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Comment by greedo | Hacker News Reader

The Booker was a perfect fit for the Army reqs, and filled a genuine need. But it didn't have a sponsor that was willing to pay for it. The Armor Branch didn't like it, and the Infantry Branch, which is the real user couldn't muster enough support in the DoD.

The Connie is a good ship and the two under contract will be fine vessels when they're commissioned. Frigates are no longer "cheap" ships, and the sticker shock was higher than expected despite the obvious changes that were going to be made to the FREMM design. But it's cancellation has more to do with dysfunction at the top of the Navy (and DoD) then the program of record.

Also, you're overestimating the flight hour costs of the F-35. Even the B model doesn't hit $50k. The other variants are closer to $35k/hour (adjusted for inflation) than $50K.

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> The Booker was a perfect fit for the Army reqs, and filled a genuine need. But it didn't have a sponsor that was willing to pay for it.

The Booker was overweight, meaning it couldn't be air dropped, which was the entire purpose for the program. No one was willing to pay for it because it wasn't what anyone wanted.

> Frigates are no longer "cheap" ships

The point was to produce a cheap ship. It's a ship that already exists and had a pricetag. The issue was it went from 85% commonality to 15% commonality, ballooning the price.

> But it's cancellation has more to do with dysfunction at the top of the Navy (and DoD) then the program of record.

They are one in the same. They could have produced an invincible super battleship and it wouldn't change the fact that they failed to accomplish what they set out to do. All three programs suffer from exactly this dysfunction.

Air dropping was never part of the requirement. It would have been a "nice to have" but not required.

There was no way we were going to be able to take a base model FREMM and use it in the USN without substantial modifications. The Navy screwed up in how they sold this to Congress, and things like wanting to use smaller shipyards for political and logistical reasons doomed it.

The Constellation class frigates had no mission. Just like the failed LCS classes before them, they aren't survivable in a modern high-threat missile environment: weak radars, small magazines. And if they can't survive themselves then they're useless as escorts.

I guess they can be put to work intercepting smugglers in the Caribbean Sea or something.

The US is converging on a single class of combat ships, which is whatever DDG-X turns into. It converges what was previously destroyers, cruisers, and frigates. It is more capable and has a higher displacement than any of them despite being called a "destroyer".

Much of the distinction separation historically was that ship category reflected command officer rank. They have been decoupling that, which honestly makes sense.

DDG-X is dead.

Oh yeah, forgot about that. The Navy decided (again) that the hull wasn't large enough to carry all of the mission ordnance.

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