Finkantieri gradi nove fregate za USN

[MOTORISTA]

Nekako nam je ova vest promakla ispod radara.

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RM SAD je izabrala Finkantieri kao pobednika u trci za nove fregate. Ova italijanska firma je ponudila svoj modifikovan projekat FREMM i njime pobedila ostale takmace u toj trci. Brodovi će biti građeni u brodogradilištu Marinette Marine u Viskonsinu a cena za prvi brod iznosi 1,281 milijardu $. Od te sume novca brodogradilištu ide 795 miliona zelembaća, dok se očekuje da prosečna cena brodova bude oko 780 miliona $, ukoliko bude izgrađeno svih planiranih 20 primeraka. Planirano je da prva fregata bude isporučena u julu 2026, dok bi sledeća trebalo da joj se pridruži u oktobru iste godine.

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The US Navy selects Fincantieri design for next-generation frigate
By: David B. Larter    April 30

In a major win for Wisconsin’s Marinette Marine shipyard, the Navy selected Fincantieri’s so-called FREMM design, an acronym that stands for “European multi-purpose frigate,” in its original Italian. The shipyard, which is also on the hook for building the remaining mono-hull littoral combat ships and a frigate version of it for Saudi Arabia, is now a major player in U.S. Navy shipbuilding.

The detailed design and construction contract, worth $795.1 million, covers the design work and the first ship, as well as options for up to nine others. The total value of the contract if all options are exercised will be $5.58 billion. The contract is expected to be rebid after the first 10 ships.

The Navy is providing a significant portion of government furnished equipment, including a variant of the AN/SPY-6 radar destined for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers under construction, and those costs are not included in the $5.58 billion.

Fincantieri campaigned hard to win the contract, bringing the FREMM to the United States to show it off and work with U.S. ships off the coast. The victory beats out challenges from Huntington Ingalls Industries, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works with Navantia’s F100 design, and Austal USA with an up-gunned version of its trimaran littoral combat ship.

According to the the Navy 2021 budget documents, the service is planing for it to take six years to complete design and construction of the ship, which should be finished in 2026.

The second frigate is expected to be ordered in April 2021, and from there it should be delivered about five and a half years after the award date.

Put another way, the first ship should be delivered to the fleet in July 2026, and the second about three months later.

The FFG(X) is supposed to be a small, multi-mission ship with a modified version of Raytheon’s SPY-6 radar destined for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Combat System, as well as some point defense systems and 32 vertical launch cells for about half the cost of a DDG.

Of course, without knowing which ship the Navy intends to buy and what the final detailed designs look like, firm price estimates are impossible, but the Pentagon has some projections.

The first ship ordered in 2020 is expected to cost $1.28 billion, according to budget documents.

The buy was supposed to be one ship in FY20, then two vessels every year until the full 20-ship buy was complete. But the Navy wanted to make sure it staggered the buy more responsibly, said Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, in his rollout of the 2021 budget earlier this year.

"We don’t want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” Crites said. "As it is, we’re going to have eight frigates under construction when we deliver the first one in 2026."

“Right now we’ll award one later this year, wand the plan is for one next year but that will get looked at. Then we’ll ramp up to two to three, with nine in the [future-year defense program].”

Izvor: CLICK

[MOTORISTA]

USN procenjuje da će cena novih brodova iznositi oko 870 miliona dolara dok pomorski analitičar Erik Labs procenjuje da će ta cena biti oko 1,2 milijarde zelenih novčanica po jednoj fregati.

US Navy’s cost estimate for new frigate won’t hold water, predicts government analyst
By: David B. Larter October 15, 2020

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Navy’s cost estimate for its new Constellation-class frigate will end up being about 40 percent short of the final cost per ship, the Congressional Budget Office predicted Tuesday.

Eric Labs, the widely respected CBO analyst who produces assessments of Navy programs for lawmakers, calculated the cost of the ship would be about $1.2 billion per hull. The Navy’s estimate is $870 million per ship. The whole 10-ship contract, if executed, will cost about $12.3 billion, CBO estimated. The Navy estimates $8.7 billion.

The CBO analysis is based on a combination of factors including: the average cost of building similar ships per thousand tons; the cost of similar systems on similar ships; historical data of savings achieved across the life of a shipbuilding program; and it accounts for the fact that the growth of shipbuilding costs historically outpaces inflation in the overall economy.

The U.S. Navy's top officer says the service is looking for something smaller than its DDG-1000 class, but still wants to "pack some heat."

Indeed, if the Navy’s estimate were to hold, it would be the least expensive surface combatant in the past 50 years, the report concluded.

If the CBO estimate holds true, it will be the latest in a series of programs that have well exceeded their cost estimates. The Navy has been roundly criticized for what the Congressional Research Service estimates is a 27 percent cost growth for the new carrier Gerald R. Ford, though at $13.3 billion the cost of the Ford exceeds the entire 10-ship FFG(X) buy, no matter whose estimate holds.

CBO allowed that the Navy has some good reasons to believe that it can keeps costs down, despite historically almost always underestimating the cost of its shipbuilding projects. The ship is based on a parent design of a ship that has been in production for years now, it is developing little in the way of new technology for it, and shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine is an experienced small surface combatant builder.

But “costs of all surface combatants since 1970, as measured per thousand tons, were higher,” CBO reports. Additionally, even when systems put on the ship are mature, as they were in the case of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, “costs have turned out to be higher than initially estimated.”

The Navy is also trying to pack a lot more into the parent FREMM design than it has previously accommodated, which could invite unexpected cost growth.

The Navy believes it has been conservative with the estimate, based partially on an independent Defense Department estimate that put the price even lower than the Navy’s $870 million per hull. But based on historical data, CBO is unconvinced.

“In its annual analysis of the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, CBO found that over the past 30 years, lead ships cost 26 percent more than the Navy’s original estimate, using a weighted average,” the report reads. “Nearly all of those lead ships cost at least 10 percent more than the original estimate.”

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Izvor: CLICK

[Dreadnought]

SUPER FFG(X) !! Meet The Constellation (FFG 62) The US Navy’s Newest Frigate

USS Constellation (FFG 62) as the name for the first ship in the new Guided Missile Frigate (FFG(X)). The name was selected in honor of the first U.S. Navy ships authorized by Congress in 1794.

The FFG(X) will be similar to the Bergamini-class, a joint French-Italian project. Fincantieri lists the vessel’s endurance as forty-five days with a top speed in excess of 27 knots. At a reduced 15-knot speed, range is 6,000 nautical miles.

[MOTORISTA]

Poučena lošim iskustvom sa brodovima klase LCS, američka mornarica će izgraditi obalno postrojenje za testiranje u kojem će biti testirane nove komponenete za nove brodove.

Citing littoral combat ship failures, Congress pushes the US Navy to get FFG(X) right
By: David B. Larter November 5, 2020

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Navy will have to set up a land-based testing site for the engineering plant destined for its new Constellation-class frigate program, according to a provision in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act on President Trump’s desk.

The frigate program, lately known as FFG(X), includes a propulsion system that hasn’t been used before in the Navy, which Congressional authorizers see as a risk to be mitigated by a testing facility. The ship is being adapted from Fincantieri’s FREMM design, which was a strategy to reduce overall risk in the program by using an existing design.

“While recognizing an existing parent design can reduce design, technical, and integration risks,” an explanatory statement for the NDAA notes, “the conferees are concerned that significant risks remain in the FFG-62 program, including: cost realism; shifting to predominantly U.S. component suppliers instead of the mainly foreign suppliers used in the parent vessel design; and a complex Combined Diesel Electric and Gas Hull, Mechanical and Electrical (HM&E) drive train that has not previously been used on U.S. Navy ships.”

The move is the latest in a series of measures dictated to the Navy by an increasingly skeptical Congress that has repeatedly expressed concerns about the Navy’s dubious track record for fielding new technologies. Members have put restrictions on how fast the Navy can move on some unmanned technologies, for example, fearing the service will charge too far ahead and find it can’t make its concepts work, an issue that has dogged the littoral combat ship program.

The conference report makes specific mention of the LCS as an example of the Navy skipping land-based testing to its detriment.

“Since 1972, [land based engineering and test sites] testing has reduced the acquisition risk of five of the seven Navy surface combatant classes (Spruance-class, Oliver Hazard Perry-class, Ticonderoga-class, Arleigh Burke-class, and Zumwalt-class),” the explanation reads. “The littoral combat ship classes, the Freedom- and Independence-classes, are the two recent classes that have not had the benefit of a LBETS.

“Since lead ship deliveries in 2008 and 2010, both LCS classes have encountered significant, costly, and debilitating engineering failures. The conferees believe many of these LCS engineering failures would have been discovered, analyzed, and corrected faster with less negative operational impact had the Navy established a LCS LBETS.”

Per the statement, the Constellation-class frigate engineering test facility will be required to:

 - “Test of the full propulsion drive train”
 - “Test and facilitation of machinery control systems integration”
 - Be able to simulate “the full range of electrical demands to enable the investigation of load dynamics between the HM&E equipment, combat system, and auxiliary equipment.”
The Navy will be required to submit its plan for implementing the land-based testing site in its 2022 budget materials.

Trump has threatened to veto the NDAA over an unrelated provision he wants added to the bill as part of an ongoing feud with social media companies, though it’s unclear if he will follow-through on the veto threat.

Izvor: CLICK

[MOTORISTA]

Pojavila se maketa novih fregata.

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