Navy Wants Frigate Now, Despite Esper Review

PENTAGON: Even as the Navy waits for Defense Secretary Mark Esper to wrap up his review of their shipbuilding and modernization plans, service leaders are fast-tracking a new frigate program they say will be a critical part of the fleet. 

“I see no scenario where frigate isn’t a major player where we’re heading,” Navy acquisition chief James Geurts told a small group of reporters this week following testimony before the Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee.

The frigate program, or FFG(X), was originally slated for contract award this summer, but Navy officials — including Acting Secretary Thomas Modly — have hinted they’re trying to push that date up. Modly told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt recently he instructed Geurts “to try and accelerate that earlier, and he’s looking into the possibilities for doing that.”

Geurts didn’t give an updated timeline, but said “we’re in the middle of source selection and will announce the output of that soon, and then we’re going to get right into detailed design and construction.” 

The competition to build 20 ships at a rate of two per year between 2021 to 2029 took a political turn recently when a bipartisan group of Wisconsin state lawmakers sent a letter to President Trump promoting the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in the state as best suited for the work.

Wisconsin, a critical tossup state in this year’s presidential election, is very much in play to go either red or blue in November.

“We have witnessed what the loss of opportunity does to the Midwest,” the letter said. “When industry departs, so does hope.” Wrapping up the pitch for close to $20 billion worth of work over the 20 ship contract, the senators concluded by telling the president his “leadership and attention to this opportunity is vital.” Late last month, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers also announced a $29 million grant to upgrade the Port of Marinette to ease changes for frigate construction.

But other shipbuilding heavyweights are involved in the competition. Huntington Ingalls Industries is thought to be offering a more lethal version of its national  security cutter; a joint effort between Navantia and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works is submitting a version of its F-100 design already in use by the Spanish navy; Austal is offering a version of its trimaran littoral combat ship; and Fincantieri is offering its FREMM design.

Plans call for the FFG(X) to be a small, multi-mission ship loaded out with the Aegis combat system, 32 vertical launch cells and a new SPY-6 radar system. The first ship to be put under contract this year should cost $1.2 billion, according to budget documents, with the following hull in 2021 dropping to $1.05 billion. The Navy expects the remaining ships to cost closer to $900 million.

But the Navy has made big promises over a smaller, faster, dynamic ship before — and ended up with the Littoral Combat Ship which has yet to find its role in the fleet.

Unveiling the fiscal 2021 budget last month, Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, acknowledged the specter of the LCS. “The frigate, we don’t want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” he said. “Right now we’ll award one later this year, we’ll award one next year, and the plan is for one next year but that will get looked at. Then we’ll ramp up to two to three, with nine over the next five years.

With that note of caution sounded, the admirals are ready to move out on the program. The frigate is “a key component of the future for us,” Vice Adm. James Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for war-fighting requirements and capabilities said during the hearing alongside Geurts. “We’re introducing a lot of common equipment that already exists for us” on other platforms, which will allow the Navy to “be able to build more of them eventually.”