SIMI VALLEY, California.—The White House has greenlit a plan to design and build a frigate domestically as part of its proposed “Golden Fleet,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.
President Donald Trump “has signed off on what we are calling the Golden Fleet…We will continue to build ships that are the cornerstones of the fleet—carriers, destroyers, amphibs, submarines. But we need new ships and we need modern ships,” Phelan said, referring to a conversation with the president, defense secretary, and White House budget director last week.
“We will be building a frigate. It will be based on an American design. It is something we can build that we think, actually, will be done before the old Constellation.”
The announcement comes just over a week after Phelan canceled the U.S. Constellation-class frigate program, which was years behind schedule. The navy secretary was scant on details but hinted there was more to come on the “big, beautiful ship.”
Earlier in the day, OMB Director Russell Vought said the decision to axe the program was driven by delays that grew from 15 percent during the first Trump administration to 85 percent during Trump’s second term. To turn that around, the government will have to “do things differently,” he said.
“It’s not just market demand; it’s execution at these companies to be able to make their contracts and stay on time. And we have a massive backlog. We have many programs that are overrun and this team is currently fixing them. But it’s going to require doing things differently to be able to crack that cycle,” he said.
Moving fast is the new normal
The Navy is pushing decisively into unmanned maritime systems with a funding infusion from budget reconciliation. And for Phelan, that means prototyping, testing and producing quickly.
“The Navy basically had a little bit over 200 different unmanned tests going on across nine [program executive offices]. We’ve consolidated it down to one,” Phelan told reporters. “We’ve eliminated layers that allow us to test faster, iterate quicker, and get things contracted—which is what we were able to do here with Saronic at this particular junction.”
The Navy surreptitiously bought an undisclosed number of small, 24-foot drone boats as part of a $392 million rapid acquisition contract with Saronic earlier this year—and it’s likely to serve as a blueprint for future buys, Phelan told reporters Saturday.
The Navy used an other transaction agreement through the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit for a prototype and awarded a production contract less than a year later. Some $200 million was immediately put on contract to jumpstart production. Phelan declined to say how many watercraft were ordered. DefenseScoop first reported on the contract’s existence.
Saronic can make about 2,000 of the Corsair vessels in its Austin, Texas, facility each year, CEO Dino Mavrookas told reporters Saturday.
Phelan, who vowed to speed up Navy contracting and spend less, said the drone boat deal was an example of how that might happen.
“This is exactly the kind of rapid prototyping discipline, scaling and responsible stewardship we need to maintain naval dominance as we transition to a hybrid manned-unmanned fleet. It proves that when new entrants bring credible capability to the table, the Department of the Navy will be a fast, serious and repeat customer,” he said.
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