After delays and cost increases, the US Navy has finally announced the cancellation of the CONSTELLATION-class frigate program, based on the Italian FREMM design.

Fincantieri Marinette Marine will complete the first 2 ships currently under construction, while the remaining 4 vessels on order will be canceled. The Marinette shipyard will be compensated and will refocus - according to a Fincantieri statement - on “new orders for the construction of units in segments that best respond to the country’s immediate interests and to the revival of the US shipbuilding industry, such as icebreakers, amphibious operations, and special-mission platforms.” The company will also support “the US Navy in redefining its strategic choices in the small surface combatant segment, both manned and unmanned.”

Over the years, Fincantieri had invested more than $800 million across its 4 American shipyards: Marinette, Green Bay, Sturgeon Bay, and Jacksonville.

The key question now is what the US Navy intends to do “when it grows up” - and what choices it will make regarding new surface combatants. That, ultimately, is the heart of the problem highlighted in the title.

Behind the decision to scrap the CONSTELLATION program lies a familiar pattern: continuous requests for modifications and adaptations, recurring requirement changes - just as seen in other programs, starting with the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) - and chronic difficulties in configuration management. All these factors directly impacted timelines and costs, rendering the program unsustainable.

Added to this is a broader US supply-chain issue, exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and gaps in qualified labor that proved difficult to rebuild. Other military programs suffered similarly, including in the aerospace sector, with companies that laid off thousands of workers practically overnight, only to later discover that reintegrating and retraining those resources would take a long time. Not to mention bottlenecks, shortages of critical materials, and related constraints.

In short, a complete debacle - one that reinforces a deeply concerning trend, especially in today’s strategic context: the United States’ growing difficulty in sustainably building “ordinary” naval vessels (that is, ships that are not aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, or high-end destroyers like the BURKE class), both from a cost standpoint and within acceptable timelines. A contrast that becomes even sharper when compared with Chinese shipbuilding, which, notably, does not face such challenges.

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