Posted on 06/12/2018 8:04:04 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Fincantieri
The US Navy announced in February that five types of warships would compete for a bid to supply the branch with 20 next-generation guided-missile frigates.
And last week, we got to tour one of those five frigates: Fincantieri's FREMM Alpino, a ship outfitted with anti-submarine systems.
"The world has changed certainly in the last two years when you take look at what Russia is doing and what China is doing," retired Admiral Rick Hunt, who now works for Fincantieri, told Business Insider on the ship's bridge. "And frankly, I think that means we got to up the game of the high-low mix that we have traditionally held," Hunt said. "We got our Aegis fleet of destroyers and cruisers," Hunt said, but "we need to have kind of a smaller utility ship that covers down on the rest, that gives you forward presence, independent ops, escort capability ... and value added to the larger carrier strike groups."
And that is exactly what the heavily-armed Alpino can provide, Hunt said, adding that it's a frigate with "destroyer-like capabilities."
Check it out below:
The Alpino is about 472 feet long, about 65 feet wide, has about a 17 foot-draft, and a total displacement of 6,500 tons.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.in ...
I can’t believe the people on Free Republic want foreiners to supply our warships! How fat down this place has gone....
That's OK. We'll just slap a big tariff on them.
This is embarrassing. The US Navy using foreign made warships! UFB. A new low has been reached.
220 rounds per minute, with a capacity of 1,000 rounds, in a gyro-stabilized gun, would make it very effective against swarms of small boats.
Thanks for posting. BUMP!
These maybe exactly what we need to replace the Oliver Hazard Perrys.
Yeah; the OTO Melara 76mm is either 85 or 120 rounds per minute with non-multirole ammo and IIRC it only holds 80 rounds on the mount. The 76mm is better if you’re only going to use it in the surface gun role - not as good for anti-air, anti-missile, littoral swarm or similar uses.
For the US Navy, the VLS is the primary offensive punch, the guns are generally secondary or defensive use only. I think the Navy’s made the right choice of configuration given modern combat factors; better a versatile fast firing, deep-magazined, multirole defensive cannon than a big but slow slugger.
The next carrier should be named the USS Donald Trump.
We need a ship in this class to replace the failed LCS idea and we need it *yesterday*. We don’t have the time to have US industry start one of this class from scratch (and the Obama Admin killed off any possibility of this for 8 long years) so we need to buy an off the shelf design. FYI, it would take 10 years to come up with a similar modern combatant and we don’t have 10 years to fix our badly weakened Navy. We need ships and we need them *now*.
No matter which design is selected, initial production will be overseas but US built ones will follow as soon as US production can be set up. We’re buying a design, a license to produce it and the first flight of ships, that’s it.
I disagree. If the Navy ever gets the arsenal ship idea into the water, the first one of *those* should be called the Trump. Think something about battleship sized that carries hundred and hundreds of VLS cells and you more or less have the idea.
Folks, the job of a Frigate is to:
1) Act as a commerce raider
2) Act as a commerce protector
3) Act as a fleet screen
It is to run away when anything larger shows up or swarm the larger target.
This ship is just 20 feet shorter than a Ticonderoga class CRUISER! It’s HUGE!
It’s not a Frigate though it maybe equipped like one.
Because of it’s girth, it cannot keep up with a fleet.
As a multi-mission ship, it’s a good choice when one has limited resources.
As a Frigate replacement... pass.
There's a certain type of "conservative" who really doesn't give a damn about the country as long as they and their cronies are making money, i.e. the Koch Brothers/Club for Growth wing of the Republican party. They're basically George Soros minus the welfare state.
America is being deindustrialized, to the point where we don't even build our own warships and fighter planes with our own materials? Why, that doesn't matter, as long as the right people are raking in money by shorting foreign currency or from mortgage default swaps.
Large areas of the US are being transformed into poverty and crime-ridden Third World slums thanks to mass immigration from Mexico and Central America? Who cares, as long as the Club for Growth types can save money on labor and can sit safe and snug in their gated communities.
Oh BS. The USA designs and builds it’s own ships. This is a crap sandwich.
Yes, we do design our own ships, but right now we have zero usable modern frigate designs ready to go and we havent built any in decades. The LCS was supposed to replace frigates and our Navy put all our eggs in that basket. The LCS turned out to suck and now we desperately need a frigate design.
It is fast enough to keep up with a CBG.
Also, if you hadnt noticed, *all* classes of ship have gotten larger over the years. Our Zumwalt-class destroyer is larger than some battleships that fought in WW2, for example - a *destroyer*.
At 15K tons the Zumwalt calls is not anywhere near BB size.
Nice rant, but not anywhere close to the actual situation. We actually *are* building warships in the US. The problem is that the Navy stupidly decided to build the wrong warships (Littoral Combat Ships) to replace frigates. They have our two shipyards that would build frigates building these LCS. It turns out that the LCS sucks at replacing frigates, and we need a bunch of frigates *yesterday*. Due to the LCS program and political stupidity in the Obama years, there are zero modern frigate designs ready to go at any US naval architect. We need frigates now, we cant wait, so were buying an off the shelf design.
Whichever design is selected will be built on the US as soon as production can be set up; only the first few will be built overseas while that happens.
This is not new - the P-51 Mustang used a British Merlin engine because no US engine could do what needed to be done in time to be useful. The P-80 Shooting Star used a British jet engine because no US engine of the required performance would be available in time to be used. The AV-8 Harrier jump jet in Marine service is British - because no US counterpart made economic sense to develop. In WW2, we adopted the British 57mm towed antitank gun because we didnt have an equivalent design and we needed one right away. In all these cases, initial production started overseas but production began in the US as soon as possible. The list of weapons and platforms that this has happened with is very, very long.
Displacement wise, no. It doesnt have the armor or massive guns.
Physical dimensions wise, yes, it is. Give me a few to find the now famous graphic comparing a DDG1000 to a WW2 battleship.
All ships are to scale. The Zumwalt is longer than the Nevada class battleship and almost as wide. It's actually wider if you disregard the anti-torpedo bulges on the Nevada's hull.
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