laststandonzombieisland

With the U.S. Navy just three weeks ago fronting cash ($15 million each) for five different frigate designs for the new FFG(X) Guided Missile Frigate concept, one of the companies, Lockheed, just pulled down a big bonus that could help.

You see, LM just picked up a plump $481 million contract for long lead work on four of what they term Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) ships for the Royal Saudi Navy. The MMSC? An uparmed version of the company’s Freedom-variant Littoral Combat Ship which is very similar to one of the five proposals greenlighted for the USN’s FFG(X) contract.

MMSC has a range of 5,000 nautical miles and can reach speeds in excess of 30 knots, packs the basic armament of the LCS (57mm Mk110 deck gun, MH-60 Seahawk, UAVs, and SeaRAM) but adds Over-The-Horizon surface-to-surface missiles (8 Harpoons are shown on the sketch), port and starboard 20 mm remote guns (Mk.38 25mms could be substituted), a new fire control radar and a forward centerline 8 cell MK 41 Vertical Launch System equipped with 32 quad-packed RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles. The MMSC is also equipped with the AN/SLQ-25 Torpedo Defense system.

The Freedom-variant FFG(X) uses the same hull as the LCS and the MMSC but includes a mini-SPY style phased array, a set of Mk.32 ASW torpedo tubes and upto a 32-cell VLS. But who’s to say the company won’t leverage the work going on simultaneously on MMSC when it comes to the cut for the FFG(X) winner…

So the Navy has handed out some cash ($15 million each) for five different frigate designs to actually replace the FFG7s, the FFG(X) Guided Missile Frigate concept.

They went to General Dynamics Bath Iron Works (for a Spanish design F100 frigate, which the Aussies are using as HMAS Hobart), Fincantieri Marine’s Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM) frigate, Huntington Ingalls (for a grey hull frigate based on the Legend-class National Security Cutter they have been making for the Coast Guard), Austal USA (for an up-gunned LCS), and Lockheed Martin (see Austal).

Out of all of them, I think the Ingalls pumped-up Coast Guard cutter is the most likely as its the most mature with the least issues, but the F100 and FREMM are very nice (though suffer from “not made here” origins).

Meanwhile, in other ship news, Ingalls just landed a $1.43 billion, fixed-price incentive contract for the detail design and construction of LPD 29, the 13th San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship. Ingalls has built and delivered all 11 San Antonios since 2000, a group of massive 25,000-ton 684-foot gators capable of toting up to 800 Marines along with a few helicopters/MV-22s and two LCAC landing craft to put them ashore. The 11th of the class, Portland (LPD 27), will be commissioned on April 21 in Portland, Oregon. The 12th, Fort Lauderdale, is under construction and is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2020. Preliminary work has begun on LPD 29, and the start of fabrication will take place later this year.