10 ms·

Improving Naval Ship Acquisition

72 points by Luc 1y ago

ceejayoz 1y ago
> Ford-class carriers have high-end radars with similar capabilities as the radars of guided-missile destroyers. Well, yeah. They have an air wing to keep track of. > the emissions from these radars make them easier to detect, track, and target… Is finding a US Navy battlegroup a challenge in the modern era? And won't the nearby escorts still have their radars on? > The helicopters add significant cost, weight, and crew to the ship. Sure. And capabilities.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  Is a creme de la creme radar really required for air traffic control? They can launch E-2s anyway, they're a carrier.
  - schainks 1y ago
    The assets that leave the ship could get shot down, so the ship needs to be self-sufficient, too. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Ford class EMALS systems have redundant power supplies, for example. That's a huge expense in both weight and operations. Not saying this is smart or 'right', but I imagine that's the logic behind the decisions for this stuff.
    - RugnirViking 1y ago
      In general the US carrier force in ww2 was well known for having excellent redundancy and damage/fire control. Its a doctrinal thing, and a legacy they're quite proud of. For example, USS Yorktown (CV-5) - took bomb and torpedo hits, with flooding and fires. Limped to pearl harbour, Was repaired in !!3 days!! and sent right back out to battle, where she was extremely heaviliy damaged again, but kept afloat through several days of bombardment before sinking. USS Enterprise (CV-6) - hit by several bombs, a large fire in multiple compartments started. Fire control and damage repairs got the flight deck partially operational for launcing and recovering flights within an hour USS Franklin (CV-13) - took almost 600 casualties, and had massive fires and ammunition explosions and fuel explosions. Despite extreme damage, she limped back to home port. Her survival is considered one of the greatest acts of shipboard damage control in naval history. there are several more. A part of this is a difference in their design - british and french carriers used thick armoured flight decks, wheras the americans sacrificed these for speed and internal machinery space
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    If you invent a creme-de-la-creme radar, there's not much reason to avoid using its components wherever you need one. E-2s get shot down; escorts get sunk. Jamming makes it so you can't get data from the E-2s, and ships can pump a lot more electrical power into their array. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 does indeed have variants for carriers that are smaller and cheaper; the ones going on the Burkes have 37 radar modules to the carriers' 9.
  - psunavy03 1y ago
    Carrier radars are not "just for air traffic control." The CVN needs its own way of being able to see its surroundings and cue its own self-defense weapons. Technology evolves, and the means to do this evolve with it. The reason carriers are getting SPY-6 is to replace other radars that are older and have the same job: letting the ship see what is around it. As another poster mentioned, redundancy is a thing. Suppose you don't have an E-2 up and you need to launch a fighter alert. Someone needs to direct that intercept and it's better not to have a single point of failure. Better for those fighters to have the ability to be directed from an E-2, or the CVN, or the shotgun cruiser . . . whatever makes sense at that time. And the Navy trains for emissions control or EMCON for short. There are tactics, techniques, and procedures not appropriate for discussion here about how ships and formations of ships are expected to do their business when it doesn't make sense to be radiating sensors.
    - stackskipton 1y ago
      What CVN self defense weapons need full SPY-6? It got Sea Sparrows and RAMs which are not very far range and not many of them. DDGs have long range stuff that really need SPY-6 capabilities. My guess is SPY-6 was put on Ford just for commonalty reasons.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
        > commonalty reasons Probably, though CVN-78 doesn't have it. It's an odd duck.
        stackskipton 1y ago
        Looks like Raytheon convinced USN that everyone rocking SPY-6 was going to save a ton of money due to commonalty but Ford was already commissioned so it's got old system. Probably will install it during it's next yard time.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        The Fords don't get "full SPY-6". It's a modular radar, made of 2x2x2 foot modules; the Burkes have 37 modules, the Fords have 9. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/sea/spy6-radars https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/sea/spy6-radars (see "A closer look at the SPY-6 variants")
  - dylan604 1y ago
    From my reading of naval strategy, the carrier wouldn't want to be sending out that much radar for SigInt purposes. Radar can be detected much further away than what can be detected by the carrier. That's one reason why they use the E2s. The E2s can fly off and see over the horizon, and then just link their data back to the fleet. So why would the carrier need this additional expense?
- andbberger 1y ago
  > Is finding a US Navy battlegroup a challenge in the modern era? And won't the nearby escorts still have their radars on? yes https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    A challenge for our likely opponents? Per your article: > China appears to be working hard to deal with this problem, and it’s very possible that they can locate the carriers reasonably effectively, but they have dozens of satellites and large, expensive over-the-horizon radar systems, which any other power is unlikely to be able to match. Seven years after this article's writing, "dozens of satellites" doesn't seem like that high a bar given Starlink's many thousands. (And we've seen huge bandwidth increases, too, which makes real-time imaging and analysis looking for ship wakes etc. far more doable.)
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      Since we haven’t had a war against a peer in like 80 years, we have basically no idea what it’d look like, right? I mean, everybody has a bunch of satellites up there right now, and nobody wants to kick off Kessler syndrome. But if two sides with serious navies started fighting and everybody’s carriers were getting spotted by satellite, is it obvious that nobody would start running that calculation?
      - dmd 1y ago
        > nobody wants to kick off Kessler syndrome Except the Trump administration, you mean. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/07/space-pollution-elon-musk https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/07/space-pollut...
      - nradov 1y ago
        In any major near peer conflict the satellites will obviously be among the first casualties. The USA and China have been quietly engaging in an ASAT arms race for several years.
- Symmetry 1y ago
  The idea isn't to remove the radar entirely but make do with something not much better than what the Nimitz class has. Without launch tubes with SM-3s no need to track things out past the atmosphere.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    And we do precisely that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 > AN/SPY-6(V)1: Also known as the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR).[21] It is 4-sided phased array radar, each with 37 RMAs... planned for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. > AN/SPY-6(V)2: Also known as the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR).[23] Rotating and scaled-down version with 9 RMAs estimated to have the same sensitivity as AN/SPY-1D(V) while being significantly smaller. Same tech, just fewer modules.
oatsandsugar 1y ago
> Rather than outsourcing design to third parties, ship design should be brought in-house, and NAVSEA should expand its staff of Naval Architects from around 300 to closer to 1200. Abundance makes this point about many government projects' inefficiency.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  In my (admittedly not ship-building) experience, big problems happen when design and manufacturing are done by different organizations. The designer has to make guesses about the tools and processes at the manufacturer, and the manufacturer has little flexibility to make small changes to the design to improve manufacturability. Of course there are ways to bridge this gap, including close collaboration and frequent back-and-forth between groups, but then when the spec has been fine-tuned for one manufacturer it can end up nearly impossible for third parties to competitively bid for a contract. I think the navy can probably do design as well as anybody, but then they'd probably have to run the shipyards too.
  - oatsandsugar 1y ago
    The alt case isn't the shipyard doing the design; it is gov't working with consultants on specs, working with designers who work with engineers who work with manufacturers who work with subcontractors
davemp 1y ago
I’ve started to think that the Gov. needs to act more like a pseudo open source maintainer rather than customer or designer. Competition helps on many different axis, but the gov not owning the designs (whose R&D we paid for) drastically limits future competition.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  I think it might actually improve competitive aspects by allowing parts of it to be bid out. You probably need that anyway, because congress will never allow key personnel to be paid enough on the gov payroll.
- nickff 1y ago
  Government holding competitions for design, build, and maintenance separately was done for missiles, and it did not work well. Government has also designed at least one missile (Sidewinder by the Navy at White Sands), and the missile turned out well, although that was an example of a relatively simple device, designed for low-cost. I think government focusing on specifying interfaces for modular components (in hardware and software) might be a good paradigm, though it probably has drawbacks which I haven't considered.
  - davemp 1y ago
    What I’m thinking is more like the Gov being able to furnish key designs to organizations that can plausibly iterate on them. So orgs don’t have to make massive investments to catch up to and integrate SotA phased array radars, flight controls, etc. Specific systems would still have single integrators. There are probably a bunch of problems with this, but it’s certainly better than a specific organization vendor locking the Gov down a multi decade rabbit hole where key capabilities are proprietary designs and the vendor gets to dictate the direction/terms because it would take anyone else 5-10 years to catch up.
PaulHoule 1y ago
Not so sure about A specialized ballistic missile defense platform based on a commercial ship hull — The US military has historically preferred to intercept ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere. The advantage is that one missile defense battery can cover a very wide area. A specialized ballistic missile defense ship could be kept farther back from more forward groups, protecting them without giving away its position with easily detectable radar emissions. One thing about BMD systems of all kinds is that the footprint they protect is smaller than you wish it was https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/22265/17_Simple_Model_Calculating_Effectiveness.pdf https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/22265/17_Simple_Model_Calculat... part of the reason why the US has BMD ships is that they can placed in places such that the footprint works since the ocean covers like 75% of the Earth's area. To really be out of range of aircraft, anti-ship missiles and all that you'd have to be hundreds of miles away from the threat and that could well put you out of the footprint. Not to say that you couldn't have clever answers such as the launch vehicle being separated by the radar though most BMD systems use track-with-missile guidance that require the missile be in close communication with the radar for the terminal phase.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  This partly gets into the reason why exoatmospheric intercept is preferred. In order to maximize the useful coverage envelope, they need to maximize missile speed. Unfortunately, there is a speed threshold beyond which endoatmospheric terminal guidance becomes extremely challenging due to limitations imposed by material physics. If your terminal guidance is exoatmospheric, you can mostly avoid those issues. That said, it is clear that the US has been leaning heavily into moving more defense to airborne missile carriers. For example, the SM-6 can now be launched directly from F-18s instead of destroyer VLS cells, which greatly extends the potential range of ballistic missile defense coverage. The B-21 Raider, while it can carry bombs, is essentially an extremely stealthy missile launcher with a very long range and loiter time.
- chipsa 1y ago
  Relatedly: if you park an AEGIS BMD ship off the coast of San Francisco, how far inland can they defend with SM-3 against an ICBM? Approximately eastern Kansas. Same question, but Hampton Roads: approximately western Kansas. The footprint defended by SM-3 is actually fairly huge.
bell-cot 1y ago
If you really want to improve Naval ship acquisition, then go back to when the US Navy had its own navy yards - which were full-bore shipyards, capable of constructing anything up to the largest aircraft carriers. So any time the defense contractors were getting greedy or moving slow, the USN could just build ships in-house. Unfortunately, the old navy yards could not <cough/> generously support <cough/> our self-serving congressmen. Vs. the defense contractors could. Guess which one got phased out.
unethical_ban 1y ago
I like the idea of certain types of ships being superstock Maersks that launch air or sea drones from the rear. Quantity may be useful in the drone and AI era.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Ukraine has been using jetski (remotely piloted) launched drones. And got the first naval drone anti-aircraft kills recently. Drones are likely to change the whole look of naval warfare a lot more than a new type of frigate in the near future.
deleted 1y ago
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ArthurStacks 1y ago
Written by someone naive who just wasted his time writing all that, all through not understanding it isnt a problem. Its by design.
ianburrell 1y ago
The problem with the distributed battle groups problem is that there is minimum capability that is needed to be viable warship. The LCS are a failure partly because they were designed for low intensity conflict. They only have point defense and not medium range air defense. The Houthis have shown in Red Sea that higher level of defense is needed against cheap anti-ship missiles and drones. The other part is that ships provide interlocking sensors and defense. The carrier's AWACS cover a long distance. The long range missiles mean that the destroyers can spread out and cover large area.
Animats 1y ago
The U.S. Naval Institute has their own proposals.[1] Everybody has to rethink sea power now that attacking ships from shore is working. The Moskva was sunk by a missile mounted on a truck. That was a wake-up call for the world's navies. China has a lot of anti-ship missiles mounted on trucks. Any naval ship in range of a hostile shore is in trouble today. The US will never again be able to send a parade of ships through the Taiwan strait as power projection. It's also a big setback for the MAGTF concept, where a Marine unit is based from a group of medium-sized helicopter carriers and boat carriers. Those craft sit offshore and send out boats and helicopters. This works great against minor enemies with no air power. Against ones that can shoot ship-sinking missiles, or swarms of drones, it's not a good strategy. Houthi drones have become a serious threat. Ships go through a lot of expensive missiles shooting down cheap drones. Running out of missiles has become a serious problem. Underway replenishment of vertical launch tubes at sea is difficult, which means ships may have to return to a base to reload. The Ukraine war, with large numbers of cheap drones and small missiles, has changed land warfare. There's no such thing as air superiority any more. If it flies, it will be shot at. No more flying helicopters over the battlefield with impunity. On the ground, nobody can move in the open. Tanks are easy to kill for anyone with the right weapons. Ukraine has turned into a war of attrition, where both sides keep steadily killing troops without accomplishing much. The side that wins will be the one that runs out of resources last. All those problems are coming to naval warfare. [1] https://www.usni.org/american-sea-power-project https://www.usni.org/american-sea-power-project
- palmotea 1y ago
  > Ships go through a lot of expensive missiles shooting down cheap drones. When will we have cheap drones that can take out other cheap drones?
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    Only when we're forced. There's an ego problem with military acquisitions, people want big fancy things. When million dollar missiles are outmatched with thousand dollar drones and that becomes an actual threat is when these things change. Ukraine is working as a reality check and learning experience for what modern war would actually be like on a large scale.
colechristensen 1y ago
This is bad analysis. The HN crowd should be very familiar with management frequently changing requirements especially when it's far too late in the process forcing reworks. Instead of middle managers, shipbuilders have the whole Navy, the personal egos and career ambitions of captains and admiralty, Congress, and the ever changing president and party in power to deal with. The author suggests we don't start building a ship until the requirements are done... my sweet summer child they're never done. There are way too many cooks in the kitchen and that's the problem that needs to be solved, ships are being designed and redesigned by committee nearly endlessly. Most things are. To make acquisitions cheaper this fiddling needs to be curbed, just saying "don't start building" misses the problem and the point.
watersb 1y ago
In this article, the approach to streamlining USN ship design looks like reduced survivability to me, a random voice on the internet who has never seen combat. Or naval ship design. Of course, the LCS hull was considered less amenable to damage control than more traditional designs, but its multi-mission modules feature made it huge, complicated, and expensive anyway. Automation is supposed to decrease the number of Naval personnel required to fight the ship; streamlining by reducing automation may run into problems. If the Ford-class carrier design is already set in steel, how do you back off on staffing implications of reduced automation?
neilv 1y ago
> 2. Rather than outsourcing design to third parties, ship design should be brought in-house, and NAVSEA should expand its staff of Naval Architects from around 300 to closer to 1200. What are the pros and cons of also in-housing building of ships?
jjk166 1y ago
One aspect not covered by the article is fictitious economies of scale. Designing a new ship class, like any other such large project, is an expensive undertaking. To try and make this number more palatable, it is typically proposed to build large numbers of ships over many years. Of course this makes the overall project very expensive, but the per unit price doesn't look too bad. The issue is because these ships will be in production for so long, there is a need to make the ships extremely capable as future needs are difficult to determine. Further because the overall project is so expensive, there aren't many concurrent projects, so this one projects has to be everything for everybody. Of course this further drives up costs and produces compromises that make no-one happy. Then invariably once these overpriced and underpowered ships start getting delivered and people complain, there is a strong call to cancel some of the ships planned, which means the cost of the remaining ships go up, which leads to further cancellations. This is how you wind up with a multi-billion dollar single ship class that has no weapons. There are further disadvantages. Since these projects are large and infrequent, there are few opportunities to train up people in actually handling such projects. The shipyard that wins the contract will grow fat and lazy while those that didn't will shrivel up and die, leading to a very unhealthy ecosystem when the next big project comes around. Because the project goes on for such a long period of time, leadership priorities both within the navy and in the government are likely to shift, meaning long term consistent support can not be counted on. And finally, the large number of ships that are unlikely to ever materialize allow planners to hand waive away real gaps in capability that realistically still need to be filled. By starting out with a commitment to small ship classes, all these issues get reversed. Since you expect to be doing projects frequently, they are low stakes, meaning it is okay to take risks, learn lessons, and make a tool for dealing with your current, real problem. You can maintain a health ecosystem of many shipyards and a large population of experienced individuals who have a few such projects under their belt. Lessons learned from each project can be applied to future ones, both allowing for improved ships and improved project management. You can always produce more of a class if you really need it, but if you do the cost savings are merely a bonus. There are cases where the benefits of standardization and mass production are just too critical to pass up. You don't want to have to worry about 37 different types of ammunition for your frontline troops for example. But warships are few enough in number and high in value - the managerial resources necessary to handle variety are easily justified.
nickdothutton 1y ago
I feel I should point out, with all this talk of "sinking ships", that it is mostly unnecessary to sink a single ship. All you need to do is spoil their mission capability. This could be as simple as a fragmentation munition peppering the radar or other critical system with shrapnel (which can be targeted specifically). A $50 munition on a $500 drone damages the $50m radar on your $500m vessel, and now you are out of the fight until a repair which will 1 year. Someone with more domain expertise, feel free to adjust those numbers.
decafninja 1y ago
One thing I don’t understand about modern warships - why do they carry so few offensive weapons? American ‘Burkes and peer destroyers from some Asian navys have a shitload of VLS cells, but my understanding is that the majority of these hold anti-aircraft (defensive) missiles? Russian ships seem to have an extremely powerful, but limited load of anti-ship and cruise missiles. But most other navys (see - especially Europe) have rather poor armament. In the case of the USN, you could argue that a ‘Burke’s primary role is carrier escort, and that the carrier air wing is the real offensive punch. But most other navies don’t have carriers.
- klooney 1y ago
  The air force does the offense. We do probably need to have some conversation about "what is the Navy for", too- its not clear how useful it would actually be in anything approaching a peer conflict. If it's just for pirates and transport the whole thing could be much cheaper.
- chipsa 1y ago
  A remarkably large number of the weapons on a USN warship can be used offensively. Most of the anti aircraft missiles can be used in surface to surface mode. Given their high speed, they can do a large amount of damage, despite the small warhead, simply from KE. This is, in fact, why the US Army is acquiring the Typhon system with SM-6 missiles. As for the Euro navies, I believe they are generally not designed for really offensive operations. They're generally conceptualized as fighting the Soviets, and so designed for fighting off Russian maritime attack regiments and submarines.
- nradov 1y ago
  Most of the US Navy's offensive weapons are with the carrier air wings. The destroyers exist primarily to protect the carriers. The Russians have to put their offensive weapons on surface ships because they're too poor to afford carriers. I mean they tried to build one but it never worked and was worse than useless.
thedudeabides5 1y ago
we're going to need more boats

72 points by Luc 1y ago

> Ford-class carriers have high-end radars with similar capabilities as the radars of guided-missile destroyers. Well, yeah. They have an air wing to keep track of. > the emissions from these radars make them easier to detect, track, and target… Is finding a US Navy battlegroup a challenge in the modern era? And won't the nearby escorts still have their radars on? > The helicopters add significant cost, weight, and crew to the ship. Sure. And capabilities.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
Is a creme de la creme radar really required for air traffic control? They can launch E-2s anyway, they're a carrier.
- schainks 1y ago
  The assets that leave the ship could get shot down, so the ship needs to be self-sufficient, too. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Ford class EMALS systems have redundant power supplies, for example. That's a huge expense in both weight and operations. Not saying this is smart or 'right', but I imagine that's the logic behind the decisions for this stuff.
  - RugnirViking 1y ago
    In general the US carrier force in ww2 was well known for having excellent redundancy and damage/fire control. Its a doctrinal thing, and a legacy they're quite proud of. For example, USS Yorktown (CV-5) - took bomb and torpedo hits, with flooding and fires. Limped to pearl harbour, Was repaired in !!3 days!! and sent right back out to battle, where she was extremely heaviliy damaged again, but kept afloat through several days of bombardment before sinking. USS Enterprise (CV-6) - hit by several bombs, a large fire in multiple compartments started. Fire control and damage repairs got the flight deck partially operational for launcing and recovering flights within an hour USS Franklin (CV-13) - took almost 600 casualties, and had massive fires and ammunition explosions and fuel explosions. Despite extreme damage, she limped back to home port. Her survival is considered one of the greatest acts of shipboard damage control in naval history. there are several more. A part of this is a difference in their design - british and french carriers used thick armoured flight decks, wheras the americans sacrificed these for speed and internal machinery space
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  If you invent a creme-de-la-creme radar, there's not much reason to avoid using its components wherever you need one. E-2s get shot down; escorts get sunk. Jamming makes it so you can't get data from the E-2s, and ships can pump a lot more electrical power into their array. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 does indeed have variants for carriers that are smaller and cheaper; the ones going on the Burkes have 37 radar modules to the carriers' 9.
- psunavy03 1y ago
  Carrier radars are not "just for air traffic control." The CVN needs its own way of being able to see its surroundings and cue its own self-defense weapons. Technology evolves, and the means to do this evolve with it. The reason carriers are getting SPY-6 is to replace other radars that are older and have the same job: letting the ship see what is around it. As another poster mentioned, redundancy is a thing. Suppose you don't have an E-2 up and you need to launch a fighter alert. Someone needs to direct that intercept and it's better not to have a single point of failure. Better for those fighters to have the ability to be directed from an E-2, or the CVN, or the shotgun cruiser . . . whatever makes sense at that time. And the Navy trains for emissions control or EMCON for short. There are tactics, techniques, and procedures not appropriate for discussion here about how ships and formations of ships are expected to do their business when it doesn't make sense to be radiating sensors.
  - stackskipton 1y ago
    What CVN self defense weapons need full SPY-6? It got Sea Sparrows and RAMs which are not very far range and not many of them. DDGs have long range stuff that really need SPY-6 capabilities. My guess is SPY-6 was put on Ford just for commonalty reasons.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
      > commonalty reasons Probably, though CVN-78 doesn't have it. It's an odd duck.
      - stackskipton 1y ago
        Looks like Raytheon convinced USN that everyone rocking SPY-6 was going to save a ton of money due to commonalty but Ford was already commissioned so it's got old system. Probably will install it during it's next yard time.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      The Fords don't get "full SPY-6". It's a modular radar, made of 2x2x2 foot modules; the Burkes have 37 modules, the Fords have 9. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/sea/spy6-radars https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/sea/spy6-radars (see "A closer look at the SPY-6 variants")
- dylan604 1y ago
  From my reading of naval strategy, the carrier wouldn't want to be sending out that much radar for SigInt purposes. Radar can be detected much further away than what can be detected by the carrier. That's one reason why they use the E2s. The E2s can fly off and see over the horizon, and then just link their data back to the fleet. So why would the carrier need this additional expense?
andbberger 1y ago
> Is finding a US Navy battlegroup a challenge in the modern era? And won't the nearby escorts still have their radars on? yes https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  A challenge for our likely opponents? Per your article: > China appears to be working hard to deal with this problem, and it’s very possible that they can locate the carriers reasonably effectively, but they have dozens of satellites and large, expensive over-the-horizon radar systems, which any other power is unlikely to be able to match. Seven years after this article's writing, "dozens of satellites" doesn't seem like that high a bar given Starlink's many thousands. (And we've seen huge bandwidth increases, too, which makes real-time imaging and analysis looking for ship wakes etc. far more doable.)
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Since we haven’t had a war against a peer in like 80 years, we have basically no idea what it’d look like, right? I mean, everybody has a bunch of satellites up there right now, and nobody wants to kick off Kessler syndrome. But if two sides with serious navies started fighting and everybody’s carriers were getting spotted by satellite, is it obvious that nobody would start running that calculation?
    - dmd 1y ago
      > nobody wants to kick off Kessler syndrome Except the Trump administration, you mean. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/07/space-pollution-elon-musk https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/07/space-pollut...
    - nradov 1y ago
      In any major near peer conflict the satellites will obviously be among the first casualties. The USA and China have been quietly engaging in an ASAT arms race for several years.
Symmetry 1y ago
The idea isn't to remove the radar entirely but make do with something not much better than what the Nimitz class has. Without launch tubes with SM-3s no need to track things out past the atmosphere.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  And we do precisely that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPY-6 > AN/SPY-6(V)1: Also known as the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR).[21] It is 4-sided phased array radar, each with 37 RMAs... planned for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. > AN/SPY-6(V)2: Also known as the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR).[23] Rotating and scaled-down version with 9 RMAs estimated to have the same sensitivity as AN/SPY-1D(V) while being significantly smaller. Same tech, just fewer modules.

oatsandsugar 1y ago

> Rather than outsourcing design to third parties, ship design should be brought in-house, and NAVSEA should expand its staff of Naval Architects from around 300 to closer to 1200. Abundance makes this point about many government projects' inefficiency.

mitthrowaway2 1y ago
In my (admittedly not ship-building) experience, big problems happen when design and manufacturing are done by different organizations. The designer has to make guesses about the tools and processes at the manufacturer, and the manufacturer has little flexibility to make small changes to the design to improve manufacturability. Of course there are ways to bridge this gap, including close collaboration and frequent back-and-forth between groups, but then when the spec has been fine-tuned for one manufacturer it can end up nearly impossible for third parties to competitively bid for a contract. I think the navy can probably do design as well as anybody, but then they'd probably have to run the shipyards too.
- oatsandsugar 1y ago
  The alt case isn't the shipyard doing the design; it is gov't working with consultants on specs, working with designers who work with engineers who work with manufacturers who work with subcontractors

davemp 1y ago

I’ve started to think that the Gov. needs to act more like a pseudo open source maintainer rather than customer or designer. Competition helps on many different axis, but the gov not owning the designs (whose R&D we paid for) drastically limits future competition.

Spooky23 1y ago
I think it might actually improve competitive aspects by allowing parts of it to be bid out. You probably need that anyway, because congress will never allow key personnel to be paid enough on the gov payroll.
nickff 1y ago
Government holding competitions for design, build, and maintenance separately was done for missiles, and it did not work well. Government has also designed at least one missile (Sidewinder by the Navy at White Sands), and the missile turned out well, although that was an example of a relatively simple device, designed for low-cost. I think government focusing on specifying interfaces for modular components (in hardware and software) might be a good paradigm, though it probably has drawbacks which I haven't considered.
- davemp 1y ago
  What I’m thinking is more like the Gov being able to furnish key designs to organizations that can plausibly iterate on them. So orgs don’t have to make massive investments to catch up to and integrate SotA phased array radars, flight controls, etc. Specific systems would still have single integrators. There are probably a bunch of problems with this, but it’s certainly better than a specific organization vendor locking the Gov down a multi decade rabbit hole where key capabilities are proprietary designs and the vendor gets to dictate the direction/terms because it would take anyone else 5-10 years to catch up.

PaulHoule 1y ago

Not so sure about A specialized ballistic missile defense platform based on a commercial ship hull — The US military has historically preferred to intercept ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere. The advantage is that one missile defense battery can cover a very wide area. A specialized ballistic missile defense ship could be kept farther back from more forward groups, protecting them without giving away its position with easily detectable radar emissions. One thing about BMD systems of all kinds is that the footprint they protect is smaller than you wish it was https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/22265/17_Simple_Model_Calculating_Effectiveness.pdf https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/22265/17_Simple_Model_Calculat... part of the reason why the US has BMD ships is that they can placed in places such that the footprint works since the ocean covers like 75% of the Earth's area. To really be out of range of aircraft, anti-ship missiles and all that you'd have to be hundreds of miles away from the threat and that could well put you out of the footprint. Not to say that you couldn't have clever answers such as the launch vehicle being separated by the radar though most BMD systems use track-with-missile guidance that require the missile be in close communication with the radar for the terminal phase.

jandrewrogers 1y ago
This partly gets into the reason why exoatmospheric intercept is preferred. In order to maximize the useful coverage envelope, they need to maximize missile speed. Unfortunately, there is a speed threshold beyond which endoatmospheric terminal guidance becomes extremely challenging due to limitations imposed by material physics. If your terminal guidance is exoatmospheric, you can mostly avoid those issues. That said, it is clear that the US has been leaning heavily into moving more defense to airborne missile carriers. For example, the SM-6 can now be launched directly from F-18s instead of destroyer VLS cells, which greatly extends the potential range of ballistic missile defense coverage. The B-21 Raider, while it can carry bombs, is essentially an extremely stealthy missile launcher with a very long range and loiter time.
chipsa 1y ago
Relatedly: if you park an AEGIS BMD ship off the coast of San Francisco, how far inland can they defend with SM-3 against an ICBM? Approximately eastern Kansas. Same question, but Hampton Roads: approximately western Kansas. The footprint defended by SM-3 is actually fairly huge.

bell-cot 1y ago

If you really want to improve Naval ship acquisition, then go back to when the US Navy had its own navy yards - which were full-bore shipyards, capable of constructing anything up to the largest aircraft carriers. So any time the defense contractors were getting greedy or moving slow, the USN could just build ships in-house. Unfortunately, the old navy yards could not <cough/> generously support <cough/> our self-serving congressmen. Vs. the defense contractors could. Guess which one got phased out.

unethical_ban 1y ago

I like the idea of certain types of ships being superstock Maersks that launch air or sea drones from the rear. Quantity may be useful in the drone and AI era.

ceejayoz 1y ago
Ukraine has been using jetski (remotely piloted) launched drones. And got the first naval drone anti-aircraft kills recently. Drones are likely to change the whole look of naval warfare a lot more than a new type of frigate in the near future.

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ArthurStacks 1y ago

Written by someone naive who just wasted his time writing all that, all through not understanding it isnt a problem. Its by design.

ianburrell 1y ago

The problem with the distributed battle groups problem is that there is minimum capability that is needed to be viable warship. The LCS are a failure partly because they were designed for low intensity conflict. They only have point defense and not medium range air defense. The Houthis have shown in Red Sea that higher level of defense is needed against cheap anti-ship missiles and drones. The other part is that ships provide interlocking sensors and defense. The carrier's AWACS cover a long distance. The long range missiles mean that the destroyers can spread out and cover large area.

Animats 1y ago

The U.S. Naval Institute has their own proposals.[1] Everybody has to rethink sea power now that attacking ships from shore is working. The Moskva was sunk by a missile mounted on a truck. That was a wake-up call for the world's navies. China has a lot of anti-ship missiles mounted on trucks. Any naval ship in range of a hostile shore is in trouble today. The US will never again be able to send a parade of ships through the Taiwan strait as power projection. It's also a big setback for the MAGTF concept, where a Marine unit is based from a group of medium-sized helicopter carriers and boat carriers. Those craft sit offshore and send out boats and helicopters. This works great against minor enemies with no air power. Against ones that can shoot ship-sinking missiles, or swarms of drones, it's not a good strategy. Houthi drones have become a serious threat. Ships go through a lot of expensive missiles shooting down cheap drones. Running out of missiles has become a serious problem. Underway replenishment of vertical launch tubes at sea is difficult, which means ships may have to return to a base to reload. The Ukraine war, with large numbers of cheap drones and small missiles, has changed land warfare. There's no such thing as air superiority any more. If it flies, it will be shot at. No more flying helicopters over the battlefield with impunity. On the ground, nobody can move in the open. Tanks are easy to kill for anyone with the right weapons. Ukraine has turned into a war of attrition, where both sides keep steadily killing troops without accomplishing much. The side that wins will be the one that runs out of resources last. All those problems are coming to naval warfare. [1] https://www.usni.org/american-sea-power-project https://www.usni.org/american-sea-power-project

palmotea 1y ago
> Ships go through a lot of expensive missiles shooting down cheap drones. When will we have cheap drones that can take out other cheap drones?
- colechristensen 1y ago
  Only when we're forced. There's an ego problem with military acquisitions, people want big fancy things. When million dollar missiles are outmatched with thousand dollar drones and that becomes an actual threat is when these things change. Ukraine is working as a reality check and learning experience for what modern war would actually be like on a large scale.

colechristensen 1y ago

This is bad analysis. The HN crowd should be very familiar with management frequently changing requirements especially when it's far too late in the process forcing reworks. Instead of middle managers, shipbuilders have the whole Navy, the personal egos and career ambitions of captains and admiralty, Congress, and the ever changing president and party in power to deal with. The author suggests we don't start building a ship until the requirements are done... my sweet summer child they're never done. There are way too many cooks in the kitchen and that's the problem that needs to be solved, ships are being designed and redesigned by committee nearly endlessly. Most things are. To make acquisitions cheaper this fiddling needs to be curbed, just saying "don't start building" misses the problem and the point.

watersb 1y ago

In this article, the approach to streamlining USN ship design looks like reduced survivability to me, a random voice on the internet who has never seen combat. Or naval ship design. Of course, the LCS hull was considered less amenable to damage control than more traditional designs, but its multi-mission modules feature made it huge, complicated, and expensive anyway. Automation is supposed to decrease the number of Naval personnel required to fight the ship; streamlining by reducing automation may run into problems. If the Ford-class carrier design is already set in steel, how do you back off on staffing implications of reduced automation?

neilv 1y ago

> 2. Rather than outsourcing design to third parties, ship design should be brought in-house, and NAVSEA should expand its staff of Naval Architects from around 300 to closer to 1200. What are the pros and cons of also in-housing building of ships?

jjk166 1y ago

One aspect not covered by the article is fictitious economies of scale. Designing a new ship class, like any other such large project, is an expensive undertaking. To try and make this number more palatable, it is typically proposed to build large numbers of ships over many years. Of course this makes the overall project very expensive, but the per unit price doesn't look too bad. The issue is because these ships will be in production for so long, there is a need to make the ships extremely capable as future needs are difficult to determine. Further because the overall project is so expensive, there aren't many concurrent projects, so this one projects has to be everything for everybody. Of course this further drives up costs and produces compromises that make no-one happy. Then invariably once these overpriced and underpowered ships start getting delivered and people complain, there is a strong call to cancel some of the ships planned, which means the cost of the remaining ships go up, which leads to further cancellations. This is how you wind up with a multi-billion dollar single ship class that has no weapons. There are further disadvantages. Since these projects are large and infrequent, there are few opportunities to train up people in actually handling such projects. The shipyard that wins the contract will grow fat and lazy while those that didn't will shrivel up and die, leading to a very unhealthy ecosystem when the next big project comes around. Because the project goes on for such a long period of time, leadership priorities both within the navy and in the government are likely to shift, meaning long term consistent support can not be counted on. And finally, the large number of ships that are unlikely to ever materialize allow planners to hand waive away real gaps in capability that realistically still need to be filled. By starting out with a commitment to small ship classes, all these issues get reversed. Since you expect to be doing projects frequently, they are low stakes, meaning it is okay to take risks, learn lessons, and make a tool for dealing with your current, real problem. You can maintain a health ecosystem of many shipyards and a large population of experienced individuals who have a few such projects under their belt. Lessons learned from each project can be applied to future ones, both allowing for improved ships and improved project management. You can always produce more of a class if you really need it, but if you do the cost savings are merely a bonus. There are cases where the benefits of standardization and mass production are just too critical to pass up. You don't want to have to worry about 37 different types of ammunition for your frontline troops for example. But warships are few enough in number and high in value - the managerial resources necessary to handle variety are easily justified.

nickdothutton 1y ago

I feel I should point out, with all this talk of "sinking ships", that it is mostly unnecessary to sink a single ship. All you need to do is spoil their mission capability. This could be as simple as a fragmentation munition peppering the radar or other critical system with shrapnel (which can be targeted specifically). A $50 munition on a $500 drone damages the $50m radar on your $500m vessel, and now you are out of the fight until a repair which will 1 year. Someone with more domain expertise, feel free to adjust those numbers.

decafninja 1y ago

One thing I don’t understand about modern warships - why do they carry so few offensive weapons? American ‘Burkes and peer destroyers from some Asian navys have a shitload of VLS cells, but my understanding is that the majority of these hold anti-aircraft (defensive) missiles? Russian ships seem to have an extremely powerful, but limited load of anti-ship and cruise missiles. But most other navys (see - especially Europe) have rather poor armament. In the case of the USN, you could argue that a ‘Burke’s primary role is carrier escort, and that the carrier air wing is the real offensive punch. But most other navies don’t have carriers.

klooney 1y ago
The air force does the offense. We do probably need to have some conversation about "what is the Navy for", too- its not clear how useful it would actually be in anything approaching a peer conflict. If it's just for pirates and transport the whole thing could be much cheaper.
chipsa 1y ago
A remarkably large number of the weapons on a USN warship can be used offensively. Most of the anti aircraft missiles can be used in surface to surface mode. Given their high speed, they can do a large amount of damage, despite the small warhead, simply from KE. This is, in fact, why the US Army is acquiring the Typhon system with SM-6 missiles. As for the Euro navies, I believe they are generally not designed for really offensive operations. They're generally conceptualized as fighting the Soviets, and so designed for fighting off Russian maritime attack regiments and submarines.
nradov 1y ago
Most of the US Navy's offensive weapons are with the carrier air wings. The destroyers exist primarily to protect the carriers. The Russians have to put their offensive weapons on surface ships because they're too poor to afford carriers. I mean they tried to build one but it never worked and was worse than useless.

thedudeabides5 1y ago

we're going to need more boats