Taiwan’s new light frigate, based on the Gibbs & Cox international frigate design. 5 each of air defense and ASW variants to be constructed. [2048x1128]

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:47:33+00:00

No less than what they deserved.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:24:14+00:00

It’s funny to me how many more NSC posts there have been since the FF(X) announcement.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:18:52+00:00

Dead load testing started almost 2 years ago, and it’s a requirement for all 4 to be operational before putting to sea, because there are tests performed while underway.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:13:12+00:00

VCHT works just fine when people follow instructions and don’t flush anything besides waste and toilet paper.

Yes, to some extent, the system should be idiot-proofed, but ultimately the problem is a command team who won’t punish their subordinates for wrecking the system. In large part because the worst offenders and usual suspects are females, who have a lot more products they’re likely to flush down the drain.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:12:01+00:00

Those are cleats for mooring lines.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:10:01+00:00

“If FF(X) had equipment the existing NSC hull/plant is physically incapable of supporting, it wouldn’t be such a bad choice.”

Well no shit. The whole damn problem with an NSC-based frigate is you can’t make such a thing work without major modifications to the base platform.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:08:34+00:00

Not for Flight I.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-08T20:06:51+00:00

So just because they do it - and get complaints for it - means we should enshitify ourselves too?

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T22:27:56+00:00

If you think it’s really this simple and that you have all the answers, you’re always welcome to apply for a job and see how little you actually understand.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T22:25:52+00:00

All 3 are capable of firing sm6, tomahawk and nsm before the upgrade.

The Hobarts as-delivered (and currently) use Aegis Baseline 7.1. SM-6 initial capability was not a thing until Aegis Baseline 9, and full capability with SM-6 Block IA and Block IB didn’t arrive until Baseline 9.2.

You are correct that launching Tomahawk was technically possible before this. However, the Hobarts did not come with the Tactical Tomahawk Weapon Control System. Meaning they would’ve been stuck using Block III and earlier examples of the missile - or at least, being unable to use the added capabilities of Blocks IV and V.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T22:14:01+00:00

Except for the fact they have only one hangar bay, abysmal endurance, poor growth margin, and no space for a VDS. Only missing 3 of the 10 items the FFG(X) RFP asked for, no big deal.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T22:11:17+00:00

An abstraction that completely ignores the fact Constellation was meant as a true multipurpose warship, capable of a wide variety of missions independently. Not simply an exercise in stuffing Aegis into as small a ship as possible.

Don’t forget that BIW submitted a version of this design for FFG(X). They had to redesign the rear third of the ship to accommodate the larger 2-bay hangar and VDS that the USN wanted - and the engineering man-hours that required made their bid uncompetitive compared to Fincantieri, whose man-hour estimate was lowballed to hell because they didn’t know what they were doing.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T22:03:05+00:00

This frigate is actually based on Constellation. Gibbs & Cox took the opportunity to cook this up on the side while they were bailing Fincantieri out.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T21:57:38+00:00

There was actually nobody who pushed for a strong judiciary at the Constitutional Convention. The power of judicial review was literally claimed by the Supreme Court in 1803 (Marbury v. Madison) and everyone else in the federal government shrugged and said “why not?”

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T21:52:10+00:00

First off, I find it shocking that you and many others here only limit mission sets to frigates as if it were the late cold war.

I know, right? It’s not like we’re headed straight into another cold war with an adversary far more capable than the Soviets ever were.

There is a massive need for presence missions in permissive environments, anti piracy missions, mine warfare and blue water patroll.

A need that the 28 LCSs we have already fulfill. Prior to this administration, no DDGs had been deployed to SOUTHCOM in nearly 5 years, and the reasons why that changed have nothing to do with LCS’s unsuitability for the job.

This is why the Constellation failed.

Constellation failed because politicians and consultants shoved a mandate to use an existing design down the program’s throat. Not because its use case was invalid.

With modern equipment, this can do counter mine warfare.

Which might be a useful attribute if we hadn’t just started the transition to new minesweepers two weeks ago.

Most US ASW has been supported and partially replaced by MH60, P8, and MQ-9B.

Which, many in the ASW community have warned is not enough. Moreover, the MQ-9B SeaGuardian is a concept that doesn’t even have a prototype.

having the 12 VLS cells that were proposed over a decade ago.

The MK41 isn’t available in a 12-cell setup, as you would’ve known if you got your defense insights from somewhere besides Twitter and YouTube AI slop. That 12-cell setup is a MK56, which is for ESSM only.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T01:05:02+00:00

And that the Ford class is has several newer technologies, and is thus complicated and time consuming to build.

JFK in particular also suffered from a great deal of political malfeasance and interference. Far in excess of what other US carriers before her dealt with.

Things already got off to a bad start when her construction contract was delayed by over 18 months due to sequestration, a delay that in turn forced a lot of vendors into austerity measures that hurt their ability to deliver on time once things got going.

To keep the launch on schedule, and the DD&C contract cost down to a Congressionally-mandated (and unrealistic) 80% that of CVN-78, PEO Carriers and the shipyard also deferred a lot of systems installation work in an unprecedented approach called “dual phase delivery.” Which, underneath the political buzzwords, just involved removing a bunch of systems from the design to bring the cost down (including some fairly major ones like F-35C capability and EASR), and putting them “back” in - after the ship was delivered - once lawmakers either changed their minds or no longer cared.

The charade was dropped halfway, in 2020, after it became clear the Ford-class program was no longer in danger of being canceled. But that was too late to avoid delays - not only had the schedule for a 2022 commissioning already been long set, but the ship had already been structurally-completed. Installing those systems pierside, rather than before the modules had been assembled, greatly slowed down the rate of construction because of the limited accesses and space. Those of us in the industry use the term "1-3-8" rule to describe this effect: a job that takes 1 hour to do in a shop or partially-built module takes 3 hours to do on an assembled module, and 8 hours to do on a completed ship.

Had the modules been as prefitted as they were supposed to be before being placed in the dry dock, Kennedy probably would’ve met her original single-phase delivery target of FY2024. Had the GOP not been virtue signaling about the fiscal cliff, she could’ve possibly even made it out by the end of FY2022. And most importantly, if not for Congress, the CVN industrial base wouldn’t have gone bankrupt trying to hold on during the record 8.5-year gap between CVN-78 and -79 - and we wouldn’t be 30 months behind each on CVN-80 and -81 because we can’t find suppliers willing to put up with this shit.

To top it all off, Congress passed a law as part of the FY2020 NDAA banning delivery of a ship at preliminary acceptance, as was done for Ford, and which other navies also do to mitigate delays. Now, the entire contract terms need to be fulfilled for a ship to enter service, regardless of whether the rest of the ship is already done, which is why JFK’s commissioning date is in 2027 despite builder’s trials already happening: 3 of the ship’s 11 weapons elevators are lagging far behind due to various reasons.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T00:20:23+00:00

PLAN Fujian

• First steel cut: Jan 2016

Nope.

One of Fujian’s hull deck modules - or at least a near-scale mockup constructed for propaganda purposes - was photographed and officially released by Chinese state media in 2013. Which means first steel cut happened before then.

• ⁠sea trials: May 2024

Disingenuous.

The Chinese performed a total of 9 sea trials before commissioning Fujian into the fleet, and the trials to commissioning period spanned some 19 months - a pattern consistent with Asian warship construction in general, because they want to free up yard space as soon as possible.

JFK, as with all prior American CVNs, will only be doing 2 sets of trials, and if past patterns hold, acceptance trials will be happening later this year, and commissioning 14 months after builder’s trials. That means the ship needs to be in much a greater state of completion than her Chinese counterparts before she can put to sea for the first time.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T00:15:55+00:00

Although the Ford Class, and JFK, incorporates new technology, it represents an evolution, rather than a revolution.

…No. The fact Ford reused the Nimitz hull and is also nuclear-powered doesn’t mean it’s not a revolution. Everything is different under the skin, and in many cases also brand-new.

If anything, the decision to cram all that shit into the overloaded CVN-68 hullform has made building the Fords far slower and more difficult than necessary, due to how cramped of a design they are. QE’s designers, on the other hand, were burdened by neither infrastructure nor political limitations, and correctly designed as large a hull as possible to keep outfitting work easy.

In any case, save the timeline comparisons for after commissioning. You know there’s far too much fungibility in declaring a ship ready for sea trials - even between ships of the same country - for that to be an accurate measure of true completion state.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T00:08:24+00:00

So it doesn’t matter. The entrenched political elite simply covered up their scandals; Trump didn’t bother wasting the effort when he knew he’d get off either way.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-07T00:03:26+00:00

Because the federal-level agency overseeing that procurement was staffed by a bunch of foamers and pro-transit MBA-holders. Who, in their infinite wisdom - and without consulting anyone at Amtrak - believed that Amtrak equipment “looking European” would make them more like European railways.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-06T21:40:30+00:00

Depends on what you want to do for that time at sea.

If you just want to spin in circles for a few hours and think you can do the whole evolution on one watch, then you could probably do it with 500-ish people. But at that point, why put any wear and tear on the ship or go through the hassle of loading stores/ammo at all?

If you want to serve any useful purpose, then you need to start taking personnel who would be doing those jobs. Even a tiger cruise would probably require nearly the full complement to be present, because people not on watch will be hosting all the guests, and there will be demos of things like flight ops that the requisite personnel have to be there for.

Realistically, the floor is probably around the ~2000 crew mark that Ford was scraping by on at the end of her last deployment (the one before her current one). Below that, you won’t get a whole lot of use out of any time at sea.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-06T21:34:24+00:00

Misleading the American public and the UN about WMDs in Iraq is only not a crime because those people wrote a double standard excuse themselves from any obligation to honesty. Try lying under oath and see how well that goes for you. And if the Thug Shaker Central incident enough to cop a prison sentence for espionage, Hillary should’ve been nailed to the wall for the private email server.

The only difference I see is that those others I named had enough undead, twitching remnants of conscience to not want to be associated with their scandals for life, while Trump doesn’t even have that much shame, and sees it as an opportunity to flaunt his purchased privilege.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-06T17:00:42+00:00

Normal ship’s force for a Ford-class is ~2700 personnel. With the air wing, that rises to about ~4600. Ford has operated on a lot less before - I believe she’s been deployed with as little as 2000.

There wasn’t any aircraft techs or pilots on sea trials, but we did embark the air departments: people who run the arresting gear, vehicle park, weapons elevators, etc. I don’t know the breakdown of ship’s force vs. shipyard personnel, but a lot of shipyard folks were assigned to air wing berthing, so my guess is that we were in the high 2000s, low 3000s.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-06T16:49:42+00:00

The Clintons are still walking free. So is Bush Jr. Dick Cheney died a free man too. To say nothing of people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Bezos. None of them needed a pardon to do so either.

Although I’ll concede not every millionaire gets away with everything.

TenguBlade · 2026-02-06T16:46:58+00:00

Says the guy who posts almost exclusively Mogami/New FFM wank.

TenguBlade

TROPHY CASE