After eight years of development, billions of dollars invested, and five years since a production contract was awarded, the U.S. Navy is cancelling its Constellation-class frigate program:
By the time the final axe came down on the LCS program in 2023, the Navy had already awarded a production contract to Wisconsin-based Fincantieri Marinette Marine to build an entirely new type of advanced frigate: the Constellation class. In order to expedite production and keep costs down, the Navy opted to base this new frigate on an existing design: the Italian-French FREMM multi-mission frigate that was already being built in two variants, one for Italy and one for France. The plan was to retain roughly 85% of the original FREMM design, while changing roughly 15% to better suit the U.S. Navy’s needs and regulations.
[…]
However, it wasn’t long before the Navy decided to depart from the FREMM design to better accommodate all of the necessary hardware. Italy and France’s FREMM frigates measure between 434 and nearly 466 feet long, but America’s new Constellation would add another 30 feet to the largest FREMM iterations, reaching 496 feet. This also came with a substantial increase in weigh from around 6,000 tons to 7,291.
Yet, making the ship bigger and heavier quickly became a problem, especially as the frigate’s requirements continued to change too. For instance, in 2022, the Navy decided to cancel plans to install a new anti-submarine warfare module into its troubled LCS ships and instead, shoehorn it into the new Constellation-class as well, citing its ability to integrate with the ship’s existing SQQ-89 ASW combat system.
In 2020, when the production contract was awarded, the Navy projected the first new Constellation-class frigates would be delivered in 2026. But by 2022, with construction underway on the first new ship, the design was still not finalized. With design elements of the ship’s structure, piping, ventilation, and other systems still incomplete, production was forced to stall, driving up costs. By the following year, the weight growth issue was becoming too big to ignore, with the ship’s displacement growing by 10% and already exceeding its maximum weight margin, calling into question whether the ship could even carry any future upgrades. The Navy even considered reducing its requirements for the ship’s speed as a result, which also called into question its ability to keep pace with fast-moving carrier strike groups.
By 2024, the first ship of the class was 36 months behind schedule, with the second already considered two years behind before its keel was even laid. The plan, as I mentioned before, was to retain roughly 85% of the FREMM frigate design to expedite production, but by that point, the Constellation design retained only about 15% of its parent design. This caused a cascade of other issues, like the need to write new code for a reported 95% of the ship’s control system software due to deviations from the FREMM design it came from, and the incorporation of new equipment and systems.
The Constellation-class frigate seemed to suffer from a classic case of scope-creep, a term used to describe a program that keeps seeing new requirements tacked onto it as it develops, resulting in cost overruns and delays. As one lawmaker put it, the Navy kept chasing a 100% solution to the point where they ended up with 0% of the ship being delivered.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
The purpose of the US Dept. of Defense is to transfer money to the owners of the MIC. The Constellation program, like the LCS, was a success.
How many illegals has the Navy prevented from walking across our southern border?