Survivability standards depend on the ship's mission

Drachinifel challenges the argument that FREMM's departure from American standards automatically disqualified it as a useful frigate. He distinguishes a fundamentally unsuitable ship from one with different pumping capacity, bulkhead arrangements, or national design practice. Carriers, submarines, destroyers, and LCS already have different requirements because they perform different jobs. His proposed frigate tradeoff accepts less survivability than a front-line fleet air-defence ship while retaining self-defence and submarine-hunting capability. In that arrangement, the frigate protects the larger air-defence ships from torpedoes, while those ships protect it against aerial threats. The Oliver Hazard Perry comparison supplies the earlier US example of differentiated escorts.