the Constellation-class frigate

Last month, the US Navy's Constellation-class frigate program was canceled. The US Navy has repeatedly failed at making new ship classes (see the Zumwalt, DDG(X), and LCS programs) so the Constellation-class was supposed to use an existing design, the FREMM frigate used by Italy, France, and Egypt. However...

once the complex design work commenced, the Navy and Marinette had to make vast changes to the design in order to meet stricter U.S. survivability standards.

Well, ship survivability is nice to have, but on the other hand, this is what a single torpedo does to a destroyer. So how does that requirement creep happen? Here's an admiral saying "DO NOT LOWER SHIP SAFETY STANDARDS" and linking to this document but the document doesn't have any hard rules, it just says "here are some things to consider doing" and "you must evaluate whether there are cost-effective survivability improvements to make". People say "I'm just following the rules" whenever they get criticized, but it's actually a judgment call from the leadership, and the leadership has bad judgment. This post says:

Shock-hardening for near-miss torpedo protection, a chemical, biological, and radiological (CBR) citadel, thicker bulkheads for [...]

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Outline:

(00:09) the Constellation-class frigate

(02:33) US shipbuilding

(07:19) business cultures & corporate governance

(10:39) Nippon Steel

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First published:
December 5th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Lng2FspAoJFuyz6hg/why-america-can-t-build-ships

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