Navy Secretary John Phelan confirmed that his service branch still needs frigates despite axing the years-behind-schedule Constellation-class warship program.
On Saturday, Mr. Phelan told the audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California that the White House approved adding frigates to President Trump’s Golden Fleet initiative.
Frigates are fast and maneuverable warships, slightly smaller than destroyers, that often escort convoys and anti-submarine operations.
“We will be building a frigate [and] it will be based on an American design,” Mr. Phelan said. “It is something we can build that we think, actually, will be done before the Constellation.”
Only the first two frigates, the USS Constellation and the USS Congress, will be constructed under the new agreement. Orders for four additional ships of the same model were canceled along with plans for an eventual 20-frigate fleet.
“The Constellation-class frigate was canceled because, candidly, it didn’t make sense anymore to build it,” Mr. Phelan said. “It was 80% of the cost of a destroyer and 60% of the capability. You might as well build destroyers.”
The Constellation-class guided missile frigates were based on the Italian navy’s version of the European Union multipurpose vessel, known as the FREMM. The model was selected because it was already a proven warship.
The U.S. Navy essentially redesigned the FREMM, resulting in skyrocketing costs and production delays.
Mr. Phelan said the Navy has settled on a design for the new frigate and, unlike the Constellation program, it won’t be redesigned on the fly.
“The requirements are going to be put in and done before we start building the first one,” he said. “When we start building the first one, any change order will have to be put through me.”
He wants to end practices that result in the Navy automatically funding programs that don’t make sense. He compared it to giving someone a 2015-model iPhone today.
“You will have obsolete technology if we do it that way,” Mr. Phelan said. “It’s something we really have to work through and with [Congress] as well.”
The Navy doesn’t necessarily need to churn out as many warships as China because the U.S. vessels are far more capable, Mr. Phelan said.
“There’s a quality component, but we are definitely going to need to partner with our allies — particularly South Korea, Japan and I’d say even Singapore — people who are very good at shipbuilding,” he said. “All options are going to have to be on the table because the president’s mandate is really to get hulls in the water.”
Mr. Phelan said Mr. Trump last week signed off on the Navy’s Golden Fleet concept — a future naval force focusing on large surface combatants armed with hypersonic missiles, smaller and more nimble corvettes, and numerous unmanned vessels all designed to counter China’s growing naval power.
“We will continue to build ships that are the cornerstones of the fleet, so carriers, destroyers, amphibs [amphibious vessels] and submarines. But we’ll need new ships, and we need modern ships,” he said. “We’ll also be doing quite a bit in manned [vessels]. There’s a significant amount of capital in the budget allocated to unmanned.”
