The U.S. Navy cancelled the bulk of its Constellation-class frigate program on November 25, 2025, when Navy Secretary John Phelan terminated the final four ships on contract and limited production to the first two hulls already under construction. The decision ended a program that had been projected to deliver up to 20 guided-missile frigates for more than $22 billion, and it came after the lead ship slipped roughly three years behind schedule with only about 12 percent of construction complete. Less than a month later, the Navy announced a replacement program called FF(X), built on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class National Security Cutter hull, with a target of putting the first ship in the water by 2028.
What Phelan Cancelled and What Survives
Phelan’s November 2025 announcement killed four frigates that had been placed on contract but had not yet begun construction. “From day one, I made it clear: I won’t spend a dollar if it doesn’t strengthen readiness or our ability to win,” he said, calling the move a “strategic shift” that would let the Navy “more rapidly construct new classes of ships.”1The War Zone. Navy Sinks the Constellation Class Frigate Program The termination clawed back $2.57 billion in funding that had been set aside for those four ships.2USNI News. Funding Bill Moves Constellation Frigate Money for New FF(X) Program
Construction continues on the first two ships, USS Constellation (FFG-62) and USS Congress (FFG-63), though Phelan said both remain “under review.” As of November 2025 the lead ship was only about 12 percent complete.3Congressional Research Service. Navy Constellation Class Frigate Program
Phelan framed the cost-benefit calculation bluntly: the Constellation cost 80 percent as much as an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer while providing only 60 percent of the capability, making it more effective in his view to build destroyers instead.3Congressional Research Service. Navy Constellation Class Frigate Program He later said the Navy and shipbuilder Fincantieri were each “50 percent culpable” for the program’s problems.4Daily Press. More Details on Navy’s Decision to Cancel Marinette Contract
Why the Program Failed
The program began in 2017 as the Navy’s first attempt to field a modern multi-mission frigate since the Oliver Hazard Perry class retired in 2015. Rather than start from scratch, the Navy chose to adapt the Franco-Italian FREMM frigate on the theory that a proven parent design would cut risk and speed delivery. Fincantieri Marinette Marine won the contract in April 2020 with an initial award of nearly $800 million for the lead ship, on a deal that could have grown to $5.5 billion for up to 10 vessels.5Fincantieri Marine Group. Fincantieri Marinette Marine Awarded Contract for U.S. Navy Frigate
That premise collapsed. Former Navy acquisition chief Nickolas Guertin later said that “modifying someone else’s design is a lot harder than it seems.”6USNI News. Navy’s Plan for Frigate Parent Design Caused Delays, Former Acquisition Chief Says American survivability standards, combat systems, and speed requirements pushed the hull more than 23 feet longer than the FREMM, added hundreds of tons of displacement, and forced a substantially reworked propulsion system to reach carrier-group speeds above 30 knots.7Naval Technology. Constellation Class: The US Navy’s Struggle to Forge a New Generation of Frigates By the end, the Constellation shared only 15 percent commonality with its parent design, against an original target of 85 percent.8The War Zone. Troubled Constellation Frigate Is Now at Least 759 Metric Tons Overweight
Senator Roger Wicker, then the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during a May 2024 hearing that nearly 70 percent of the requirements had changed after the contract was signed. He called the program “acquisition malpractice and a terrible waste of time and resources,” placing the blame on Navy management rather than on Fincantieri.9U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Full Committee Hearing Transcript
Building Before the Design Was Done
Construction on the lead ship started in August 2022, before the design was finished. A May 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that the 3D design model was still incomplete more than a year into construction and that work had effectively ground to a halt. The GAO called starting construction before the design was mature “inconsistent with leading practices.”10U.S. Government Accountability Office. Constellation Class Frigate: Actions Needed to Improve Oversight
Unplanned weight growth of at least 759 metric tons, roughly 13 percent above initial estimates, forced the Navy to consider reducing the ship’s speed requirement just to keep the design viable.11USNI News. Constellation Frigate Unplanned Weight Growth Could Limit Service Life, Says GAO
Cost and Schedule
The money went sideways early. Congress had funded the lead ship at $1.28 billion and the second at $1.05 billion.12USNI News. Report to Congress on Constellation Class Frigate Program In October 2020 the Congressional Budget Office warned that the Navy had underestimated the lead ship’s cost by 40 percent, projecting an actual price of $1.6 billion.13USNI News. CBO Says Navy Underestimated Cost of First Frigate by 40 Percent By 2025 unit cost estimates had climbed to about $1.4 billion per ship, and the lead ship’s delivery had slipped from the contractual date of April 2026 to an estimated 2029.1The War Zone. Navy Sinks the Constellation Class Frigate Program Then-Secretary Carlos Del Toro acknowledged the contract had been “underbid.”4Daily Press. More Details on Navy’s Decision to Cancel Marinette Contract
The FF(X) Replacement
On December 18, 2025, less than a month after killing the Constellation class, Phelan announced the FF(X), a new frigate built on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class National Security Cutter, a design already in production at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Mississippi.14U.S. Navy. Navy Announces New Small Surface Combatant The stated logic: start from a design the Navy already knows how to build.
The FF(X) is smaller and simpler than the Constellation. At 421 feet long and 4,750 tons, it drops the 32-cell Mk 41 vertical launch system that would have given the Constellation its air-defense punch. Weapons include a 57mm gun, a 30mm cannon, a 21-cell RAM launcher, and up to 16 Naval Strike Missiles in containerized launchers on the fantail. The Navy says that modular approach will allow rapid capability swaps without the integration problems that plagued the Littoral Combat Ship’s mission modules.15The War Zone. Navy’s New Frigate Program Makes Big Bet on Containers Loaded With Missiles The ship is designed for a crew of 148, a top speed of 28 knots, and a range of 12,000 nautical miles with 60 days of endurance.16National Defense Magazine. Navy Commits to Fielding New Frigate by 2028
The trade-offs are real. The FF(X) lacks built-in area air defense and integrated anti-submarine warfare sonar arrays, two missions the Constellation was specifically designed for. Analysts have described it as a “light frigate” or “sea presence platform” rather than a ship that would slot into a carrier strike group.17Naval Technology. US Navy FF(X) vs Constellation Frigate: A Comparison The Navy’s answer is bulk: a fleet of 50 to 65 of these ships to handle lower-end missions like maritime interdiction and presence operations, freeing Arleigh Burke destroyers for high-end combat.16National Defense Magazine. Navy Commits to Fielding New Frigate by 2028
The FY 2026 defense appropriations bill provided $242 million for long-lead items for the first FF(X) ships.2USNI News. Funding Bill Moves Constellation Frigate Money for New FF(X) Program In April 2026 the Navy awarded Ingalls a $282.9 million sole-source contract for lead yard support, covering design work, long-lead materials, and pre-construction activities. The Navy aims to have the lead ship in the water by 2028, with the earliest possible fleet delivery projected for June 2030. A broader competition for future hulls is planned once Ingalls has production underway.18USNI News. Navy Awards $282.9M FF(X) Frigate Contract to HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding
What It Means for Marinette, Wisconsin
The cancellation hit Fincantieri Marinette Marine and its shipyards in Marinette, Green Bay, and Sturgeon Bay hard. Fincantieri had invested $800 million in facility upgrades across its U.S. operations to support frigate production. The company laid off 93 white-collar employees in early December 2025 and released several hundred subcontractors in the weeks that followed. The yard’s total workforce stood at roughly 2,175 before the cuts.4Daily Press. More Details on Navy’s Decision to Cancel Marinette Contract
Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin called the decision “a blow to our state’s economy and our national security” and accused the administration of “pulling the rug out” from under thousands of workers.19U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin. Baldwin Denounces Trump Admin Plan to Cut Frigate Program Wisconsin Republican Congressman Tony Wied took a different tack, supporting the Navy’s focus on a “larger and more capable fleet” while pledging to fight for future shipbuilding work in the district.20WBAY. Navy Cancels Constellation Class Frigate Program, Impacting Ship Building in Marinette
To keep the yard alive, the Navy and Fincantieri reached a framework agreement covering future work on amphibious, icebreaking, and special-mission vessels.1The War Zone. Navy Sinks the Constellation Class Frigate Program In February 2026 Fincantieri was selected to build four Landing Ship Medium vessels alongside Bollinger Shipyards, and in April 2026 the company received a $30 million contract for long-lead materials and engineering on those ships, with construction expected to begin in late 2026.21USNI News. Bollinger, Fincantieri Marinette Marine to Build Landing Ship Medium, Navy Says Congress also included $800 million for the Medium Landing Ship program in the FY 2026 defense appropriations bill, explicitly to stabilize the shipyard industrial base after the frigate cancellation.2USNI News. Funding Bill Moves Constellation Frigate Money for New FF(X) Program
Can the Navy Avoid Repeating Itself
The Constellation joins a familiar list. In a December 2025 analysis, defense writer Austin Gray identified the same pattern that sank earlier programs: starting construction before designs are ready, allowing requirements to creep unchecked, and underestimating the difficulty of reconciling American naval standards with a foreign hull. His recommended fixes included enforcing a hard stop on construction until designs are complete, resisting the Navy’s “insatiable appetite for requirements,” and matching what the service wants to build with what American shipyards can actually produce.22War on the Rocks. After the Constellation Class: Lessons of the Navy’s Latest Shipbuilding Debacle
Retired Captain Kevin Eyer, writing in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings in April 2026, placed the Constellation alongside the Littoral Combat Ship and the Zumwalt-class destroyer as programs that lost discipline on requirements and ended up operationally misaligned. His warning about the FF(X) was direct: because the National Security Cutter hull lacks the weight and space for area air defense or complex anti-submarine warfare, the Navy has to accept it as a lower-end platform and resist the temptation to add capabilities it was never designed for.23U.S. Naval Institute. Three Shipbuilding Failures and a Future Whether the Navy can hold that line, after failing to hold it on the Constellation, the LCS, and the Zumwalt, is the central question hanging over the new program.