What the Frigates up with our Frigates? A Bilgepumps Christmas 2025 @Drachinifel& @wgowshipping

A mature FREMM derivative promised less development risk after LCS, but extensive American changes removed that advantage.

Two British Type 26 hulls are described as afloat, while Australia has selected Mogami for the lighter role.

Clarke rejects extensive Type 26 and Type 31 commonality, citing different builders, design origins, and control systems.

Mercogliano considers the National Security Cutter the likely candidate, while the production pause and potential redesign leave the timetable uncertain.

Clarke argues that Russian readiness problems make Black Sea losses an unreliable general test of the frigate, while Seidel stresses how much the threat has changed.

Powerful American heavy frigates and numerous British patrol frigates illustrate how a navy's wider fleet determines what its smaller ships must do.

A South Korean design transfer and container-carrying autonomous vessels offer contrasting ideas for increasing American surface-ship numbers.

Future task groups could use crewed frigates and destroyers to provide command, deterrence, and human presence for uncrewed wingmen.

The proposed division gives frigates anti-submarine warfare and destroyers area air defence, with secondary capabilities retained in both.

The Type 83's mooted tethered-drone radar shows how gaining sensor height creates difficult aviation, cable, weather, and station-keeping problems.

Hypersonic weapons are a grave threat within the recurring historical contest between offensive innovations and new counters.

Mercogliano's answer centers on larger, longer-ranged combatants supported by the replenishment ships needed for oceanic carrier movements.

The cutter alternative offers a buildable hull, but even that restart may leave the Navy waiting years for new frigates.

A conventional gun-and-VLS Zumwalt could have preserved a modern hull and avoided another disruptive return to Burke production.

A debate over Zumwalt's 155 mm gun separates common ammunition from sharing the expensive electronics inside guided shells.

Mercogliano contrasts the requirements of drone-threatened merchant escort with a possible long-range underwater-drone threat.

Leadership appointments and branch identity prompt differing interpretations of surface-versus-submarine priorities.

Mercogliano rejects that premise: surface ASW and escort work still has a role, exemplified by the Knox and Perry classes.

A proposed LST 100-derived landing ship program is presented as a test of whether named ownership and tightly controlled change orders can preserve a foreign design.

Chinese construction and British Astute and Type 45 examples connect repeated building to learning, cost, and the number of deployable ships.

A class still being completed can already have lost the fabrication workers needed to start its next hull.

The missing hulls matter more because the Offshore Patrol Cutter replacement program is also delayed, leaving aging cutters in service.

Mercogliano agrees with Seidel's historical comparison, but argues that contractor remedies also have to confront Navy requirements and oversight.

Polaris, Nimitz-class carriers, and the Royal Navy's construction hierarchy provide examples of sustained program responsibility.

State dockyards retained enough design and construction knowledge to challenge commercial estimates and test the true cost of a warship class.

Mercogliano's shipyard-executive account links temporary naval architects and frequent change orders to a loss of continuous design responsibility.

Combining Type 26 quieting with Type 45 air-defence requirements would create an exceptionally capable but exceptionally expensive escort.

The response treats commercial volume as an important part of the explanation, alongside clear roles and restraint over changes.

Informal technical communities can share practical solutions, while distance between yards can obstruct that contact.

An anecdote about a Navy secretary's Korean visit compares time spent welding with time absorbed by paperwork and other duties.

Battle-damage examples prompt a qualified argument about additional redundancy, ship size, and the number of hulls a fleet can build.

Automated boat handling and assisted firefighting illustrate the tension between labor-saving equipment and keeping full manual teams in place.

Mercogliano traces the workforce problem through private-yard dependence, post-Cold War contraction, and interrupted naval programs.

Lancaster's overseas farewell prompts concern about the visibility of frigate retirements and the absence of a royal ceremony.

Clarke emphasizes manning and damage-control changes; Drachinifel identifies an additional problem in demanding several variants' combat capabilities from one hull.

Age-of-sail ratings explain why a fleet needs well-built standard combatants and escorts as well as its most expensive first-rate ships.

The FREMM debate asks how differences in national construction standards should be judged against the intended escort role.

World War II escort types provide an analogy for the mismatch between buying an affordable ASW ship and demanding a general-purpose destroyer.

A historical yard-inspection example contrasts identifiable technical responsibility with the difficulties described in dispersed oversight.

Personal engineering anecdotes illustrate how technical objections can be lost when senior requests go unchallenged.

F100's weapons and radar resemble much of the expanded requirement, with shorter range and weaker ASW provision as explicit disadvantages.

The Burke-default hypothesis asks whether familiarity with one combatant has displaced clear thinking about a frigate's separate role.

The requirement for a design already in service excluded Type 26, even though the later Canadian variant resembled the expanded American specification.

A personal account of a ministerial design discussion explains why visiting guests need facilities close to a reception area.

The capacity argument distinguishes a guaranteed multi-year workload from an aspiration to build more ships each year.

An illustrative continuation of Type 45 uses a different launcher fit to explore the cost of extending a mature production run.

The stated case for a replacement program repeats Constellation's original speed-and-numbers objective.

The possibilities raised are test-bed service or transfer to an ally; no final use is established.

Different proposed LCS derivatives make it difficult to know which size, speed, and machinery assumptions a frigate comparison is using.

The concern is that adapting cutters for the Navy could leave the Coast Guard short while its other replacement program is delayed.

The cutter concept has potential as a smaller ASW escort, but fitting a deeper launcher would recreate some of Constellation's layout problems.

A twelve-cell example shows how adding an anti-submarine weapon can reduce the self-defence magazine and prompt another request for a bigger hull.

VLS-cell counts and historic ship ratings provide examples of technical mistakes in public naval discussion.

Age-of-sail ratings become a model for modern carrier, destroyer, and frigate tiers whose different strengths combine in a task group.

The response to American heavy frigates illustrates why increased armament called for larger or cut-down hulls.

Drachinifel's Warrior principle is to define the capability, verify the required systems, and then design a hull to contain them before building.