Tag Archives: AMDR

CIMSEC Interviews Captain Mark Vandroff, Program Manager DDG 51, Part 1

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC sat down with Captain Mark Vandroff to solicit his expert insight into the complex world of acquisition and the future of the U.S. Navy’s destroyers. CAPT Vandroff is the Program Manager of the U.S. Navy’s DDG 51 program, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which is the most numerous warship in the U.S. Navy. In the first part of this two part interview series, CAPT Vandroff discusses the capability offered by the SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar, the differences in warship design between the currently serving Flight IIA and upcoming Flight III variants, and the U.S. Navy’s ongoing Future Surface Combatant Study. 

This is a big year for your program. It is the fiscal year where you begin procuring the new Flight III destroyers. Can you talk about the differences from the Flight IIA to the Flight III?

The raison d’etre of Flight III is fielding AMDR. SPY 6 is the designation for that radar as it goes on a DDG 51. That radar program may yield other radar technologies because it is very exciting technology. The Flight III gets the AMDR SPY-6 radar onto a DDG 51 platform, replacing the SPY-1 radar currently in use. That radar is a significant, multi-generational leap forward in radar technology. In the same space and roughly twice as much power, it produces over 35 times as much power out. Between the power efficiency and sensitivity of the radar, it is a huge step forward. It also includes other very desirable radar features such as a much improved resistance to advanced counter-radar jamming techniques and the ability to integrate seamlessly through a radar system controller, not only the S-Band SPY-6, but also an additional separate frequency input. It can use the multi-frequency input for better targeting, and a lot of good things happen for targeting and your reaction time by synthesizing multi-band input. We hook up the SPY-6 AMDR, which is a S-BAND radar, with the existing and already planned for DDG 51 X-Band emitter AN/SPQ-9B to get the full radar suite for the Flight III.

Primary Flight III changes.
Primary Flight III changes.

If it were all that simple I would tell you to talk to my colleague, CAPT Seiko Okano, she’s the SPY-6 program manager. I would not have to do very much and she would just deliver me a different radar. But the radar requires us to do things to the ship to be able to accommodate it.

The radar takes about twice as much power. We had to take the ship from three, 3 megawatt (MW) generators to three, 4 MW generators because we never have three on at one time for purposes of redundancy. We always calculate what would happen if you had to run on two of the three. When we calculate what our battle loads are and can we handle them, we always calculate to whether we can handle them with two of the three generators if one of them is down for whatever reason. That’s how you design a redundant warship.

So when we up the power out of our generators to four megawatts we run into our first physics challenge. When we up the power we have to do one of two things, either increase the voltage or increase the current. At a certain level of current, it becomes difficult and at times unsafe to run a certain amount of current through the kind of wiring we would put on a ship. With what we currently have, if we had to up the power anymore we would be hitting those limits. So we have to up the voltage, which is easily done. We’ve got 4160 volt power on aircraft carriers, on DDG-1000, so we had to implement that for Flight III. There’s a separate 4160 bus for powering the radar, and then we stepped down with transformers for our 450 loads that exist. That allows us to power the radar, and at the same time power the rest of the ship the way it is powered in a Flight IIA. That was the first change and we’ve done a lot of work to make sure that electric plant design will be safe, stable, redundant, and survivable in battle. That’s been the work of the last two or three years, and a lot of work is put into splitting those loads out.We have a 4160 distribution system with the existing 450 distribution system that we could do that with. That was the first ship side technical challenge that I would say now we’re pretty much through. The new generators, the four MW generators, have gone through their critical design review and they’re just now starting production.

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Flight III Electric Plant Concept.

The next thing we needed to look at was actually powering the radar. The radar runs off 4160 converted 1000 volt DC to AC. The equipment to convert that and condition it was similar to what DDG-1000 uses, they use that power conversion module on their SPY-3 radar. We competed, it was a full and open competition, we got many bids, and DRS (Diagnostic/Retrieval Systems, Inc)  won the work. They came to us with a box that was based on their DDG-1000 design, but had a couple of generations of power monitoring and power conditioning improvement on top of that incorporating lessons learned from the commercial world. That’s been through its preliminary and critical design review and its gone into production now. That gets us power to the radar, and power to the electric grid.

If you think about power what else does the radar need? The radar needs more cooling. A more powerful radar produces more heat. For reference, a refrigerating ton is the amount of cooling I would have if I rolled a ton of ice into this room and let it melt for 24 hours. A DDG 51 today has about 1000 tons of cooling. Once you install the SPY-6 you really need 1400-1500 tons of cooling. When we were starting the early preliminary design, NAVSEA already had an energy saving initiative. It was a plan to take the Navy standard 200 ton plants and equip them with a more fuel efficient compressor, and some other design improvements. All of that’s made by York Navy Systems in Pennsylvania that makes that standard 200 ton plant. NAVSEA works with them, and they are actually in the process now, and there’s a working prototype of the improved 200 ton plant that is putting out over 325 tons of cooling and it is just going through its equipment qualification to make sure  the new machine will pass all the Navy standards for shock survivability. We are getting ready to put the initial orders for those to deliver to the Flight III because when you put five of those you get an excess of 1500, and that will give us more than enough  cooling to accommodate the new cooling loads. So those have been the key components in changing the ship for the Flight III.

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Prototype HES/C 300 rton A/C chiller.

In terms of weight, if you put everything that a SPY-6 uses and everything a SPY-1 uses on a scale they roughly balance. However, SPY-1 forms the signal in a signal generator and then transfers that up to the array, so that signal generator is lower in the ship. Because SPY-6 is an active array, the signal is generated on-array, so that means the arrays are heavier. Arrays go up high so that means the weight goes up high. If you are on a ship you are not crazy about high weight. You want to be like a running back, you want your weight low so it is hard to knock you over. The last thing we did is move some weight around in the ship. We thickened up the hull and  the scantlings, which are the ribs of the hull. That offsets the high weight by putting extra weight low, and moves your center of gravity back down. The center of gravity of a Flight III will be roughly where the Flight IIA’s center of gravity is now. We are still concerned about things like performance for flight ops and maneuvering, and what that means for the pitch and roll in different sea states. We have the advantage of  Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock’s great new MASK tank where they can do all sorts of different sea states all in one tank. We have the scale model of the Flight III being built out at Carderock and that will go through all its tank testing with an idea to make sure that as we are designing the ship we know where we are for maneuvering the ship.

Those are the big shipboard changes that facilitate the introduction of the radar. It is cool for me as the ship guy to talk about moving weight around to get good center of gravity,  or getting the new electrical plant, but all that has to mean something to the warfighter. What the warfighter gets out of the Flight III is that improved radar performance from the new SPY-6 radar tied into the existing AN/SPQ-9 radar and those synthesized together for better performance in the atmospheric regime and the ballistic missile defense regime. It offers tremendous improvement in capability in both of those regimes.

Because AMDR is such a tremendous increase in capability, how does this affect the DDG 51’s growth margins?

That is one of the reasons we looked at things like the extra cooling and the extra power. If you look at where the Flight IIA is, the Flight IIA has about one and a half MW of service life power growth, and about 200 tons of cooling growth. If you added up every load on a Flight IIA today you would get something just over 4 MW of load, and if you put two 3 megawatt generators on the load together to power those four megawatts. You pay an efficiency penalty when you parallel two generators together, so two 3 megawatt generators gives about 5.8 MW of usable power and about 200 KW of the generators fighting themselves at peak. That is about one and a half MW to one and two thirds MW of margin on a IIA today. The Flight III will have a heavier load. A full battle load will be up over 5.5 MW, but we will be well over 7.5 MW when we put two four MW machines online together. We will have another two MW of power. The total cooling reserve will be about 200 refrigeration tons to 300 refrigeration tons.

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AMDR system overview.

At this point some people usually ask is 2 MW enough when you look at directed energy weapons and railguns. I can tell you the Navy is reevaluating its  historical standards for electrical growth in its future ship design. Will those historical standards be adequate for a future that includes railguns and directed energy? The Flight III will have as great or greater an ability to accommodate that as the Flight IIAs today. Whether or not we need to do something to make that more, and how that would affect ship design in the next ten years, is a question of ongoing discussion, both in the requirements side in OPNAV, and the ship design side in NAVSEA. What are we really going to need, and what does that mean for ship design? That’s the next step.

The Flight III tasking was to get AMDR on and give it the same cooling and power growth potential. Don’t take a step back from the Flight IIA today. I could have put AMDR on Flight III and eaten all the growth, and you would have had a ship with no growth margin. We looked at that extensively because it was the lowest cost option, and discarded that as not responsible. We are going to want to keep these ships around, so keep what we have today as far as margins, and that gave us a certain design and philosophy. I think you will see CNO staff and NAVSEA work together on other concepts of what will we do to grow that some more. But that is the next generation after this Flight III. That will be my relief’s concern to tackle.

What can you tell us about the process behind the Future Surface Combatant Study?

If you look at the way the DoD formulates future requirements, it is called the JCIDS process, the joint capabilities integration and development system, it starts with an analysis, an FCA, a future capabilities analysis. The organization that thinks they might have a future gap, must first analyze what capabilities in a given time frame does a given force structure need to be able to address. From the result of that you write an initial capabilities document and you address an analysis of alternatives. Where we are in that process now is that N96 is running that future capabilities analysis, that is going on now. That is really a requirements evolution, it is not really a technical or acquisition evolution so that is not mine to run.

N96 wanted to be very participative so they have got a team doing it. The team has regular meetings with a couple of oversight councils, one at the captain’s level and one at the flag level. N96 invited a slew of practitioners across the spectrum of operators, acquisition, technical, and budget to get regular briefings on what the teams were doing and get feedback. They thought I was one of the practitioners and I have sat in those meetings. I have seen the work they are doing, and they are doing good work. They are looking out into the future and asking what kind of capabilities will the surface Navy need to contribute to the force in the 2030s, 2040s, and what are we doing today and what modifications do we think we need to make in order to meet those future needs. Those are the questions they are trying to answer.

The question that comes after is more of an acquisition question of which I would expect, both the PEOs (Program Executive Officers) and NAVSEA to be more involved in, and that is the analysis of alternatives. Now that you have told us these are the things you need us to do, what are some of the different ways of doing it, and let’s determine which of those ways might do it best, which ways can do it most affordably. But the future capabilities analysis is where they are at now.

What best practices and lessons learned from the DDG 51 program should inform the Future Surface Combatant Study?

I would put those into two different categories. The DDG 51 program has been successful from a technical standpoint and from an acquisition standpoint. From a technical standpoint, the DDG 51, from its inception, was designed to be flexible, redundant, and survivable. We have proven this, look at the Cole. The ships have taken battle damage and lived to fight another day. The ships have been flexible enough that they were designed in the 1980s and with modification, and sometimes significant modification, could be made combat relevant in the 2020s. The systems engineering of both the design of the ship, and especially the systems engineering that went into the design of the combat system, is good solid systems engineering discipline. Know your requirements, break them down, formulate them, and integrate the pieces back together to provide an end-to-end capability.

To give you an idea, I want to be able to shoot down an air target at a certain distance that is moving a certain speed with a certain level of maneuver. The systems engineer asks how do I design that kill chain? How do I break that down? What capability do I want in the missile, radar, and illuminator?  What parts of that kill chain are going to produce which effects in order to get the end effect that you want? From its earliest days back when Wayne E. Meyer had the Aegis program, that has always been a disciplined engineering process. Whether you are talking about the ship’s survivability, mobility, or the ship’s combat capability, that has been a disciplined technical process. That is good for anyone building ships, or anyone building anything, that mind and that process.

On the acquisition side, there are several things I would want a future shipbuilding program to look back at the DDG 51 program and extract. The first one is a real careful, facts-based decision on what parts of the ship were we going to have the shipbuilder do, and what parts would we contract separately where the government contracts GFE (government furnished equipment) and delivers separately to the ship. There have been times when it has been thought advantageous to go one way or another with that pendulum.

Because there is a certain attractiveness, we could have the Navy buy everything and just have the shipbuilder assemble everything. That’s got problems. You can give the shipbuilder the performance spec for the ship and let the shipbuilder buy everything. That’s got problems. You have different problems both ways. The Aegis program, and especially DDG 51, has always been a point in the middle, and very carefully thought out. What do we want the shipbuilder to buy because we want them to be responsible for it, because it is within their wheelhouse and capability. This could be an engine, generator, or a fire pump. Alternatively, this is not in their wheelhouse, it is not within their capability, and frankly I want control over it like a sonar, radar, or a missile launcher.

Those were thought out decisions in the DDG 51 and I have changed some of them during my time as Program Manager in both directions. Times change, industry changes, but we don’t make those changes lightly, and we make them only after a very long analysis of thinking about the capability we are trying to get, and what is the best way to materialize it. We carefully think through what makes sense to contract directly for, what makes sense to contract out, that is called a make-buy, or the GFE/CFE divide. That is one thing I would have a future program look at DDG 51, and the way they made their decisions. Not that a future program would make all the same decisions, ten years from now industry might change and the requirements might change. They might make a different decision, but the process we used to make that decision was fundamentally sound.

The other thing that has always been key in our program is maximizing competition between the shipbuilders, using profit-related offer, at the sub-tier vendors, and using competition wherever it was possible and practical to get competition. Competition gives you good results in acquisition. From between having a good make-buy plan, and using competition as much as you practically can, marry those together and that provides a good foundation for any future acquisition program.

In Part Two, CAPT Vandroff goes into depth on his publications Confessions of a Major Program Manager published in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and an Acquisition System to Enable American Seapower, published on USNI News and coauthored with Bryan McGrath. He finishes with his thoughts on building acquisition expertise in the military and his reading recommendations. Read Part Two here.

Captain Vandroff is a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. With 10 years as a surface warfare officer and 16 years as an engineering duty officer, he is currently the major program manager for Arleigh Burke – class destroyers.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Nextwar@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: CRYSTAL CITY, Va. (Jan. 12, 2012) Capt. Mark Vandroff, program manager for the DDG 51-Class Shipbuilding at PEO SHIPS, discusses new technology with guests and media during the 24th Annual Surface Navy Association Symposium. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Todd Frantom/Released).

The Capability Cost of a Flight III Ballistic Missile Sea Shield

The following is part of our series “Alternatives to the U.S. Navy’s DDG Flight III

DDG-51 Flt III and the Shifting Sands of BMD Requirements

BulletTo intercept a ballistic missile intercept, platforms must be at the right place at the right time to detect, track, and engage.  Depending on the capability of the sensors and interceptors, these three locations may not be synonymous—the laws of physics and trigonometry are uncompromising; and, the clock is always ticking.  Threats must be properly classified and their ultimate target determined.  Flight paths and opportunities for intercept must be calculated.  Interceptors must perform flawlessly, and to a degree, so must the adversary’s missile.  Any deviation in expected performance throughout the boost, mid-course, and terminal phases that exceeds parameters might be enough to cause a failure to intercept. 

Raytheon Missile Systems nonchalantly describes this manuever as “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” which still doesn’t quite respect enough the degree of complexity and luck required to conduct integrated air and missile defense (IAMD), the integration of simultaneous anti-air warfare (AAW) and ballistic missile defense (BMD).  It does, however, hint at everything that is wrong with our approach to it.  From largely ignoring cheaper ways to attack the enemy kill-chain to Aegis brand myopathy to shifting war-fighting capability requirements to fit fiscal/political constraints, the U.S. Navy is risking the credibility of its large cruiser/destroyer surface combatant force by building its justification on the shifting sands of its BMD requirements.

In 2007, the Navy completed its most aggressive, expensive ($35M) and comprehensive Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) to date, the Maritime Air and Missile Defense of Joint Forces (MAMDJF) AoA, also known as the Next-Generation Cruiser/“CG(X)” AoA.  The recommendation of the analysis was for either a nuclear-powered cruiser or a conventionally powered cruiser with hybrid-electric drive/integrated propulsion system—both larger than the BB-41 Iowa-class battleships. These were to be capable of generating more wattage than the sum of the entire surface combatant fleet, and were to have radar array faces orders of magnitude larger and more sensitive than legacy SPY radars.  The cost per hull was projected at a staggering $9B. 

Among the alternatives the study looked at, near the rear of the discounted hull forms and behind a DDG-1000 mod, was a DDG-51 derivative.  Yet in 2013, the 30-year shipbuilding plan shows 33 of these DDG-51 derivatives, now called Flt III!  What changed that has made the alternative (and its 12-14 foot radar arrays) operationally acceptable when only CG(X) (and its 36 foot radar arrays) were acceptable in 2007-2010?

“I don’t believe they [CG(X) requirements] are clear. And I think its requirements at two levels. First we need to make sure we understand what it is we want on this ship and what it is we want in the fleet, how that is all going to work together. This ship is not going to work by itself. It’s going to work with other components, as part of ballistic missile defense system [and] many other components. We need to understand how that’s all going to work…. I think this is the first time in a long time that we’ve tried to work it in this formal a process. And to work through a real detailed specification and set of requirements. And that is creating some challenges. And there are tradeoffs that have to be done. And these are more than just worrying about what type of hull form we use…”
–Former SECNAV Donald Winter, 2007

AMDR: Battle of the Bands
                     AMDR: Battle of the Bands

From the January 2012 GAO report, “…since the MAMDJF AoA was released the Navy has changed its concept on numbers of Navy ships that will be operating in an IAMD environment.”  This concept, “sensor-netting,” is not new and was in fact analyzed in the MAMDJF AoA, but the problem with relying on sensor-netting multiple sensors and shooters first observed then remains today.  The capability to fuse multiple (and disparate) sensors and pass high-quality track data (measured by its track quality index (TQI)) in real-time for BMD does not exist, nor is there currently a plan to expand existing systems such as Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC).  If the Flight III CONOPS is therefore reliant upon satellite tactical data-links, what does it mean to the Navy’s BMD capability when confronted with an anti-access/area denial (A2AD) environment, such as we may face with a near-peer competitor? The GAO for one concluded that the Flight III will likely “be unsuitable for the most stressful threat environments it expects to face.” 

The purpose of BMD is to defend the U.S. homeland, bases, critical infrastructure (including forces afloat), and Allies from ballistic missiles.  All three of the defense departments—Army, Air Force, Navy—maintain a BMD capability.  The Air Force and the Army have largely invested in developing capabilities to intercept ballistic missiles in terminal flight—their descent from space to final target.  The Navy is primarily investing in interception at the boost and mid-course phases, due to Navy’s ability to use the ocean as maneuver space and close the threat, enhancing ballistic missile defense-in-depth while providing the only means of IAMD for the sea base. 

Intercepting ballistic missiles in boost phase is the most dangerous as it requires the warship to be closest to the enemy.  Intercepting in mid- course is the most difficult due to the distance, including the altitude, and window for intercept—taxing both radar and interceptors.  In both phases, sufficient radar resources must be devoted to tracking the ballistic missile while still searching for additional ballistic or cruise missiles.  For a DDG-51 Flight III without a large radar array, such as the one planned for CG(X), this will be much more challenging. 

When Greenland attacks Africa, it's best to cover all phases of the missile's flight.
        When Greenland launches on Africa, one can’t be too prepared.

The Aegis combat system—a proprietary product of Lockheed Martin (LM)—has evolved from a robust anti-surface cruise missile (ASCM) area-defense system to a comprehensive combat system for all mission areas, including BMD.  Attempts at forcing competition, open architecture, and migration to an enterprise-shared “Objective Architecture” starting with CG(X) have all ultimately failed as LM successfully lobbied against such efforts.  While the merits of each position can be and often are debated, one fact remains: we are utilizing a combat management system that at its root was designed in the 1970s.  Likewise, the decision to go with a Flt III of the DDG-51 line ensures that the Arleigh Burke-class (or derivatives thereof), will be in service for over 100 years.  The B-52 and M-16 are the only likely other platforms that will be able to claim that dubious honor.  How much capability can the Navy continue to squeeze out of a 40-year-old, proprietary combat system (despite its upgrades in hardware and software)?  What is the return-on-investment?  What changed since 2007 when PEO IWS determined that a new combat system was required for the IAMD mission?

Land targets must be defended by hard kill; attacking ballistic missiles with electronic warfare only to cause the missiles to later fall on civilian populations is unacceptable.  Can the same thing be said about the sea base?  Is there significant heartburn over a seduced, distracted, or diverted ballistic missile falling into unoccupied ocean, killing Flipper?  The Navy should look beyond hard kill solutions for a better way to attack the kill chain that does not hazard surface combatants by closing the threat to achieve a boost-phase intercept, but also does not overly tax our radar and interceptor resources (and budgets) for a mid-course intercept.  By focusing exclusively on hitting bullets with bullets; by reducing the IAMD requirements to fit the DDG rather than finding a ship that fits the requirements; and, by building its justification for the DDG line on the shifting sands of politically and fiscally constrained BMD requirements the Navy is risking the credibility and health of its surface force.

Nicolas di Leonardo is a member of the Expeditionary Warfare Division of the OPNAV staff and a graduate student of the Naval War College.  The article represents the author’s views and is not necessarily the position of the Expeditionary Warfare Division, the Naval War College, or the United States Navy.

Flight III – A Piece in The Surface Combatant Puzzle

 

A Lockheed Martin AMDR conceptual depiction.
A conceptual depiction of the Flight III and AMDR.

For a distant observer, commenting on alternatives to the DDG Flight III would be difficult without the well written documents by Congressional Research Service writer Ronald O’Rourke.  His Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs: Background and Issues for Congress lists most of the program’s considered possible alternatives, reducing the scope of the issue to selecting evaluation criteria and identifying a specific solution.  Besides the considered options there is also a recommendation that could broaden the scope of the discussion:

Conduct a thorough [Analysis of Alternatives (AOA)] in accordance with DOD acquisition guidance for its future surface combatant program to include:
(c) implications of the ability of the preferred ship to accommodate new technologies on future capabilities to determine the most suitable ship to carry [The Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR)] and meet near-term [Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD)] requirements and provide a path to far-term capabilities;
(d) implications on future fleet composition;

With the gradual disappearance of frigates from the Navy’s service, the truncation of DDG-1000 to three units, and LCS under critics’ fire, Arleigh Burke is slowly becoming the sole “can-do-all” class of surface combatant. There is an interesting critique of a homogenous ship class force structure related to the history of the Canadian Navy, with the judgment rendered thus:

Force structure planners should be aware that the history of the RCN shows that naval flexibility cannot be derived from a uniform fleet.”

The author, Kenneth Hansen further elaborates his thesis in another article, concluding that  “If the strategic context is complicated, changing, or uncertain, a diversified fleet structure is required.” Armed with such knowledge, let’s step back and reconsider Navy assumptions for its old Future Surface Combatant Program. This envisioned:
• – A DD(X) destroyer for the precision long-range strike and naval gunfire missions;
• – A CG(X) cruiser for the air defense and ballistic missile defense missions; and
• – A smaller combatant called the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) to counter submarines, small surface attack craft (boat swarms), and mines in heavily contested littoral (near-shore) areas.

Many things have caused the cruiser as originally conceived to become unaffordable, the destroyer (DDG-1000) has grown to the cruiser’s price and size, and LCS is suffering badly from a lack of operable modules. But the concept itself is not dead. The original requirements, changed under the pressures of the economy and a drive for efficiency, asked for an AMDR with a relative capability described as “SPY+30.”  The new solution for DDG Flight III has a relative capability of “SPY +15”, called in a GAO report “marginally adequate“. At the same time Ronald O’Rourke reports states:

As part of the [Maritime Air and Missile Defense of Joint Forces (MAMDJF)] AOA, the Navy identified that DDG 1000 can accommodate a SPY+25 radar. As part of a technical submission to the Navy, BIW, the lead designer for DDG 1000 also identified a possible design for a 21-foot radar on DDG 1000. The Navy did not include a variant with this size radar in the Radar/Hull Study.

Fancy a frigate?
                          Fancy a frigate?

Another conclusion from MAMDJF AOA study was that a smaller number of higher performance ships is preferable to networking less-capable but more numerous ships. On the other hand such a former approach deepens the deficit of cruiser/destroyers. Is there a way out of this trap? As controversial as it seems, it is theoretically possible to reintroduce a hi-lo mix into the surface fleet, consisting of cruisers and frigates. The aim would be to acquire one cruiser and two frigates for a price of two DDG Flight III. The result would be a Navy with a high-capability ship focused on IAMD undistracted by other tasks, such as ASW, with dedicated escorts in numbers allowing it to close the gap in surface combatants hulls. The fleet structure could therefore consist of:

1. Cruisers with the IAMD mission. If DDG-1000 fills this role it can retain its striking capability. Its towed sonar would be eventually cancelled and ASW mission limited to self-defense and shorter ranges. As an intermediate step toward future capabilities, an extant volume search radar could be retrofitted to the three hulls under construction, allowing more time for BMD software development and integration. This cruiser would represent a scaled-down version of CG(X).

2. Frigates would fill the escort mission focused on ASW and anti-air local area defense. For this purpose, a low-end Aegis could be used, possibly combined with a future, economy version of SPY-3 radar. Frigates should resemble the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen more than the Spanish Alvaro de Bazan-class with a the difference being a higher number of VLS cells. This class promises to be an affordable workhorse of the fleet, doubtful for the DDG Flight III, which looks more and more strategic.

3. DDG-51 and its follow-on class, which opens a discussion about the word “destroyer” in the U.S. Navy. In order to avoid a “can-do-it-all” syndrome, the follow-on class (a differently conceived Flight III perhaps) could specialize in strike and anti-air area defense capabilities without BMD, and limited ASW capabilities similar to the aforementioned cruisers. In other words, this class would represent a return to a more realistic representation of DD(X) idea. A flexible class would be a good companion both to carriers, supporting the strike mission, and to the corvettes below, providing air defense. It is also neutral towards follow-on decisions and permits the class to free up the extra room for needed growth margins.

4. Corvettes, with a mission to “clear littoral clutter” and focus on ASW, ASuW, MCM, and patrol tasks.

Such a mix would also open the path for new technologies like an all-electric drive, a Total Ship Computing Environment (TSCE), or Advanced Gun System (AGS) to develop in the Fleet. New technologies need enough numbers to evolve into something practical, otherwise they become unwanted expensive “gold-plating”. This four-tier structure also offers flexibility for forming surface task forces tailored to changing situations.

Przemek Krajewski alias Viribus Unitis is a blogger In Poland.  His area of interest is broad context of purpose and structure of Navy and promoting discussions on these subjects In his country