The Sad Tale of the Misbegotten Connies…
By 
As some of you may be familiar with, the Navy took what absolutely should not have been regarded as a big swing with respect to its new frigate project, the Constellation class. The CEO of Fincantieri opens up:
Q: Why didn’t the Navy just take the base class and do minimal modifications to it? It became what seemed like a totally new ship.
A: That’s a great question, Howard, but I would need to speculate to answer that one, and I wouldn’t want to do that, because you’re right. But at the same time – what’s the saying? Hindsight is 20/20. It’s probably one of those occasions at this point. But it’s a great question. I’d love to be with you when we pose it to the right folks.
Q: But what do you think is the answer to that question, from your point of view?
A: From our point of view – from the get-go, when the award was made, it was made because there was a review of the requirements, a review of the design, and a review of all the elements that led to recognition that the parent design possessed exactly the right features to represent the path forward. So collectively, we had marched on that path. We might find ourselves in a different situation right now, but like I said, it’s one thing asking somebody to change their M.O. and adopt a new approach without fully empowering them or doing something drastic to signal that type of transformation. And it’s another where we said ‘we will try this new approach.’ But there was a lot of follow-through that was needed.
Translation: The Navy redesign process gave every idiot an opportunity to ask for a change and every idiot took advantage of that opportunity, but I have to deal with these idiots in the future so I’m going to be careful with my words. In any case, does not inspire a lot of confidence in the Trump-class battleship project. Anyway, the Connies were cut to two and now may be cut altogether:
“According to senior Navy officials, these two ships are under review for potential termination,” GAO officials stated. “Notwithstanding this review, these officials also told us their anticipated course of action but deemed that information not suitable for public release.”
As of March, shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine was ordered to pause ordering new material for the two ships “to evaluate … necessity as those ships remain under review,” the report said.
This is just the latest chapter of a messy, long and pricey saga for the Navy as it has sought to add to the fleet a small surface combatant that can take over some responsibilities from the service’s heavily tasked guided-missile destroyers. Among the planned missions that the vessel was conceived to shoulder were anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, air defense, and ship escorting.
This is probably the right call, because no one wants two orphan ships that have distinct but hardly unique needs and capabilities. You build twenty so that it’s economical to train crew and maintainers to service the fleet; two ships are more of a burden than an asset.