Canadian Surface Combatant RFQ

[Kirkhill]

More bad news for one of the ships (Constellation class) that Alan Williams loves to point to as an option to continuing with the CSC.

Navy's New Constellation Class Frigate Is A Mess

Endless changes to the base FREMM design have contributed to major delays and now "unplanned weight growth" could lead to a loss of speed.

www.twz.com

Further to...

Could US Navy’s Constellation-class frigates share Littoral Combat Ship fate?

The Constellation-class frigates have been developed to replace the troubled Littoral Combat Ship vessels, which are being decommissioned.

www.naval-technology.com

Design immaturity and a US procurement tendency to stray from original blueprints could lead the US Navy into trouble with its Constellation programme.

The problem that occurs when everybody wants to leave their thumbprint on your project.

 

[KevinB]

The problem that occurs when everybody wants to leave their thumbprint on your project.

Honestly the biggest issue is trying to claim you are buying a ‘cheap’ ship, but it doesn’t fulfill your mission requirements, so you modify it and then wonder why it isn’t cheap anymore…

 

[Baz]

There is also often a disconnect between the operational intent and the requirement. The intent gets lost in the translation to a technical requirement. Then, off the shelf systems, that would perfectly meet the intent, have to be customized to meet the requirement.

The other thing that sneaks in is trying to enforce the old “way of doing things” onto a new system, which also requires customization. An example of this was certain ex-Aurora people asking how the P-8 was going to meet the Aurora conops. Why would it have to if it meets the operational intent and has an appropriate conops?

 

[Kirkhill]

Honestly the biggest issue is trying to claim you are buying a ‘cheap’ ship, but it doesn’t fulfill your mission requirements, so you modify it and then wonder why it isn’t cheap anymore…

See, there's the difference. I would buy the stock model and figure out what it could do first. Once I had that nicely bedded down, and figured out the gaps it was covering, then I would look into mods. Only then would I look at custom builds.

And by that time the operational needs would have changed in any case.

 

[KevinB]

See, there's the difference. I would buy the stock model and figure out what it could do first. Once I had that nicely bedded down, and figured out the gaps it was covering, then I would look into mods. Only then would I look at custom builds.

And by that time the operational needs would have changed in any case.

Or buy a ship that has what you need to start…

The FREMM/Con wasn’t designed to do what the USN wanted - probably would have been easier to take the AB hull and play with the model to make what was wanted.

 

[Rainbow1910]

As much as I do like to gloat about the obnoxious Constellation fans finally having to eat crow over their comments regarding CSC, a lot of the issues around the program are poorly understood or false.

It is common for ships to have fabrication of parts and construction itself start before the design is completed, same for modifications to the design ongoing throughout parts of the building process. The Arleigh Burke class destroyers alongside the Zumwalt class destroyers are recent examples, with the first 5 ships of the former being built with the design at 50% completion while the latter started construction at 80% design completion. As long as you can keep things reasonably under control, there is no catastrophic issues with doing this.



Look above at an figure on module design percentage complete on Constellation as of October, 2023. Notice how the most important sections of the hull, the machinery spaces, are the most mature compared to sections like the stern and mast. Even the least developed parts of the design AS OF OCTOBER 2023 are at the same level as the first 5 Burke class destroyers upon initial construction. The most important sections of the design and the sections that will be worked on first have generally the most advanced design progress. The sky is very much not falling in this aspect.

Design changes are also expected considering that outside of baseline civilian (and NATO warship standards I believe?) standards, each nation generally has their own specifications to what they want ships and their systems built to. Nations modifying foreign designs to incorporate fundamental national standardized things that NEED to be changed like the jump from European 230v to US standard 120v electrical is not abnormal. This includes actual hull construction and damage control standards but can vary tremendously down to things as seemingly minute as the layout and square footage of berthing/accommodation spaces. This is before you get into the changes from nation to nation that each Navy might want, but not necessarily need. The drop in commonality from the baseline FREMM design to Constellation of 85% to 15% seems horrid but when you realize that the French and Italian variants of the FREMM only have a 15% commonality with each other, it puts things into a far less dire perspective.

Claims of unplanned weight gain eating into growth margins of the ship are partially false as well. The US has specified that 300t of additional weight is being added to the ship to bring it up to USN survivability standards, the GAO report does not take this specified and planned for weight into consideration and tacks it onto the category of "unplanned" as the tonnage figure they use was released prior to this additional weight being announced as already worked into the design. There is a lot of doom and gloom circulating from people skimming the GAO report and either quoting it out of context or taking it at face value without addressing the facts. It is the GAO's job to criticize US procurements and while they are generally good at their job and a valuable asset, this constant negativity clouds their judgement at times and can produce slanted or misleading reports.

Not to say that there is not actual pressing concerns regarding the Constellation program, because there is. They really cut steel far too early on the ships and had drastically unrealistic production timetables. There was dramatic amounts of pressure to get a design picked, modified and rolling that was built domestically. You are looking at the result of that situation. The yard building the ships is also facing major personnel shortages/retention (something like 500~ white/blue collar employees across the work force?) due to the fact they are still building the LCS alongside an LCS derivative frigate for the Saudi's. Cost estimates for the program have also been generously low, something people were very happy to compare to CSC's comparatively high cost figures without proper context or common sense.

 

[Baz]

I sometimes think that the openness of the US procurement system, especially reporting to Congress, skews peoples ability to have a go at their programs. They openly talk about the things they need to fix.

To my knowledge, the closest that Canada has to the GAO would be the auditor General, and they aren't able to do the in depth work the GAO does.

Does any other country even try to publish something similar to the DOT&E Annual Reports? They have legislated the requirement to "Document weapon system performance and any vulnerabilities in an independent and objective report to Congress and the Secretary of Defense" and they publish the results.

We, on the other hand, actively try to say "all is well" when it clearly isn't.

I sometimes wonder if we'd be better off to get in bed with them, buy whatever they buy, including the mod / blocks, and use our particular experiences to influence their projects?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I sometimes think that the openness of the US procurement system, especially reporting to Congress, skews peoples ability to have a go at their programs. They openly talk about the things they need to fix.

To my knowledge, the closest that Canada has to the GAO would be the auditor General, and they aren't able to do the in depth work the GAO does.

Does any other country even try to publish something similar to the DOT&E Annual Reports? They have legislated the requirement to "Document weapon system performance and any vulnerabilities in an independent and objective report to Congress and the Secretary of Defense" and they publish the results.

We, on the other hand, actively try to say "all is well" when it clearly isn't.

I sometimes wonder if we'd be better off to get in bed with them, buy whatever they buy, including the mod / blocks, and use our particular experiences to influence their projects?

Yes.