By Moderator, 15 April 2026
In Canada we tend to focus on the problems with our own shipbuilding but we’re not the only ones who
have issues. The US Navy has had a few bad years. Aside from the problematic Littoral Combat Ships, the
Constellation-class frigate replacement program was cancelled in November 2025.
To summarize the birth and death of the Constellation-class project, in 2020 the French-Italian FREMM
design was selected by the USN for the program. The plan was that relatively few changes – 15% was
the number – would be made to the design. But things went off the rails and after a few years it seemed
that only 15% of the original design had not been changed. There were delays, cost increases and
multiplying problems. After the program was cancelled, the USN announced that it wanted a new design
quickly, and one that was not a paper design but actually existed. The decision to go with the US Coast
Guard National Security Cutter as a basic design was made within a month. This would mean a smaller
and less capable ship.
There’s an interesting article by Jonathan Cassels, “A River Runs Through It: The River-Class as an Option
for the US Navy.” He argues that there is a better choice for the USN. And that’s the River-class
destroyer that Canada is in the process of constructing. Because Canada and the United States militaries
have worked so closely together over the years, the adoption of a Canadian design would (in theory)
need less work to ‘Americanize’ it. He makes a good argument. He concludes that “The case for the
River-class is not that it is perfect, cheap, or tailor-made for the US Navy. It is that it can be built now,
meeting urgent fleet needs, while preserving the option to pursue greater ambition later.” You can read
the article starting at p. 36, https://www.navalassoc.ca/naval-affairs/starshell/.
Image: A photo of the latest large-scale model of the River-class Destroyer. Credit: Royal Canadian Navy
