To Build Golden Fleet Frigate Fast, Two Shipyards are Needed
Last updated 06:17 AM EDT • Read time: 5m
In 1798, while at war with France, an exasperated British Lord Nelson exclaimed, “Were I to die at this moment, ‘want of frigates!’ would be stamped on my heart.” It’s a perennial problem: Frigates formed the backbone of navies in Nelson’s time and do so today as well, and there seldom seems to be enough. The U.S. Navy’s ambitious Golden Fleet shipbuilding plan aims to fill a frigate gap but will require shipyard capacity that today the nation lacks.
The Navy’s 2026 shipbuilding plan plans a fleet of 66 frigates. By 2031, two Constellation-class frigates are to be completed at the Marinette, Wisc. shipyard and a modified U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter at the Ingalls, Miss. shipyard. But to meet the Navy’s goal, a sustained delivery of more than three frigates per year will be needed by 2037. Such a production schedule is unlikely with one shipyard, and the plan all along was to have two frigate-producing shipyards.
In December 2020, just months after the initial frigate contract, the Navy reported to Congress its intention to stand up a second shipyard to expand production to three ships by 2023 and four ships from 2025. In its 2025 shipbuilding plan, the Navy laid out a proposal to expand frigate production to a second shipyard by 2030.
The Constellation frigate program and a repurposed National Security Cutter will fill the need for a multi-session surface combatant – anti-submarines warfare and limited air defense. Nearly seven years after the program’s inception, zero frigates have been built.
Complicating frigate production has been persistent design uncertainty; one adjustments to original FREMM design for Constellation, and uncertainty over how the Navy will turn the National Security Cutter into a frigate. For Constellation, the intent was to build a proven allied design with little to no changes, but modifications resulted in the ship retaining only 15% of its original design. Today the design is over 95% complete, but cost and displacement have ballooned to approximate a destroyer.
The axe fell in November 2025. Then-Secretary of the Navy Phelan cancelled Constellation because it was 80% the cost of a destroyer while providing only 60% of their capability. The thinking then was to substitute this with a repurposed cutter.
The previous delivery of 10 National Security Cutters seemed to validate a pivot towards HII’s Ingalls shipyard. That said, modifications will be needed before its design is Navy-ready: modest air-defense systems, torpedo magazines, added fuel storage, additional crew accommodation. But it has been years since the last National Security Cutter was built. As such, additional workforce at Ingalls will be needed and supply chains restarted, slowing renewed production of a reproposed cutter.
On the other hand, the Constellation program does benefit from Fincantieri investments of $800 million and workforce expansion of 850 that since cancellation has begun to be let go. Reversing this is still possible with a finalized design that could allow for initial delivery quicker than the Ingalls repurposed cutter. But both options today face capacity constraints.
In an August 13 memo, President Trump announced a framework to increase domestic shipbuilding capacity using the “Finland Model” that seeds domestic shipbuilding growth through initial overseas orders. This works by making conditional ship orders that see the initial hulls built at foreign shipyards while concurrently developing American shipyards to construct later ships. This model is inspired by from the 2024 ICE Pact icebreaker construction effort with Canada’s Davie Shipbuilding with shipyards in Finland and Texas.
Adapting the Finland Model to frigate production offers way ahead that could leverage shipbuilding capacity in Japan and South Korea -- the world’s second- and third largest shipbuilders, respectively. Both nations build capable frigates that have emerged as potential options for meeting urgent American frigate needs: South Korea’s Chungnam-class and Japan’s Mogami-class. Already, Australia has inked their own Finland Model 11-ship deal with Japan, with the first three Mogami-class vessels being constructed in Japan and follow-on production in Australia.
Thoughts of partnering with Turkey on frigate production, however, would be hindered because it hasn’t made industrial investment commitments like Japan and South Korea have. Japan has committed a portion of the $550 billion of U.S. investments to modernizing America’s shipbuilding industry. South Korea’s Hanwha Group has followed its $100 million purchase of its Philadelphia shipyard in 2024 with a $5 billion infrastructure plan to further develop the facility, and Seoul has committed $150 billion to the Make American Shipbuilding Great Again.
While the Navy may opt to acquire foreign frigates under the Finland Model, further leveraging existing American shipbuilding capacity at Ingalls and Marinette shouldn’t be overlooked to further accelerate domestic frigate construction. The Navy needs frigates, and unconventional approaches required to be clear, but only a plan that seeks added domestic shipbuilding capacity will be sustainable.
Brent Sadler is a 26-year naval veteran and current senior research fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the Heritage Foundation. Chase Ouellette is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.
image: Workers leave Fincantieri Marinette Marine Friday, July 12, 2024, in Marinette, Wis., after their shift. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)