The -not-so-sudden- cancellation of the Constellation frigate program by the US Navy, announced on November 25 by Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, rather abruptly closes a chapter that began with promising rhetoric: “…we will take a mature, successful European design, adapt it to American conditions, and avoid the mistakes of the LCS.”
In practice, the exact opposite happened. The program ended up three years behind schedule, with the first ship only about twelve percent complete, and the design still not finalized, while the Italian FREMM project was built in about four to five years from scratch.
The Pentagon’s decision is clear. The program is practically terminated, the contracts for the four ships that had not yet started are canceled, only the first two, Constellation (FFG-62) and Congress (FFG-63), continue towards completion, and these under close review and monitoring in terms of cost and schedule. In public discourse the cancellation is presented as a “strategic shift to faster implementation programs”, but behind the wording lies a very concrete reality. How, in other words, another US surface program foundered due to excessive design interventions, cost overruns and time delays, with the Naval Sea Systems Command, the well-known NAVSEA, and in particular the naval engineering department NAVSEA 05, as the central player.
From the Italian FREMM to the “American” Constellation, how the… translation was lost
The FFG(X) program, later renamed FFG-62 Constellation, was born around 2017, when the US Navy indirectly admitted the failure of the LCS as a “small” surface ship (small by US naval standards). So the new idea sounded logical. “Instead of designing a new frigate from scratch, let’s choose an already successful design from the international market, adapt it as necessary to American systems and procedures, and in this way we will save time, reduce technical risk and keep costs at reasonable levels.”
The choice of the Italian FREMM by Fincantieri seemed ideal. A ship already serving in the Italian and French navies, and with exports, with proven top-notch anti-submarine warfare capabilities, area anti-aircraft defense capability and effective for surface warfare. A design with years of real operational experience, with low technical risk and, above all, fully developed.
In practice, however, NAVSEA 05 was not prepared to accept simply an “Italian-style frigate”. The shipbuilding department began to implement the full framework of American design criteria for warships, with a logic almost as if a new class were being designed from scratch. The requirements were multi-layered:
- Increased survivability and damage management were required according to the most stringent standards of the US Navy, with more watertight and fireproof zones, reinforced compartmentation, additional escape routes and redundancy in critical systems.
- Full compliance with the MIL-S-901 vibration standard was imposed for main mechanical systems, electronics and weapons, which meant new mounts for all electromechanical systems, reinforcements in the hull structure, and changes to all sorts of aspects of the original Italian design.
- Greater power and cooling capacity was required for future system deployment/deployment, which necessitated a complete redesign of the networks, electrical panels, and cooling system.
- Cybersecurity and network-centric architecture, based on the American Risk Management Framework, added another layer of complexity to the interconnection of radars, sensors, combat systems, and data networks.
- A key element was the choice of American armament and sensors. The ship was to carry SPY-6(V)3 or equivalent advanced radar, Aegis combat system, Mk41 launchers, RAM launcher, advanced sonar and a full electronic warfare package. The integration of this “Americanization” package, combined with survivability requirements, meant additional weight, a higher center of gravity, the need to strengthen the central mast, radical changes in the design of superstructures and in some cases, new dimensioning. After all, the vessel had already been extended for +500 tons of displacement.
- Finally, the propulsion followed a combined architecture (Combined Diesel-Electric and Gas) that had not been used before on US Navy ships, which for the Branch added technological risk and the need for extensive testing on land before full operational integration. The fact that Fincantieri had excellent experience in this type of propulsion and that the vessels were already operating successfully in allied navies left NAVSEA bureaucrats “indifferent”.
All of this together led to a result that was impressively reflected in a 2025 analysis: Constellation, in its development, ultimately had only about fifteen percent similarity to the “parent” FREMM. So the radically reformed vessel (essentially a new ship) was accompanied by the disadvantages that a “from scratch” program entails, such as a multi-year design phase, the need for redesign, delays, and upward cost escalation.
Initial estimates spoke of a cost of around $850 to $950 million per ship, after the first. With the changes, the price approached, and probably exceeded, the level of $1.3 billion per unit, while reports spoke of an additional $600 million above the initial projections in the case of the first ship, mainly due to repeated modifications and delays.
Here the paradox began to become clear, that after the US Navy chose an existing, successful design to save money and development time, it then changed it so much that it lost the advantages of the “ready-made” design, without gaining anything overwhelmingly superior to modern versions, e.g. the FREMM EVO which already exists and is “free” in terms of design.
The LCS Freedom Precedent
To understand why NAVSEA’s responsibilities are not limited to the Constellation program, one must go back to the early 2000s, when the LCS program was presented as the “low-cost, flexible, multi-mission” solution for littoral waters. Littoral Combat Ships were supposed to be fast, shallow-draft, modular, and most importantly, low-cost compared to typical frigates.
The LCS Freedom in particular was based on a high-speed Fincantieri design, adapted from Italian experience for military use. The basic idea was that they would take a platform with a basic electronics/weapons package, customize it with equipment packages for various missions, and keep it relatively simple by shipbuilding standards, since it would not operate as a front-line offensive unit in a high-threat environment.
There, NAVSEA intervened in a manner that is strikingly reminiscent of what later happened to the Constellations. The management demanded additional levels of survivability, more damage control elements, stricter compliance with military standards for vibration, fire safety and compartmentalization. The result was changes to the interior layout, increased weight, changes in load distribution. The very propulsion architecture, with waterjets and a complex transmission system, was burdened by the modifications. It is no coincidence that the Freedoms became known for their power transmission system failures and significant out-of-service periods for repairs.
The image that NAVSEA intervened in the Freedoms and left the Independences (i.e. the other class of ships in the LCS program) untouched is not correct. The Independence, as an all-aluminum trimaran by Austal, based on a fast ferry design, reached the shipbuilding stage with its inherent limitations built into it. The material of construction, the large hull surface area and the “trimaran philosophy” made the ship more susceptible to underwater explosions, electrolysis, corrosion, metal fatigue and structural stresses. However, NAVSEA could not impose on this design the same range of requirements that it imposed on the steel Freedom, because this would have required an almost complete redesign of the ship or the cancellation of the political decision to purchase Independence as well.
Management interventions on Independence focused on areas such as fire safety, cable protection, optimization of electrical standards, reinforcement of navigation and communications systems, as well as upgrading damage control procedures, always in accordance with Navy standards. Its intervention, strangely enough, was muted around the issues of corrosion and electrolytic damage to the hull, oversights that led to cracks in the ships, the need for additional coatings and enhanced maintenance programs.
Ultimately, the changes to Independence did not take the form of a radical “revamp” as happened to Freedom. NAVSEA mandated the addition of a new CMS (now being replaced on older ships) with some cybersecurity provisions, new protocols for electrical networks, and a review of the reliability of the waterjets, which presented durability and maintenance issues when the ship operated at high speeds for extended periods.
The most disappointing thing, however, is that all of these requirements increased the cost. Initial estimates spoke of about two hundred to two hundred twenty million dollars per ship (Freedom). In practice, the actual cost reached levels of five hundred to six hundred million dollars per unit, according to analyses based on data from the Congressional Budget Office. So the ships became more expensive and lost their original purpose, which was a “cheap ship for asymmetric threats”, while technical problems and the increase in the Chinese Navy in power, showed that for these ships their original role no longer existed.
NAVSEA and the “Destroyer Mafia”
The question is therefore whether the cancellation of the Constellations was the result of poor technical management or whether it reflects deeper trends within the US Navy itself and the American industrial complex. NAVSEA is the organization responsible for the design, performance and technical standards of all surface ships and submarines of the US Navy. Its role is necessary, but its power is enormous. Thus, it can, with a set of requirements, transform an “off-the-shelf” design into a completely different ship, or move the center of gravity of a program from operational need to compliance with procedures and standards.
At the same time, public debate in the US has been talking for years about “mafias” within the armed forces: Jet mafia in the Air Force, Sub mafia in submarines, and Destroyer mafia in the field of large surface vessels. That is, as cultures of senior officers, who “defend” specific philosophies of armaments and designs, so they are suspicious of anything different and new. In the opinion of analysts and veterans, this “destroyer mafia” within the US Navy systematically favors large, heavily armed destroyers and critical high-cost programs, at the expense of smaller, and potentially more numerous vessels such as frigates.
So senior officers, who have grown up operationally in the Arleigh Burke and Ticonderoga classes, as well as the industrial lobby of large shipyards specializing in such ships, viewed the effort to create a cheaper frigate with suspicion. Furthermore, large destroyers bring large budgets, long-term contracts, many jobs in specific states and, of course, significant political influence for any legislator who secures supplies and production for his region.
So the Constellation, as a design based on a European ship, was a “foreign body” in this system from the start. It was built in an American shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin, with a local workforce, but under the umbrella of Fincantieri. The very fact that the US Navy had chosen a foreign design as the basis for its fleet frigate sent a message that traditional segments of the shipbuilding community may not have found particularly pleasant.
Where NAVSEA and the “Destroyer mafia” theory meet is in how the requirements were implemented. If the Navy really wanted a low-risk frigate, it could have kept the hull and basic shipbuilding logic of the FREMM almost intact, incorporated a relatively “lighter” combat system, and accepted some differences in standards compared to a destroyer.
The inability of the American shipbuilding system to build ships of this size quickly and cheaply has exacerbated the problem, as evidenced by the delays at the Marinette shipyard, where the first Constellation remains at a very low completion rate well after construction began.
Whether this course is a conscious preference for a destroyer-based fleet and future classes of large vessels, or whether it is “simply” the usual inertia of a system that cannot settle for less than the absolute, is a matter of debate. However, the repetition of the same pattern from the LCS Freedom to the Constellations is difficult to attribute to mere coincidence.
In an era when the quantitative balance of surface ships is tilting in China’s favor, the US’s inability to acquire a reliable, reasonably priced, and mass-produced frigate is a strategic problem. And as long as NAVSEA and the broader “culture” of the Branch continue to treat every program as an opportunity for the ultimate, rather than the feasible but sufficient, we will see programs that start with great promise and end in failure.
So if the US Navy wants to – as its secretary has stated – try the path to a “small surface ship” again, it will have to answer a simple question: does it really want a frigate, or a small destroyer disguised as a frigate?
