The U.S. Navy is considering purchasing foreign-designed frigates from Japan, South Korea and Turkey in a potentially historic shift that could see some warships built abroad to speed fleet expansion.
David Silbey, a Cornell University professor of history specializing in military history, defense policy, and battlefield analysis, says the frigate competition is the latest example of the Navy's decades-long struggle to modernize and expand the fleet.
Silbey says: “The Navy has spent the last 30 years trying to build a wave of highly advanced new ships, pumping them full of bleeding-edge technology. For the most part, all those ship programs have failed and been curtailed or canceled.
“One of those types is a ‘low-end’ frigate, optimized for actions such as drug interdiction, escorting merchant ships, and general patrolling. The value of these ships is not just in what they do, but that they relieve our ‘high-end’ warships from having to carry out those missions. If the Navy could manage to get a successful program going, commissioning one to two ships a year, it would take a lot of the pressure off the rest of the fleet.
“Similarly, the Ford-class carrier situation reflects other major problems converging at once. The Navy attempted to overhaul multiple critical systems, including the aircraft launch catapults, weapons elevators, and radar suite, all of which have had substantial teething problems.
“President Trump has further complicated matters by demanding the Navy revert to the older catapult system, which would cost billions and delay affected ships by years. He has also called for moving the carriers' bridge/island structure farther forward, apparently for aesthetic reasons, another expensive and time-consuming redesign.
“Meanwhile, China continues building its next carrier, which may be nuclear-powered.”
