Controversy over Australia's new frigate

[Dawes]

It's supposedly 2000 tons heavier than envisioned, but that doesn't sound like a show-stopper: 

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2023/12/21/australias-anti-submarine-frigate-program-sails-rough-seas/

[Ivanhoe]

Stuffing long-range land attack, air defense BMD, and ASW into a frigate hull seems like a USN-style exercise in stuffing 10 pounds of taters into an 8 pound sack.

 

[Ssnake]

Make it bigger, and people will want to stuff more into it.

[Dawes]

Sounds like they want to avoid expanding up to DDG-51 size.

[Josh]

3 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Stuffing long-range land attack, air defense BMD, and ASW into a frigate hull seems like a USN-style exercise in stuffing 10 pounds of taters into an 8 pound sack.

 

Actually I'd argue the Soviets were much more guilty of this than the USN. If anything most USN ships historically have been relatively under armed for their weight class.

[Ol Paint]

According to the article, the baseline was 8800 tons and has grown to 10,000 tons, which puts it in the same weight class as the late-configuration Ticonderogas or DDG-51 Flight III territory.  It's a frigate in name only.

This quote from the article is astounding...

Quote

“It still meets all of [Australia’s] key 23 performance criteria [for] speed, range, endurance, seakeeping [and] underwater radiated noise, so I would challenge you to determine why it is still referred to as too heavy and too slow,” Craig Lockhart said. “In fact, it’s still [capable of] 27 knots-plus. And when we get the first ship in the water and get upwards of 31 or 32 knots in the real testing trials, then it will become our model benchmark.”

One MT30 at ~36MW (about 50k shp) is unlikely to drive this size vessel to 30kts.  DD-963s and CG-47s used about 80k shp to make speeds in the 30kt range and are 70' longer and 13' narrower, DDG-51s run 100k shp and are two feet narrower and 15-20 feet longer than the Type 26.

There seems to be a trend that nations are unable to properly design and package ships anymore.  In comparison to older classes, the newer ships seem to have more displacement to carry less stuff.  10k tons used to get 122 Mk41 VLS tubes, 2 5" Mk45 guns, Harpoon, SPY-1 Aegis, 30+kts, hull & towed sonar, and 330 people.  If the Wikipedia specs are to be believed, the Type 26/Hunter gets about 1/2 to 2/3rds of the stuff in the same displacement. 

Edited to add:  This amount of weight growth is non-trivial and has the high likelihood of seriously affecting the structural design, lifecycle cost, and operational capabilities.  Supposedly, they started cutting steel on these ships in 2021, which would make me concerned about how the changes have (or haven't) been incorporated in the lead ship.

Doug

Edited December 25, 2023 by Ol Paint

[futon]

China's latest frigates, the Type 54B at around 6000 tons and Japan's latest frigates, the Mogami-class at 5500 tons full load, are fitted out with that weight. I suspect other countries have smaller surface combat ship fleets and so maybe shifting frigates towards jack-of-all-trades kind of ship.  

[TrustMe]

Now that most naval ships are multi-role the whole concept of frigate or destroyer classification is worthless.

[Rick]

I presume China is seen as the military threat to Australia and I'm going to assume the submarine is the main threat? Does Australia have any military agreements with other countries to attack China if China attacks said country?

[Josh]

The words “frigate” and “destroyer” are quite meaningless. The size of such vessels today would qualify as cruisers in WWII, although the armaments are not comparable. We’ve gotten very, very far away from a three masted sailing ship with a single gun deck and the torpedo boat destroyer.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Josh

[Ol Paint]

6 hours ago, TrustMe said:

Now that most naval ships are multi-role the whole concept of frigate or destroyer classification is worthless.

Not really, although the definitions have shifted over time.  There's some distinct capability and survivability differences between vessels that make different descriptors useful.  Compare the contemporaneous FFG-7 to DDG-992 to CG-47, for example.  FFG-7 had less machinery redundancy, combat capability, and magazine depth than the multi-role DDGs.  CG-47 may have shared hull lines, but brought more command and control.  

Tying designation to displacement is not necessarily as good of a metric, but when comparing vessels of similar displacement and era, it makes sense to question why the tonnage is being utilized less effectively.

Doug

 

[Josh]

4 hours ago, Ol Paint said:

Not really, although the definitions have shifted over time.  There's some distinct capability and survivability differences between vessels that make different descriptors useful.  Compare the contemporaneous FFG-7 to DDG-992 to CG-47, for example.  FFG-7 had less machinery redundancy, combat capability, and magazine depth than the multi-role DDGs.  CG-47 may have shared hull lines, but brought more command and control.  

Tying designation to displacement is not necessarily as good of a metric, but when comparing vessels of similar displacement and era, it makes sense to question why the tonnage is being utilized less effectively.

Doug

 

Except that different countries use the terms in wildly different ways even inside the same generation. Constellation is a frigate at ~7000 tons, Type 52C/D is a destroyer at 7500 tons, Burke is a destroyer at 9500 tons (flight IIA), Tico is a cruiser at about the same displacement, and Type 55 is a destroyer again at 12-13,000 tons. And that’s without involving any other countries besides those two. The type names are meaningless; you just have to know your ship classes.

[DB]

The UK uses the frigate/destroyer distinction to separate primary role - DDG is area air defence and FFG is anti-submarine warfare. With the return of the CV to RN service, the roles shift a little with the DDG also covering the US CG role (albeit sub-optimally due to lack of magazine depth).

I suspect that there are good capability balance reasons for the relative differences in apparent capability between (say) PRC and US types that are perceived to be equivalents. I suggest that survivability and endurance are two of them.

[R011]

It seems the USN has classified by speed and role since the seventies.  An escort about as fast as a CVN is a destroyer.  An escort slower than that is a frigate.   A destroyer that has flag facilities to act as a TG command ship is a cruiser.  Destroyers today are AAW ships, but that's only since the ASW/Land Attack Spruance Class ships were all retired in the post-Cold War drawdown.

[Argus]

My 2 cents.

Welcome to the VLS age. 
The RAN's 'frigate' woes are just the natural expression of a paradigm shift surfacing in a medium power that is naturally marginal, large enough to be playing the top game but not big enough to find compensation in other areas.  

It used to be a ship's role defined what was loaded into her magazines, but with VLS a ship's role is set by what was been loaded into her cells yesterday. This raises the obvious desirability of fitting a ship with all the systems she required to properly employ the full spectrum of weapons the navy could shove down her VLS tubes, thus producing a universal warship. A great idea that runs into the usual answer; it would be nice, but such a ship would be impractical due weight/volume/cost. Or it did, we are hitting the inflection point were a lot of the things that were role specific and used to define a ship type are starting to blur. Look at the big hanger that is/was a big part of a ship's ASW potential, well double hanger, multi-mission bay, UAV bay, call it as you will a big volume aft is now par for the course. Is that a VDS slot I see or a small boat recovery bay? Electronics are getting very capable systems down into smaller footprints - or more capability into the same sized packages - but nothing is ever the same size is it. Speaking of which, VLS cells themselves have a pretty inflationary impact on displacement, and the urge to get as many into a ship as possible is pretty hard to resist, given as they largely define a ship's throw weight. 

So ships are getting bigger, bigger ships have more scope to slot in 'nice to have' systems and those 'nice to haves' are getting much closer to essential force multipliers than gold plate. AIUI a respectable 'frigate' sized 3D radar with a middle of the road combat system can match the area defense capability of a proper AWD of 20-30 years ago in its day. A frigate with a proper 'Baby AGIS' type system might come up lacking in saturation levels and the BMD department, but otherwise hasn't got much to blush about. Who would not want that capability in their 'escort' ships if it were possible, and AFAIK it's on the cusp.  

In the Australian context Frigate and Destroyer have been largely marketing terms for yonks, practically they are cruisers. Should a hot war kick off they have their roles, but 99% of the time they are cruisers sailing about doing cruisery things, and to be honest escorting high value units is also a cruiser role too. But 'cruiser' is an expensive word, 'frigate' is a cheap word, and 'destroyer' falls somewhere in the middle. The functional demarcations between major warship types are falling away, leaving only scale to really separate them and the RAN is presently tip toeing into that minefield trying to find the dividing line between HIGH and LOW elements when the only practical differential is the number of VLS cells and how many magic pixies are dancing around the combat systems.     

Edited January 12, 2024 by Argus

[shep854]

That's a good overview, Argus.