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In a major win for Wisconsin’s Marinette Marine shipyard, the Navy selected Fincantieri’s so-called FREMM design, an acronym that stands for “European multi-purpose frigate,” in its original Italian. The shipyard, which is also on the hook for building the remaining mono-hull littoral combat ships and a frigate version of it for Saudi Arabia, is now a major player in U.S. Navy shipbuilding.
The detailed design and construction contract, worth $795.1 million, covers the design work and the first ship, as well as options for up to nine others. The total value of the contract if all options are exercised will be $5.58 billion. The contract is expected to be rebid after the first 10 ships.
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Fincantieri campaigned hard to win the contract, bringing the FREMM to the United States to show it off and work with U.S. ships off the coast. The victory beats out challenges from Huntington Ingalls Industries, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works with Navantia’s F100 design, and Austal USA with an up-gunned version of its trimaran littoral combat ship.
The second frigate is expected to be ordered in April 2021, and from there it should be delivered about five and a half years after the award date.
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<img src=”https://www.armytimes.com/resizer/xC1UiiBaVpN782CVHIdW0y-B-4s=/600×0/filters:quality(100)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/SWMVZ3JPBZAELL2X5YRKNDSHWU.jpg” alt=”The Italian FREMM Alpino moored pierside in Baltimore. The ship’s design is the basis of the US Navy’s next-generation frigate. (Staff photo By David B. Larter)”/>The Italian FREMM Alpino moored pierside in Baltimore. The ship’s design is the basis of the US Navy’s next-generation frigate. (Staff photo By David B. Larter)
The FFG(X) is supposed to be a small, multi-mission ship with a modified version of Raytheon’s SPY-6 radar destined for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Combat System, as well as some point defense systems and 32 vertical launch cells for about half the cost of a DDG.
Of course, without knowing which ship the Navy intends to buy and what the final detailed designs look like, firm price estimates are impossible, but the Pentagon has some projections.
The first ship ordered in 2020 is expected to cost $1.28 billion, according to budget documents.
“We don’t want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” Crites said. “As it is, we’re going to have eight frigates under construction when we deliver the first one in 2026.
“Right now we’ll award one later this year, wand the plan is for one next year but that will get looked at. Then we’ll ramp up to two to three, with nine in the [future-year defense program].”
Source: Defense News “The US Navy selects Fincantieri design for next-generation frigate”
Note: This is National Interest’s article I post here for readers’ information. It does not mean that I agree or disagree with the article’s views.
Tiananmen's Tremendous Achievements 
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In choosing an Italian design, the American is better to stock up on Italian parts, and Italian oil, to avoid some embarrassment. When the Australian bought two LHDs from Spain, they embarrassingly experienced problems when they used some wrong engine oil not bought from Spain. In Indonesia at least, American heavy equipment company Caterpillar often reneges on equipment warranties only because they suspected the customers do not buy overcharged spare parts from their company, but this was the first time I knew that the wrong engine oil could actually break a diesel engine. I should pay more attention to my marine engines just in case if they are made in Spain. Anyway, the timing of the breakdown, on both ships, meaning that the Australian LHDs must be towed in the participation for the Operation Talisman Sabre training with the American, since the American themselves. Towed warships on wargames must be looking good to the Chinese information-gathering ship reported nearby. And the American did not even have a spare LHD ready. Where the heck was the USS Wasp at this crucial time? But the American is actually no stranger to towing warships themselves. The American might not like to report warships under tow, but there was no escaping the news when the USS Zumwalt broke down on the busy Panama Canal. It must be an arduous task to tow and recover the Zumwalt among angry ships which busy schedules were delayed. The Italians must be laughing to their guts if their working FREMM breaks down in American hand because of the wrong oil not bought from Italy. How did the American manage to be a ‘superpower’ in the first place anyway.
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In reply to NDL not anybody else
Your coment on FON in SCS intended to pit PLAN against USN has been deleted due to its ill intent.
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Gary Lock, an ethnic Chinese and Democrat politician once ambassodor for America in China under Obama is a typical running dog traitor. He has now joined Trump’s campaign for president despite the regime’s overt racism towards Chinese people in his own country.
In a country whose election for a leader is decided on how xenophobic the candidate is towards a particular race is particularly sad and uncivilised.
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Gary Locke is the example to Asian kids growing up in America. Migrating to America from Hongkong at the age of six to grocery store owner parent, well close to take away restaurants and laundry business. Growing up feeling inferior in the rascist environment, but still feeling superior than his peers in his native Hongkong. He sucked up some American enough to make him chosen, not elected, to be a toy governor when America was in need of a token Chinese figures in the wake of China’s, and Asia’s rise. But he was forced to resign by the death threat against his daughter by those who disapproved an Asian governor. He resigned because even as governor, he was not even granted protection for his family member like any other governor, or even ordinary American. Obama chose him to be ambassador to China because he seemed capable to keep the Hongkies in his area in line. Stupid Obama would think that the Chinese aristocrats in Beijing were similar to the Hongkies. What was he thinking? He naively believed that China was just like one giant American Chinatown. Stupid Obama should know better, his brother in law is a not-Hongkie Chinese but a Canadian South East Asia Chinese. But of course lawyers are trained to lie, not to see the truth, or facts. Even as an American ambassador in Beijing, Gary was not even awarded ambassadorial protection, where as he was reported buying coffee at Starbucks with his daughter alone, without ambassadorial security details. In the end, he found Beijing bureaucrats were more intimidating than Hongkies, and tougher than any American lawyers and politicians. Unable to perform his intended duty to keep Chinese leaders in line with American agenda, he was sent back to America in disgrace, quietly and unceremoniously unlike his grand appointment. What more to be said about Chinese American loser kid with an inferiority complex. There are countless other Chinese American kids just like him. Unsurprisingly, he is a lawyer by education, not at all science research material. It may be important profession in squabble-loving America along with PTSD specialist, but not needed everywhere else where only progress is important.
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America’s strategy has always been to manipulate and take advantage of Chinese American scientists and take credit for themselves. After decades of feeling taken advantage of, not being recognized, being passed over for higher positions and sometimes being scapegoated as spies for China and being prosecuted and imprisoned, many Chinese Americans have been going back to China in droves. This has resulted to American so called ingenuity being eroded. Thus the Americans are now using illegal, immoral and prohibited measures to destroy China.
This covid19 that America and its military, with the collaboration of big pharmaceutical companies, unleashed upon the world to demonize and destroy China didn’t go as planned. America thought millions of Chinese will die as a results of the coronavirus. This in turn will definitely scare the world population as for them to introduce ID2020 that will require every citizen to be vaccinated and injected with electronic ID and which America will try to dominate the world. But China was able to control the epidemic thru massive and effective lockdown. This in turn forces Trump to keep on saying that it is under control in America.
Why Trump had to say it’s under control when it was only one person infected in January? Then it was like 5 persons infected and Trump again said it’s under control. This strategy to ease the anxiety of the American population by saying it’s under control was in reality, done to make the infection spread more easily because their original plan in China was unsuccessful. It now has to be done in America and to infect as much people as possible in order to scare the world population.
However with this covid19, many mainland Chinese
who immigrated and acquired citizenship abroad were discriminated against and suffered racial attacks due to fabricated news by western media. With this development, those former mainland Chinese are now regretting their decisions to leave China. I have been telling mainland Chinese for many years that if I were a China born ethnic Chinese, I wouldn’t leave China. Now they know how it feels.
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Most of Chinese Americans are not research material quality, actually, due to their American education. Their parents may go to America for their extraordinary science skills basis, and got underpaid as they had to be ‘grateful’ to be awarded American Green Card, but their kids do not actually has the same quality educations they get in their home countries. To say that those scientists’ kids grow up to be ordinary American, as in brochure, is overrated. As Asians, they would forever always be less-than-ordinary Americans, to be bullied, ridiculed and made to feel inferior among their ‘real’ American peers. What sad is that these dysfunctional Asian American kids would be made to feel that no matter how inferior they are in America, they would still consider themselves to still be superior than their peers from their parents’ home countries, when it is the fact that they are actually even far more inferior outside America. Given the American’s attitude toward Asians, there is nothing they can do to change the status quo in America. But there is a way to change it, from outside America. China is actually a good example of how threatened the American is to the country’s rise of prestige. But we do not have to be Chinese citizens to overtake American prestige. If the Chinese Overseas in South East Asia could find a common ground with the natives against American-incited differences, they could actually raise their countries’ prestige against American’s. Then with China at the center, we could actually created a Pan-Asianic alliance that would eclipse America and even the European Union. Only then the American could no longer entice and take advantage of our scientists, as going to America would not be attractive, or prestigious anymore. Of course, with the prestige higher than the American, we would be considered threats by the American, and we would be subjected to similar petty attacks and bullyings that the American does to China. But being American enemy is a fair price to pay for progress. More importantly, our children and their children won’t be considered inferior by the Westerners. We will have our own identity.
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So what does is it mean? Does the American finally they can no longer research and develop warships of their own? Well, copying the Italian FREMM is a viable solution to bypass developing a warship of their own. The irony is, the FREMM looks like the copy of Chinese Type-056 corvette, and nothing like the Zumwalt and the LCS. While the American loves to mock Chinese for their expertise at copying and reverse-engineering, the American cannot even copy or reverse-engineer anything even if they want to. They have to beg the Italian, to copy and reverse-engineer Italian tech, which may have been copied and reverse-engineered from the Chinese. Does it make sense? And I thought only India behaves so shamelessly to ask others of how to reverse-engineer tech. Well, it is fair to say that if we want to look at the vision of America’s future, we only need to look at India.
The shortage of Chinese scientists willing to work to develop American R&D has surely been a problem since American ‘pivot to Asia’ early 2010s. The American gravely underestimated the tenacity of Chinese people’s pride. The American may claimed that they only targeted Chinese Communist Party, but in reality any Chinese people are fair game, be it Chinese citizen, American citizen Chinese and non Chinese citizen. When it happened, any privileges and rewards that the American gave to any Chinese working for them seemed hollow. After all, we all have the brains and intelligences to determine what Western is about, and not what they want us to believe, pure lies. It is actually true to consider as if Chinese pride is made from glass. Very fragile glass, indeed. Once broken, the glass can never be mended back. In this regards, it took American R&Ds shattered with it. Barack Obama’s vice president Joe Biden once tried to recruit Chinese scientists outside America to work for the American against the ‘oppressive’ Chinese Communist government in his speech on the Australian racist Lowy Institute in Sydney. But despite the nice rewards, according to him anyway, it failed to sway any Chinese to betray their people. In the end, Joe Biden was only successful to entice a bunch of Hongkies whose skills were to do take away restaurants and laundry jobs, hardly relevant to do military researches. Hardly relevany to fix the problems on the F-35, or the Zumwalt, or the USS Gerald Ford and the new USS John F Kennedy, or even the Virginia-class submarine. We, after all, are not Hongkie quality. The West always wants to believe that the Chinese people have the suck up to the West quality of the Hongkie. But in reality, the Hongkies, although forming majority in Western Chinese, are actually a very small minority among Chinese people, in China and in Chinese Overseas. On thing for sure, we will not drop anything and race to fight our own people the way Hongkies do, on rally like in Hongkong, at the command of the self-proclaimed Western masters. Recently, Australian minister Peter Dutton’s ‘unofficial’ rave and rant about asking China to ‘come clean’ is broadcasted across Asia by Western-controled media as if it something important. It comes with the message about the ‘tenacity’ of the ‘outrageous’ Chinese government daring to challenge Australia as the ‘master’ of Asia and a ‘world leader’. The Australian wishes to gain support from anti-Chinese elements in Asia, to rally us to the sucking up ‘normalties’ that had worked so well in Hongkong. It is an outrage, all right, but not the one that Australian wants. In Indonesia at least, people are outraged at the absurdity of the Australian, not China, to behave like they are still the colonial master of Asia. It is even more absurd that the Australian back off so fast, in the sign that China would take this case seriously. So far, the Australian claims to have the support of the ‘world’ only because they have the support of the Pompous Pompeo, no one else, not even Donald Trump. Even New Zealand has tried to calm its citizen by announcing that China will not punish New Zealand for Australia’s behavior. In any case, Joe Biden had found out that Australia was not an ideal place to recruit smart Chinese willing to treacherously work for the American against their motherland, as American R&Ds are still stuck in the ditch since his last recruitment attempts. But the American can still always recruit Hongkies from Australia to work on laundry and take away restaurants in America as it appears that America is still more attractive destination than Australia for Hongkies.
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“….The irony is, the FREMM looks like the copy of Chinese Type-056 corvette, and nothing like the Zumwalt and the LCS. ”
Give me one good reason the US Navy would copy the PLAN 055. Just one please
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Which one? The Type-056 or the Type-055? There are tons of reasons but you could not even see one? What good is ‘one’ reason to you if you want to stuck your head in the sand. Do you even have the knowledge to understand? Humor me. For one, you could not even ascertain that the FREMM is nothing like the Zumwalt and LCS, eventhough there is an LCS picture on the same article. Then what more to be said? The FREMM looks more like streamlined stealth frigates and corvetes in the PLAN than American absurd claim that the J-20 is a ‘copy’ of the F-35 only because they have similar nose. Do you get it now? I am not surprised that all American weapon projects ran aground once the Chinese scientists abandoned them in the wake of American vendetta against Chinese people from early 2010s. Otherwise why would American navy wants to buy a foreign design which they condider obsolete with those ‘wave piercing’ ‘revolutionary’ design with lots of ‘instability’. I do not know what makes sense to you, thus I have to ask what is your education background. Community college? It figures.
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The US lack the capacity and capability to design its own freaking frigate instead adopt an italian fremm alpino. How can the US copy an advanced destroyer like China’s 055. US navy will be lost at sea. U are asking a silly question
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In reply to It is getting worse for China
Your comment on divest from China is deleted as it is irrelevant. Please make the comment on my post related to it.
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CkY, I really want to read the deleted post. I am sure it is rave and ranting but I actually enjoy the helplessness and desperation in replying my post. It shows the level of intelligence of these people.
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I have told the relevant commentators to make their deleted comments on relevant posts of mine. I believe they will not be so shy or timid not to make their comments there.
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I am sorry that the commentators whose comments have been deleted by me fail to make their comments on my relevant posts so that I have deprived you of the pleasure to laugh at their stupidity.
I hope you will forgive me as their failures to make comments prove that they have no interest in commenting on my posts. They want, instead, to use my blog as their forum to give their opinions irrelevant to my posts. I cannot allow that. They shall set up their forums by establishing their own blogs for that purpose.
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What is happening to the world’s number 1 superpower, cannot design ships, lacking capability and capacity. Like US ineptitude to buck the trend and put a lid on Covid19, a repeat of cost overruns, budget deficits and ineptitude is a certainty. Sadly, US is financially bankrupt and lacking expertise in warship construction. The italians are loving it.
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