“They are looking for something in the $700 million to $1 billion range,” said Bryan Clark, a retired but well-connected Navy strategist the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, which itself recommended a larger frigate in a recent congressionally-chartered study. That’s as compared to $550 million for the latest Littoral Combat Ships, whose price has come down dramatically since early overruns, and about $1.8 billion for an 8,200-9,700 ton Aegis destroyer. “If it could be half the price of a destroyer, that’s probably the ideal.”
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