Big Navy Says The First Of Its New Frigates Will Be Named USS Brooke

FFG(X) Artist’s Conception

Unless it isn’t.
The Navy hasn’t fielded a frigate since the 1977 Cold War era FFG 7 Oliver Hazard Perry, lead ship in a class of 51 and nicknamed OHP’s or Fig 7’s. Pretty decent escorts too, if memory serves. Some are still at sea under other country’s flags.
I digress.
Time to contract for a new Fig class with an accurate, if unglamorous name of FFG(X).

BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK

A Pentagon contracting announcements indicates that the first of the U.S. Navy’s new class of guided-missile frigates, commonly referred to as FFG(X), will be named the USS Brooke. Former Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly had sought to the name the first of these ships the USS Agility, before resigning earlier this year amid a scandal having to do with a serious COVID-19 outbreak on the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.

The mention of a new frigate named USS Brooke appeared in the Pentagon’s daily contracting notice for July 17, 2020, in an entry having to do with the purchase of Raytheon Enterprise Air Surveillance Radars (EASR), which you can read about in more detail here. The FFG(X)s, among other future Navy ships, are slated to receive a fixed-face variant of the EASR radar, now designated the AN/SPY-6(V)3.

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The hull number given, FFG-1, appears to be a typo, as it has already been reported that the first FFG(X) will be FFG-80. FFG-1 refers to a previous first-in-class USS Brooke, a guided-missile frigate that first entered service with the Navy in 1966. The service has not named any other ships after John Mercer Brooke, a 19th Century American naval officer, as well as scientist and engineer, who played a key role in the laying of the Great Transatlantic Cable, since then.

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While it remains unconfirmed, Brooke certainly seems like it might make sense name for these new FFG(X)s. It has more significant Navy history and heritage behind it than former Acting Secretary of the Navy Modly’s proposed Agility class. Additional suggested names for further ships in the class included Dauntless, Endeavor, and Intrepid, according to a document USNI News obtained in April. Navy officials reportedly rejected these proposals entirely.

However, John Mercer Brooke also resigned his Navy commission during the American Civil War to join the Confederacy, becoming a key figure in the Confederate Navy, including being involved in the conversion of the ironclad CSS Virginia. Naming a ship after him now, at a time when there is a renewed push to remove monuments and other references to the Confederacy from public display across the United States, including within the U.S. military, could prove controversial, at best.

There is precedent, two actually. USS Chancellorsville (CG-62) and USNS Maury (T-AGS-66). The former is named after what is arguably Confederate General Lee’s greatest battlefield victory, and the latter for Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, the “Father of Modern Oceanography” who also resigned from the US Navy to sail for the Confederacy. All of this is of course immaterial, and the chances of FFG-80 commissioned as USS Brooke are between slim and none.

Read the entire article here: The Drive

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Navy