Posted on 05/31/2019 8:12:22 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
As the U.S. Navy gets closer to issuing the final request for proposals for its future frigate competition, or FFG(X), one particularly notable design, BAE System's Type 26, has largely been absent from the discussion. It seems particularly curious given that the British-designed ship is well on its way to becoming one of the most popular warships in its class among some of America's closest allies, with 32 examples in various configurations on order for the U.K. Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy.
BAE did propose a variant of the Type 26 to the Navy in 2017, but the United Kingdom-headquartered defense contractor did not receive one of the five initial developmental contracts in 2018. The service says it still expects other firms to make offers when it announces the formal request for FFG(X) proposals, which is supposed to happen by the end of September 2019. But with an eye toward reducing risk and keeping costs low, the program, at present, is focused on designs based on ships that are already in service. Construction of the very first Type 26 for the Royal Navy only began in 2017.
The Type 26's design itself, also known as the Global Combat Ship (GCS), dates back to the mid-2000s. BAE Systems originally developed the ship, which The War Zone previously examined in depth, in response to a U.K. Royal Navy requirement, but has always had an eye toward the export market.
"BAE Systems has a proven track record in licensing warship designs and combat systems to international customers and partners, enabling local build which enhances skills and improves in-service support," the company's website says. "BAE Systems has committed to working with prospective international partners to learn more about their requirements and ensure these can be met by the Global Combat Ship design."
If it weren't for the "already in service" requirement, just based on the Navy's other publicly stated demands and from looking at the other FFG(X) contenders, the Type 26 would certainly be a competitive design. BAE says the ship has a maximum speed of 26 knots, or around 30 miles per hour, and a range of over 7,000 nautical miles, which would meet certain FFG(X) threshold performance requirements. It is not clear if this reaches the Navy's desired top speed, though, although it surely could be modified to do so.
A crew of just over 150 can operate the frigate, fulfilling another Navy stipulation. The basic design has a big flight deck and associated hangar that could easily accommodate the MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopters and MQ-8C Fire Scout the service expects will fly from its FFG(X)s.
With a displacement of around 7,000 tons, the Type 26 is also larger overall than the other known FFG(X) competitors by varying degrees. The existing proposals include a design from Fincantieri Marine Group based on its Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM), or European Multi-Mission Frigate, and an offering from General Dynamics Bath Iron Works derived from Spanish shipbuilder Navantia's F100 Álvaro de Bazán-class.
Austal USA has pitched a new version of its Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), while the proposal from Hungtinon Ingalls Industries remains unknown. Lockheed Martin, which had been working on a variant of its Freedom-class LCS, just announced it had decided not to make a bid for the final contract later this year.
The ship's starting size could make it easier to accommodate the Navy's existing weapons and mission systems requirements. For instance, the Royal Navy's Type 26 design already has 48 vertical launch system cells for the Sea Ceptor surface-to-air missile, as well as another 24 Mk 41 vertical launch system cells, each of which can accommodate a wide array of weapons, including quad-packed RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) or a single Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) cruise missile, among others. FFG(X) calls for a total of 32 Mk 41 cells, which BAE could certainly find space for by deleting the Sea Ceptor system.
BAE would still need to accommodate other systems the Navy has outlined in its FFG(X) requirements, including Lockheed Martin's COMBATSS-21 battle management system, which is a derivative of the Aegis combat system, and Raytheon's Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR). The service also has significant demands for trade space to support the integration of additional capabilities in the future, including manned-unmanned teaming capabilities and directed energy weapons, among other things.
The core Type 26 design already features a reconfigurable "mission bay" that could help with the rapid integration of new systems in the future and make the ship more flexible overall. This, along with the larger starting design, could make a version of the ship particularly attractive. You can read more about the service's exact requirements for the FFG(X) and its future plans to expand its capabilities here and here.
The bigger design may also simply be more expensive. The Navy is targeting an average FFG(X) unit cost of around $800 million.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense's awarded BAE a 3.7 billion pound contract for the first three of its Type 26s, which would average out to more than $1.5 billion per ship, though the deal almost certainly includes other ancillary items and costs that don't factor directly into the price tag of the individual ships. Still, past estimates have pegged the unit cost for the Royal Navy's new frigates at between 750 and 800 million pounds. At the time of writing, the current exchange rate is $1.26 to the pound.
At the same time, the price the Navy would pay would likely be lower given that the United Kingdom and others have effectively financed the base Type 26's development already. The service also plans to buy 20 frigates in total, more than twice the number of Type 26s the Royal Navy eventually expects to receive, which could help push the unit cost down, as well.
With all this in mind, and with BAE's hullform design already mature enough to enter production, one has to wonder whether the Navy is unnecessarily limiting its options by preventing ship designs that are not in service yet from at least competing in the FFG(X) program. In its most recent report to Congress on the frigate project, which came out earlier in May 2019, the Congressional Research Service raised just this question, writing:
As mentioned earlier, using the parent-design approach can reduce design time, design cost, and technical, schedule, and cost risk in building the ship. A clean-sheet design approach, on the other hand, might result in a design that more closely matches the Navy’s desired capabilities for the FFG(X), which might make the design more cost-effective for the Navy over the long run. It might also provide more work for the U.S. ship design and engineering industrial base.
Another possible alternative would be to consider frigate designs that have been developed, but for which there are not yet any completed ships. This approach might make possible consideration of designs, such as (to cite just one possible example) the UK’s new Type 26 frigate design, production of which was in its early stages in 2018. Compared to a clean-sheet design approach, using a developed-but-not-yet-built design would offer a reduction in design time and cost, but might not offer as much reduction in technical, schedule, and cost risk in building the ship as would be offered by use of an already-built design.
There is a possibility that BAE may already be looking to partner with an American shipyard and to make exactly this case. It is worth remembering that Huntington Ingalls Industries has categorically refused to give any details about its FFG(X) proposal or any information about the team it has working on the ship's design. This is already curious given that the shipbuilder had been publicly offering more combat-focused frigate variants of its Legend-class National Security Cutter, which it developed for the U.S. Coast Guard, for years now.
There has also been speculation that Huntington Ingalls might join with one of the companies competing for the U.K. Royal Navy's Type 31e General Purpose Frigate tender and pitch a variant of one of those designs to the Navy for FFG(X). Another option might be a design that leverages the Danish Navy's StanFlex modular mission systems technology.
BAE could also look to partner with Lockheed Martin, as the two companies are already working together to supply a Type 26 variant to the Royal Canadian Navy. The American firm has also now dropped out of the FFG(X) competition as a prime contractor, saying it made its decision in large part on the fact that it will be supplying various systems, such as the COMBATSS-21, to whoever wins the final FFG(X) competition. The two would still need to identify a U.S. shipyard to build the American variant of the Type 26.
All told, it is hard to deny that the Type 26 offers a more modern design than any of the existing FFG(X) competitors. The fact that three of America's closest allies are betting big on it is also very attractive, to say the least. Its size and unique feature set lend themselves better to longevity and the ability to offer more flexible capabilities down the road, too.
Although the Navy wants something as close to off the shelf as possible, it seems irresponsible to not at least consider what they are giving up by leaving the Type 26 out of the competition.
There is nothing in service yet that will compare to the Type 26. It is the best design for anti-submarine warfare bar none, this has been the RN’s speciality since the cold war. they aren’t in service yet, but they are under construction, so the design is ready to begin construction. I’m pretty sure BAe Systems will have learned from the Type 45 engine issue, but to be fair, the MoD is partly at fault, because they didn’t specify this requirement and it was assumed when they were designed in the late 90s that they would be spending most of their time in the North Atlantic rather than in the warmer equatorial waters of the Middle East (contemporary planners wouldn’t have imagined that we’d be re-opening a Royal Navy Base in Qatar and moving back there).
Good catch - no, I meant ‘Lorenz’, the XOR cipher used by German high command.
‘Lorentz’ is the physicist.
Ahh!
yes but wasn’t sure!
thanks for clarifying!
“I meant Lorenz” = “I should have typed Lorenz, but I’m an idiot”
If it works out, we can buy them later. We neither have the time (due to the failure of the LCS) nor the money (due to the Zumwalts) to spend on waiting for the Type 26 to hit the water and get the bugs worked out.
We also don’t need to find out that the Type 26 has a nasty Type-45-like surprise hidden away due to similar MoD silliness.
Agreed - it’s no good buying something that doesn’t have a track record.
If - if - another model fits all role requirements then there’s no sense in making the perfect the enemy of the good. Especially when the ‘perfect’ hasn’t been tested yet.
The only reason for holding out for a T26 is if no current ship fits the role and tender requirements.
Yes, that I understand fully. And sadly the American companies building ships and aircraft want years and decades for their time-to-market. We need months.
Saying that, I suppose FReeper experts should look dispassionately at the alternative offerings, such as the ‘Fregata Europea Multi-Missione’.
Do they measure up?
Needs torpedoes. And no, we shouldn’t buy a damned thing from the Brits since their government and intel agencies were part of the 2016 coup attempt.
They better feel lucky we even drink tea.
To be fair, all those companies *are* having to start from scratch and warship design does indeed take years.
Ah, you know who else was part of the 2016 coup attempt?
Your government.
And who masterminded that coup attempt? Who gave orders to MI6?
Your President, and his advisors.
Not to put you on the spot here, but are you going to give up buying stuff from America?
Or will you recognise that the true enemy is the Deep State, on both sides of the Atlantic?
If we had more time and money we could simply wait before considering the Type 26 and all the other ships that are currently on the drawing boards. But we don’t and we can’t; we need ships now.
There’s also the issue that of late we’ve been trending more towards the German WW2 model for our armed forces - very few copies of a limited number of resource intensive wunderweapons, supposed to be all singing, all dancing - which was buried under the American and Soviet models. Good enough vehicles produced in staggering numbers and thrown at the Germans in those same numbers. We all remember which model of armed force won, right?
We need a good enough frigate and we need to make it in enormous numbers - the spiritual successor to the Fletcher class.
To be fair, most modern surface combatants fire ASROC-like torps out of missile cells and not old-style torpedo tubes.
Which sounds like a good plan - in a war against a near-equal combatant it seems wise to avoid ships that are too expensive to risk against e.g. land-based missiles.
If you have a large navy, armed with the naval equivalent of the T34 then that seems to be a superior model for absorbing materiel damage.
We should look at the increases in invisible costs though. Fuelling, harbourage, crew pay and (gulp) pensions.
Maybe that’s the driver behind high tech + low crews. Pensions ate General Motors alive. Would a heavily crewed US Navy end up as a pension company with warships?
As noted, most of the frigate designs being evaluated for FFG(X) use automation extensively and have surprisingly small crew compliments. Not so great for damage control and prize crews, buuuut you can get more hulls in the water for the same amount of crew. Also, less casualty risks per hull.
A horde of frigates would also be an answer to the Chinese Type 22 missile boat swarms - the Type 22 is designed (in part) to swarm a single large target or concentrated group of targets and unload 4-8 shipkillers per hull in a tsunami of missiles to saturate and overload CBG defenses. And they made 83 of the damn things so far. A couple hundred frigates coming over the (radar) horizon, fighting datalinked with networked target assignment and spraying clouds of anti-missile missiles would solve that problem rather quickly.
Doesn’t matter. It’s different that a foreign government decided to return to it’s default status as an adversary and attack our government.
And the answer to not buying American isn’t right. The answer is to disband the CIA and FBI.
We don’t need to do the Brits any favors right now. At a bare minimum they need to own up, and extradite Steele and his superiors.
Good point about Asroc although that seem tailored against subs.
Missiles are better shipkillers for surface combatants than torpedoes these days. You have to get awful close to your target to be able to use a torpedo from a surface combatant these days. At least with USN torps. The Russian Shkval torp, not quite so much.
For those who may not know ...
The VA-111 Shkval torpedo and its descendants are supercavitating torpedoes originally developed by the Soviet Union. They are capable of speeds in excess of 200 knots.
Good. Makes sense so far.
Let’s examine that small ship role. They take hits and are designed to be relatively cheap metal.
Each unit within this fleet is not very defensible: they don’t have individual Aegis or similar. They can’t individually defend themselves from e.g. cruise missiles.
The concept is networked attack and defence: perhaps these “Spktyr” class frigates act in concert with high value Frigates with classic Aegis.
All of which sounds similar to LCS. Wasn’t that supposed to be a networked platform?
But maybe LCS wasn’t low cost per unit?
We should maybe examine why LCS is being deprecated. I read that it was because LCS units have low individual survivability.
Which of course they do, but it turns out that that’s a feature, not a bug.
Maybe some FReeper can chime in on why LCS doesn’t work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.