"When did frigates become major warships?" Topic

I've been doing some light reading lately and looking at modern naval lists and I see a distinct lack of what I consider to be major surface warships (like cruisers) in most navies, with frigates and destroyers being listed as major surface combatants for England, France, Germany, etc. I have always considered these types of ships to be escort vessels. My naval combat reading has been mostly confines to WWII and earlier so, when was the change? Was there a tipping point (like the Falklands)?

The tipping point came with Surface Battles no longer being fought by battleship/dreadnaught gunlines but by planes and submarines.

The Arleigh Burke class destroyer carries a 96-cell vertical launch system and is cheaper and quicker to build than the modern equivalent of the Arizona.

Plus, with the available manpower dropping, smaller ships are the way to go.

Also don't overlook the fact that frigates and destroyers are a *lot* bigger than they used to be. A modern destroyer displaces somewhere between 7k-10k tons, i.e. they are really the size of pre-WWII 'treaty cruisers', not at all same the same as the 1.5k-3k WWII era destroyers. The Zumwalt comes in at 14k tons displacement! So one of the big factors is that the ships haven't changed, it's the nomenclature. A large surface combatant is a destroyer, a smaller one is a frigate. Some navies retain the 'cruiser' designation but that's mainly a holdover from earlier periods rather than a distinct tactical unit.

-Wil

Wminsing beat me to it:

There's also tonnage creep to keep in mind. One of the worst examples being the Spruance class DDs of the '70s, which come in at around 8000 tons, definitely in cruiser territory size-wise.

In the steamship era, there were same fairly hefty "frigates" as well, so this is not entirely a new thing.

Rob

Also, easy to get Congress to pay for a 'Frigate' than a Nuclear-Powered Missile Stealth Strike Battle ASW Cruiser' which they end up being anyway…:)

So, it looks like the big toys have scale creep as well. That all makes sense.

Yep – gradual size and mission creep, coupled with a reduced number of larger vessels. In the particular case of frigates, I'd say a lot has to do with post cold-war drawdown too; until the '80s a hell of a lot of frigates were basically an ASW suite and a dual purpose gun. Since then they've tended to become more genuinely multi-role, with the ASW emphasis fading away, and consequently gotten categorised as major combatants.

…frigates were basically an ASW suite and a dual purpose gun.

Yep, that was the Frigate (originally a DE later changed to an FF) I was on in the '70s.

1 x 5" DP gun up forward

1 x 8-cell ASROC/Harpoon launcher aft of that

2 x 2-tube Mk 46 torpedo tubes amidships

1 x 8-cell Sea Sparrow Point Defense launcher on the stern

Historically speaking, frigates used to be major surface combatants.

Early frigates during the Age of Sail were roughly equivalent to 20th-century cruisers. They were lighter, slimmer, faster, and more maneuverable than ships-of-the-line such as HMS Victory. Like cruisers, their role was as fast, powerful scouts for the "big boys", as well as tending other cruiser-like functions. The USS Constitution was one.

That sums it up. I would add, at least for the USN that these classes have different missions:

Cruisers: major escorts for carriers with a very strong SAM and SSM battery to shoot down aircraft and SSMs and to provide precision missile strikes. They can also shadow foreign cap ships and act, to a degree, independently. At least in "peace" times. Very few navies even have these ships. They are armed with a 5" gun or two, a strong battery of SAMs and SAMs (VLS in modern ships), and maybe some ASW torps. Also some HMGs and a PDS or two.

Destroyers: a smaller and probably more expendable cruiser. Most western DDGs have AEGIS systems and/or SSMs for anti-shipping missions. These are the modern "battleship" and are what modern navies collect to show power. Generally they are armed as cruisers but on a smaller hull and thus have a smaller array of weapons… Generally.

Frigates: they use to be mostly for anti-sub work and are the true successors to the old WWII DDs. They are very popular craft in most small navies and the old US Perry class was the most numerous. Now they are really "pocket" destroyers. Modern Perrys aren't really frigates… Gunboats really. Most have a 3" gun, some SAMs (even man pads), some anti-sub torpedoes,and many have a battery of SSMs. They might also carry a few light autocannons ant MGS and even a PDS.

Corvettes: modern destroyer escorts and are armed like frigates. They run from 800 tons to 2000 or so. Many carry an over sized SSM battery. Egg shells with bazookas according to so navy types.

@Terrement: That's really cool! Please tell me you have some of his "plankowner" memorabilia!

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As the others have said, modern "Destroyers" are the size of WW2 Cruisers, and modern "Frigates" are the size of big WW2 Destroyers.

It's really a nomenclature gap, just like the "Cruiser Gap" of the 1970s.

Up to the 1970s, the USN was following the WW2-era naming protocols, where ships were classed by mission. The big carrier escorts were classed as Destroyer Escorts or Destroyer Leaders, because that's what the mission of a DE or DL was. An American DLG frigate like the Belknap-class displaced nearly 8000 tons, which is about the same as a 1930s-era Portland-class cruiser. (post-treaty cruisers like the Baltimore-class were 14,000 tons, same size as today's Zumwalt-class "destroyer")

The Soviets were building big ships armed with guns and missiles, with their primary mission as surface warfare. Classic cruiser mission, and that's what they were classed as.

Since many of the "frigates" of the 1960s and 1970s USN were the size of WW2 cruisers, they were re-classed as 'cruisers' without changing their mission.

Now, the Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates displace 4100 tons, while WW2 Escort Destroyers (DEs) displaced about 1800 tons, and the WW2 Gearing-class destroyers displaced 3500 tons. The OHPs were designed after the 1975 cruiser realignment, which re-defined "frigate" in US service to mean an AAW and ASW ship.

As far as other navies go, I think most of them still use the word "Frigate" in the Age of Sail sense. Faster than a ship of the line, but otherwise capable of taking any and all challengers when operating independently. This implies an AA capability greater than self-protection, a light surface-warfare capability, and good ASW capabilities, which makes for a rather expensive ship. But it's possible to shoehorn all that capability into a 1300ton hull, as the Israeli Saar 5 class shows. Well, I'd like a decent-sized gun (defined as 3" or larger), but the Saar 5 has SAMs, Harpoons, and torpedoes.

One unique exception to the usual naming rules is the Japanese MSDF. Due to Article 9 of their post-war constitution, they are prohibited from possessing offensive warships. So even their 27,000 ton flat-tops are classed as 'Helicopter Destroyers'. I think they get around the offensive use clause for their amphibious ships because they're an island nation and may need to get troops and supplies ashore after a typhoon or an attacking nation has destroyed a harbor.

Thank you; this has been quite informative. I feel a little better about the state of naval affairs now.

A few Western navies – USN, RN – have both destroyers and frigates, but most now have frigates only (though the JMSDF has destroyers and "destroyer escorts".) However, in contemporary European usage "frigate" just means "major surface warship" – at the top end, a Horizon-class runs 7000t and $1.5 USD billion, for example.

The early '80s or late '70s.
-Kle.

In the US Navy frigates were incapable of maintaining the speed to work with fleet carriers. Destroyers and Cruisers were escorts for the carriers, frigates were escorts for convoys. Since there weren't any convoys to escort they ended up working with CVN's anyway. In the '70's they did away with the "Destroyer Leader" category, which described ships bigger than the FRAM destroyers but smaller than the WW2 cruisers because they retired all the FRAM destroyers and cruisers. My first ship, the USS Luce (DDG-38) started out as a DLG and was renumbered as a DDG, while the Leahys and Belknaps were redesignated as cruisers. Other navies had different criteria for designating ships.

Also terms "frigate" and destroyer" are interchangeable. Even light frigate and corvette are often interchangeable.

In the Japanese navy everything is a destroyer whereas the Germans regard most suyrface combatants as frgates.

The Iranians consider light frigates as destroyers.

The USN classed them either as frigates or destroyers or cruisers depending on what "gap" they're getting paranoid about.

In the US Navy frigates were incapable of maintaining the speed to work with fleet carriers. Destroyers and Cruisers were escorts for the carriers, frigates were escorts for convoys.

With the speed of modern cargo ships, I'm not sure the FFG-7s can keep up!

major surface combatants for England, France, Germany, etc.

England doesn't have a navy.

But I agree with the sentiments: the British navy, once the greatest on the globe, seems to consist of frigates, dingies and an aircraft carrier with no aircraft…

Oh and some subs, obviously.

John T