The U.S. Navy Wants Frigates That Can Pack a Punch

The Navy soon could select a shipyard to build the new class of frigate starting in 2020.The U.S. Navy might tweak its force-structure goals in order to boost the number of frigates.That's what Vice Adm. Bill Merz, the deputy chief of naval operations, told a House of Representatives subcommittee on March 27, 2019. "We’re expecting a pretty hard look at the mix of ships this year," Merz said, according to USNI News.In rewriting the force-structure plan to include more small surface combatants, the Navy could signal its intention to acquire larger numbers of smaller ships at the expense of bigger ships.This first appeared in earlier in April 2019.The idea would be to distribute U.S. naval power across a greater number of less-expensive vessels, reversing a decades-long trend toward larger, and fewer U.S. warships."We know we are heavy on large surface combatants, and we’d like to adjust that to a more appropriate mix, especially with the lethality we’re seeing coming along with the frigate," Merz said.

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