one type.
 
Maybe, despite ComNavOps’ proof of uselessness, you’d pick a lightning carrier or a sea control carrier?  Maybe a class of SSGNs?  Or maybe you’re a believer in small missile boats?
 

Alright, I'm going to pick the small ASW corvette to deal with the multitude of diesel subs, provide convoy escort, patrol chokepoints, protect homeland harbors, provide ASW protection for Guam, and pick up the crap peacetime duties like anti-piracy.

What one class would you pick to get the most bang for the buck?

Ships With No Purpose

The Marines have stated publicly and repeatedly that they are out of the amphibious assault business.  Let’s set the wisdom of that aside and just look at what that means for the Navy.

 

From the Navy’s official current ship count, the fleet consists of 220 combatants (carriers, surface combatants, submarines, amphibious ships) in the ‘Active in Commission’ category.[1] 

 

 

Combatant Type	Number
Aircraft Carriers	11
Surface Combatants	110
Submarines	68
Amphibious Warfare Ships	31

 

 

If we’re truly out of the amphibious assault business, as the Marines say, that means that 31 of the 220 combatant ships in the Navy – that’s 14% of the combatant fleet - have no purpose. 

 

If we subtract the 22 LCS which have no viable combat capability, that leaves a fleet of 198 combatants and that means that 16% of the fleet has no purpose.

 

That’s a lot of operating cost, personnel, and resources being devoted to ships that have no purpose.

 

And we’re continuing to build more amphibious ships!

 

 

 

_____________________________________

 

[1]https://www.nvr.navy.mil/NVRSHIPS/FLEETSIZE.HTML

War Five Years From Now

The Navy has publicly stated that they view a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and a war with China within the next several years as highly likely.  If so, what kind of shape will the Navy be in if a war starts, say, five years from now?

 

Here’s an overview of the Navy’s projected condition in 2027 based on the Navy’s most recent 30 year plan which includes the detailed 2022-2027 five year period[1]:

 

• Burkes will have begun retiring;  DDG-51 is scheduled to retire in 2027
• 1-2 Light Amphibious Warfare (LAW) will be in service
• Down to 48 attack subs (SSN) with several unavailable for service due to multi-year waiting periods for maintenance
• Down to 9 active carriers (9+1 in RCOH)
• 1-3 Constellation class frigates (FFG) in service
• Another air wing will almost certainly be disestablished, dropping the number of air wings to 8, as the carrier level drops to 10
• Early retirement of a carrier is likely
• F-18s will be woefully obsolete but will constitute the bulk of carrier air wings
• No great amount of F-35s;  at most, one squadron of 10 aircraft in each air wing
• 20-50 unmanned, lightly armed vessels
• Ticonderoga class will all be gone

 

 

Projected 2027 Combat Fleet
Carrier	10
Burke	86
LCS+FFG	23
SSN	48
SSGN	1
Total Combat Ships	168

 

 

A total combat fleet of 168 ships is not a lot and 20 or so of that total will be the remaining LCS which have no combat capability due to their lack of meaningful armament and very short endurance/range for the Pacific theater.  The real combat fleet will be about 148 ships!

 

It is also quite possible that the Ford class carriers will not be combat-capable due to the ongoing, and seemingly unsolvable, EMALS, elevator, and AAG reliability issues.

 

The fleet is also projected to have 25 amphibious ships of various types, mostly the LPD-17 class.

 

It is absolutely baffling that the Navy believes war is imminent and yet they’re shedding ships as fast as they can.  If a Chinese agent had infiltrated the Navy and become CNO, he couldn’t do a better job of declawing the Navy than what we’re doing to ourselves.

 

 

A Burke and an Unmanned Vessel

This is Your Future Navy

 

 

_____________________________________

 

[1]Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2023, Apr 2022 

Distributed Lethality Precedents

The Navy’s concept of distributed lethality envisions individual, or very small groups, of ships operating on their own, deep inside enemy waters, confounding the enemy’s operational and strategic thinking and paralyzing the enemy with indecision while our ships operate with impunity, springing forth to rain death and destruction on the hapless enemy and then vanishing from sight and sensor to do it all again.

 

So, let’s recall the historical precedents of ships operating alone or in small groups in enemy waters.

 

• Force Z (Repulse, Prince of Wales)
• Bismarck
• Graf Spee
• Pueblo
• Asiatic Fleet
• General Belgrano

 

 

And the list goes on.  I’m not going to describe the outcome of each case.  You can investigate them on your own if you’re not already thoroughly familiar with them.  Suffice it to say that each ship(s) led a very short, ineffectual life.  In fact, I can’t, offhand, think of a single example of a ship successfully operating alone in enemy waters and having any significant impact.  There may be one but the successes are extremely few, if any.

 

The US Navy is in the process of building a future fleet based on distributed lethality?  Why do we think that will work when the totality of history demonstrates otherwise?

 

The military leaders who couldn’t win in Afghanistan after two decades are the ones changing our fleet structure and we’re supposed to believe that they know what they’re doing?

Comparative Fleet Roles

The key to an effective Navy is to have a balanced fleet - a balanced fleet that is designed to handle all of the missions and roles required of it.  Is today’s fleet balanced and capable of meeting its requirements?  To answer that question, let’s start where wisdom always starts … history.  Let’s see what kind of balance the surface fleet of WWII had and how that compares to today.  We do this by looking at the various required roles and what ship types filled those roles, as demonstrated in the table below.

 

 

Role	WWII Type	Example	Current Type	Example
Strike and fleet defense	Carrier	Essex	Carrier	Nimitz
Aviation escort	Escort Carrier	Casablanca	-	-
ASuW and land attack	Battleship	Iowa	-	-
Escort and land attack	Cruiser, Heavy	Baltimore	-	-
AAW	Cruiser, AA	Atlanta	Destroyer	Burke/Tico
ASW/ASuW escort	Destroyer	Fletcher	-	-
ASW	Destroyer Escort	Buckley	Destroyer	Burke
ASW and convoy escort	Corvette	Flower	-	-
Patrol and ASuW	Patrol	PT Boat	-	-

 

 

Notes:

 

I have not included the LCS in the table because it has no actual combat capabilities.

I have not included the Zumwalt in the table because it’s only three ships and they have no defined purpose.

 

 

The first thing we note is that the WWII fleet had a ship type for every role and, in many cases, multiple ship types for a given role.

 

Comparing the WWII fleet structure versus our current structure demonstrates that we’ve lost several fleet functions or, more precisely, condensed them down into fewer ship types.  The problem with condensing the roles down is that the resultant ships are hugely more expensive, more risk averse, and less optimized which means less capable.

 

During WWII, the balance and diversity of ship types allowed mixing and matching of ship types to perform specialized roles such as the ASW hunter-killer groups composed of escort carriers and destroyer escorts.  The diversity of ship types endowed the fleet commanders with tremendous flexibility to tailor the task forces to the specific needs of the operation.

 

Today’s fleet commander has no flexibility and no choices.  We have carriers (too expensive to risk in combat) and Burkes … and that’s it. 

 

The Navy’s quest for efficiency and cost savings has resulted in a necking down of all the ship types into just two types:  carrier and Burke.  While the endless production of now-obsolete Burkes has, indeed, produced cost savings, it has produced an inflexible fleet that is going to be mismatched to the specific operational needs when combat comes.

 

Today’s fleet is unbalanced, inflexible, and ill-prepared for war.

Striking Power of the Fleet

The Navy’s striking power has steadily changed throughout history. 

 

Guns - Initially, sailing ships carried their cannon right up alongside the enemy and then proceeded to pound away until the enemy submitted (sinkings were relatively rare).  With the passing of the age of sail and the advent of steam and armor, the only thing that changed was the range of the guns and the speed and maneuverability of the ships.  The objective was still the same – to batter the enemy until they sank (submitting was no longer an option). 

 

Aircraft - With WWII, the primary striking power of the fleet began to shift from naval guns to aircraft and the aircraft carrier emerged as the new strike force.  This continued through Vietnam and the Cold War.  So called ‘alpha’ strikes were the primary striking power of the fleet.  The battleship was retired without replacement and the largest gun in the fleet was the 5” and most ships have only one of those.

 

Missiles – More recently, missiles have begun to replace the aircraft.  Modern anti-air systems have grown too deadly for manned aircraft, even stealth aircraft, to be considered the primary striking force.  Not only does the Navy not have any survivable strike aircraft but even the limited buy of F-35Cs does not appear to be intended as strike aircraft but, instead, as surveillance and targeting nodes in the Navy’s fantasy network of sensors and missile shooters.  Thus, the Navy appears to envision the F-35C as a missile enabler/supporter rather than a strike asset. 

 

Just as importantly – and perhaps more so – defender’s anti-ship missiles have forced the carrier to stand off to such ranges as to nearly invalidate the use of strike aircraft.  Without a doubt, the new striking power of the fleet is missiles:  cruise, ballistic, hypersonic.

 

 

 

This, then, is the state of affairs, currently.  We are in the final stages of transforming from a carrier strike navy to a missile strike navy.  We already see more than ample proof of this in the form of Tomahawk missiles which have become the main strike weapon of the Navy.  Even the remnants of carrier aviation are geared not at delivering bombs but at launching missiles such as the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) and the developing hypersonic missiles.  As ComNavOps has repeatedly stated, the new role of the carrier is not strike but, rather, escort and protection of the true striking force of the Navy which is the Tomahawk (hopefully, soon to be LRASM) armed Burkes.  SSGNs, until they are retired, also constitute a significant portion of our naval strike power.  While we are not replacing the SSGNs with dedicated replacements, we are expanding the missile carrying capacity of new Virginia class subs so as to provide a replacement in the aggregate.  One can question the wisdom of this but the trend towards missiles as the strike power of the fleet is clear enough.  Just slightly further in the future, one can readily see the movement towards hypersonic missiles on ships and aircraft.

 

While this ends the discussion of the development of naval striking power from its beginnings until now, I offer the next, predictable, future step in strike development for your consideration.

 

AI/Robotics – Though not available in any useful form, yet, one can easily imagine the next step in striking power to be artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced robotics.  Mere missiles will be rendered ineffective by AI-enhanced defenses and lasers which will require AI-enhanced strike weapons to overcome the defenses.  Such strike weapons will run the gamut from individual, small ground robots to AI-enhanced cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles.  The logical extension of this would be AI-enhanced swarms of missiles acting as a single striking entity but with the intelligence to actively and intelligently modify their attack in response to the defenses and targets encountered.

 

 

Lessons

 

Before we discuss what all this means, let’s list the lessons from the preceding discussion:

 

• Aircraft have been replaced by missiles as the striking power of the fleet and Tomahawk cruise missiles have become the standard strike weapon of the fleet.
• The Navy has no stealthy (survivable) strike aircraft.
• The role of the carrier has changed from strike to escort.  Carrier aircraft now exist to defend the Burke strikers.
• Carrier aircraft cannot perform naval strike even with long range anti-ship missiles like LRASM due to the targeting problem.
• Burkes, and SSGNs until they’re retired, are the new striking power of the fleet.

 

 

Implications

 

Now, what do those lessons mean for the future of the Navy?  What are the implications for force structure and operating doctrine?  Here are the issues and implications:

 

We should be adapting the carrier and the air wing to the new role of escort for the real missile shooters, the Burkes/SSGNs.  This means emphasizing long range, air superiority fighters which means that the current F-18 and F-35 are ill-suited and have no place in the future air wing and should no longer be procured.  We’ve already discussed how to obtain a new aircraft in just five years so ceasing procurement will not result in aircraft shortfalls (see, “How to Build a Better Aircraft”).

 

Even trying to use aircraft as LRASM shooters is only marginally effective due to numbers.  For example, a strike aircraft can only carry two missiles for any appreciable distance.  Thus, it would require huge numbers of aircraft to mass enough missiles to create an effective strike.  We’ve noted that it required nearly a hundred Tomahawks to partially destroy a single, undefended Syrian airbase in the recent past.  A full strike against a peer defended target would require 300 missiles or more.  That would require 150 aircraft or the entire combat air wing of four carrier air wings (and that would leave nothing for tanking or carrier defense!).  By comparison, a single SSGN can launch 150+ missiles and two SSGNs meet the requirements for our illustrative strike of 300 missiles.  This is why retiring the SSGNs without replacement is such a mistake.

 

Air wings need to be mainly fighter aircraft with a single shorter range strike squadron that can be swapped out, as needed, to further increase the fighter complement.  The strike aircraft should be a new, simple, low end design conceptually similar to the A-4 or A-7.

 

We need a new, very long range, very long endurance, air superiority fighter.  Conceptually, this would be akin to the F-14 and would encompass a combination of the best features of both the F-14 and F-22.

 

We desperately need a new cruise missile to replace the obsolete Tomahawk.  Presumably, this would be the LRASM which is being developed for aircraft launch and we should be working, right now, on a vertical launch, shipboard version (VL-LRASM), as well.  The Navy has discussed a desire for a VL-LRASM and done some preliminary work but development seems to have ground to a halt.  Further, we should be starting development of the LRASM replacement which should be an AI-enhanced, very long range missile.  The LRASM should be viewed as just a stopgap measure.

 

New missiles need to be self-targeting.  They need to be capable of being fired in a general direction and actively implementing their own search and targeting without the need for traditional surveillance and contact tracking and targeting.  This is a research effort that needs to begin immediately.  Pieces of the concept are already under development but a focused, integrated research effort is needed.

 

We need very long range, stealthy, survivable sensor assets to complement the very long range missiles that we currently have.  Million mile missiles are useless when paired with 20 mile sensors!  Our current UAVs, P-8s, helos, and whatnot that we are depending on for surveillance and targeting are not survivable over a peer battlefield. 

 

We need large caliber naval guns.  Are guns obsolete?  Of course not!  Naval gunfire is overwhelming and superior in every way to aircraft delivered munitions except in range.  There will still be circumstances where close range, overwhelming firepower is needed and large caliber naval guns are still be best solution for those scenarios.

 

 

Summary

 

Understanding the evolution of naval striking power enables us to see the current and future realities.  This allows us to properly design our force structure and assess which assets we currently have that will prove useful in combat and which won’t.

 

For far too long, our force structure design has been based on technology rather than strategy.  We’ve procured whatever new technology we could get without regard to its usefulness – hence, the useless LCS, Zumwalt, Ford, etc.  We need to return to combat needs-based asset design backed by a clear understanding of how naval combat and striking power is evolving.

 

We need to develop a force structure that will actually be useful in the war with China.  Our previous follies have already given us an LCS that has no use, whatsoever, in high end war along with Fords, Zumwalts, JHSVs, etc. that have little relevance or use.  Let’s not keep repeating that same mistake.

Fleet Size Doesn't Matter

The Navy seemingly pulls fleet size numbers out of the air (actually, they pull them out of somewhere else but decorum prevents me from specifying the location) and with great frequency.  Today’s ‘number of the month’ is 355, however, in recent times it’s been anywhere from 300 to 355+, depending on who you ask and when.

As we’ve pointed out on these pages, the Navy has tried to play games with the ship numbers by counting hospital ships, logistics support ships, and other non-combat vessels.  Congress slapped them down on that attempt but they then they tried to include ‘commissioned’ ships that were completely non-combat functional like the Zumwalts and the Ford.  Again, Congress slapped them down and passed legislation requiring the ship to be counted in the fleet totals only after it was actually combat-capable.

The most recent mini-controversy involved suggestions by various people inside and outside of the Navy that the ship counting rules should be modified to include unmanned vessels.  However, CNO Gilday recently stated that unmanned ships would not be part of the fleet count (see, “Unmanned Ships Won’t Count”).

In short, the Navy is heavily invested in pushing for a larger fleet size since it means a bigger slice of the budget pie for them.  To that end, they’re playing games with the fleet size requirements and the counting methodology.  Congress and outside observers are also caught up in the fleet size and closely related ship counting issue.  However, what the Navy and all the interested parties are failing to grasp is that the fleet size, and ship count, is utterly irrelevant.

If fleet size was the only thing that mattered we could simply buy a few thousand combat canoes and all our problems would be solved.  Of course, any rational person instantly recognizes that despite the description as ‘combat canoes’, the canoes would have no useful combat power and would be utterly useless.

Wait … what now?

Are we saying that combat power is more important than ship numbers?

Of course we are!  In fact, it’s the only relevant measure of a navy.  Nothing else is relevant.  Not tonnage.  Not numbers.  Not ship types.  Not average fleet age.  Nothing.

It’s all about what the fleet can accomplish in combat.  That’s it.  Nothing else.  Pure and simple.

Okay, so what’s the problem?  Let’s add up the combat power and be done with this.  Well, therein lies the problem.  It’s very difficult to quantify combat power.  You can describe some of the peripheral factors that contribute to combat power, like number of VLS cells, but those factors only tell a small part of the story.  VLS cells, to continue the example, don’t indicate the size of the missile inventory (what’s the point of having 10,000 VLS cells in the fleet if your totally missile inventory is only 3,000 and wartime production is limited to 100 new missiles per year?), they don’t contribute to anti-swarm defense (VLS is only good against certain target types), they may not be usable in some combat scenarios (surface ships with VLS can’t get within range of many desirable targets without exposing themselves to enemy fire), they may not contain the appropriate missile mix for a given situation, and so on.  So, yes, VLS is a descriptor of combat power but only in a partial and imperfect way.

The other major aspect of ‘combat power’ is that it depends on the scenario.  For example, if our goal in a war with China is to simply execute a distant blockade, that requires far less combat power than if we want to scrub the entire South/East China Seas of all enemy assets.  So, the combat power that might be adequate for one scenario may be inadequate for another.

When we talk about combat power, what we’re really talking about is strategy and its derivative, operational planning.

Strategy and operational planning are what tell us how much and what type of combat power we need.  Strategy gives us our objectives and operational planning tells us what specific capabilities and assets we need to accomplish the objectives.  That’s our combat power requirement.

For example, we might feel good that we have 150 VLS cells distributed on 15 small, unmanned missile ‘barges’ but if those barges can’t survive long enough to get into launch position then they’re useless and don’t actually represent useful combat power.  Perhaps we really need a single guided missile submarine (SSGN) that has a very good chance of surviving to reach launch position – in other words, useful combat power.

So, is the Navy recognizing that combat power is the real measure of a useful fleet?  Read the following comments from Acting SecNav Modly and then decide for yourself.

“We haven’t done a really comprehensive force structure assessment in a couple of years; 2016 was the last one. So we started on a new path for that last fall, and what we’re finding in that force structure assessment is that the number of ships we need are going to be more than 355. And when you add in some of the unmanned vessels and things like that that we’re going through experimental phases on, it’s probably going to be significantly more than [355],” he [Acting SecNav Modly] said.

Modly, when asked why the Navy was betting so much of its ability to get to 355 ships by the end of the decade on quickly acquiring brand new ship classes that haven’t gone through the Navy and industry design and construction process yet, said, “I think ‘quickly’ is going to have to define everything we do, because the world is changing pretty quickly and we’re going to have to react more quickly.”

“This year, this budget will keep us on a path to grow to over 300, but the ultimate goal was to grow to an even bigger fleet than that,” and the Navy is already looking at its 2022 planning and eyeing multiple paths to grow faster.

We’re trying to make the case for a bigger Navy, and I will continue to make the case for a bigger Navy …  Modly continued. (1)

Do you see the focus on numbers rather than any coherent vision of useful combat power?

We need to stop focusing on ship numbers and counting methodology and start focusing on strategy, operational planning, and real combat power.  The Zumwalt may represent an increment of ‘1’ in the fleet size quest but it doesn’t represent any substantial increase in useful combat power.  The same can be said of the entire LCS class.  Submarines make up a substantial portion of our fleet count but many of our submarines are laid up, non-operational, due to a massive backlog of submarine maintenance.  They may contribute to fleet size but not to combat power.

The focus on numbers is a potential wrong-way street in the quest for a suitable Navy and, given the current fixation on unproven, unmanned vessels, a very likely wrong-way street.

Stop counting and start planning!

_________________________________

(1)USNI News website, “SECNAV Modly: Path to 355 Ships Will Rely on New Classes of Warships”, Megan Eckstein, 3-Feb-2020,

https://news.usni.org/2020/02/03/secnav-modly-path-to-355-ships-will-rely-on-new-classes-of-warships

The Navy Way vs. Common Sense

Let’s talk about the most important ships in the current and future Navy.  Fords?  ComNavOps proposed destroyer?  Flt III Burkes?  Unmanned vessels?  Subs?  No, it’s none of those.  It’s the logistic support ships.  I’m not even going to bother making the case for the importance of logistic support ships.  It’s just too obvious.  It boils down to this … no logistics support, no effective Navy.

The Navy has struggled to force itself to even ask for funding for logistics ships out of fear that it will take funds away from big, shiny, Burkes and carriers.  In the past, the Navy briefly explored a common hull for a family of logistics ships but quickly abandoned it when they got cost estimates from industry. 

Program Executive Officer for Ships Rear Adm. Bill Galinis acknowledged earlier this month that previous designs from industry-led to cost estimates upwards of $1 billion per hull, for the program that seeks two variants: one to cover sealift, and one to focus on tasks such as sub-tending and command and control. [emphasis added] …

Galinis said the original idea – a single hull design to cover five mission sets – is inherently not optimized for any of the missions, which drove some cost into the original plan. (1)

ComNavOps has consistently decried the idea of commonality and modularity (a common hull is a variation of the modular concept) due to the lack of optimization.  This demonstrates, yet again, the inherent inefficiency of commonality.  The problem is, by the time you take an unoptimized vessel and add in the required degree of optimization to perform, say, hospital work versus bulk cargo transport, you overwhelm and lose any cost savings that the common hull might have provided.  Commonality only works between closely related functions (and even that’s questionable) or functions that can accept a large degree of inefficiency (rarely the case).  Look at the F-35 example of commonality – a dismal failure because the degree of optimization for each variant turned out to be too great and the required optimization efforts cost far more than any commonality cost savings.

Side note:  Please don’t confuse this with commonality of component parts like the same pump for the same pumping task across many different ships.  That’s a single piece of equipment performing the same task, just in many different ships.  If you have an identical task, of course you’d use the identical piece of equipment.  What you wouldn’t do is try to use the same pump to pump oil that you would use to pump potable water.

Now, the Navy is resurrecting the common hull concept (CHAMP - Common Hull Auxiliary Multi-mission Platform) based on a commercial design.

… the Navy asked its industry partners to go back and start with a commercial hull design, adding in the military-unique requirements only where needed. (1)

That seems reasonable, at first glance, doesn’t it?  The problem is that even this approach costs a LOT of money and there is a much cheaper, common sense alternative:  buy used ships for pennies on the dollar!  Even the Navy recognizes the absurdity of what they’re trying to do.

Former Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, though, cast doubt on the Navy’s ability to support the CHAMP ships – even at a much lower price tag than the $1 billion estimate – in remarks in May 2019, when he said it was hard to ask Congress for money for these new ships when he could ask for far less money to buy used sealift ships.

“Putting my business hat on for the business case, I can’t afford a lot of $600-million ships. I can’t really afford a lot of $400-million ships, when I can go out and buy used [roll-on/roll-off ships] for $35 to $40 million. (1)

Let’s repeat the relevant portion of that passage:

I can’t afford a lot of $600-million ships. I can’t really afford a lot of $400-million ships, when I can go out and buy used [roll-on/roll-off ships] for $35 to $40 million. [emphasis added] (1)

So, we see the Navy way which is to buy new ships, of whatever type, versus the common sense approach of buying used ships for pennies on the dollar.  Want to guess which approach the Navy will pursue?  There’s the Navy way and then there’s the common sense way.

Hey, new ships are great when the requirement is for a ship so unique and so optimized that there is no commercially available equivalent and when optimization would cost more than building new.  Aircraft carriers and destroyers and submarines are good examples.  For logistics support ships, however, a $40M used RO/RO buys you a LOT of ship for the money and leaves a lot of dollars for whatever optimization you need to apply.

The Navy way versus common sense.

____________________________________

(1)USNI News website, “Navy Trying Again On CHAMP Auxiliary Design, After White House Pushback”, Megan Eckstein, 30-Jan-2020,

https://news.usni.org/2020/01/30/navy-trying-again-on-champ-auxiliary-design-after-white-house-pushback

The Missing Destroyer

One of the key elements of a balanced and effective surface navy is completely missing from the US Navy force structure and that is a true destroyer.  Yes, the Navy calls its Burkes destroyers but we’ve previously noted that Burkes are not functional destroyers – they’re the modern cruiser/battleship in that they are closely tied to carrier and amphibious escort duty in the anti-air (AAW) role.  Given their cost ($2B each) and value (Aegis AAW), no sane commander is going to risk them in the anti-submarine (ASW) role.  Being tied so closely to the carrier, they are also not a tactically flexible and useful anti-surface (ASuW) asset.

What is missing, and needed, is a true destroyer that can provide useful and effective ASW and ASuW.  Thus, the functions of a true destroyer include:

• Extended layer ASW escort for carriers, amphibious, and surface groups
• Independent attack groups (Guadalcanal being an example)
• Picket line
• Heavy ASuW (analogous to the WWII Fletcher heavy torpedo fit)
• Higher end convoy escort

ASuW – This is the main function of a modern destroyer just as it was in WWII.  The WWII heavy torpedo fit is replaced by heavy anti-ship cruise missiles (AGM-158C LRASM) although a heavy torpedo fit is also retained and would prove a useful weapon against merchant shipping and in close surface encounters, should those happen.  As in WWII, destroyers would operate in squadrons, able to mass their firepower for effective anti-ship strikes.

The flexibility of not being intimately tied to carriers allows the destroyer (squadron) to act independently in the anti-surface role, conducting sweeps, patrols, raids, and interdiction.  The higher risk of such operations is justified by the lower cost of the ships.

One could also add a single Burke to a destroyer squadron to act as a destroyer leader and provide higher end AAW protection.

ASW – While the main responsibility for open ocean carrier, amphibious, and surface group ASW protection lies with the destroyer escort, the destroyer provides the complementary higher end, close up ASW capability as well as providing helicopters to support the destroyer escort’s ASW efforts.  Not being tied to the high value unit’s AAW needs, like the Burke is, the destroyer can leave the group to prosecute submarine contacts, if needed.  It should be noted that the destroyer is built from the first rivet to be an ASW platform with acoustic isolation of all machinery, built in quieting, Prairie/Masker, and whatever other ASW-specific quieting is available.

AAW – The destroyer is not intended to provide area AAW protection.  It’s AAW capability is limited to medium range ESSM surface-to-air missiles for self-defense and local area protection for vessels in fairly close proximity.  With no need to provide area AAW protection, there is no need to mount an expensive Aegis/AMDR radar and combat suite, thus saving significant cost.

To summarize, from the blog Fleet Structure page, the destroyer’s main features are:

•  2x 5” gun
•  2x Phalanx CIWS
•  2x SeaRAM
•  32x Mk 41 VLS (ESSM, VL-ASROC, LRASM)
•  4x 21” torpedo
•  2x RBU-ish ASW rocket depth charges
•  2x MH-60R ASW helo
•  TRS-4D radar
•  Hull mounted multi-frequency sonar
•  Towed array

From the preceding discussion, we can see that the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for the destroyer is two-fold, as ever-so-briefly described below:

1. Escort - The destroyer is used to expand the escort (AAW and ASW) coverage area with significant and effective firepower and capability without risking high value, close escort Burkes.  Operating in the middle zone between the outer ASW destroyer escorts and the inner AAW Burkes, this adds an additional layer of protection around the escorted vessels and expands the sensor coverage area.  The expanded coverage area enables earlier warning and engagement of attacking aircraft, ships, subs, and missiles.

One of the key aspects of the escort concept is numbers.  Destroyers must be deployed in sufficient numbers to provide effective coverage and to be mutually supporting.  A carrier group, for example, would require ten or more destroyers.

2. Independent Operations - Destroyer squadrons allow for effective anti-surface sweeps and operations, again without risking higher value Burkes, while maintaining a formidable amount of firepower and a reasonable amount of AAW self-protection.  While a destroyer squadron is not sufficient to conduct a sweep of the South China Sea, by itself, against the entire Chinese military, a squadron is powerful enough to conduct peripheral or supporting operations while being capable of a reasonable degree of self-defense. 

Unlike a solitary ship engaged in the Navy’s idiotic distributed lethality, which is subject to isolation and defeat in detail, a destroyer squadron has the firepower to constitute a significant offensive threat while presenting a challenging defensive capability that is sufficient to give an enemy pause.

At this point, readers may be asking, ‘how is this different than the frigate that ComNavOps is always arguing against’?  The answer is that, on the surface, the destroyer does spec out somewhat like a modern frigate.  However, the deeper answer reveals that there are significant differences:

CONOPS – The Navy envisions their frigate as a jack of all trades, continually deployed, running around and accomplishing little.  The problem is that the Navy has not developed a CONOPS for the frigate whereas I’ve laid out a very specific, and limited CONOPS for the destroyer.  The destroyer CONOPS requires significant numbers of ships in order to be effective whereas the Navy is only planning on building 20 frigates – totally insufficient.  The destroyer CONOPS emphasizes a very heavy anti-surface fit as opposed to the Navy’s frigate.  The greatest overlap in the two ships lies in the ASW role and, in this, they are reasonably equivalent.

Combat – The destroyer, totally unlike the Navy’s frigate, is built for combat.  To that end, it will have WWII levels of armor, as appropriate for its size (1.5”-2” armored guns, 1”-2” hull armor, 1”-1.5” deck armor, internal armored command (CIC) space, armored VLS, etc.). 

The ship will be built to take damage and continue fighting.  This includes characteristics such as healthy weight reserves, extremely good stability (metacentric height), excessive buoyancy reserve (recall the Navantia/Norwegian frigate that sank so quickly from such minor damage? – that won’t happen with this ship), state of the art damage control design, redundancy and separation of key components, etc.  This is not a ship that will go down easily and, if it does go down, it will do so while continuing to fight.

Finally, we must consider the issue of cost.  While I’ve stated repeatedly that cost cannot be the controlling factor in ship design, neither can it be totally ignored.  The goal of intelligent ship design is to build in the MINIMUM capability that can accomplish the CONOPS, rather than trying to build in every capability ever conceived, as modern ship designers do.

All of the above is tremendous but unless it can be done for a reasonable cost, it won’t be feasible.  So, what would a destroyer cost? 

First, it is necessary to accept that this is a warship, not a cruise ship.  This is not a ship to send on worthless 6-10 month deployments.  Therefore, the ship would have minimal crew comforts.  All available space would go directly to weapons and supporting functions.

The starting point for cost estimating is the Burke which costs around $2B, depending on specific version and acquisition time frame.  The major cost adjustments to the Burke would be:

Radar – Substituting a TRS-3/4D type radar for the Burke’s Aegis/AMDR/BMD would save $200M-$300M in radar, supporting utilities, computers, and software.

Size – The destroyer would be smaller than a Burke (510 ft long).  Relevant comparative data points would be the Forrest Sherman DD class at 418 ft long, the Adams DDG class at 437 ft, and a modern frigate such as the F100 (Navantia) FFG family at 481 ft.  The F100 is a bit oversized with excessively large flight deck area (see a plan of a Ticonderoga or Spruance to see what the flight deck area should be) and a greatly oversized superstructure to accommodate advanced radars.  The conceptual model for the destroyer would be the WWII Fletcher with its minimalist superstructure and no-frills construction.  The overall size of the destroyer would be around 430 ft.  As a very crude approximation, the 430 ft length is 84% that of a Burke.  Thus, the Burke cost would scale down to $1.7B based on a linear scaling of size and cost.  I recognize that’s not how cost works but it provides an idea of the savings due to size.

Of course, as size decreases, other aspects also decrease resulting in further cost savings.  For example, smaller engines, smaller propellers, smaller air intakes and exhausts all result in reduced costs.  With smaller propulsion equipment goes reduced manning which means smaller berthing spaces which, in turn, means smaller galleys, food storage, water storage, etc.

The other significant size decrease would be in the superstructure.  Modern ships have hugely increased the size of their superstructures since WWII, presumably in pursuit of stealth shaping.  This destroyer would retain stealth shaping where possible but it would return to the conceptual model of WWII ship design and hugely reduce the size of the superstructure.  This, alone, improves the stealth by simply removing superstructure – the best stealth there is, is non-existence!  The conceptual model for the superstructure would be the WWII Fletcher with its minimal superstructure.  By greatly reducing the size of air intakes and exhausts, eliminating giant radar arrays, and placing command spaces below the main deck (the destroyer has minimal crew comforts, remember), we can significantly reduce the size of the superstructure.

We see then, that a destroyer would be significantly cheaper than a Burke due to reduced size, reduced crew comforts, greatly reduced radar fit, smaller superstructure, etc.  My guesstimate on the cost is $800M.

The Navy desperately needs balance in its fleet composition instead of the all-Burke fleet we have now.  We need balance in ship types, roles, cost, risk-aversion, and capabilities.  Until we get that, we have a limited fleet that is heavily skewed toward expensive, risk-averse ships which makes for an ineffective combat fleet.

Bring back the missing destroyer!