Regardless of what may or may not be on the requirements punchcard this FY, we are overdue for three new classes of ships ready to cut steel for.
First, we need a replacement for the LCS. Let’s call that FFG-(X). We’ve talked about it some, but was we still don’t know what the FF conversion of LCS will look like and at present there is no leadership push to license build a foreign design. We will unfortunately have to wait until the next SECNAV starts to get his hands around the challenge and breaks embedded intellectual logjams.
We should look at two options. One would be a single ship design between 4,000 and 7,000 tons somewhere along the FREMM to NANSEN design. The second option would be for two ships. One a large frigate towards the top of the range, and the other in between the 1,000 – 3,000 ton range. Good people can argue the merits and justifications of either one.
Second, we need an replacement for our outstanding Arleigh Burk Class DDG. Flight III will be a great ship, but we don’t need a Flight IV.
A lot of thought has already gone in to a DDG-(X). We need to put it in front of a properly composed murder board and crack on. Anywhere between 8,000 to 10,000 tons will be fine, just leave plenty of freeboard for the future.
Third is what could be argued as the most critical; CG-(X). Yes, we’ve already had a run at that, but it was a shambolic failure that birthed a nuclear powered battle cruiser that was beautiful, deadly, but ultimately unaffordable even if you could get through all the compounded technology risk.
If we can assume, and I know I dream big, that we can get some acquisition reform to get barriers out of the way, what do we need to do to get our “Three X’s” at least on the drawing board?
Of course, the right leadership must arrive first, but then we need to review what not to do based on recent experience. We do not need to build an entire ship around weapon systems that are vaporware like the Transformationalists did with LCS and DDG-1000.
We need to respect technology risk and build with a respect for the future by having enough white-space and freeboard for the future to be able to install treasures the good idea fairy will one day deliver. No more exquisitely designed ships arrogantly designed with no room for a failure of imagination.
OK, we’ve looked at what not to do, but what should we do? If we want our major surface combatants to have a service life of 30-40 years, we should look to the conceptual features of successful programs that in the past gave us things that were so good, we did all we could to extend their lives.
On the surface side, most should be familiar with the unsexy, unexciting, but extremely successful OHP (Hull-1 ordered ’73, commissioned ’77) and SPRU/TICO/KIDD programs, and even the LA & Virginia SSNs – but wouldn’t it be of use to go outside the Navy to our sister services for examples of the right mindset? What was a mindset that helped them, by design or accident, create their most successful programs?
Let’s look at two USAF programs; the U-2 and the A-10. As we approach the 3rd decade of the 21st Century, they’re still making news;
The U.S. Air Force plans to maintain its fleet of Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolts close air support aircraft and the Lockheed Martin U-2 high altitude spy plane, shelving plans to phase out these cold-war era platforms.
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The Air Force confirmed Tuesday that it plans to maintain the majority of its A-10 Warthogs in coming years, despite previous plans to phase out the entire A-10 fleet, replacing the armored flying gunslingers’ Close Air Support (CAS) capability by fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighters and new, off the shelf light attack platform.
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The U.S. Air Force also dropped plans to begin retiring the U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane around 2019. The Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2018 does not include any funding request or time schedule for the U-2 retirement. As a result of additional spending in the recently enacted 2017 budget and the proposed 2018 plan, the Air Force has more resources to maintain both the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned platforms intended to replace the U-2 and the manned spy plane. “We plan to keep that platform well into the future. It’s a capability that we need and we also need the capacity as well,” Said Maj. Gen. James Martin, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget. “We need both [platforms] to meet the demand of ISR,” Martin said.
Budget uncertainty in previous years played a role in recent recommendations to retire the U-2, the general said. The U-2 retirement could save about US$2.2 billion, the Air Force estimated last year. But “the world changed in August 2014,” Martin said, in an apparent reference to the start of the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.
No, the world did not change. The nature of combat has not changed. Though papers, doctrine, spin, and blinkered leadership may have not said so, the requirements for the abilities those aircraft possess have not changed. Seven or four decades, they are still best at their jobs – outlasting more exquisite peers and follow-ons. Only people in charge have changed.
Why?
Why those two? Let’s look at the timelines.
The U-2 was the result of an proposal in 1953 and the first aircraft was delivered two years later in 1955. Two years to make a shadow, in use 67 years.
The A-10’s requirement came from 1966 and the first flight was in 1972; six years gave us 45 years with more to go.
Though both had some cutting edge equipment for their time, they were firmly evolutionary aircraft.
Since WWI, the needs for high altitude reconnaissance and CAS have been known. The right people used the right process decades ago to get a premier platform to do the mission.
For almost as long, our navy’s needs for long range patrol frigates, large & robust destroyers, and air-defense cruisers have also been known.
As the USAF is flailing to find something in this century that can even match what was created generations ago, Navy is in the same spot.
The USAF has time to figure it out, we’ve used up a lot of our time.
As we move towards new designs, will we repeat the mistakes of the recent past and hope for a different result, or reach a bit further back in time and benchmark those successful mindset that are still serving the nation long after their designers have left their mortal coil?
