In early February, the Dutch announced the sale of four frigates to Chile: two van Heemskerck-class air defense ships and two of eight Karel Doormans. The sale seemed part of a wider Dutch naval retrenchment that included the retirement of all the P-3Cs. However, it might have a broader significance. The Karel Doormans had been very well regarded for their careful and economical design. To many, they epitomized a European attempt to build optimized surface combatants, which could be contrasted with a U.S. tendency toward much greater size. Yet the sale, conducted while the Royal Netherlands Navy plans a second pair of big missile ships, suggests that navy now finds its tightly designed frigates less valuable.
It seems fair to imagine that many U.S. surface officers have felt they were driving SUVs, while their European counterparts were driving sports cars. Why could not the U.S. Navy do as well? One analysis, sponsored in the 1970s by Naval Sea Systems Command, suggested that U.S. (and Canadian) warships were so large because their designers incorporated large design margins. Some of those margins could be associated with the need to operate over vast distances and thus be largely self-supporting. Perhaps the Europeans produced such elegant designsthe Dutch were hardly alone-because their naval architects, most of them working for private shipyards, were not bound by government-mandated rules. Instead, they produced the tightest design that met a relatively simple series of performance specifications.
So one question is whether smaller, which is what the Dutch and other Europeans got, is really better. Surely, one imagines, it makes for less expensive ships. Are not ships bought by the ton? In fact, ship steel is quite inexpensive; what makes a modern surface combatant costly is her combat system or systems. A longer ship may actually be easier to drive through the water, so larger may save on machinery and fuel costs-not to mention wear and tear becausce of motion in a seaway. Such comparisons do not, of course, apply to ships that are dynamically supported, such as hydrofoils or air-cushion vehicles. Larger ships do demand larger crews to maintain them, although recent "smart ship" efforts suggest that crewing can be tightened dramatically.
The key reason larger is more expensive is that a larger hull has more space in which to stuff combat systems. For example, in the 1970s the U.S. Navy bought the Spruances (DD-963), which essentially carried frigate combat systems in destroyersized hulls. It turned out to be a far better bargain, because the Spruances, could easily run with a carrier and because that space could be exploited for later upgrades.
Conversely, it might be imagined that if size affects cost, then it is possible to cut the cost of an expensive ship by stuffing the same combat system into a smaller hull. Unfortunately, that tends to produce a small but expensive ship with limited capability. For example, in the late 1950s, the U.S. Navy was confronted with what seemed an urgent need to replace a large destroyer force built during World War II. The existing Charles F. Adams (DDG-2) class destroyer was considered too expensive. What could be done? General Dynamics Pomona, which made the missile (Tartar, soon to be replaced by SM-1), proposed a 12-missile box launcher, which would have removed below-decks launcher components. The unpleasant surprise was that this sort of sacrifice bought little savings-because even one missile still would have required much the same combat system, including radars and (analog) computers.
Back, then, to the Europeans. In the aftermath of the Cold War, many of the European navies that seemed to be good at buying sports cars are buying SUVs. The Dutch van Heemskercks, for example, are to be replaced by a second pair of big missile destroyers, the De Zeven Provinciens. The Royal Navy seems set to unload many of its elegant Type 23s, while it buys its own big missile destroyers, the Type 45 Daring class. The British already have sold several of the earlier and somewhat larger Type 22 frigates. Even the Royal Danish Navy, whose StanFlex 300 missile corvettes made an impression some years ago, is now building four large (4,000 to 6,000 ton) frigates specifically for littoral operations.
What is going on here? The Karel Doormans and the Type 23s all were optimized for a particular kind of war, the war that many imagined would break out if the Cold War turned hot. The Dutch, for example, were obliged (under NATO agreements) to assemble antisubmarine hunting groups in the North Sea. Their area air defense ships would have provided a defensive umbrella for the optimized antisubmarine warfare (ASW) ships. None of them would have operated far from home.
Similarly, a British Type 23 frigate is optimized for ASW, much of its machinery design justified by the need for silencing. Officially, it is now a multipurpose ship, which is partly valid. That the Type 23 can support a very large helicopter, the Merlin, means that it is inherently multipurpose, because the helicopter can be used for much more than ASW. The ship also has a gun that has proved useful for shore bombardment. Even so, clearly Type 23 is a largely optimized ASW ship. The Royal Navy is saying that general-purpose surface combatants of some type are key to its future.
A successful executive officer is as much a manager as a specialist in a warfare area. The ability to manage a Type 23 probably will translate to the ability to run a Type 45 destroyer or the currently planned Future Surface Combatant (in numerical terms, the Type 23's successor). The technology will change, but understanding how technology and tactics work is a basic and transferable skill. None of this makes the Type 23 a particularly effective post-Cold War ship; but there is no magic wand the Royal Navy can wave to transform it into the sort of ship it really needs.
With the end of the Cold War, neither the Karel Doorman nor the Type 23 seems so good a bargain as when designed. Both were excellent choices for the Cold War, but in each case the design seems to have been predicated on the assumption that the Cold War would never end. Navies and surface combatants still are worthwhile. For example, the Royal Netherlands Navy still offers the Dutch government some very valuable capabilities, but now they are worthwhile only if they can be exercised in potential battle areas quite far from home. Moreover, area air defense and land attack capability seem far more valuable than Cold War-style ASW. Possibly the main post-Cold War role a Karel Doorman can fulfill is maritime interdiction (which includes participation in the international war against drugs). That is hardly to be derided, but ships are expensive to run, and the Dutch could have hoped for more.
The Cold War U.S. Navy produced its share of optimized ships in the form of Knox (FF-1052)- and Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7)-class frigates, but much larger and less optimized ships, such as the Spruance, Ticonderoga (CG-47), andArleigh Burke (DDG-51) classes, were a much greater part of its surface force. They were effective in crucial Cold War roles, but they were relatively easy to adapt to a world in which surface strike was a key capability. That was not accidental. When the Mk 41 vertical launcher was being designed, there was a conscious decision that its cells would be able to take Tomahawk strike missiles and antiaircraft Standard missiles. That was a decision against optimization, since limiting the length of the cells would have helped limit the size of the ships. When the decision was made, around 1976, those involved had little idea how important the surface ship land-attack mission would become, both during and after the Cold War. Rather, they understood, in warship design, it was far better to make provision for a new capability than to rule it out for the entire life of the ship.
The various European navies are now building air defense ships, such as the Dutch de Zeven Provincien, the British Daring (Type 45), the German Sachsen, the Spanish Alvaro de Bazan, and the Franco-Italian Horizon, which cost about as much as an Arleigh Burke but are substantially smaller. By previous European standards they are huge ships, however, and all of them cry out that the Europeans are finding that small is not beautiful-at least not any more. Yet, it is not so clear that they are much better bargains than their Cold War predecessors. Outwardly they are comparable to the Arleigh Burke', all are high-capability antiaircraft ships with Aegis-grade combat systems. However, the effort to hold down size and cost has left them with, on average, less than half the missile capacity of the U.S. ship.
That limitation matters. For the present, the air threat that required about a hundred SM-2s in an Arleigh Burke has receded sharply. The key Western naval role seems to involve intervention abroad, as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, what matters most in an Arleigh Burke is that the same cells !that carry antiaircraft weapons can carry about a hundred Tomahawks. Because Tomahawk is difficult to replenish at sea, whatever a ship takes into a theater of operations is whatever she is likely to fire there. It would have cost very little for the European builders to have added hull volume for additional vertical cells; the only ships to make explicit allowance for such additions are the Dutch (with capacity for eight more cells) and the British (the gun forward can be replaced by a bank of Mk 41 launchers). The Franco-Italian frigates lack capacity, and it seems unlikely they will carry land-attack missiles.
It seems, then, that the best way to read the Dutch and British warship sales is that size does matter. Unfortunately, ships still are being built to meet the most prominent Cold War threats, rather than to deal with what seems to be coming. In the British case, the saving grace, if there is one, is the plan to build two large carriers-ships with entirely open architectures. For us, the fundamental lesson seems to be that we were extremely fortunate to have bought flexibility when we bought large surface combatants. No one has to explain to a U.S. officer that even though he is commanding a ship of clearly obsolete concept, he is being trained to command a realistic warship tomorrow. He already is commanding the right sort of ship. Maybe sports cars have their limits.