Franken-FREMM: How the Constellation Class Became a Monster

By Emma Salisbury

The U.S. Navy’s new frigate is now years behind schedule – and it’s unclear when any of them will enter service. The Navy was meant to have learned the lessons of previous failures but has somehow made a hash of this program too.

It all sounded rather good at the beginning. The Constellation-class frigate was meant to represent a significant development in the evolution of naval warfare capabilities. Named after the original USS Constellation, the first ship commissioned in the U.S. Navy, this new class was designed to conduct a wide range of missions and intended to be a testament to the Navy’s commitment to maintaining maritime superiority and adapting to modern technological advancements.

This vision, however, now has a number of holes below the waterline – all caused by the Navy. The Constellation-class design was deliberately based on an existing in-production frigate, the European-designed FREMM, in order to help reduce costs, delivery times, and risk. The design was always going to need some tweaks to make it meet U.S. needs, but the Navy’s constant tinkering with the design (now at 511 alterations) has reduced commonality from the original 85 percent down to just 15 percent, while making it incredibly difficult for the shipbuilder to keep up with the changes. The Constellation class are therefore now 23 feet longer and 500 tons heavier than originally intended, while production is years behind schedule.

As Sen. Roger Wicker aptly stated in a recent congressional hearing:

“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. Almost 70 percent 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. This is acquisition malpractice and a terrible waste of time and resources.”

How did the U.S. Navy manage to turn a few tweaks to a good off-the-shelf frigate design into a lumbering mess of a program with no end in sight?

“There Was a Dream That Was FFG(X)…”

Recognizing the need for a new generation of versatile and technologically advanced frigates, the Navy initiated the FFG(X) program in 2017, which evolved into the Constellation-class frigate. The goal was to build a ship that could effectively operate in the contested maritime environment of the 21st century, leveraging advanced sensors, weapons systems, and a robust combat management system. The Constellation-class frigates are designed to perform a wide range of missions, including anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, air defense, maritime security, and expeditionary operations.

The frigates are being constructed by Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin. The design is based on the FREMM (Frégate Européenne Multi-Mission), a joint French-Italian project known for its modular design and versatility. However, the Constellation class incorporates several modifications to meet the specific requirements of the U.S. Navy. These include enhanced combat systems (Aegis Baseline 10, the AN/SPY-6 radar, and Mk 41 VLS missile systems), improved anti-submarine warfare capabilities (the AN/SQS-62 variable depth sonar and the AN/SQQ-89(V)15 undersea warfare combat system), modifications to the hull and superstructure to enhance stealth, advanced damage-control systems, a larger flight deck, more scope for uncrewed vehicles (aerial, surface, and underwater), and better cybersecurity and communication systems.

“… It May Not Be Realized.”

It originally looked as though the U.S. Navy was learning some lessons from its prior missteps in ship procurement. The acquisition of a predecessor small surface combatant, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), was truncated after years of performance shortfalls, deficiencies, and cost growth. The poor acquisition outcomes of LCS, coupled with persistent fleet needs for small warships, prompted the Navy to accelerate the delivery of Constellation-class frigates by minimizing technology development and streamlining the frigate acquisition approach. By relying on the FREMM as a parent design, with limited customization to meet U.S. operational needs, the Navy should have been able to curb its historic tendency to overdo things when it comes to incorporating new technologies. With a fixed-price incentive contract for the detailed design and construction of up to the first 10 ships, cost risks could be managed more efficiently and the Navy initially had confidence that the program would deliver the promised capabilities on schedule.

However, subsequent mistakes have threatened the Navy's ability to meet these objectives. Significant additional modifications have resulted in a final product that barely resembles the original parent design, with the tweaks and additions ballooning steadily. Poor functional design review practices and flawed metrics have also obscured the program’s actual design progress. This led to the premature start of lead ship construction before the design was stable enough to support it. So-called “unplanned weight growth” of 10 percent or more – caused by adding on more capabilities – may require the Navy to shed propulsion capability, reducing the top speed, to allow the ships the margin needed for future upgrades, a problem that also reared its head during the procurement of LCS. As a recent Government Accountability Office report noted:

“The Navy’s decision to approve construction with incomplete elements of the ship design — including information gaps related to structural, piping, ventilation, and other systems — and the underestimation of adapting a foreign design to meet Navy requirements have driven this weight growth. Resolving this weight growth adds another dimension to the shipbuilder’s ongoing design activities, further diminishing the predictability of these already schedule-challenged efforts.”

With the construction start for the second frigate under review, the Navy lacks clarity on the remaining work needed to stabilize the functional design and the impact of ongoing design delays on subsequent ships – and likely won’t know the exact impact until the lead ship is finished. Consequently, we simply don’t know when the new frigates will come into service.

From FREMM-ish to Franken-FREMM

It is difficult to assess from the outside how many of the later design modifications are necessary or operationally justified, but a jump from 85 percent commonality to 15 percent commonality raises that question. If the 85 percent commonality version represented a decent FREMM design tweaked to U.S. specifications, then why was the 15 percent commonality version necessary given all of the delays and issues it has caused?

It looks as though the U.S. Navy has fallen into the old trap of making the perfect the enemy of the good – so the fleet will end up with delayed and potentially poorer-quality Franken-FREMMs when it could have had prompt and thoroughly decent FREMM-ish frigates. One hopes the U.S. Navy will eventually learn this lesson – but, clearly, not yet.

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Dr. Emma Salisbury is the Sea Power Research Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy in London. Her research focuses on American and British naval strategy, military procurement, and defense-industrial base issues. She is also a senior staffer in the UK Parliament and an assistant editor at War on the Rocks. 

Further Reading

Government Accountability Office, “NAVY FRIGATE: Unstable Design Has Stalled Construction and Compromised Delivery Schedules” (May 2024), https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106546.pdf.

Ronald O’Rourke, “Navy Constellation (FFG-62) Class Frigate Program: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service (May 30, 2024), https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/details?prodcode=R44972.

Tom Sharpe, “The US Navy has fallen victim to the British disease,” The Telegraph (June 2, 2024), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/31/us-navy-constellation-frigate-gao-report-design-fremm/.

Mallory Shelborne and Sam LaGrone, “Constellation Frigate ‘Unplanned Weight Growth’ Could Limit Service Life, Says GAO,” USNI News (May 29, 2024), https://news.usni.org/2024/05/29/constellation-frigate-unplanned-weight-growth-could-limit-service-life-says-gao.

Richard Thomas, “GAO: USS Constellation frigate construction ‘at a standstill’,” Naval Technology (May 30, 2024), https://www.naval-technology.com/news/gao-uss-constellation-frigate-construction-at-a-standstill/.

Joseph Trevithick, “Navy’s New Constellation Class Frigate Is A Mess,” The Warzone (May 30, 2024), https://www.twz.com/sea/navys-new-constellation-class-frigate-is-a-mess.