Frigate and destroyer costs

[GC13]

I recently finished a blog post about using smaller ships to combat piracy and am having a bit of trouble coming up with the costs of the standard US Navy capital ships. The Littoral Combat Ships are pretty doggone expensive, judging from a Navy report about the program, but I can't find similar information for frigates and destroyers.

So if anyone else could point me to some good information I'd be grateful. For the Cyclone class patrol ships also; I have a ~$25 million figure for them, and though I have a .gov that says that's in the ballpark I wouldn't mind a more detailed program cost piece.

Thanks.

[Blackjack]

I can tell you that the cost for a DDG-51 Flight IIA Destroyer is $2,200,000,000 per ship according to the CBO. The DDG-51 Destroyer and the CG-47 Cruiser and the main ships in the U.S. fleet.

Source
CBO Report on Current and Projected
Navy Shipbuilding Programs

[Ken White]

generally run from $350M to 1.5B or more, equipment and building nation dependent. Her's a list I got off the internet. It is from the "Canadian American Strategic Review" of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. I picked it up a couple of years ago. Their web site is apparently down right now so I cannot see if they have newer figures. They seem reasonable to me.

[2] Unit costs for naval vessels (especially when averaged) are notoriously unreliable – there are simply too many variables and accounting practices. With that caveat in mind, the following are rough unit prices for the frigates mentioned in the text and the Single Class Surface Combatant.
• Danish – 1.5B Kr = $333M Cdn (Project Patruljeskibe)
• FREMM – 280M € = $447M Cdn (French version, diesel powered)
• FREMM – 350M € = $600M Cdn (Italian version, turbine powered)
• Dutch – 400M € = $639M Cdn (De Zeven Provinciën class)
(or up to – 450M € = $719M Cdn quotes vary according to source)
• Spanish – 400M € = $639M Cdn (F100/Nansen class, prices vary)
• Typ 125 – 550M € = $878M Cdn (projected German Fregatte Klasse F125)
• FREMM – 550M € = $879M Cdn (projected air defence version)
• Typ 124 – 700M € = $1.12B Cdn (German Sachsen class air defence frigate)
• CF SCSC – 1.06B € = $1.70B Cdn (Single Class Surface Combatant)"

[Bob's World]

Probably the wrong question. No reason to use / put at risk expensive Navy ships designed for far more complex operations than this.

For a fraction of the cost we could deploy a few contract vessels that can launch, recover, sustain RHIBs and Helos. I'm sure the good people at companies like Triple Canopy or Blackwater would be happy to pick up all or part of that operation.

[GC13]

Wow. Those frigates are a fair sight more expensive than I had expected (though I may have forgotten to adjust for inflation when I checked the globalsecurity sourge). Thanks though, it's a big help.

And to Mr. Bob's World: Yep, that's essentially the argument I'm making: you don't need the big expensive ships when littler ones will do the same job for less money; this is hampered by the fact that our navy doesn't like to have smaller ships. Contractors would do nicely too... But I think a lot of people would argue that, politically, private contractors are bad juju.

[Ron Humphrey]

Wow. Those frigates are a fair sight more expensive than I had expected (though I may have forgotten to adjust for inflation when I checked the globalsecurity sourge). Thanks though, it's a big help.

And to Mr. Bob's World: Yep, that's essentially the argument I'm making: you don't need the big expensive ships when littler ones will do the same job for less money; this is hampered by the fact that our navy doesn't like to have smaller ships. Contractors would do nicely too... But I think a lot of people would argue that, politically, private contractors are bad juju.

As to that last bit

That's probably more so due to the fact they make great scapegoats for the agencies they are hired by when things start to get hot.

Seems like they would be better on accountability for the actions of their employees if that equated to more confidence in them by those that contracted them rather then what seems to be the norm of if something goes wrong they'll go to extraordinary lengths not to let it come out because doing so will almost guarantee large scale losses.

Just figure why would either of the two you mentioned want such a thing considering first time they actually shot someone they would probably find themselves up in front of an international war crimes commission.

Long and short contracting can provide a lot more for much less but in order to get that value from it you might be required to actually publicly acknowledge that value.