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"If it's like a frigate, why don't we call it a frigate?" he said Thursday morning to a roomful of surface warfare sailors at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium just outside Washington.Well, okay. If it walks like a duck, etc.
"We are going to change the hull designation of the LCS class ships to FF," Mabus said, citing the traditional hull designation for frigates. "It will still be the same ship, the same program of record, just with an appropriate and traditional name."
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The fleet's last guided-missile frigates (FFGs) will be decommissioned in September, and the next number in that sequence is FFG 62. But unlike the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates being phased out, the LCS doesn't carry an area air-defense missile such as the Standard missile — the basis for the "G" — so the FFG series isn't entirely appropriate.
What's frigate, then? Back in the old days:
... [T]he term was soon applied less exclusively to any relatively fast and elegantsail-onlywar ship.
In its present configuration, given its best currently working weapons systems, I would call what we have "FFHs" or "Helicopter Frigates." As the promised miracle modules appear for them you can have FFM (mine warfare), FFA (ASW) and FFS (Surface Warfare). Given their current limited anti-air capabilities, you might also call them "needs an AAW escort."
Of course, up-gunned versions are on the planning board:
Gotta love it.
Mission Package capabilities eliminated a Multi-function towed array and Torpedo Defense and Countermeasures, for instance which are now relisted as 'Modifications' in a lengthier Organic Capabilities/Attributes category.
ReplyDeleteRather than mere window dressing, the FF designation may hint at a bit of an expanded role.
Somehow, deploying a towed arrays in a littoral area seemed an ambitious or even foolhardy task that would be better suited to a more expendable craft.
On the half of the LCS/FF/LCI(R)/ that is wide enough to accept it, the 76mm/3" OTTO Melara would be a better choice than the 57mm.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the designation change may have had something to do with the common interpretation of "LCS".
Shadow
Oh come on now, they are barely a frigate however you type them.
ReplyDeleteThat is a nifty typing convention, surely its is too easy for the USN to adopt?
But I do like the FFH because ALL the mission packages have an air component.
How about the original and Flight 0 be corvettes, and the "upgraded" hulls nee SSC get the frigate type?
P.S. why couldn't SECNAV revised the ship types HIS organizaton was using earlier? Perhaps they were some name games going on?
P.P.S. I proposed a naming convention for JHSVs to be named after US merchant marine heros but that went NO where. It is so political to use place names~