USN needs new ‘boots on maritime ground’, quickly

The United States Navy (USN) is well underway with the process of recapitalising its surface fleet force structure. Following announcements in late 2025, two new surface ship classes have emerged within this process – one each to meet the requirements for small and large surface combatants, respectively. However, these two new programmes and the procurement course changes they reflect are underscoring the need to deliver such recapitalisation more quickly, particularly when set against continuing shifts in global geostrategic tectonics and accelerating military threats.

The maritime domain and its connectors – sea lines of communication (SLOCs) on the surface, and critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) on the seabed – are subject to contest, confrontation, and conflict today, as great powers seek greater control over the domain.

With an uncharted journey towards a new world order perhaps being navigated today, naval surface forces will play a continuing, crucial role in accessing the maritime domain. Often called the ‘workhorses’ of any fleet, such surface forces – especially traditional ‘escort’ platforms like destroyers and frigates – play a vital part here, demonstrating interest in an area, generating presence there, and exercising sea denial or sea control if required. In the context of contest, confrontation, and conflict at sea, surface forces are effectively the maritime equivalent of ‘boots on the ground’.

Even in a shifting geostrategic context, the USN will remain a global naval power and will retain a global maritime presence.

In the post-Cold War world, its CG47 Ticonderoga class cruisers and DDG51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers have provided the bulk of the USN’s surface-based maritime mass. Two other major programmes – the DDG1000 Zumwalt class destroyers, and the twin Freedom and Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) – were introduced as prospective new courses for transitioning towards new types of surface warship capability and effect: however, both were curtailed as costs increased and capabilities moved on.

Curtailing the LCS programme prompted the USN to seek another route for building small surface combatant (SSC) capability. This led eventually to the selection of Italy’s Fincantieri Marinette Marine to deliver the FFG62 Constellation class future frigate, using the Italian Navy’s Bergamini class FREMM multi-mission frigate design.

The company received a build contract in April 2020; work began on the lead ship in August 2022, with its keel laid in April 2024.

The need for speed

However, in late 2025, the Constellation class programme was cancelled, bar the first two ships.

“We are reshaping how we build and field the fleet,” US Secretary of the Navy (SecNav) John Phelan said, announcing the decision on social media. Working closely with industry to deliver warfighting advantage, the first step in this process would be “a strategic shift away from the Constellation class frigate programme”, he added.

“A key factor in this decision is the need to grow the fleet faster, to meet tomorrow’s threats,” Phelan continued. The decision reflected requirements moving towards more rapidly constructing new ship classes, to deliver warfighting capability more urgently and in more numbers, SecNav emphasized.

Design and programme challenges had already seen the lead Constellation class ship’s delivery schedule slip from 2026 to 2029.

This course change came at a significant time for the USN’s surface fleet, given the need to underpin current readiness and operational output to counter mounting military threats while simultaneously building out the broader future force structure.

For the foreseeable future, the Arleigh Burke destroyers will remain the core of the fleet, with the class’s Flight IIA and Flight III ships to bring a combined force of over 80 platforms that will remain in service until at least the 2050s. However, around this core the USN is looking to layer lower-end and very high-end capabilities through developing the small and large surface combatant programmes.

With Constellation cancelled, the SSC capability is now set to be built by HII, using the company’s design for its in-service Legend class National Security Cutters (NSCs).

Regarding the large surface combatants (LSCs), this is set to be provided by the Trump class battleships, announced by President Donald Trump in late December 2025.

This means the core surface ship force structure is set to be based around four primary pillars: the LSCs; the Arleigh Burkes; the SSCs; and a range of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). Stated requirements for up to 25 Trump-class battleships/LSCs, 24 SSCs, and 80 or so Arleigh Burkes will give a crewed ‘escort’ surface ship inventory of around 140 vessels, with around 100 or so medium-size USVs bringing additional mass to augment this presence.

Yet uncrewed systems including USVs remain an emerging technology. So, the requirement remains in turn for delivering SSC and LSC, as the two new crewed platform pillars, as quickly as possible.

Delivering these two ship types illustrates several key challenges the navy is wrestling with.

First, speed is the need – but still is the challenge.

The LSCs, being developed instead of the planned DDG(X) programme, are aiming to bring significantly more capacity for technology and capability. With a planned displacement of at least 27,000 tonnes, the ships will have more than enough space to accommodate a full range of emerging effectors including rail guns, hypersonic missiles, and laser-based directed energy weapons. Yet despite the prospective capacity available in the hull, the challenges will include developing and constructing a new hull design of such scale; developing and integrating a range of still-emerging technologies; building a non-nuclear power- and-propulsion structure that can generate sufficient output to meet the requirements for both driving the ships and powering the new, energy-hungry weapons; producing sufficient crews; and controlling the costs of the different components of this complex programme.

The new SSC solution confronts some challenges, too. HII’s NSC option was chosen because it is a proven design, with ships in US Coast Guard (USCG) service (the last arriving in April 2024), and with the design itself having been one of the candidates in the original SSC down-selection process. In this context, it was chosen to support delivery at speed and scale. Media reports indicate the first hull could be in the water by 2028.

However, what may be just as important as the programme’s procurement speed is its capability scale. Displacing 3,200 tonnes compared to the 6,100-tonne Constellation class, it is not yet clear what capabilities the new hull may accommodate. For example, Constellation was an Aegis-capable, multi-role platform with a particular emphasis on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability, carrying high-end towed array and variable-depth sonars. ASW capability is increasingly in demand in both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres, with peer-level submarine threats from Russia and China.

Operational output

Assessing the threat issue, the USN’s new surface force structure is to be accompanied by a new concept of operations, with different surface ships developed to provide adaptive, non-traditional, ‘hedge’ capacity against different missions, namely ASW, mine countermeasures, and integrated air and missile defence (IAMD).

The ASW and IAMD roles will fall to the escort vessels. With their extensive air-defence suites, the Flight IIA and Flight III Arleigh Burkes will cover the IAMD requirement, as well as the ASW threat. The US Department of War’s 2026 National Defense Strategy highlighted Russia’s undersea threat to the US homeland: the ASW threat is thus a time-urgent matter to address. Will the SSC capability continue to be part of the requirement for meeting this threat?

It is also worth noting that the changing world order is raising the question of whether there are still maritime areas where naval ‘boots on the ground’ will likely face only lower-end threat contexts. ‘Non-traditional’ actors such as the Houthi rebels in the Red Sea prove that non-state actors can bring emerging capabilities – uncrewed systems for example – and high-end capabilities like ballistic and cruise missiles to the naval fight. Other navies, including the UK Royal Navy (RN), are shifting away from dividing up surface forces across lower- and higher-end threats, ‘up-gunning’ all ships to reflect this new reality. Thus, the SSC solution may well need punchy outputs like its larger counterparts in the USN’s surface fleet.

Dr Lee Willett

Author

Dr Lee Willett is an independent writer and analyst on naval, maritime, and wider defence and security matters. Previously, he was editor of Janes Navy International, maritime studies senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London, and Leverhulme research fellow at the University of Hull’s Centre for Security Studies.

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