Not sure if you had a chance to review the recently released
, yet.
Within the context of said report, in particular its explicit reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine and prioritization of "American preeminence" in the Western Hemisphere, it kind of makes sense for the USN to acquire a fleet of upgunned USCG cutters.
Doubt any reasonable analyst will expect such a frigate to perform meaningfully better than the LCS against peer adversaries, but if we're to be totally fair: it's an almost
natural fit for "bullying banana republics."
LCS is already fairly well suited to the hemispheric enforcer role, though of course you don't really need 40kt speed if you just plan to sink every "narco terrorist" boat from the air. I don't think we should undersell the
of the
Legend NSC design, though. It can probably be hammered into a useful workhorse akin to PLAN's 054A.
It's certainly tempting to link the shift from
Constellation away to broader political-strategic changes. For all the undoubted mismanagement of the former program, it still had the advantage of several years of active development and even construction and supply-chain activity, which suggests that the shift owes to more than the usual teething problems.
I think the fundamental issue is that a globally pre-eminent US Navy has a requirement for at least 3 classes of surface combatant hullform. But today, they are trying to do everything with just 2 classes, and then failing.
There does seem to be an institutional bandwidth problem, similar to that which I previously
discussed in the context of USAF. I suspect that one reason for that is the combination of (a) a commitment to certain high-end capabilities with (b) the fear that more modest options, if available, would ultimately crowd out those high-end capabilities in the course of struggles over budgets and schedules. Hence USAF's enduring pursuit of an all-VLO inventory and USN's
exclusive commitment to nuclear-powered supercarriers and nuclear-powered submarines. The LCS program may have been many things, but it was never going to encroach upon the territory of CG-47, DDG-51 or their notional successors. Conversely, an all-
Burke inventory may not be ideal but, in the grand scheme of things, having too many
Burkes is not a bad problem to have.
Looking at it from a bird's eye view, this is what I think the US Navy should be planning for.
1. Based on a fleet of 11 supercarriers, there would be:
Inner Zone (close-in escort)
22 Cruisers or Large Destroyers
Middle Zone (ASW and AAW)
22 Any ship hull larger than a Frigate will work, as long as it is fast enough
Outer Zone (pickets on the threat axis)
22 Smaller Air-Defence Destroyers
These all have to be high capability ships
2. In addition, they would have a fleet of low-cost, low-medium capability Frigates.
Previously this was covered by the 50 OHPs.
I notice that this links back to our
previous discussion about 054B and PLAN escort inventory structure.
If NSC is indeed the new low-end path, and that path does indeed produce a fairly modest "workhorse" ship <5500 tonnes full-load displacement, there is indeed a very large gap between that ship and the ~13-14k tonne future DDG(X). However, procurement for the latter is currently
only from the early 2030s, which implies that DDG(X) would only begin to enter service from the late 2030s at the earliest, So in the medium-term, that apparent gap is filled by ongoing production and service of DDG-51. SecNav Phelan did recently
to one more "big, beautiful ship". Conservatively, he's probably talking about further revisions to DDG(X), or perhaps a reborn CG(X), but it's conceivable that he could be referring to a new project to sit between the new FFG and DDG(X).
