HOPE HODGE SECK
In the Navy’s full-court press to build its fleet out to the 355 ships that recent service structure assessments demand, one idea that has gained traction among leadership is the possibility of pulling old Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates out of mothballs and readying them for present-day missions.
The head of the House Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee agrees the ships should be refurbished but says he has a better idea for their use: Transfer them to allied nations to improve global defenses and expand the Navy’s network of knowledge around the globe.
“I think we could look at and say, ‘Are these assets that our allies could use that would be helpful force multipliers for us, because we’re going to operate jointly in many of these environments,’ ” Rep. Rob Wittman, a Republican from Virginia, told Military.com on Tuesday.
The chief of naval operations, Adm. John Richardson, revealed in June that the Navy is taking a hard look at resurrecting the old frigates, which were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and began to be retired in 1997.
“We’ve got to be thoughtful about this,” he said at an address at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. ” … Those are some old ships, and the technology on those ships is old. And in this exponential type of environment, a lot has changed since we last modernized those. So it will be a cost-benefit analysis in terms of how we do that.”
Wittman called the idea of repurposing the frigates for the Navy’s own use “a little bit of a stretch,” but said the service could reap multiple benefits by repairing them and equipping them with current-day technology for allied use.
He suggested several “Pacific nations” would derive significant value from adding a Perry-class frigate to their navy.
https://www.defensetech.org/2017/10/18/congressman-fix-navys-perry-class-frigates-give-allies/
