Navy Cancels Constellation Frigate Class

You’re probably thinking this is a ComNavOps April Fool’s piece that somehow got misplaced on the calendar, right?  Well, it’s not. 
 

The Navy is walking away from the Constellation-class frigate program to focus on new classes of warships the service can build faster, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced Tuesday on social media.
 
Under the terms negotiated with shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine, the Wisconsin shipyard will continue to build Constellation (FFG-62) and Congress (FFG-63) but will cancel the next four planned warships.[1]

This is not exactly surprising.  ComNavOps has heavily criticized the Constellation program since day one and the evidence of failure has steadily accumulated since then.  The program should never have gotten this far.  That said, I do give the Navy some degree of credit for recognizing and terminating a failed program before it got totally out of hand.  How much better off would we be if the LCS had been cancelled after just two ships?
 
I have not seen an official explanation for the cancellation although reasons abound.  I doubt we’ll ever know the real reason.  So, lacking any definitive information, we’ll instead discuss the implications of the cancellation.
 
ASW, never a Navy point of emphasis, fades further into the background … out of sight, out of mind.  We now have no surface vessel that even pretends to do ASW except the Burkes and no sane commander will risk a multi-billion dollar vessel playing tag with a submarine.
 
Replacement options unfortunately include additional LCS (perhaps the modified Saudi versions?) and, most distressingly, some cockeyed, garbaged up “family” of unmanned craft.  The latter strikes me as exactly the kind of thing the Navy would do although either option, bad as they are, is more than plausible. 
 
There is also the question of whether the Constellation even needs to be replaced?  ComNavOps has opined that a frigate is about last on the list of the Navy’s needs.  If they did opt for a new design frigate, it should be just that: a new design and something along the Visby lines.
 
Orphans have now being created, just as has happened with Zumwalt and the F-35.  We’ll now have a mini-class of two ships that require their own dedicated supply, maintenance, training, and support pipelines and that never works out well.  It is almost certain that in a relatively short time frame, the Navy will declare the two ships too expensive to maintain and operate and will retire them early.  We seem to be early retiring a lot of ships, don’t we? 
 
CONOPS were never developed for the Constellation but even if they had, this now completely invalidates any concept of operations.  How do two ships fit into the fleet?  Where do two ships, dissimilar to the rest of the fleet and too small in number to have an impact, fit into the warfighting scheme?  The ships will not only be physical orphans, they’ll be operational orphans, much like the Zumwalts.  No commander will know what to do with them.
 
Trust between Congress, who holds the purse strings, and the Navy has never been lower and this is just going to make it even worse.  Congress has been extremely upset with the Navy for failures, lies, and deceit for several years now and, after being told by the Navy how vitally important the Constellation class was and after being assured that the “parent design” would eliminate all risk, Congress is going to be extremely skeptical and reluctant to fund whatever idiotic idea the Navy comes up with next.
 
Land facilities, as you recall, were built or being built to provide ashore testing and support for the class.  Obviously, they no longer serve a purpose.  Can they be repurposed into support for the next class or will they be abandoned … more of Congess’ (meaning us, the taxpayer) money lost to the Navy’s incompetence?
 
Accountability has never been a strong suit of the modern Navy.  Will SecDef Hegseth fire the people responsible for this debacle?  I doubt it.  He’s been a major disappointment.  This is yet another opportunity for him to truly change the culture of incompetence but I’ll be surprised if he does anything.
 
Battle Force structure is terribly out of whack, as we’ve discussed many times.  In WWII, we had a range of ships from the ultimate battleships and carriers all the way down to destroyer escorts.  We could tailor forces for the capability and risk we faced.  Today, we have only one class of surface ship, the Burke, and carriers.  There is no range from which we can select and tailor forces.  Any task we have, no matter how big or small, will be performed by a Burke/carrier.  This is how we wind up with Burkes chasing pirate skiffs.  The Constellations, poor a choice as they were, would have provided a degree of range.  Now … Burkes.
 

Goodbye

 
Conclusion
 
This has been a debacle, without a doubt.  The only saving grace is that it’s being stopped at two ships.  This was the program that would not, indeed could not, fail thanks to the Navy’s insistence on requiring a parent design (which they instantly abandoned and modified to a mere 15% commonality).  If the Navy couldn’t make a parent design approach work, what approach can they successfully execute?  The last successful surface ship the Navy built was the 1980’s Burke.  That’s forty years of subsequent failure.  If you were Congress, would you give the Navy any more money for anything?
 
The ripples of this failure will spread far and wide and last a long time.
 
 
 
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[1]USNI News website, “Navy Cancels Constellation-class Frigate Program, Considering New Small Surface Combatants”, Sam LaGrone, 25-Nov-2025,
https://news.usni.org/2025/11/25/navy-cancels-constellation-class-frigate-program-considering-new-small-surface-combatants