In layman’s terms, he said, it’s like the operating system in a car “telling you the status of your engine, the status of all your components, and when you need to do maintenance and how you plan for that maintenance.” “We're moving forward with Fincantieri and a group called DEI and working across all the, all the vendors that are supporting on propulsion side, to have a mission-readiness sustainment system that will be installed on the frigate,” he said. Typically, when a ship enters a maintenance availability, there are challenges in determining the health of the ship’s systems, buying the needed materials and keeping the process on time. Navy today has been a challenge,” he said. “This is a foundation of the program, where we actually have programs in our budget, opportunities to do early integration testing across the board,” he said.Īnother foundation of the Constellation-class program is the approach to sustainment, he said. “We have a virtual test environment that we'll be testing our frigate baseline to make sure that there's any integration issues with SPY-6 … with a combat system, we wring those out as early as possible before we go to sea and shoot a missile on trials,” he said. And a facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, will handle the SPY-6 radar integration. The Constellation class will also benefit from a new dedicated lab for Aegis testing and integration in Moorestown, New Jersey, he said. “We worked with Fincantieri and all their system of yards to do an advanced construction pilot before we started construction, for them to really exercise all of the capital improvements, all of their workflow processes, all of their instructions, all the way through the value stream,” he said. The hope is it will also inform Fincantieri and pay dividends in the construction of subsequent ships. More construction out of the water is more efficient, provides better access to the ship, “and really takes hours out of the shipbuilding program,” he said. Instead, the Constellations will be built to at least 90 percent before transferring into the water via a ship lift, he said during a briefing at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space exposition.
Kevin Smith, program manager for Constellation-class frigates.įor one, the Aegis-equipped ship will not be side launched at 70 percent completion like littoral combat ships. Prime contractor Fincantieri began construction on the USS Constellation last August at its facility in Marinette, Wisconsin, and the construction process involves several approaches to reduce risk and contain costs, said Capt. NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland - The first Constellation-class frigate is under construction, and in a change from past acquisition programs, the Navy is already factoring in sustainment of the new ships, a service official said Apr. An artist's rendering of Constellation-class frigate
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