Most recent reports on the construction of the first U.S. Navy Constellation-class frigate are grim and filled with unwelcome news.
The first ship of the class is only 10% complete despite years of construction. The design of the ship has not been completed, and changes continue, no doubt accounting for rising costs and lengthening delays in construction.
Senior leaders at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) continue to blame industry for these problems, industry blames the Navy, and Congress penalizes the program in response.
While U.S. designs like the DDG-51 have been a “gold standard” for survivability, the Navy must strike a balance between ability to resist and sustain damage and rapid construction, perhaps across multiple ship flights, to field warships in needed numbers.
The current outlook for frigates is questionable, and does not look to improve soon. Still, the frigate is essential to the U.S. Navy force structure. The fleet has become increasingly imbalanced with more high-end ships like the DDG-51 used for low-end missions like counter-piracy and show the flag port visits.
Navies always find a need for larger numbers of smaller warships in wartime. It’s time to fix the frigate, and produce it in numbers, even at the expense of the larger DDG, and pair all manned combatant ships with unmanned “sidekicks” that add additional firepower and more options for distributed capacity.
Challenges with the Constellation class
The Constellation was supposed to be the vessel that avoided the problems of the littoral combat ship (LCS) through the adoption of a proven design. Its weapons and systems were mature and would not fail testing, prolong the program and raise costs as occurred with LCS.
The Navy’s new frigate program is substantially delayed with significant cost increases due in part to the service’s inability to finish the ship’s design. Unlike LCS, whose delays were due to immature equipment and systems failing testing, the Franco—Italian–French Frégate Européenne Multi-Mission (FREMM) frigate design on which Constellation was based was delayed through an unfiltered application of U.S. NAVSEA standards to the FREMM design.
European and American warship design standards are different. Naval Sea Systems Command has lessons going as far back as World War II that guide its requirements for U.S. warship design. As a result of these lessons, and the U.S. Navy focus on damage control as job one for all sailors, U.S. warships are hard to sink. These changes to design are costly and take time to implement.
Now three years into the design process, the first ship is only 10% complete, but the design as much as 98% finished. Given that level of design completion, now is not the time to cancel the frigate program. The Navy needs more smaller warships and cannot be a fleet of DDG’s alone.
The key, however, is balancing the inclusion of those design features with the need to rapidly reconstitute the Navy in larger numbers. The Navy has not yet captured that balance, and the service can’t wait any longer. Building the frigates in flights of five ships and delaying some of the changes for future vessels and refits to existing ships is one way to recover that balance.
Smaller ships always in need
The U.S. Navy’s DDG fleet is performing magnificently in a variety of theaters, from the Red Sea where the class has successfully engaged missiles and drones, to the Pacific in deterrence operations, and now missions closer to home ensuring border security.
It is also easy to expend DDG readiness, especially in lower-end missions. In wartime the surface combatant fleet will need to escort other ships, guard vital maritime lines of communication and chokepoints, serve as anti-surface combatants and perform antisubmarine warfare across wide swaths of ocean expanse.
The DDG force that is optimized for carrier escort and distributed surface warfare cannot do all those missions on its own. LCS continues to improve and become more effective, but the reduced numbers of littoral combatants from their planned strength of 52 vessels still leaves the Navy short of surface warships.
That shortfall was part of the impetus for the construction of a new frigate class in the first place.
Fix frigate now
The Navy needs to get immediate control of the frigate design, rapidly make it effective enough to build the first five-ship flight and then focus on making follow-on batches the ideal platforms with more NAVSEA lessons from past wars baked into the design.
The latest House Armed Services Committee version of the annual defense spending bill omits funding for the frigate, a disaster that needs immediate attention.
Adding unmanned ships with additional weapons and electronic warfare systems can further distribute any one vessel’s capacity. Rather than having all of a ship’s missiles on just one platform, having several unmanned ships where missiles can be distributed makes it harder to completely destroy all of the ship’s capability unless all of the unmanned ships are also eliminated.
Time is of the essence in preparing for possible conflict, and the Trump administration brooks no failed programs that drain taxpayer dollars. The clock is ticking on frigate.
