Italian Navy combat ship an adaptable option for U.S. Navy’s future: former officer

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The U.S. Navy is on the hunt for a new combat ship, and a former Navy officer said global shipbuilder Fincantieri has a frigate that is a mission-ready, adaptable and efficient option.

The Fincantieri Frigate is one of five semi-finalists in the US Navy’s FFG(X) (Guided-Missile Fast Frigate) competition. The Navy will pick a winner in 2020 and order up to 20 ships — with an estimated cost of around $950 million per hull.

Vice Admiral Richard Hunt (Ret.), who serves as chief strategy officer for Fincantieri, said the Fincantieri Frigate sets itself apart from the other finalists, all of whom were awarded $15 million to perfect their designs.

“I think it’s going to be a ship ready to go in harm’s way, to provide mission success and to get our sailors safely home, which is really what the Navy is all about today,” said Hunt, who served for nearly 40 years in the Navy.

The Navy has gone without frigate ships — one of the midsize class of warships — for the past five-to-10 years, Hunt said, so the ship will be filling a void, Hunt said. He described the frigate as the “go-to ship; kind of the utility infielder if you will that will be able to pick up and do any kind of mission that’s important.”

But not just any ship can meet the Navy’s changing needs, Hunt added.

“Understanding where you are today, and what the requirements will most likely evolve to in the future, becomes very essential in my mind for picking the right choice in the FFG(X) competition,” he said. “You get the hull right so that again you can meet the needs right out of the chute on day one. But with minimal changes, you can also meet the needs of our future Navy because there will be changes and this ship will be around for a good, long time.”

The ship is scalable and able to adapt to the Navy’s needs, Hunt said. Additionally, it is designed to accommodate for rapidly changing technology in the industry. Marinette, Wisconsin-based Fincantieri Marinette Marine will build the Fincantieri Frigate.

“They have designed equipment removal routes for virtually every piece of gear on the ship — what that does is enables you to do upgrades and modifications in a very quick time, minimizing the cost, expense and down time on the ship,” Hunt said.

This is a deviation from previous models where gear was packed in tight, and removing things could be an inflexible and expensive process. The change “clearly provides a foundation to meet the requirements today with future growth as we look down the road,” Hunt said.

A version of the Fincantieri Frigate is already being put to the test. The ITS Alpino is a FREMM (FRigate European Multi Mission) built by Fincantieri for the Italian Navy, and made landfall in Norfolk, Virginia, earlier this month. From there, it will head to Baltimore and New York before wrapping up in Boston.

The aim of this mission is to show the FREMM’s capabilities to the world — a chance to demonstrate its power and get some seatime operations, “which can be very beneficial for the ship,” Hunt said of the ship already in service in both the Italian and French Navies.

The tour of the Alpino is an opportunity to get feedback from U.S. Navy war fighters ahead of the competition, too.

“[We are looking for] folks who have walked the ship, that have seen how she’s laid out, what the design is, what the capabilities are … and can look at it through the lens that says, ‘OK, when you take this hull and you put the U.S. systems on, what does that give me for mission success? Is this the right blend of capabilities?’ And I think people are really going to enjoy that,” Hunt said.

FREMM frigates are the only ships in the competition that have been proven in combat, having helped to destroy a Syrian chemical weapons facility in April. This proven quality of the hull can minimize risk, making it a dependable option for the United States Navy, Hunt said.

“I believe this is the right hull to do exactly that: Minimize risk, provide affordability, make sure you can deliver on schedule to get frigates back into the United States inventory to take some of the demand of our Aegis fleet so they can kind of reset, and we can be ready to deal with whatever challenges the U.S. Navy will be confronted with in the next decade or so.”

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