Fleet Cost Problems post

A response to: Fleet Cost Problems? For a start, stop calling cruisers either destroyers or frigates

“Fleet Cost Problems?  For a Start, Stop Calling Cruisers Either Destroyers or Frigates."  8 December 2015

In his post “Fleet Cost Problems?"  Ken Hansen suggests we stop calling our future ships destroyers or frigates as they are really ‘cruisers’ in his view.  On the way there he claimed the official naval response to those that questioned the costs of those future warships was to label the critics “uninformed.”  I questioned those costs in a well publicized 2013 CDFAI paper, and the navy did not call me “uninformed.”   This claim of labeling needs to be backed up with evidence.

He then estimates that “current growth rates will result in a frigate of ‘6500 tons’ and a destroyer of about ‘8000’ tons.”   It might will be that the future Canadian combatant approaches those figures, mind it would be nice if Hansen revealed his expertise or methodology here.   His main point, however, is that these “will be cruisers,” and his title argues they should be so named.

If we were, however, to name our future combatant ‘cruisers’ we would be an outlier, as this extract shows:

Eric post

Every warship here is a frigate or destroyer and not a ‘cruiser.’

Finally, Ken Hansen concludes with his now obligatory critique of the naval staff.  See here and here for other examples.  In this post he declares “Strangely, the Canadian navy puts little value on fuel capacity and economy of operation preferring instead to rely on operational sustainment at sea from our venerable sustainment ships.”  Yet a quick online comparison of the Canadian Patrol Frigate’s 7,100 nautical mile (NM) range at a 15 knots economical speed shows it to be almost the equal of the British Type 26 (7,500 NM), and better than the Italia Maestrale (6,000 NM) and American DDG 51 (5,700 NM).   The CPF’s endurance is significantly superior to the French Lafayette (4,000 NM) and German F125 (4,000 NM).  Contrary to what Hansen claims the RCN puts more value on endurance than most of our NATO allies.

Finally, I am unable to ascertain from this post how renaming the Canadian Surface Combatant a ‘cruiser’ will do anything for the project’s costs, the title above notwithstanding.

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