Kenneth Braithwaite, Secretary of the Navy og tidligere ambassadør til Norge og ex Orion flyger lanserer ny tanke - Joint Strike Frigate - The Drive

 

Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite has raised the possibility of his service running a multi-national frigate program together with allies and partners, in the same general vein as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, a notional effort he dubbed the "Joint Strike Frigate." This came just days after Robert O'Brien, President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, said he saw a need for the U.S. Navy to get more frigates, faster, pointing to the possibility of the service acquiring more of its future Constellation class ships, previously known as the FFG(X), than it plans to buy at present, at least publicly.

Braithwaite made his comments yesterday at an event the U.S. Navy Memorial organization held as part of its SITREP Speaker Series. O'Brien had offered his remarks while speaking to workers at Marinette Marine, a subsidiary of Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri, in Marinette, Wisconsin, earlier in the week. 

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"We took our eyes off the ball, especially in the Navy," Braithwaite said. "We moved into littoral warfare looking for a role for the United States Navy and we forgot about our commitments in deep water and so we’re behind and we’ve got to catch up and we’ve got to catch up fast."

“I have a concept in my head is if we created a Joint Strike Fighter that we could share with NATO allies," he added. "Why can’t we create a Joint Strike Frigate? Why can’t we take that same platform and offer it to our allies and partners around the world?"

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Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite talks with US Marines on the UK Royal Navy's first-in-class aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth earlier this month. The Marine Corps has a contingent of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters on this carrier at present.

A dozen countries, in addition to the United States, operate one or more variants of the F-35 or are in the process of acquiring them. Other nations have expressed an interest in buying their own Joint Strike Fighter fleets, as well. The U.S. government has actively promoted sales of the F-35, often touting the operational benefits of having allies and partners all fly the same kinds of jets, as well as the cost burden-sharing and industrial cooperation benefits that have come along with the program.

Braithwaite seems to have been thinking about how a similar shipbuilding program might help improve interoperability between allies and partners, as well as drive down costs. 

It's interesting to note that the Navy already made a point of only considering in-production frigate designs, or derivatives thereof, for its FFG(X) program, ultimately selecting a design Marinette Marine had pitched based on its parent company's Franco-Italian Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM), or European Multi-Mission Frigate. In addition to the examples in the French and Italian navies, FREMM variants are also in service with the Moroccan and Egyptian navies, both of which are American partners, as well.