The Constellation program was supposed to produce 20 frigates to serve as small surface combatant ships to support the rest of the fleet and be able to conduct independent patrols. In an effort to reduce development risks and avoid fielding delays that often accompany entirely new designs, Navy officials decided to use an already proven parent design they could modify to meet the Navy’s needs. They selected the European multi-purpose frigate design employed by the French and Italian navies.
Navy leaders made the decision to speed up the process with the Constellation program because it was supposed to fill the capability gap created by the failure of the Littoral Combat Ship program. The LCS was intended to be the Navy’s affordable small surface combatant ship of the future, but it ended up failing spectacularly. Engineers were never able to get the ship’s mission hardware to work properly. The ships also suffered a string of embarrassing mechanical breakdowns.
The decision to use a proven design for the new program was sound. Defense policymakers typically pursue clean-sheet designs because the contractors can maximize their financial gain through the research and development process. But the Constellation-class program now clearly demonstrates how the national security establishment’s natural proclivity to make simple things complicated remains firmly in place.
The Constellation-class program failed because rather than simply building the ships as designed in Europe, American naval engineers effectively tore up the blueprints and designed a new ship. The U.S. Navy has different mission requirements than its European counterparts, so the ship’s design did need some modifications. Officials sold the idea of the Constellation-class program in part by saying the American version would have 85% commonality with the European version. They then lengthened the hull by nearly 24 feet, redesigned the bow, completely redesigned the ship’s superstructure, and added approximately 500 tons of displacement. The American design today has only 15% commonality with the original.
Well. Now I now understand the NEED to increase the nearly trillion dollar defense budget to $1.5 trillion.
Relevant-to-War technological advancements are now coming along so fast as to overwhelm normal bureaucracies ability to think, let alone plan coherently, let alone to conceive, fund, build, train, and put on the battlefield.
The future probably looks like an amalgam of the original brilliant Skunkworks with the current stunning Ukrainian “put the cleverest actual fighting soldiers together with brilliant young practical engineers close to the front lines so they can redesign/reprogram faster and faster and faster.”
There was an utterly brilliant but freakishly bizarre SciFi short story predicting this in
(my copy was falling apart, moldy and then was ripped to pieces by a dog, and so I cannot refer you to the precise title and author).
In the story a civilization is at war with something, but as one approached the front lines time became relativistically compressed. All weapon design and production had to take place as close as possible to the “boundary chaos” or would be hopelessly obsolete by the time it got used…. it was a disturbing mind bender of a novel. Everyone I know who read it hated it except me, my brother, and my father, all of us demented engineering maniacs.
Wasn’t Ukraine a sort of Silicon Valley of the USSR?
Google AI:
Yes, Soviet Ukraine was largely considered the technological, aerospace, and scientific hub of the USSR, acting as a key “Silicon Valley” for the Soviet regime. It provided the crucial brainpower, engineering, and infrastructure for Soviet advances in space, weaponry, and technology, including the creation of rockets, missiles, and the foundational technologies for the Soviet space program.
And now this administration wants a BBG, which will cost 3x as much and not even deliver 2x the firepower (assuming they could get the shipboard lasers and railgun working reliably). BBG is going to be another money hole, and I’ll be surprised if we get one finished vessel before the program is canceled (which is should be…it never should have been started).
We need DDG(x). The Arleigh-Burkes are old tech, many ships are approaching end of life, and the power plant is straining to meet demand of new technologies.
