Originally Posted by
SLXOwft
<RANT MODE ON>The UK ends up paying more for its ships and hence can't afford enough because it doesn't have a rolling ship building programme so can't improve incrementally and indulges in exceptionalism so can't share in international programmes. Look at the Wasps and Americas, major design changes over the lifetime of the programme in the case of the Wasps over 20 years (and the USN is big enough to stand alone), (Or the various incarnations of the Type 12 Whitby ordered 2/51 to Ariadne Laid Down 11/69) We may be getting it more right with aircraft though.<RANT MODE OFF>
Be very careful what you wish for. Is that the USN that has not designed a successful surface combatant since the late 80s? That USN? The one that ended up with a class of 3 (should have been 32) "destroyers" that cost north of $5Bn each, displace 16000 tonnes and have large parts of their weapons systems mothballed because they can't afford the ammunition? That USN? Or the one that has had to get it's new frigate designed by Fincantieri, because institutionally it has forgotten how to design from first principles?
It's not quite as simple as forgetting - there are some organisational factors in play (as there are here). But fundamentally, if you do not exercise the front-end design skills required to understand why a particular ship is the way it is, they are lost. In the UK, we've struggled because the T23 was designed (by MoD) in the late 80s and then nothing until the early 2000s (T45) and then nothing again till the teens (T26), which means that the people leading the design have fifteen years before the next one. Which means they don't have sufficient expertise, which leads to design issues.
Design itself - at least to the contract design level - is relatively inexpensive, it's detail design with offices stuffed with draughtsmen that costs. Long runs of the same build don't really generate cost-savings beyond ships 3 or 4. Where you do get savings is in equipment items. Far better to do a new class of ship every 6-8 years, build 4-6 of them and do another. It carries an overhead, but means that you avoid block obsolescence, maintain your design skills base and are a bit more flexible in response to changing operational requirements.
The real issue is that contrary to the single most important recommendation in Sir John Parkers National Shipbuilding Strategy there is still no ring-fenced long-term capital budget for shipbuilding.