April 14, 2025

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: First Constellation Frigate Only 10% Complete, Design Still Being Finalized.

The first Constellation class frigate for the U.S. Navy is just 10 percent complete more than two years after construction began and nearly five years after the award of the initial contract for the ship. The work is also continuing despite the continued absence of a firm functional design for the vessel, which is still weeks or even months away from being finalized and approved.

Major changes to the Constellation’s configuration compared to its parent Franco-Italian Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM) have already led to serious delays and cost increases, and there are growing questions about the program’s future. A key program goal had been to take an in-service design that would only need relatively minor modifications to make it ready for Navy use, which would help keep the work on schedule and budget. The opposite has now happened.

Mark Vandroff, senior vice president of Government Affairs at Fincantieri Marine Group, confirmed the state of progress on the construction of the USS Constellation and provided an update on the program to TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the floor of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition earlier this week. 19FortyFive had first reported that the lead ship in the Constellation class was only 10 percent complete last month, citing an anonymous source.

The whole idea of the Constellation was to take the proven FREMM class, customize it just a little for the US Navy’s needs, but otherwise leave the design alone and get it into service quickly.

But the Navy had to go and screw it up.

Posted at 8:34 am by Stephen Green 8

NAKED LUNCH: San Francisco Humiliates Itself Further, Erects 45-Foot Tall Statue of Woman—but Leaves Out Key Feature.

San  Francisco was once a shining example of a great American city, but now it is mostly a punchline. The metropolis that gave us epic Mark Twain quotes, Levi’s, an iconic music scene, the Golden Gate Bridge, and so much more is now known more for excrement on the street, crime, mass drug addiction, and homeless people sprawled across the sidewalks. Given that, you’d think they’d figure out what to prioritize to improve the lives of their citizens.

Their answer, though, will make your head spin. They’ve decided to erect a 45-foot statue of a woman in Embarcadero Plaza to “jazz up” downtown.  They might certainly achieve their goal, because the sculptor decided that the woman didn’t need something most of us would want when standing in the center of a city square: clothes.

That’s right, this lady is buck nekkid.

“Quick, darling, pack the bags—let’s take the kids to San Francisco!”*

I’ve decided not to put a photo of this atrocity here because you get the idea, but if you’d like to take a look, here’s the link.

* I’d say “Or raise them there,” but “unexpectedly” that hasn’t been happening very much in SF for decades: In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Frisco had the lowest percentage of children of any major American city. In 2005, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal spotted an AP article that noted, “‘San Francisco has the smallest share of small-fry of any major U.S. city,’ the Associated Press reports. ‘Just 14.5 percent of the city’s population is 18 and under.’”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Best comment: “I mean- the biggest shock of all of this is that SF has acknowledged what a woman biologically should look like, and erected it into a 45-foot statue to celebrate.”

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll 19

CHINA IS ASSHOE: China is littering in LEO.

China’s construction of a pair of communications megaconstellations could cloud low Earth orbit with large spent rocket stages for decades or beyond, Space News reports. Launches for the government’s Guowang and Shanghai-backed but more commercially oriented Qianfan (Thousand Sails) constellation began in the second half of 2024, with each planned to consist of over 10,000 satellites, demanding more than a thousand launches in the coming years. Placing this number of satellites is enough to cause concern about space debris because China hasn’t disclosed its plans for removing the spacecraft from orbit at the end of their missions. It turns out there’s another big worry: upper stages.

An orbital time bomb … While Western launch providers typically deorbit their upper stages after dropping off megaconstellation satellites in space, China does not. This means China is leaving rockets in orbits high enough to persist in space for more than a century, according to Jim Shell, a space domain awareness and orbital debris expert at Novarum Tech. Space News reported on Shell’s commentary in a social media post, where he wrote that orbital debris mass in low-Earth orbit “will be dominated by PRC [People’s Republic of China] upper stages in short order unless something changes (sigh).” So far, China has launched five dedicated missions to deliver 90 Qianfan satellites into orbit. Four of these missions used China’s Long March 6A rocket, with an upper stage that has a history of breaking up in orbit, exacerbating the space debris problem.

Commies ruin everything.

Posted at 7:32 am by Stephen Green 43

ASSASSINATION CULTURE: Another Day, Another Alleged Would-Be Trump Assassin Charged. “Shawn Monper, 32, of Butler — the same Pennsylvania community where Trump came within a fraction of an inch of being assassinated last July — faces federal charges of making threats to assault and murder Trump, DOGE advisor and Tesla founder Elon Musk, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and others, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 14

GOODER AND HARDER: Adam Carolla Exposes What’s Really Destroying California (Video):

Full episode here.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll 17

IT’S ONLY BAD WHEN TRUMP DOES IT:

Posted at 7:02 am by Glenn Reynolds 65

WORTH MORE ATTENTION THAN IT’S GETTING:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 35