Why not the Oliver Hazard Perry class?

[adroth]

This topic was discussed to death in the original forum. Sadly . . . all those discussions are currently inaccessible. Time to rebuild the database for this question.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rpdefense/permalink/1101766479909198/?match=b2xpdmVy

[adroth]

As per multiple shoulder-taps over the years, the following have been reported:

1. The Philippine Navy has considered the OHP numerous times over the past 10 years

2. In all instances, the OHP had been rejected because of the cost of operation of their Combined Gas and Gas (COGAG) propulsion which is optimized for high-speed transit as part of USN carrier battle group operations

====

The following Naval Post Graduate school paper compares the costs of operating an OHP in the regular fleet as compared to the naval reserve

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a272492.pdf

Key factors

MANPOWERCOSTS ......................................... 9
A. MANNING ............................................ 9
B. PAY AND ALLOWANCES ................................ 10
C. BASIC PAY AND RETIREMENT ACCRUAL ................... 12
D. RETIREMENT COMPUTATION ........................... 14
IV. MAINTENANCE COSTS ..................................... 18
A. MAINTENANCE CONCEPT .............................. 18
B. ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL MAINTENANCE ................... 20
C. INTERMEDIATE LEVEL MAINTENANCE .................... 24
D. DEPOT LEVEL MAINTENANCE .......................... 26
V. OPERATING COSTS ....................................... 30
A. DIRECT COSTS ...................................... 31
B. INDIRECT COSTS .................................... 34
VI. DEPRECIATION COSTS .................................... 36
A. RATIONALE FOR DEPRECIATION ........................ 36
B. STRAIGHT-LINE METHOD ............................. 37
C. ACCELERATED DEPRECIATION ......................... 39

The following table from the document represent early 90's pricing

[adroth]

An Australian angle to this well-worn story, right or wrong, has been inserted into the discourse. Might as well acknowledge it and discuss

http://maxdefense.blogspot.com/2017/04/australias-adelaide-class-frigates-best.html?m=1

===

The question: Can afford the costs shown below. Or are there more economical alternatives?

Cash-hungry ship costs navy $300,000 a day
OCTOBER 16, 20128:34PM

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/cash-hungry-ship-costs-navy-300000-a-day/news-story/a9de65f5fd4e68201a8d9533ac4ee061

< Edited >

Ageing Adelaide-class frigates cost $279,325 a day or $11,639 an hour while the Anzac frigates cost $206,247 a day or $8594 per hour.

< Edited >

[adroth]

https://www.facebook.com/adrothph/posts/750384655142790?comment_id=750387715142484&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R0%22%7D

[horge]

Why not the Oliver Hazard Perry class?

Because you don't buy a Ferrari for grocery runs.
Moreso when you can't really afford to sustain a Ferrari.

PN is not some blue-water navy with a need for fast transit across oceans,
and PH is not a global empire with a need to project naval power globally.

What PH has aren't even regional, but territorial defense concerns.
What PN needs are vessels more within the philosophy of an OPV:
good endurance+seakeeping; good sensories; economical operation.


Consider the likelihood that any OHP transfer will be very cold. If you
thought the Hamiltons were severely-stripped before delivery, hah...

Hamiltons have an autonomous 45-day endurance
Perry's require UNREP every 12-15 days, in a 180-day deployment.[1]

Both max out speed at 28 kts, but...
Hamiltons technically have a range of 14,000 NM at 11 kts
Perrys technically have a range of 4,000NM at 18 kts

'OHP' cost figures have already been posted, and the del Pilar opcost
(admittedly in a PN, not USCG context) is open source. Perrys do have
le two-car garage, which does affect endurance, but opcost-disparity
remains significant between an FFG and an OPV.

When/if fast vector is called for in a naval context, there should
be airpower on-call, almost inevitably land-based... which means said
airpower should have the range to get to where they may be needed
(our EEZ is a fair clue) ...and this is another cause of acute heartburn.

Get an OPV, but for God's sake, no more "fitted for, but not with" BS
which, for new-builds, stinks of a tactic to lower common denominators,
thereby enlarging the bidding pool and thus increasing the number of
bidders who might then try to bribe those in power.





[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10460/07-17-smallcombatants.pdf

[gemini1]

Would it not be possible to re-engine one the OHP's gas turbine with diesel?

[adroth]

Would it not be possible to re-engine one the OHP's gas turbine with diesel?

The engineering effort required would better be spent on building a whole new boat.

[LionFlyer]

https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/SNAME/3514e45e-10da-4cec-af00-5a1b541dc923/UploadedFiles/ModernNaval%20Solutions_2final.Ohmayer.Nov%202012c.pdf

Engines are built into the ship during construction. Replacing / engineering are major works, which involves cutting open the deck to access the engine compartment. The fact that they were gas turbine only means that there might not sufficient internal volume to accommodate a diesel and associated parts. There also a question on how the additional weight of the diesels will affect the stability of the ship.

Suffice to say, if it was easy/cost-effective to do, existing operators like Turkey  or Australia would have done them.

[40niner]

The RAN Adelaide class depicted in this image just to show her relative size over existing and incoming PN assets. 

Arts credits are listed on the image.

Note that retired-'Baptiste de Andrade' class of Marinha Portuguesa (Portuguese Navy) is also included for comparative purposes.

[dr demented]

Believe it or not, the Americans are considering returning the Perry class frigates to active service.

https://news.usni.org/2017/06/13/cno-navy-taking-hard-look-bringing-back-oliver-hazard-perry-frigates-ddg-life-extension-options-build-355-ship-fleet

CNO: Navy ‘Taking a Hard Look’ at Bringing Back Oliver Hazard Perry Frigates, DDG Life Extensions as Options to Build Out 355 Ship Fleet

By: Sam LaGrone
June 13, 2017 1:20 PM

Studies are underway to “take a hard look” at putting eight mothballed Oliver Hazard Perry frigates back into service as well as extending the life of existing Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyers to help the Navy reach its goal of a 355-ship fleet, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said on Tuesday.

Speaking before an audience at the U.S. Naval War College, Richardson said service leaders were looking at “every trick” to put more platforms into the fleet including bringing back some Perrys into service.

“We’re taking a hard look at the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. There’s seven or eight of those that we could take a look at but those are some old ships and everything on these ships is old… a lot has changed since we last modernized those,” Richardson said in a response to an audience question on how the Navy’s inactive reserve fleet could be used to grow the fleet.
“It’ll be a cost benefit analysis in terms of how we do that. The other part is how we do life extension and how do we plan to keep them out of mothballs longer. That’s going to be money in the bank if we do that.”

He said early looks at extending the planned service life of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers could help the service reach a 355 total ten to 15 years faster.

“If we plan now, for instance, to extend the life Arleigh Burke DDGs beyond the current projections, the initial returns are we could buy ten to 15 years to the left in terms of reaching that 350 ship goal,” he said.

In follow-up tweets to his remarks at the Current Strategy Forum, Richardson and a Navy spokesperson stressed the service was still in the early stages of formulating how it would reach the 355 ship goal and that the progress on the life extension program was more mature than reactivating the frigates.

The service – currently at 275 ships – determined late last year that it needed to grow to 355 ships by the mid-2020s to keep a U.S. advantage over adversaries like Russia and China.

“It’s clear to get beyond that we’re going to have to start building, we’re going to have to build ships,” Richardson wrote in a white paper issued last month.
“And we’re going to have to look at extending the life of ships, we’re going to have to look at just about every way we can to increase our inventory of ships in the United States Navy.”

One naval analyst told USNI News on Tuesday considering reactivating the frigates was a sign of the stress the current fleet is under.

“The fact that this is being considered speaks to the strength and utility of the Perry-class frigate design, as well as the strain being felt by the fleet,” Eric Wertheim, author of U.S. Naval Institute’s Combat Fleets of the World, told USNI News on Tuesday.
“While increasing maintenance and shipbuilding funding could help alleviate some of these challenges in the future, near term gaps still need to be addressed more immediately. Returning retired vessels to the fleet could potentially be one near-term solution, and it sounds like it is now being considered – among other options.”

Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former aide to retired former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News that the missions for the frigates would be limited and the cost would be high in reintroducing them to the fleet.

“The Perry class are going to be an expensive proposition to bring out of mothballs and maintain just for the purpose of going out and doing some presence missions,” Clark said.
“You’re talking about having to come up with a 150 billets for each of those ships out of an already stressed manpower pool. They’re also not going to offer that much in terms of combat capability. So if you bring them back, they’re essentially going to be like how they were when they left the fleet, which was as a theater security cooperation, maritime security asset.”

The last Perry left U.S. service in 2015 with the bulk of the class set aside for foreign military sale or dismantling.

Originally designed as a guided missile frigate, the class was a key platform for the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq War in the late 1980s and later was a key platform for anti-drug trafficking operations in U.S. Southern Command.

[Juramentado]

Bryan's comments are very relevant. If CNO really deemed the Perries return to service, they'd be nothing more than Presence Assets. Not particularly useful to the USN, given they'd have to reinstate a whole logistics, support and training chain unless they could find enough standers who did serve on the class before. At this point, they're struggling to figure what to do now they've dumped the 3-2-1 manning model on LCS, hence the intimation that crewing is a problem.

The reasoning behind the PN looking into the Perry class recently again is mired more in the ugliness of what's happening in the HHI bid behind the scenes.

[40niner]

Those who are curious on where they are now, the Dec-2016 report of the OFFICE OF SHIP DISPOSAL PROGRAMS has this summary :


Taiwan was earmarked and approved for transfer for four units by the US Congress.  However, it only chose to received a couple of the units and received them three months ago (March).  FMS, reactivation and transfer cost for both is $177M.  This is still just a basic gun and sail configuration.  Note that Taiwan already has eight licensed-built OHP frigates in their navy, so logistically it may not be difficult to integrate them.

It is unclear if Taiwan intends to bring the two frigates up to similar standards as their locally built equivalents...

One can also back read (pls use google) Pakistan's ex-USN OHP's acquisition/refurbishment in late 2000s, where because of politics only one (again barebone) was delivered in 2011 for $78M.  They have to look to Turkey to upgrade this unit.

[sbhntr]

It may not be that difficult to bring them back to service. If the VLS-41 were installed, remove the -60s and replace with UAVs, upgrade the fire control and asw suite with off the shelf items (optional?), one might have a very effective stop gap fleet of frigs. Not much r&d required as LM already did it for Australia.
The systems mentioned above are still very much alive logistics wise and the skills are available in the fleet since other boats use the same stuff. And, since there are still active OHP operators, the technical data (drawings, pubs, etc), manufacturing, repair facilities are still available.
In today’s US dollars, the Aussie upgrade cost approximately $2 billion for four ships. Spending $4 to $5 B for eight hulls made available relatively quickly may not be a bad idea.
For comparison, a perry frig would cost 727 million today (based on 194 million cost in 1978) and the price for an arleigh burke is a little below 2 billion…
(Big unknown is how much “stuff” of usable items (from other boats and ready inventory) NAVSEA has in warehouses)
-jm2c

[Juramentado]

The material condition of the HME is the limiting factor. Upgrading the combat capabilities of this vessel requires some more EMD; you can't go straight into yard refit - after a while it ends up just being more money into a pit.

[dr demented]

A lot of the impetus in possible reactivation of the OHPs is tied to a goal of having a 355 ship fleet.

However, given the fact that the OHPs are reportedly very run down, and the missile capabilities on these ships were removed back in 2004, I would place such proposals in the same category as proposals to reactivate Essex class carriers and Des Moines class heavy cruisers during Reagan's 600 ship fleet program.  You can do it, but at great expense, and the end result is a ship with limited capabilities and a very short extended service life.