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At a moment where many Navy shipbuilding programs are stalling, the Constellation-class guided missile frigate stands out as the most behind schedule, the most over budget, and the most emblematic of the systemic faults plaguing naval shipbuilding. Last week, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan canceled the program — one that has spent billions of dollars over five years and still has years of work to deliver a single ship.

Earlier this year, I explained which of the most expensive, delayed programs should be canceled. The Constellation-class frigate made my list. Here, I sketch out my ideas on how the Navy ought to make the most of what Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker described as “a tough but vital call.”

I focus on three types of corrective action Pentagon leadership should take immediately. This cancellation risks atrophying critical shipbuilding capacity in Wisconsin. It risks sending a negative signal to shipbuilders and capital. And like any risky march deep into the enemy’s territory, with supply lines severed and necessity driving the advance, this maneuver must strike a strategic blow — it must be worth the risk. The Navy now should move with speed and precision to use the Constellation-class cancellation as such a blow in the greater 2025 campaign of acquisition reform.

To be sure, I lead a shipbuilding company and have some skin in the game. I have no interest in the Constellation-class frigate’s cancellation, although I do have significant interest in acquisition reform in the shipbuilding space. Companies like mine, a new entrant technology-led company without large compliance or capture teams, could not compete without recent reform efforts. Theoretically, new shipbuilding efforts launched in this frigate program’s wake could seek more autonomous ships, like my product, in place of larger frigates. But it’s more likely that a post-Constellation-class frigate shipbuilding plan reverts to a conventional crewed ship in this frigate’s place, such as a corvette, a different frigate design, or even a battleship.

There are three categories of lessons and corrective actions I see from the Constellation-class frigate program.

First, there are the known lessons where corrective action is already underway. Many of these are Pentagon-wide acquisition reform initiatives championed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Others are Navy-focused, such as the organizational reshuffle announced by Phelan.

Second, there are the obvious lessons — the Government Accountability Office and think tanks have elucidated many of them publicly — that the Navy has not acted on. Such reforms would be challenging. But some of them must be considered, while reformers have momentum.

And third, there are the corrective actions nobody is talking about. Although these have not received years of endorsement and codification by blue-chip panels and star-studded commissions, leaders committed to regenerating America’s capacity for sea power should consider some new approaches. Whispers of a White House plan for a “Golden Fleet” offer some strategic-level hope for a bold course correction, but such visions can only be realized if harder reforms are undertaken in a holistic rebuilding of the Navy’s shipbuilding bureaucracy, from active duty and civilian personnel to reservists and senior leaders. The old remedies clearly haven’t worked yet.

Haze Gray and Already Underway

The Constellation-class frigate program’s collapse is not occurring in a vacuum. Several major reforms are already underway, and they form the foundation on which any post-Constellation-class reforms ought to build. These initiatives share a common theme: pushing decision authority downward, shortening feedback loops, and re-architecting the Navy’s acquisition enterprise to behave more like a modern industrial organization.

First, the Department of Defense is moving to compress acquisition timelines. Accelerated milestone approvals, portfolio governance, and the mandated shift from monolithic programs to smaller, iterative increments — these Pentagon-wide reforms are slowly forcing programs to deliver value in measurable blocks rather than grand designs. These reforms give future programs the scaffolding to prevent the brittle program structures that sank the Constellation-class frigate program.

Second, a Navy organizational shakeup is underway. Phelan’s restructuring of the Navy Secretariat and systems commands — starting with the acquisition executive that oversaw the Constellation class — is more than an organizational reshuffle. It realigns accountability for requirements, engineering authority, and program execution — three functions that drifted apart during the Constellation class’s development. The reorganization, if followed through, should make it harder for requirements churn and late-stage design “tinkering” to sink programs.

Third, industrial base stabilization mechanisms are finally coming online. Multi-year procurement tools, shipyard capitalization funds, and munitions-style block buys are now being applied to surface combatants. These mechanisms give industry greater predictability, enable modernization of aging shipyards, and reduce the Navy’s risk when a program fails.

All these reforms are necessary, but insufficient. They represent the loudly revving engine of modernizing the Navy’s acquisition ecosystem, not the sound of a successful sonic boom or a cheering crowd at the finish line. The harder work lies in the obvious fixes the Navy has avoided, and the unspoken opportunities no one is openly discussing.

The Obvious Fixes the Navy Still Avoids

If the underway reforms provide a foundation, the next category of lessons is more uncomfortable: the widely documented, repeatedly recommended fixes the Navy has chosen not to implement. These aren’t controversial, nor are they new. Government Accountability Office reports, blue-ribbon panels, and think tank studies have hammered these points for years. The difficulty lies not in understanding them, but in summoning the capability to execute them.

First, the Navy must stop bending metal before the design is mature. “Unstable design has stalled construction and compromised delivery schedules,” wrote a top watchdog in 2024 about the Constellation-class frigate. With Navy oversight processes emphasizing rigid schedules and design firms paid on cost-plus time-and-materials contracts, the shipyard is incentivized to hold to the schedule, while designers and design reviewers are incentivized to prolong the design phase. The corrective action is obvious but painful: freeze the design, mandate a completed functional design package before construction starts, and resist the urge to secure an early marketing win with a keel-laying photo opportunity. This discipline adds upfront time but avoids years of downstream churn.

Second, requirements discipline must be enforced by someone empowered to say no. The Navy has “an insatiable appetite for requirements that inflates unit costs for ships,” wrote Tom Moore, a Huntington Ingalls Industries executive and former Naval Sea Systems Commander. Every expert take, from the independent 2010 Balisle Report to those from the previous administration’s Navy leadership, concurs. This requirement creep also drives unrealistic cost estimates, until it’s too late. Although there has been significant reform underway in the joint requirements space, none has yet arrived specific to shipbuilding or the Navy.

Third, Navy force structure is driven entirely by requirements and concepts of operation — not what the American industrial base can build. Bringing industrial capacity into force planning discussions as an input or constraint on requirements would stop — or at least slow — the mismatch between the ships the Navy is asking for and what the beleaguered, autarkic maritime industrial base is ready to build. Until this problem is solved, the Navy will keep needing special slush funds to build the maritime industrial base. From welders and pipefitters to dry docks and cranes, every part of the shipbuilding ecosystem is accustomed to building ships of specific sizes, shapes, and materials in specific locations. Embracing a warship designed for manufacturing would unleash the existing industrial base.

Fourth, the Navy must reestablish authoritative technical leadership. Technical oversight of ship designs is diffused into many parts of the organizational chart, including a myriad of technical warrant holders who all have veto power and little incentive to accept risk. Despite widespread acknowledgement of this problem, the Navy has shown little interest in addressing the sprawl of technical oversight. Recent leadership has come from the Senate, whose recent National Defense Authorization Act draft attempts to rein in technical warrant holders on some ship designs.

These reforms are obvious not because they are easy, but because everyone already knows the Navy must do them. The Constellation-class frigate’s cancellation provides a rare moment of leverage to force movement on long-ignored recommendations. The harder part comes next: the fixes no one is even discussing yet.

The Bold Moves Nobody is Talking About

In shipbuilding circles, rumors swirl that President Trump will soon announce a Golden Fleet as part of the White House’s Maritime Action Plan. Whatever the shape of that plan, any aspirational new warships must fill a frigate-sized hole in the Navy’s force architecture and in the industrial base. Such a plan for new warships — regardless of how gilded it is and how much support it has in the West Wing and Congress — will not survive far from the Rose Garden without execution expertise in the Pentagon, in the Navy Yard, and in the shipyards.

In order to capitalize effectively on the Constellation-class frigate’s cancellation, the Navy should direct a flagship Golden Fleet program to Marinette Marine Shipyard — Wisconsin’s welders cannot be left idle — that can be a good news story. Such success will not come quickly. A thorough ship design process will take one to two years. The Navy’s budget cycle will take three to five. But the even slower process will be rebuilding the Navy’s shipbuilding team to make successful processes repeatable. To capitalize on the Constellation-class frigate’s cancellation, the Navy should immediately kick off a holistic re-architecting of its acquisition and requirements corps — the people, training, culture, and incentives. A new national shipbuilding plan such as Golden Fleet is a strategic move on the chessboard, but strategic human resourcing and culture building will decide what pieces we have on the board.

To start, get more industry experience into the acquisition corps. Many of the Pentagon’s most accomplished officers, when they hang up their uniforms, take jobs in the private sector where their service experience makes them indispensable. What would it take for senior shipbuilding or aerospace executives to spend a tour in an acquisition office or a requirements role? Senior political appointees — former Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan controversially came to the Pentagon directly from Boeing — often arrive with industry experience. But senior executives with relevant industry experience are the exception and are concentrated in the senior political appointee ranks, far above day-to-day acquisitions decisions.

Today’s one-way revolving door leaves government handicapped — it is also a misnomer until it goes both ways. Stronger sabbaticals or tours with industry programs would be a start. Such tours should become mandatory for any program manager or program executive officer. Entirely restructuring the civil service pay and promotion system to build a lean, risk-taking force — it would have to be competitive and interactive with the private sector labor market — would be the most ambitious version of this intent.

For uniformed officers, the Navy’s reserve corps — where officers have vast expertise in shipbuilding and technology — is also being severely underutilized. Last month, I sat down at dinner next to a C-suite executive at a major defense prime contractor. Inevitably, we griped about our reserve duty. The Navy’s human resourcing system had him stashed at a deep backwater for any of the technology he is an expert in. As a shipbuilding executive myself, I think about shipbuilding and drones all day, every day. But I cannot navigate Millington’s process to find a reserve unit that will get value out of me. At a time when Chinese shipbuilding is racing ahead of America’s, I might have a better understanding of shipbuilding supply chains than any other naval intelligence officer. Shouldn’t I be helping target them?

The Navy should stand up special reserve units that draw on reservists’ private sector expertise, as the Army has done with great marketing fanfare. They could achieve this using existing reservists with active duty experience, without unnecessarily commissioning civilians as senior officers off the street.

To help senior leaders currently in the building, the Department of Defense needs to even more clearly communicate what good and bad acquisition executive leadership looks like. Cancelling the Constellation-class frigate contract with Fincantieri Marinette Marine publicly punishes the executives, workers, and stockholders at that company, but offers no accountability within the government. If anything, this frigate’s cancellation gives the senior officers responsible more power and responsibility because they now have billions of unallocated taxpayer dollars to spend. Regardless of where you fall on the Constellation-class frigate blame game debate — I personally buy into the argument that Navy “tinkering” was the primary of several causes – there cannot be a constructive way forward where only the private sector faces accountability.

Accountability has likely been the goal of the wave of firings from the Pentagon this year, but these firings have lacked the clear communication necessary to deliver it. Many Friday afternoons this year have come with news of another admiral or general fired from a high-profile role. Most of these cullings — Rear Admiral Kevin Smith, who oversaw this frigate program as Program Executive Officer Unmanned and Small Combatants, was fired for “loss of confidence” — come with no explanation. The removal of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Navy’s top Judge Advocate General in February was equally opaque.

Removing senior officers who have dedicated their lives to serve our nation is a serious decision — one that, if taken, should be used to set precedents and examples. Since Department of Defense leadership is committed to accountability and doing the hard part already, they should do the less hard part and communicate exactly why each leader was fired.

Communicating firings clearly matters because it will help senior leaders understand where they should take risks. Should Hegseth announce that all the firings so far have been attributed to three behaviors —e.g., policy disagreements, not meeting physical fitness standards, or poor acquisitions leadership — and attribute each firing to one or more of those unforgivable sins, the remaining uniformed leadership would have a clearer picture of how to navigate in today’s waters. Officers who have left duty should not be immune to scrutiny. The nation is living with their decisions. Although all the admirals I listed above were part of the Constellation-class frigate tragedy, there is a low chance that it registered in the decision to fire them, Smith excepted.

But blame will only go so far. Strategic human resourcing must build a force that understands how to develop, build, and buy incredibly complex warships. Most of the major initiatives I’ve categorized as underway or obvious will fail without the right people implementing them. Navy leadership must embrace a comprehensive, well-resourced, and multi-pronged initiative to build, train, and incentivize an acquisition corps ready for today’s complexity and speed. Fixing the team that will build the next generation of warships will be hard. It will be easier if they have an example of a successful program to follow.

If the Navy does not treat the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate as a turning point, it will repeat this cycle on the next class of ships — and America cannot afford that.

Austin Gray is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Blue Water Autonomy, a defense-first builder of autonomous ships. He previously worked in the Kyiv Engineering Corps and served in the U.S. Navy as an intelligence officer. He holds degrees from Davidson, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard.

**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.