By Geoff Fein
The U.S. Navy is beginning an effort this week to bring together the international frigate community to explore areas where the service and its allies might have common interests when it comes to modernizing the ships, according to a service official.
“We are trying to see what kind of initiatives apply to the global community…obsolescence issues, supply, logistics, sustainment, are all critical in these ship classes,” Rear Adm. Jim McManamon, deputy commander to surface warfare, told reporters at the annual Navy League Sea, Air, Space expo earlier this month.
The week-long symposium is being held at Naval Station Mayport, Fla. Besides the United States, other countries with frigates are: Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, Poland, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. McManamon said there are opportunities in the frigate community that the U.S. Navy would want to take advantage of.
For example, countries have taken different paths on advancing weapons systems, or on hull, mechanical and electrical (HM&E) systems, he added.
‘We are looking for different ways to identify those issues for the global community. Maintaining technical documentation is a challenge and we want to exchange information on that,” McManamon said. “And as we look for long-term sustainment, what are the parts availabilities and how do we want to best do that?”
The U.S. Navy operates 30 Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. As many as 10 FFGs will remain in service through 2019, according to the service. There are a total of 33 Perry-class frigates in use by allied navies.
Another reason for bringing together the frigate community is to continue to press forward on concepts raised by former Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Mike Mullen and current CNO Adm. Gary Roughead, McManamon added.
“We have an opportunity here to promote both Adm. Mullen’s view of international cooperation and Adm. Roughead’s view of how we can actually build better ties to understand the international world here,” he said.
This is not the first international partnership between the Navy and other countries, McManamon pointed out. The sea service has longstanding connections with NATO, for example, on the NATO Sea Sparrow program.
“But in terms of ship platforms, this is probably one of the first times we are looking at this, and we believe that if it gives us the added value, we think we can probably look at other ship classes we can continue with,” he said.
The symposium which began yesterday, runs through Friday. In the near-term, the goal is to establish lines of communications among the eight countries, McManamon said.
“We will be doing a certain amount of workshops and networking opportunities to try to identify some of the real interest items and allow for that exchange of information,” he said.
As the parties work their way through the week, “we are going to see if we see value added in the discussions,” McManamon said. “Are we getting good information flow between the different countries and ourselves?”
The longer-view will look at where the countries want to go with this idea, he added. “Is this perhaps an annual event or every two years? Do we want to rotate it? Do we want to bring more industry in?”
“Right now, my intent is to limit this to a government and uniform presence,” McManamon said. “But I am very open that if we get the right value added and as we establish the communications there may be more interest in opening it up for other programs and processes in terms of potential modernization projects which would notionally bring in more and more stakeholders.”
McManamon said he has received good support and interest, at the flag officer level, from the participating countries.. “[They] have indicated either a flag or equivalent will be coming to the symposium.”
McManamon said he has taken a quick look at some of the briefs that have been prepared by the international partners.
“Each country is actually right now putting forward what they have done with their FFGs, and what issues they have had,” he noted.
Navy officials recently met with their counterparts in Turkey and have heard about some of the upgrades that country’s navy wants.
“The Australian navy is interested in showing the pros and cons and challenges on some of the weapon systems upgrades. The Egyptian navy has done some different changes and modernization for HM&E,” McManamon said. “I think what we are going to be having in this first [symposium] is everyone kind of putting their best foot forward and showing some of the items that they have done with their FFGs.
“The second half of that, that…they want to talk about…is what are some of the sustainment and obsolescence parts challenges we see in the worldwide community,” he added.
McManamon acknowledges these efforts are not without challenges. For example, there are laws and regulations that place limitations on what can be done to improve the condition of frigates as they move into the foreign military sales (FMS) world. For example, Congress has a rule preventing modernization within five years of decommissioning, with exceptions, he added.
And there are international regulations too, McManamon said. His job will be to balance the rules and regulations with what is possible.
There might be areas in HM&E, for example, that might be easier to work in, McManamon added.
“Every ship is having a challenge on the engineering propulsion control system…it’s just getting old…some cards are going obsolete,” he said. “Can I foresee a joint buy or some way I can shape an ability if we reach an agreement on how to go forward…that it would be a joint program? Yeah, I think it’s reasonable, but not without challenges.”