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Dear Ghost Ships, Uncle Sam Wants You!
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...tired-carrier-uss-kitty-hawk-out-of-mothballs
US Navy Looking At Bringing Retired Carrier USS Kitty Hawk Out Of Mothballs
Bringing back its last operational conventionally powered supercarrier would help the Navy make its 12 carrier fleet goal a reality.
By Tyler RogowayJune 8, 2017
The War Zone355 ship NavyAdmiral Thomas Mooreaircraft carrierCG-47CV-63FFG-7FrigatemothballsOliver Hazard Perry Classpresident trumpReserve FleetSupercarrierTiconderoga ClassUss Kitty Hawk
Last Stop for USS Kitty Hawk
MC3 Kyle D. Gahlau—U.S. Navy
SHARE
Tyler RogowayView Tyler Rogoway's Articles
twitter.com/Aviation_Intel
As the US Navy struggles to figure out how it can reach its new goal of a 355 ship fleet—up from 275 ships today—as quickly as possible, it has been looking towards extending the life of the ships it already has in service. Now the service is also examining the possibility of selectively pulling ships out of mothballs, refurbishing them, and sending them back to the fleet. One ship in particular may have a better shot than others at sailing the high seas once again—the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)—America's last operational conventionally fueled supercarrier.
The Navy Now Says It Can Get More Service Life Out Of Its Existing FleetBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
The US Navy's Newly Delivered Supercarrier Still Needs a Ton of WorkBy Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
Florida's Full Court Press to Bring a Supercarrier Back to MayportBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
7 Revolutionary Hardware Changes the US Navy Should Make in the Trump EraBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
30 Hornets Pulled From Boneyard, Navy Eyes Ditching New Carrier Arresting GearBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
The head of the Navy's Sea Systems Command, Vice Admiral Thomas Moore, stated that while most ships in the inactive fleet are in too sorry a state to be worth reviving, the USS Kitty Hawk may not be: "Of the carriers that are in inactive force, probably Kitty Hawk is the one that you could think about. But we studied that when we decommissioned Enterprise, and the carriers are pretty old."
USN
Certainly pulling a carrier directly back into service would go a long way to bridging America's "carrier gap" and would make President's Trump's demand for a 12 supercarrier fleet much more obtainable. Currently the Navy has 10 operational supercarriers, and with the USS Gerald Ford's (CVN-78) entry into service date murky at best, that number may not increase for years to come.
USN via USNI
Even just the possibility of Kitty Hawk returning to the fleet is likely music to the ears of those in Mayport, Florida, who have been begging the US Navy to return a supercarrier to the naval station there. The facility was never upgraded to support nuclear propulsion, so after the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) was retired in 2007, it has been without a resident supercarrier, which hurt the local economy and also has strategic implications as well. The Kitty Hawk would be an ideal candidate to call the base home without the need for major infrastructure investments.
USN
Some of the other ships that would seem to be likely candidates for revival will probably be passed over—specifically the first five Ticonderoga class cruisers that sit quiet on the Delaware River. These ships didn't feature Mark 41 vertical launch systems, instead being equipped with twin-arm Mark 26 missile launchers and their associated magazines. But still, many have regarded their rickety reserve status a huge waste of latent surface warfare potential. Moore thinks otherwise, and probably for good reason.
The ships are vastly outdated compared to their active counterparts, and would take serious money to get them even close to their fleet counterparts standard. Not just that, but they have been cannibalized for spare parts in recent years. Moore says: "Most of those ships, from a combat systems perspective, are pretty obsolete...We probably wouldn’t bring them back and they’ve kind of been spare-parts lockers the last couple of years."
Bigbird78/wikicommons
The sorry state of the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) at naval yards in Philadelphia.
Regenerating old ships is all about balancing the cost of bringing them back into service based on what mission sets they could provide, how degraded a capability compared to their modern counterparts is acceptable, and how long they could remain in service once the money has been invested in them.
Aside from the Kitty Hawk, the best candidates for regeneration are the ships that could take on lower-end tasks, and thus not require the huge amount of technological investment as their more advanced cousins require. Primarily this includes the Navy's mothballed logistical ships and especially its Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates. The tough Oliver Hazard Perry class ships were retired too soon by many accounts—a symptom of their fiscal neglect more than anything else—and were ripe for a major upgrade like many of the second-hand models operated by allied Navies around the globe have received. Some of these enhancements include the installation of Mark 41 vertical launch systems and upgrades to the ship's sensors and combat systems.
USN
Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate USS Thatch patrols the Persian Gulf in 2009.
"We’ll go look at the FFGs, see if there is utility there... We’ll look at the combat logistics force, see if there’s utility there... So, there is limited opportunity in the inactive fleet but we’ll look at it ship-by-ship."
It is very likely President Trump would support such a plan, in fact we predicted exactly this type of asset regeneration program would occur under his administration. Trump also has a personal history with being very comfortable with operating aging but upgraded vehicles. He even hinted at the possibility of bringing back the Iowa class battleship during his campaign, although that is extremely unlikely to ever happen regardless of the political will involved.
Contact the author: [email protected]
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/navy-considers-reactivating-mothballed-warships
Navy Considers Reactivating Mothballed Warships
kitty
The carrier Kitty Hawk, second from left, alongside Independence, Constellation and Ranger at NISMF Bremerton
By MarEx 2017-06-08 21:12:31
In a recent interview with defense industry outlet DefAero Report, NAVSEA commander Vice Adm. Thomas Moore raised the possibility that the Navy could reactivate mothballed ships as part of its plan to build up to a 355-vessel fleet. Among the candidates are the remaining Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates and a number of the combat logistics ships, with an outside chance for the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk – the Navy's last conventionally-fueled flat-top.
"We'll go look at the [Oliver Hazard Perry-class] if there's utility there, we'll go look at some of the combat logistics force ships . . . probably of the carriers that are in inactive status right now, Kitty Hawk is the one that you could think about," Moore said. "The carriers are pretty old, so I think there's limited opportunity in the inactive fleet to bring those back but we're going to go look at that ship by ship and put that into the mix." The first hulls in the Ticonderoga class of guided missile cruisers are off the table. "Most of those ships are obsolete and they've kind of been spare parts lockers for the last couple years," Moore said.
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the ex-U.S. Navy hulls are still in service with other armed forces around the world, including the navies of Pakistan, Turkey, Poland, Egypt and Bahrain. Australia, Spain and Taiwan liked the design enough to build their own, and over a dozen foreign-built Perry-class ships are still in active service. The U.S. Navy retains about one dozen inactive Perry-class hulls in its Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facilities, several of which are candidates for foreign military sales. Many current operators have modified their Perry-class frigates, re-engining with Cat 3512B diesels, adding SM-2 missiles, Mk-41 vertical launch systems and improved radars. Several American politicians have called for the Navy to take the same approach.
The Perry class has one notable advantage: they are notoriously hard to sink. USS Stark survived two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi warplane in 1987, and USS Samuel B. Roberts managed to stay afloat after striking an Iranian mine the following year, despite severe damage. Both vessels were repaired and returned to service. In a live-fire exercise in 2016, the decommissioned USS Thatch absorbed four Harpoon anti-ship missiles; one Maverick missile; multiple Hellfire missiles; one 2,000 lb. bomb; one 500 lb. bomb; and one Mk. 48 torpedo. She stayed afloat for 12 hours (with calm weather, and without fuel or munitions aboard).
Extending service life
In a recent speech, Vice Adm. Moore also raised the possibility of extending the service life of active vessels as a strategy to enlarge the fleet – so long as the Navy can commit to a regular and consistent maintenance schedule. "We’re taking a pretty close look at what it would take to get them out another five, another 10 years . . . And people will say, well we’ve never really gotten a surface ship past 35 or 40 years, and I will point out all the time that we routinely take aircraft carriers to 50 years," he said. "And the reason we do that is because we consistently do all the maintenance you have to do on an aircraft carrier to get it to 50 years. So we know how to do this." Moore suggested that by extending vessel service life out by one or two more drydocking availabilities, the Navy could reach the 355-ship mark by 2030-2035 at a relatively economical cost.
Moore restricted his comments to steel-hulled vessels. "What happens over 25 years? Aluminum doesn’t quite have the tensile strength, so you’ll have a little bit more flexibility in the hull. We’ve seen this with some of the cracking in the cruise superstructures," he said. The Navy is currently building a series of 13 aluminum-hulled Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships, and the fourth vessel in the class – LCS 8, USS Montgomery – suffered a crack in her hull after colliding with a tugboat last October. Moore did not reference this incident, but he said that "we’ll proceed a little bit more cautiously on extending the service life of aluminum ships than we will steel-hulled ones.”
https://arstechnica.com/information...-old-ships-to-grow-fleet-but-not-battleships/
Navy chief: It may be time to bring back retired warships
Some Oliver Hazard Perry FFGs may be candidates for reboot to help grow fleet faster.
Sean Gallagher - Jun 14, 2017 3:44 pm UTC
Enlarge / The Oliver Hazard Perry-class fast frigate USS Ford (FFG 54) departs Pearl Harbor in this 2010 photo. The Navy is looking at bringing back a handful of the decommissioned ships.
US Navy
228
In a speech before the Naval War College yesterday, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said that the Navy is looking at "every trick" to grow the fleet more quickly toward the Navy's goal of 355 ships, including extending the lives of ships already in the fleet and "bringing ships back." And one of the candidates for a comeback, Richardson said, is the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate. (The Iowa-class battleships, despite political posturing by President Trump during the election campaign, have not yet been mentioned.)
The Perry class ships were the Navy's equivalent of the Air Force's A-10 Thunderbolt II—workhorse ships that lacked the glamor of larger, more capable commands that performed missions essential to the fleet. They were originally built as guided missile frigates (FFGs), intended to provide a combination of air and antisubmarine defenses for carrier battle groups. The few ships being considered for reactivation were all built in the late 1980s and decommissioned over the past five years. About 10 are held in the Navy's Inactive Fleet Inventory designated for foreign sale, while the remainder are slotted to be scrapped or sunk as targets.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson speaks at the Naval War College on June 13, 2017.
Enlarge / Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson speaks at the Naval War College on June 13, 2017.
DVIDS/Department of Defense
The Australian Navy has managed to keep three of its original Perry-class frigates (known as the Adelaide class) in service through upgrades to its power plants and other life-extending maintenance. Several other navies still operate former US ships of the class.
But the US Navy moved to decommission all of its Perry FFGs to make room for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) classes, claiming heavy wear from overuse had rendered them too expensive to keep afloat. The move has been seen as more political than operational by many analysts, because the Navy's leadership had neglected the ships for so long—putting off upgrades to the missile system and then dispensing with it altogether and replacing it with M242 Bushmaster automatic cannons. The Navy instead spent its budget on newer, larger, more capable ships (the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers) and on the LCS with its "modular" mission capabilities.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the neglect, the Perry ships were put into mothballs faster than the Navy could replace them, leaving a major gap in the US fleet.
Now, orders for new LCS ships are on hold because that "modular" mission capability turned out to be more of a pipe dream than an actual thing, and the LCS ships in service are woefully underarmed for service in more hostile waters. The Navy is looking at a new frigate program based on a beefed-up version of the LCS designs. But that leaves the Navy short on ships at a time when it is under increased pressure to deal with a growing Chinese fleet in the Pacific, and the antisubmarine role has once again become a high priority.
Richardson said that the Navy needs to look at taking early steps to plan to extend the lives of Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers to prevent further gaps and stretch the lives of those ships 15 to 20 years beyond their present projected spans in order to reach the Navy's goal of a 355 ship fleet in 15 instead of 30 years. But just keeping current ships won't be enough, as construction programs for new ships lag.
So, Richardson said, “We’re taking a hard look at the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. There’s seven or eight of those that we could take a look at."
He acknowledged that some cost-benefit analysis would need to be done because "those are some old ships and everything on these ships is old… a lot has changed since we last modernized those." Still, other navies have managed to modernize the ships to make them useful. Australia added vertical launch systems to its FFGs, allowing them to carry more capable anti-air and anti-ship missiles. And programs such as the modular Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) being built for the Navy by Raytheon could theoretically be used to modernize the handful the Navy could re-commission.
Dear Ghost Ships, Uncle Sam Wants You!
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...tired-carrier-uss-kitty-hawk-out-of-mothballs
US Navy Looking At Bringing Retired Carrier USS Kitty Hawk Out Of Mothballs
Bringing back its last operational conventionally powered supercarrier would help the Navy make its 12 carrier fleet goal a reality.
By Tyler RogowayJune 8, 2017
The War Zone355 ship NavyAdmiral Thomas Mooreaircraft carrierCG-47CV-63FFG-7FrigatemothballsOliver Hazard Perry Classpresident trumpReserve FleetSupercarrierTiconderoga ClassUss Kitty Hawk
Last Stop for USS Kitty Hawk
MC3 Kyle D. Gahlau—U.S. Navy
SHARE
Tyler RogowayView Tyler Rogoway's Articles
twitter.com/Aviation_Intel
As the US Navy struggles to figure out how it can reach its new goal of a 355 ship fleet—up from 275 ships today—as quickly as possible, it has been looking towards extending the life of the ships it already has in service. Now the service is also examining the possibility of selectively pulling ships out of mothballs, refurbishing them, and sending them back to the fleet. One ship in particular may have a better shot than others at sailing the high seas once again—the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)—America's last operational conventionally fueled supercarrier.
The Navy Now Says It Can Get More Service Life Out Of Its Existing FleetBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
The US Navy's Newly Delivered Supercarrier Still Needs a Ton of WorkBy Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
Florida's Full Court Press to Bring a Supercarrier Back to MayportBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
7 Revolutionary Hardware Changes the US Navy Should Make in the Trump EraBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
30 Hornets Pulled From Boneyard, Navy Eyes Ditching New Carrier Arresting GearBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
The head of the Navy's Sea Systems Command, Vice Admiral Thomas Moore, stated that while most ships in the inactive fleet are in too sorry a state to be worth reviving, the USS Kitty Hawk may not be: "Of the carriers that are in inactive force, probably Kitty Hawk is the one that you could think about. But we studied that when we decommissioned Enterprise, and the carriers are pretty old."
USN
Certainly pulling a carrier directly back into service would go a long way to bridging America's "carrier gap" and would make President's Trump's demand for a 12 supercarrier fleet much more obtainable. Currently the Navy has 10 operational supercarriers, and with the USS Gerald Ford's (CVN-78) entry into service date murky at best, that number may not increase for years to come.
USN via USNI
Even just the possibility of Kitty Hawk returning to the fleet is likely music to the ears of those in Mayport, Florida, who have been begging the US Navy to return a supercarrier to the naval station there. The facility was never upgraded to support nuclear propulsion, so after the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) was retired in 2007, it has been without a resident supercarrier, which hurt the local economy and also has strategic implications as well. The Kitty Hawk would be an ideal candidate to call the base home without the need for major infrastructure investments.
USN
Some of the other ships that would seem to be likely candidates for revival will probably be passed over—specifically the first five Ticonderoga class cruisers that sit quiet on the Delaware River. These ships didn't feature Mark 41 vertical launch systems, instead being equipped with twin-arm Mark 26 missile launchers and their associated magazines. But still, many have regarded their rickety reserve status a huge waste of latent surface warfare potential. Moore thinks otherwise, and probably for good reason.
The ships are vastly outdated compared to their active counterparts, and would take serious money to get them even close to their fleet counterparts standard. Not just that, but they have been cannibalized for spare parts in recent years. Moore says: "Most of those ships, from a combat systems perspective, are pretty obsolete...We probably wouldn’t bring them back and they’ve kind of been spare-parts lockers the last couple of years."
Bigbird78/wikicommons
The sorry state of the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) at naval yards in Philadelphia.
Regenerating old ships is all about balancing the cost of bringing them back into service based on what mission sets they could provide, how degraded a capability compared to their modern counterparts is acceptable, and how long they could remain in service once the money has been invested in them.
Aside from the Kitty Hawk, the best candidates for regeneration are the ships that could take on lower-end tasks, and thus not require the huge amount of technological investment as their more advanced cousins require. Primarily this includes the Navy's mothballed logistical ships and especially its Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates. The tough Oliver Hazard Perry class ships were retired too soon by many accounts—a symptom of their fiscal neglect more than anything else—and were ripe for a major upgrade like many of the second-hand models operated by allied Navies around the globe have received. Some of these enhancements include the installation of Mark 41 vertical launch systems and upgrades to the ship's sensors and combat systems.
USN
Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate USS Thatch patrols the Persian Gulf in 2009.
"We’ll go look at the FFGs, see if there is utility there... We’ll look at the combat logistics force, see if there’s utility there... So, there is limited opportunity in the inactive fleet but we’ll look at it ship-by-ship."
It is very likely President Trump would support such a plan, in fact we predicted exactly this type of asset regeneration program would occur under his administration. Trump also has a personal history with being very comfortable with operating aging but upgraded vehicles. He even hinted at the possibility of bringing back the Iowa class battleship during his campaign, although that is extremely unlikely to ever happen regardless of the political will involved.
Contact the author: [email protected]
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/navy-considers-reactivating-mothballed-warships
Navy Considers Reactivating Mothballed Warships
kitty
The carrier Kitty Hawk, second from left, alongside Independence, Constellation and Ranger at NISMF Bremerton
By MarEx 2017-06-08 21:12:31
In a recent interview with defense industry outlet DefAero Report, NAVSEA commander Vice Adm. Thomas Moore raised the possibility that the Navy could reactivate mothballed ships as part of its plan to build up to a 355-vessel fleet. Among the candidates are the remaining Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates and a number of the combat logistics ships, with an outside chance for the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk – the Navy's last conventionally-fueled flat-top.
"We'll go look at the [Oliver Hazard Perry-class] if there's utility there, we'll go look at some of the combat logistics force ships . . . probably of the carriers that are in inactive status right now, Kitty Hawk is the one that you could think about," Moore said. "The carriers are pretty old, so I think there's limited opportunity in the inactive fleet to bring those back but we're going to go look at that ship by ship and put that into the mix." The first hulls in the Ticonderoga class of guided missile cruisers are off the table. "Most of those ships are obsolete and they've kind of been spare parts lockers for the last couple years," Moore said.
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the ex-U.S. Navy hulls are still in service with other armed forces around the world, including the navies of Pakistan, Turkey, Poland, Egypt and Bahrain. Australia, Spain and Taiwan liked the design enough to build their own, and over a dozen foreign-built Perry-class ships are still in active service. The U.S. Navy retains about one dozen inactive Perry-class hulls in its Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facilities, several of which are candidates for foreign military sales. Many current operators have modified their Perry-class frigates, re-engining with Cat 3512B diesels, adding SM-2 missiles, Mk-41 vertical launch systems and improved radars. Several American politicians have called for the Navy to take the same approach.
The Perry class has one notable advantage: they are notoriously hard to sink. USS Stark survived two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi warplane in 1987, and USS Samuel B. Roberts managed to stay afloat after striking an Iranian mine the following year, despite severe damage. Both vessels were repaired and returned to service. In a live-fire exercise in 2016, the decommissioned USS Thatch absorbed four Harpoon anti-ship missiles; one Maverick missile; multiple Hellfire missiles; one 2,000 lb. bomb; one 500 lb. bomb; and one Mk. 48 torpedo. She stayed afloat for 12 hours (with calm weather, and without fuel or munitions aboard).
Extending service life
In a recent speech, Vice Adm. Moore also raised the possibility of extending the service life of active vessels as a strategy to enlarge the fleet – so long as the Navy can commit to a regular and consistent maintenance schedule. "We’re taking a pretty close look at what it would take to get them out another five, another 10 years . . . And people will say, well we’ve never really gotten a surface ship past 35 or 40 years, and I will point out all the time that we routinely take aircraft carriers to 50 years," he said. "And the reason we do that is because we consistently do all the maintenance you have to do on an aircraft carrier to get it to 50 years. So we know how to do this." Moore suggested that by extending vessel service life out by one or two more drydocking availabilities, the Navy could reach the 355-ship mark by 2030-2035 at a relatively economical cost.
Moore restricted his comments to steel-hulled vessels. "What happens over 25 years? Aluminum doesn’t quite have the tensile strength, so you’ll have a little bit more flexibility in the hull. We’ve seen this with some of the cracking in the cruise superstructures," he said. The Navy is currently building a series of 13 aluminum-hulled Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships, and the fourth vessel in the class – LCS 8, USS Montgomery – suffered a crack in her hull after colliding with a tugboat last October. Moore did not reference this incident, but he said that "we’ll proceed a little bit more cautiously on extending the service life of aluminum ships than we will steel-hulled ones.”
https://arstechnica.com/information...-old-ships-to-grow-fleet-but-not-battleships/
Navy chief: It may be time to bring back retired warships
Some Oliver Hazard Perry FFGs may be candidates for reboot to help grow fleet faster.
Sean Gallagher - Jun 14, 2017 3:44 pm UTC
Enlarge / The Oliver Hazard Perry-class fast frigate USS Ford (FFG 54) departs Pearl Harbor in this 2010 photo. The Navy is looking at bringing back a handful of the decommissioned ships.
US Navy
228
In a speech before the Naval War College yesterday, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said that the Navy is looking at "every trick" to grow the fleet more quickly toward the Navy's goal of 355 ships, including extending the lives of ships already in the fleet and "bringing ships back." And one of the candidates for a comeback, Richardson said, is the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate. (The Iowa-class battleships, despite political posturing by President Trump during the election campaign, have not yet been mentioned.)
The Perry class ships were the Navy's equivalent of the Air Force's A-10 Thunderbolt II—workhorse ships that lacked the glamor of larger, more capable commands that performed missions essential to the fleet. They were originally built as guided missile frigates (FFGs), intended to provide a combination of air and antisubmarine defenses for carrier battle groups. The few ships being considered for reactivation were all built in the late 1980s and decommissioned over the past five years. About 10 are held in the Navy's Inactive Fleet Inventory designated for foreign sale, while the remainder are slotted to be scrapped or sunk as targets.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson speaks at the Naval War College on June 13, 2017.
Enlarge / Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson speaks at the Naval War College on June 13, 2017.
DVIDS/Department of Defense
The Australian Navy has managed to keep three of its original Perry-class frigates (known as the Adelaide class) in service through upgrades to its power plants and other life-extending maintenance. Several other navies still operate former US ships of the class.
But the US Navy moved to decommission all of its Perry FFGs to make room for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) classes, claiming heavy wear from overuse had rendered them too expensive to keep afloat. The move has been seen as more political than operational by many analysts, because the Navy's leadership had neglected the ships for so long—putting off upgrades to the missile system and then dispensing with it altogether and replacing it with M242 Bushmaster automatic cannons. The Navy instead spent its budget on newer, larger, more capable ships (the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers) and on the LCS with its "modular" mission capabilities.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the neglect, the Perry ships were put into mothballs faster than the Navy could replace them, leaving a major gap in the US fleet.
Now, orders for new LCS ships are on hold because that "modular" mission capability turned out to be more of a pipe dream than an actual thing, and the LCS ships in service are woefully underarmed for service in more hostile waters. The Navy is looking at a new frigate program based on a beefed-up version of the LCS designs. But that leaves the Navy short on ships at a time when it is under increased pressure to deal with a growing Chinese fleet in the Pacific, and the antisubmarine role has once again become a high priority.
Richardson said that the Navy needs to look at taking early steps to plan to extend the lives of Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers to prevent further gaps and stretch the lives of those ships 15 to 20 years beyond their present projected spans in order to reach the Navy's goal of a 355 ship fleet in 15 instead of 30 years. But just keeping current ships won't be enough, as construction programs for new ships lag.
So, Richardson said, “We’re taking a hard look at the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. There’s seven or eight of those that we could take a look at."
He acknowledged that some cost-benefit analysis would need to be done because "those are some old ships and everything on these ships is old… a lot has changed since we last modernized those." Still, other navies have managed to modernize the ships to make them useful. Australia added vertical launch systems to its FFGs, allowing them to carry more capable anti-air and anti-ship missiles. And programs such as the modular Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) being built for the Navy by Raytheon could theoretically be used to modernize the handful the Navy could re-commission.
