US Navy scuttles Constellation frigate program for being too slow for tomorrow's threats
The US Navy is scrapping an entire shipbuilding program in an effort to find alternatives that can be delivered faster to counter expected threats.
Announced on social media site X by Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, the decision means the Constellation class of frigates will be limited to the two ships currently under construction, instead of the 20 that were planned.
Phelan said he wanted to reshape how the Navy builds and fields its fleet, and axing the Constellation class is the first step toward this goal. A key factor is the need to grow the fleet faster to meet tomorrow's threats, so new classes of vessels that can be built faster will be chosen instead.
What those threats might be wasn't mentioned, but Reg readers can make an educated guess. China has been building up its own naval power rapidly, and now has more ships than the US.
However, the Constellation class was itself meant to be delivered quickly, with the US Navy selecting an existing ship design from Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri to bypass the often long-winded process of developing a new vessel entirely from scratch.
But after this design, known as FREMM, was chosen and even after the contract for the first vessel was signed in 2020, the Naval Sea Systems Command department within the Navy started to make changes.
These continued even as the first ship was being built, until the Constellation class bore little resemblance to the original blueprints. It is understood the design has less than 15 percent commonality with the original, and the program is at least three years behind schedule.
It seems that Secretary Phelan decided to cut the Gordian knot and drop the whole program, rather than work through the problems it faced.
Construction will continue on the first two ships, Constellation (FFG-62) and Congress (FFG-63), to keep the workforce at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine facility in Wisconsin employed while the Navy decides on its next steps. However, even the future of this pair of vessels is "under review," Phelan said.
Ironically, the Constellation class had been a strategic shift away from the smaller littoral combat ships (LCS) the Navy had procured since the turn of the millennium, designed to address newly perceived threats including that of fast attack craft like Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf.
The costs for the LCS also ballooned and they were criticized for being less capable than a full-size frigate, so this program was also cut short before all the planned units were delivered.
In a press release, Fincantieri said it had reached an agreement with the Navy on terminating the project, or "reshaping the future of the Constellation-class program," as it put it. However, the company said it was continuing to work closely with the navy and would help to deliver new classes of vessels.
Cancellation of the frigates will leave America's Navy with a gap in its anti-submarine capabilities, as the Constellation class was to have been fitted with similar cutting-edge sonar equipment as the Royal Navy's Type 26 sub-hunting ships, currently under construction.
The US fleet does have plenty of the Arleigh Burke destroyers and a handful of the larger Ticonderoga-class cruisers that can perform anti-submarine tasks, but these are old designs that are due for replacement by another ship project, the DDG(X) Next-Generation Destroyer Program.
Ironically, the Canadian version of the Type 26 could fit the Navy's needs, as this will be fitted largely with American-made equipment, including the AEGIS combat system, radar, and missiles. This may not be politically acceptable, however, and it may also not be possible to build them quickly enough for the Secretary of the Navy's liking.
Those in charge now face the unenviable task of finding a replacement for the Constellation class that can be brought into service quickly while still meeting the Navy's exacting requirements.
The force has been experimenting with autonomous vessels for the past several years, and it is possible that something like the Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle (LUSV), which is intended to be a "low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ship with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads," could take the place of a frigate.
"The facts are clear: it's time to deliver the ship our warfighters need, at a pace that matches the threat environment, not the comfort level of the bureaucracy," Phelan stated. ®
