Key Points and Summary: The US Navy’s Constellation-class frigate program, intended to counter China’s naval expansion, is facing significant hurdles.
-Delays in design finalization, potential cost overruns, and debates about shipyard capacity and firepower are plaguing the program.
-The adaptation of a European frigate design for US Navy requirements has proven more complex than anticipated.
-Experts advocate for a second shipyard to accelerate production, but questions remain about the optimal number of missile tubes and the overall maturity of the design.
-The program’s success is crucial for the US Navy, but it highlights the limitations of the current defense industrial base.
Constellation-Class Frigates: Can the US Build Them Fast Enough?
The plans for this program are ambitious – and they are also critical say numerous defense advocates – in a world where the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) shows an almost endless capacity for producing naval vessels.
Procurement of the Constellation (FFG-62) class frigates (FFGs) by the US Navy began in FY2020, with a total of six procured through FY2024.
The US Navy plans to call for procuring a total of at least 20 FFG-62s, according to a report released late December 2024.
The same report also details challenges the program will have to overcome in the meantime:
-An estimated 36-month delay in the scheduled delivery of the first FFG-62, which was reported publicly by the Navy in April 2024;
-The potential for cost growth in the FFG-62 program, particularly after the first 10 ships produced;
-Whether and when to introduce a second shipyard into the FFG-62 program;
-The number of vertical launch system (VLS) missile tubes in the FFG-62 design; and
-Technical risk in the FFG-62 program.
While all the items have a direct impact on the program, the one with the larger and longer-ranged implications is the question of a second shipyard being brought into the program.
The veteran shipbuilders who spoke to 19FortyFive on the issue were all uniform in their advocacy for a second shipyard for Constellation class in particular – and their detailing the need for more shipyards in the US in general.
The Navy’s Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG-7s that the Constellations will replace, were procured in the 1970s at annual rates of as high as eight ships per year. At the time they were built in three separate shipyards.
In deliberating whether to build the FFG-62s at a single shipyard or at two shipyards, the Navy states “Congress may consider several factors, including but not limited to the annual FFG-62 procurement rate, shipyard production capacities and production economies of scale.”
Constellation-Class Frigate
Enough Firepower for Constellation-Class?
There is also a debate as to whether there are sufficient vertical launch system (VLS) tubes in the FFG-62 design.
The current design calls for only 32 of these tubes, but due to the concerns presented by some of the latest PLAN designs, there are those calling for that number to be expanded to 48.
The Navy document points out that in addition to the 32 VLS each FFG-62 also possesses “separate, deck-mounted box launchers for launching 16 anti-ship cruise missiles, as well as a separate, 21-cell Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) AAW missile launcher.”
Expanding to this arsenal by adding the number of VLS tubes also has a significant impact on the ship’s final design.
To quote the same report:
“To grow from a 32 Cell VLS to a 48 Cell VLS necessitates an increase in the length of the ship with a small beam increase and roughly a 200-ton increase in full load displacement. This will require a resizing of the ship, readdressing stability and seakeeping analyses, and adapting ship services to accommodate the additional 16 VLS cells.
“A change of this nature would unnecessarily delay detail design by causing significant disruption to ship designs. Particularly the smaller ship designs. Potential competitors have already completed their Conceptual Designs and are entering the Detail Design and Construction competition with ship designs set to accommodate 32 cells.”
Mature Design
The Constellation-class frigate’s design is projected to be mature and thus in a position for the shipyard to begin continuous production of the vessels by May 2024.
This is according to testimony from the US Navy’s senior acquisition executive from December 2024.
An artist rendering of the U.S. Navy guided-missile frigate FFG(X). The new small surface combatant will have multi-mission capability to conduct air warfare, anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, electronic warfare, and information operations. The design is based on the FREMM multipurpose frigate. A contract for ten ships was awarded to Marinette Marine Corporation, Wisconsin (USA), on 30 April 2020.
The assessment comes after findings earlier in the year revealing various delays in finalizing the design.
The shipyard, Fincantieri Marinette Marine, was to have delivered the first in the FFG-62 series in 2026, but with the current set of production bottlenecks, that date could very well be pushed back another three years.
“In the meantime, we’ve awarded that company a handful of different ships, and we’re going to get them to the place where they could build them at speed, knowing that we’re significantly delayed in getting the first ship out,” stated US Navy Assistant Secretary for Research, Development, and Acquisition Nickolas Guertin last month.
The design of the FFG-62 ships was originally based on the FREMM frigates built jointly by France and Italy and operated by both their navies. However, significant modifications were necessary to the FREMM configuration to adapt the design to US Navy requirements, largely due to survivability and growth margin considerations.
Fincantieri Marinette Marine CEO Mark Vandroff said that the US Navy and shipyard recently underestimated the complications of altering that design.
“With the frigate what you have is the contractor responsible for the functional design, but the government has to approve every artifact,” he said.
“Then we wondered, after we set that up, why it took way longer than originally estimated. Because industry didn’t have the capability that we thought we had to do the design. But then on the Navy, they were bottlenecked in bandwidth [to make approvals].”
As with so many new, significant weapons programs in 2025, the shortcomings of the defense industrial base are the limiting factor. That reality – plus the growing problems of supporting the Ukraine in the current war – should be a wake-up call to more than one constituency.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
