It is well known that the current, largely homogeneous, surface combatant fleet is not an affordable force structure for the future. This is a key force driving the development of a new frigate, but serious questions remain about the affordability of the currently planned force structure. Considering the CG(X) program was canceled after estimates reached $5 billion per ship and that the recent reemergence of great power competition likely will drive an even more expensive design, these concerns have merit.
One potential solution to this problem is to go beyond the current high-low framework to a three-tier, high-medium-low fleet. The ships to support this framework would be approximately as follows:
- High-end ships would grow to meet the most demanding requirements and effectively counter the most sophisticated and challenging threats in our adversary’s arsenals.
- Medium ships would be cost-effective escorts to support the more expensive high-end ships as well as fill a variety of secondary roles.
- Low-end ships would only be designed for self-defense to keep costs down while still providing flexibility and lethality to offensive and support missions to fill capacity gaps outside fleet defense.
This split will allow the fleet to efficiently balance capability and capacity to deliver a lethal, affordable force. It also is important to remember that since this structure is a major departure from the current fleet, existing ship classes like the littoral combat ship (LCS) and especially the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers do not fit cleanly into these categories, even if they can be loosely mapped onto the framework.
High: Large Escort
This ship may come from the large surface combatant program, but this cannot be said for certain. As such, the term “large escort” will be used instead of LSC since this ship will be large and the first examples likely will be tasked with carrier escort. Despite of the name, the ship will be equipped to perform a variety of missions and roles. As previously mentioned, the large escort will be designed to deal with the most sophisticated and challenging threats in service and development, but its cost will limit quantity.
The most important feature of the large escort is a set of radars larger than was planned for CG(X) to counter the growing antiship ballistic-missile threat. The fleet will need radars with greater range and accuracy to target not only ballistic missiles in all stages of flight, but also the reconnaissance satellites they use to gather targeting information. The ability to destroy satellites will allow the fleet to open paths into hostile antiacces/area-denial (A2/AD) systems. This would be done by working with F-35s and P-8s to achieve local information superiority by identifying and destroying hostile sensors before they detect and target the force. Finally, these extremely large arrays also will be ideally suited to taking advantage of the secondary capabilities of modern AESA radars.
As a consequence of the radar, the large escort will have ample displacement for weapons and other features. A large number of Mark 41 cells is a given thanks to the efficiency of the hull, and the Navy already has discussed oversized missiles in the context of LSCs. The cell counts discussed for CG(X) were much higher than current surface combatants, and the relatively limited arsenal of the medium platform, FFG(X), makes this even more important. As a consequence, much of the land-attack mission will fall to the large escort, along with the bulk of the fleet’s long-range air and ballistic missile defense armament. In addition, the large escort also will have the displacement and power generation available to support lasers and rail guns.
Finally, with space for additional capability and limited fleet numbers, the large escort will be an ideal platform for a variety of specialized systems not required in large numbers, such as low frequency AESA radar. It is difficult to say exactly what other features it will have, but enhanced drone launch facilities seem likely. It also seems reasonable to assume it will build on the Zumwalt class’s enhanced passive protection features to remain combat effective after receiving battle damage. In addition, with its size and value, a significant number of proven point-defense weapons such as the Phalanx CIWS and RAM launchers will be essential.
All of this will of course drive a very high cost. The large escort will be estimated at $7 billion here, and the service life will be assumed to be 50 years to help offset that cost. This is based on the fact that the large escort will be substantially more capable than CG(X), which was estimated at up to $5 billion. It is important to note that there is no further analytical basis for this cost estimate, so other numbers can be substituted into the final estimates if desired. That said, it should still effectively capture the unprecedented cost of this ship to illustrate how it can fit into a reasonable budget using a three-tier fleet architecture.
Medium: FFG(X)
Moving on, the medium role requires a competent but affordable multimission combatant capable of dealing with most threats on its own and partnering with the large escort to meet the fleet’s defensive requirements. While FFG(X) is not yet fully defined, the requirements for this new frigate appear firm enough to say it will fill the medium role with reasonable confidence.
Since this ship is in constant flux and presumably familiar to anyone interested in future fleet composition, its design will not be discussed further here. The only significant point to note is that while the Navy currently estimates a cost of approximately $800 million per hull, an estimate of $1 billion per hull will be used to reflect future upgrades and avoid accusations of appearing excessively optimistic in selling this fleet concept. The service life will also be assumed to be 30 years based on the National Security Cutter and currently planned LCS numbers.
Low: Shrike-Class PCG
The purpose of the low-end ship is to provide additional offensive capacity in wartime and fulfill many low-end, day-to-day missions in peacetime. This requires a small, low-cost ship with excellent availability capable of supporting a wide variety of missions from peacetime patrol to sinking major warships.
While there has been a significant amount of discussion about ships in this size range, existing designs lack the required flexibility. Fortunately, newer conceptual designs like the Shrike-class missile patrol ship could break this barrier.
The Shrike builds on the proven utility of the Cyclone-class patrol ship, with major improvements in lethality, flexibility, and survivability while retaining affordability. The Shrike’s full-sized AN/SLQ-32 electronic warfare suite, SeaRAM, and miniature hit-to-kill (MHTK) missiles provide excellent survivability at relatively low cost. Its eight long-range antiship missiles (LRASMs) give it an impressive offensive punch and, more important, the ability to act as a networked shooter for the joint force.
The secondary weapons build on this foundation with an unconventional configuration for low-cost flexibility. Instead of a traditional deck gun, the Shrike mounts a simple 105mm howitzer for area land attack and warning shots. Close quarters lethality instead comes from seven pintle mounts, each mounting a FGM-148 Javelin launch tray and a ballistic weapon like the M2 Browning. This is complemented by 36 Spike non-line-of-sight launch system missiles for precision land attack and defeating small boats/unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) at long range. This combination of secondary weapons will make the Shrike well-suited to supporting amphibious warfare and exceedingly lethal against small boat or USV swarms. Finally, the Shrike retains all the support and launch capabilities of the Cyclone while adding unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) launch facilities, small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) support, and a dual-band electro-optical/infrared Distributed Aperture System (DAS) to maximize flexibility outside of direct combat. This capability set effectively frees the Shrike from the limited roles of traditional missile and patrol boats, allowing it to be a true multimission surface combatant instead of a highly specialized support asset like current small ships.
While the Shrike is expected to cost $94.6 million per ship, the price will be rounded up to $100 million as a conservative estimate. The service life will be considered 20 years before being replaced with newer versions incorporating upgrades such as the next-generation land-attack weapon (NGLAW).
Fleet Numbers
With the ships that make up the three-tier fleet described, we can move on to the build numbers and cost estimates. This section is intended to be illustrative, as no simple analysis can be fully accurate. It will use simple math to show steady-state fleets if a given construction rate is maintained indefinitely. While this is a useful way to show fleet cost effectiveness, it is obviously impossible in the real world.
The most critical shortcoming of this approach is that the 50-year service life of the large escort means it will take a full 50 years to reach the hypothetical steady-state number. As such, the number realistically available for service will be substantially lower over any relevant timeframe and complicate the transition. It is also essential to remember that this analysis is only looking at manned surface combatant construction cost. This is a major limitation given the upcoming cost of the Columbia-class submarines, which may seriously impact the available budget when these ships are ready to enter production.
To deal with this uncertainty, several different possible fleet compositions have been explored to show how this framework can adapt to varying budget levels. Also, remember that the current 355-ship plan calls for 104 large and 52 small surface combatants for 156 total hulls.
As can be seen, there are many possible variations on the three-tier fleet concept. Many of these examples produce a much larger fleet than the 355-ship plan calls for at relatively low cost.
Compositions 1, 2, and 3 represent relatively straightforward balance shifts with 1 being more balanced, 2 being heavier, and 3 being lighter. Something along the lines of 1 or 2 would be more appropriate in the current era of great power competition, while 3 would be better suited to dealing with the low-end threats of the recent past. Compositions 8 and 9 represent more extreme versions of 2 and 3 respectively, and would likely be unsuitable due to high cost for 8 and lack of defensive capacity for 9.
Compositions 4, 5, 6, and 7 shift the balance towards the middle with a much larger number of frigates and offer a potential way to increase defensive capacity at relatively low cost. Compositions 4, 5, and 6 roughly parallel 1, 2, and 3 to illustrate the effect of shifting the balance between low and medium platforms. Composition 7 illustrates how this approach can allow fewer high-end platforms than a more traditionally balanced fleet where smaller platforms outnumber larger platforms.
Finally, compositions 10 through 15 revert to a two-level structure to show the disadvantages. Compositions 10 through 13 show outcomes without the low end platform since that most closely resembles the Navy’s current trade space, while 14 and 15 eliminate the high and medium platforms respectively for completeness. While these fleet compositions are not entirely unaffordable and/or incapable of meeting capability and capacity requirements, they clearly do not compare well with the options which take advantage of all three types of ship.
The superiority of this three-tier structure is well illustrated by comparing fleets 5 and 12. Fleet 12 is robust enough to be a plausible option, unlike the other low cost two-tier fleets, and since its price is very similar to fleet 5 we can eliminate cost as a variable. This allows us to directly compare their effectiveness and, by extension, efficiency to demonstrate the superior fleet architecture. Fleet 5 generates more high-end platforms than fleet 12 while providing substantially more ships for both peacetime readiness and wartime offensive action, substantially increasing the fleet’s ability to accept risk. The only advantage fleet 12 has is more ships capable of fleet defense, but fleet 5 already has substantially more fleet defense ships than are currently in service. That advantage is also mitigated by the fact that the additional large ships in fleet 5 will almost certainly carry many more total weapons than the larger number of medium ships in fleet 12. When you consider that many roles do not require the fleet defense capability of the medium ships, the actual impact of that defensive capacity gap will be minimal, and more than outweighed by the additional low-end ships available for high-risk offensive operations. All in all, fleet 5 is clearly superior to fleet 12 in both capability and capacity thanks to the superior cost effectiveness of a three-tier fleet.
Bringing it Back to Reality
While this analysis has illustrated the advantages of a three-tier fleet structure, these simple numbers do not translate well into reality. The fact of the matter is that fleets are constantly in transition, as are the national priorities that drive their existence. This means there is no simple answer to the fundamental question of what to build. Actual construction will interact with other priorities and budget demands. For example, the need to replace the current cruiser fleet may drive a period of very lopsided construction, with a temporary surge to one high-end platform a year driving reductions elsewhere. When you factor in the constantly shifting political landscape, the only thing that seems certain is that the balance between the three ship types will constantly be in flux as the Navy reacts to the nation’s needs.
