The Navy may never build any Constellation-class frigates

A troubled new class of ships that had already been whittled down from 20 vessels to just two may be facing even more bad news.

According to the Government Accountability Office’s annual weapons assessment, released earlier this month, even the two Constellation-class frigates now under construction may be on the chopping block.

The report notes that the reduction from 20 ships to two, made last November, followed “years of design instability and construction delays.” At the time, work had begun on six frigates, then the Navy halted work on four of them.

In February, a contract change from the Navy moved the remaining two ships from a fixed-price incentive model to a cost-plus fixed fee model up to the price ceiling of the contract – a change that reflects the uncertainty and instability around the shipbuilding plans and the related cost estimated.

And now, the ship class may be shelved altogether.

“According to senior Navy officials, these two ships are under review for potential termination,” GAO officials stated. “Notwithstanding this review, these officials also told us their anticipated course of action but deemed that information not suitable for public release.”

As of March, shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine was ordered to pause ordering new material for the two ships “to evaluate … necessity as those ships remain under review,” the report said.

This is just the latest chapter of a messy, long and pricey saga for the Navy as it has sought to add to the fleet a small surface combatant that can take over some responsibilities from the service’s heavily tasked guided-missile destroyers. Among the planned missions that the vessel was conceived to shoulder were anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, air defense, and ship escorting.

The FREMM-class frigate Alsace giving a 21-gun salute, March 2021. The Constellation-class frigate is based on the FREMM. (Photo by Corinne/Wikimedia Commons)

Originally called FFG(X), the program originated in 2017. Long-range shipbuilding plans at one point called for 58 frigates in two variants, but evolving requirements stymied progress.

The lead ship Constellation was announced in 2020, a few months after Fincantieri was named to build a planned variant of the existing Italian-French FREMM frigate. Yet, as the Navy added new taskers and requirements to the base design, costs went up and the delivery timeline slipped from 2026 to 2029.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-KS), now chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in 2024 that “acquisition malpractice” was to blame.

“The Constellation-class frigate will be three years late and will take nearly 10 years to deliver the lead ship. This is largely because the Navy cannot keep its requirements steady,” he said. “Almost 70% of the requirements have changed since the Navy signed a contract. … This is not an example of the industry underperforming. This is senior officials unable to manage a program.”

Initially estimated to cost $850-950 million per hull, costs for the Constellation quickly slipped upward of $1.1 billion.

In explaining its cancellation last year, then-Navy Secretary John Phelan described the situation bluntly.

“The Constellation-class frigate was canceled because, candidly, it didn’t make sense anymore to build it,” he said. “It was 80% of the cost of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and 60% of the capability. You might as well build destroyers.”

The GAO report noted that the design changes that the Navy wanted to the Constellation grew to interfere with the ship’s ability to do its mission.

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Graphic presenting the systems planned to be onboard a Constellation-class frigate. (Naval Sea Systems Command)

“Implementing these design changes necessitated hundreds of tons of estimated weight growth within the ship design. In July 2025, the shipbuilder reported weight growth over 1,100 metric tons from initial estimates. The Navy and shipbuilder were considering an increase to the ship displacement limit by 7.5 percent to 8,400 metric tons,” investigators wrote. “However, increasing such displacement would likely affect the ship’s speed, range, and buoyancy characteristics.”

The Navy will have little to show for the billions invested in the Constellation program. According to GAO, Navy officials plan to use $2 billion to “secure alternative workload” for Fincantieri and “provide workforce training, development, and retention opportunities.”

The Navy has struggled to launch a reliable new class of ships for years. The littoral combat ship and the Zumwalt-class destroyer have both seen struggles to meet mission requirements and find their place in the fleet.

Now the the Navy plans to build a different class of small surface combatant, the FF(X), to be “highly adaptable” and “engineered for rapid, cost-effective production,” with the design based on the Coast Guard’s well-established National Security Cutter. The Navy has said it plans to have the first FF(X) hull in the water by 2028, with shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries awarded an initial $283 million contract in April to begin work.

As GAO noted, officials have high hopes for the new FF(X) frigate, saying it will “be able to relieve larger, multi-mission capable platforms from lower-priority tasking, thereby enhancing fleet-wide operational flexibility.”

Will it be able to pull the Navy out of the new-ship doldrums? With the tight timeline the service has set, we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Feature Image: Rendering of the future guided-missile frigate USS Lafayette. (U.S. Navy)

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