Constellation class program aborted

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The U.S. government (mostly) cancelled its navy frigate program that was meant to slightly adapt a foreign frigate design for the USN so a lower cost general purpose ships could do all the escort tasks that Arleigh Burke destroyers cannot do because they're busy escorting carriers.

The NAVSEA bureaucracy ruined the program with so many changes that the program turned into a mess. They didn't get much of anything right post-Cold War anyway. The Arleigh Burke was the last important ship class that was not a mess - but even its fist batch of ships was flawed due to the lack of a helicopter.

 

Some background: 

The Americans always followed a general purpose ship design philosophy regarding escorts, while some European countries use smaller ships dedicated to either air defence or anti-submarine warfare. There are also some general purpose ships in Europe and both some Europeans and the Japanese have ships that are Arleigh Burke equivalents, but the Americans clearly favour general purpose (GP). GP nowadays means not just AAW and ASW, but also defence against quasiballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles. The use of quasiballistic missiles by the Houthis against ships now help to justify this. I believe the GP approach is the correct one for such warships, my reasoning is here. 

 

So there we have one of the reasons why it's so difficult for the American naval bureaucracy to exercise self-restraint and modesty. They want a first rate AAW ship that's also a first rate ASW ship and has the endurance for transoceanic escorting. There's just no way that's going to end up being compact or cheap, especially if you have the hypersonic missile threat in mind. That's why they de facto stick with the Arleigh Burke class, albeit that hull is kinda overburdened by now (both the newest hulls and upgraded ones).

The feasible quantity of frigates wouldn't have sufficed for much ambition anyway. The hopes of the Americans for the case of a Sino-American war rest on holding the so-called island chains as bases for air power so the carriers (their aircraft are rather too short-ranged for much direct attack on the PRC early in such a war) would only have to sortie if some task force or convoy attempts to run the blockade or knock out / invade one of those islands. The Chinese submarine fleet isn't terribly big (in relation to possible tasks) or of a high quality and would rather not bring Pacific & Indian Ocean maritime transport to a standstill. It might not even be able to cut the Tokyo-Hawaii route.

The need for American frigates only exists if Chinese naval or air power can somehow run the blockade and get into position to attack whatever the frigates would be tasked to protect. 

I wrote some suggestions how the USN should reform and I can live with nothing of it being done.

 

In my opinion the Americans do not need frigates so much - even though that's widely regarded to be an extremely obvious need. 

 

The U.S. armed forces need to prepare differently for a Sino-American War:

1. container sets to create armed merchantmen from container ships for a distant blockade enforcing role
2. container sets to create self-protecting armed merchantman convoys capable of (at least mostly) surviving a weak air attack and a single submarine in blue water
3. some form of transport to resupply forwardmost island chain bases with kerosene*
4. composite island garrison regiments (USMC&USAF) that defend and run an airbase on an island (including jump ski** and arrestor gears to reduce dependence on long runways)
5. many more munitions, especially anti-ship missiles and anti-submarine munitions (the USN should introduce Type 07, as it's much superior to VL ASROC)
6. preparations to use C-17s as missile saturation attack launch platforms
7. USAF fighter/strike fighter procurement of CVN-compatible aircraft (replace F-35A with F-35C with additional interface for USAF-style midair refuelling) to ensure the carrier don't easily run out of aircraft due to combat attrition and the island chain airbases can operate without lengthy runways 
8. A-10s transfer to ANG or some kind of USMC reserve with 99% of their role being buddy-buddy tanker so F-35s based on island chain airbases can be refuelled without using giant long runway-dependent tankers
9. figure out how to convince the PRC leadership to take an exit from war once it's started

 

Meanwhile, European countries should in my opinion use a rather non-military approach to deter the PRC:

1. We should establish a "Stay out of Europe doctrine" regarding East Asian powers and enforce it.
2. No patrols of European warships between Singapore to Alaska
3. Clarify in public that Europeans would join a Sino-American War only if Article V North Atlantic Treaty gets triggered (Chinese aggression including attack on CONUS)
   /2017/07/just-reminder-about-north-atlantic.html
   /2018/11/natos-boundaries.html
   This would serve as a deterrent against escalation of a hot conflict.
4. Clarify in public that Europeans would enact a total economic, communications, travel embargo and asset freezes against whoever starts a war between the PRC & Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Philippines and/or the U.S..

 

related:

Eight part series about escorts (I'm still 95+% fine with what I wrote there)

/2021/05/navies-obsession-with-peacetime-hull.html 

/2023/04/chinas-naval-geography-problem-and-usn.html

/2023/07/shipbuilding-disparity-and-usn.html
 

 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: There are two historical (mostly WW2) precedents: Fast surface combat ships (mostly destroyers and fast minelayers) use as fast transports that run a blockade by sprinting (not very promising nowadays) and transport submarines.

**: To use a fixed jump ski (not facing into the wind) approximately halves the necessary runway length for take-off with high trust to weight aircraft such as F-35.