New Frigate wishlist is essentially Oliver Perry II

via Inside Defense.

But as previously reported by Inside the Navy, the service is now considering adding a local air defense requirement to the frigate, as well as alternative designs beyond those based on the LCS.

Boxall and Neagley's testimony points to evolving "maritime threats" and the Navy's greater emphasis on "distributed operations" as the service reviews the frigate requirements.

"The Navy is defining the requirements for the frigate to improve its ability to operate in a more contested environment than LCS, enhancing its role in distributed maritime operations," the testimony states. "In this role, both LCS and Frigate will free up our large surface combatants to focus on their primary missions including area air defense, land strike, and ballistic missile defense. The Navy is also seeking to leverage Fleet-wide commonality of combat system elements wherever possible to deliver capability and flexibility in the most cost effective manner."

Then this...

 " However, he emphasized the importance of maintaining the low cost of the frigate compared to higher-end capabilities like those on a guided missile destroyer.

"But at $1.8 billion for each destroyer, the overall shipbuilding plan cannot afford a fleet of destroyers and drives development of a small surface combatant," Wittman said. "In response to cost efficiency, Navy developed a Littoral Combat Ship at a price point of $550 million that is less than a third of their more robust destroyer counterpart. The challenge before this committee is to ensure the correct high/low balance of surface combatants that best responds to fleet requirements in the most efficient manner."

Do you get the force of connection here?

This means that you can practically scratch off  the list any offering from France, the UK, Japan, S. Korea and Singapore.  As a matter of fact if you take a look at the Frigate market worldwide then you're almost back to the default of making either an Oliver Perry 2, going with Absalon or CrossOver!

Everything else is just too damn expensive!

Steel is cheap (meaning that the size of the ship isn't the cost driver...its the systems you put on it!), so the added flexibility that the Absalon class has inherently makes it the leader in my opinion but we'll see.