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It has been better known as the Cancellation class, too.

The Navy canceled the class, but they didn't cancel the decision making process that lead to that class.

An elephant is just a mouse, built to government specifications.

Pentagon to the Arleigh Burke: "You're gonna be the only ship in the navy FOREVER!"

US Navy tried to gold plate a frigate until it becomes a destroyer.

And they'll do it again with the next program.

cough cough
Corruption
Cough cough

The paradox is societies either put people with no battle experience in charge of deciding hardware policies, or people with too much experience. The former tend to approve shiny new toys that can be built in their represented geography, the latter tend to prefer hardware they wish they had for the last war(s).

I had family who worked on the failed ships and apparently a huge reason for the constant redesigns was from a commonly occurring scenario where some congressman or state senator would come in insisting they could manufacture  part in a factory within their constituency at a cheaper price.Then they'd inevitably come back a few months later after the deal was made and reveal they can't qctually manufacture the part to the correct specs but can make something near enough that will work with some "slight tweaking" to the design.

Rinse and repeat for damn near every component of the ship and the disaster that was the Constellation class makes more sense.

"Let's not make that mistake again, this time we are buying an OFF THE SHELF design and will only make the bare minimum modifications."
Some years pass
"So anyways, what left of the ship is the same as the original design at this point?"

If I close my eyes I could swear you were talking about Australia's Hunter Class frigates

From my experience in military procurement, the service branches award a contract to a defense company, then the branch proceeds to change what they want every 3 months. The contractor just can't build the boat or tank. They have to constantly stop, redesign, tear it apart, and start over. Again, and again.

Budgets explode. Deadlines constantly get extended. And people have the nerve to blame the contractor!

Remember that the us navy had non functional torpedo's during the first half of ww2. and for the longest time thier brass acted like there was nothing wrong

It makes me laugh that the US expects everyone else to buy American stuff but they refuse to even consider using anyone elses weather its better or not.

Constellation never gets a fair shake even though it’s literally exactly what the navy asked for and now the navy is asking for the exact same thing from a builder that can do it faster, meanwhile Fincantieri invested nearly a billion dollars into Marinette to crank out ships faster and more efficiently. Now Fincantieri has to recompete under the design study with the FREMM-EVO so it goes round and round!

At this rate, China will have spaceships while the United States remains stuck trying to make a single patrol boat.

Reminds me of that one Oglaf  strip.

"A lot of people gave very selflessly to build this warship so we can go out and battle the vikings.

But the time has come to admit that hard work and hope are no substitute for actual knowledge.
And that we've made a really shitty ship.

If we sail this ship against the vikings, we'll be massacred immediately. I suggest we break it up for scrap, never speak of it again."

All the changes ultimately made it a new design, defeating the purpose of selecting an existing design.  It actually takes more time to change an existing design (think of redesign a home where everything is changed including some of the walls and roof) than to do a new clean sheet design.

Virtually every project in the USA fails, exceeds its budget, or falls years behind schedule—ranging from nuclear power plants, the "copy" of CERN, the Boeing 777X, and high-speed rail to smaller undertakings like the railway line in Hawaii.

It's a proven ship, so we are going to rediseng it. Brilliant.