In April of 2020 on my final day in office as the Acting Secretary of the Navy I formally named the new class of American frigate warships the “Agility Class.” The first ship of the class was to be called the “USS Agility” as an intentional nod to the organizational, and human, characteristic I believed was most critical to the future of the United States Navy. The ship-naming decision was deliberate and lawful—something my team and I had considered for months and hoped would inspire not only the development, construction, and operation of our new frigates, but also the sailors who would eventually crew them. Within days of my departure that decision was unceremoniously rescinded with no explanation. Weeks later, the new Navy Secretary harkened back to the age of wooden ships powered by sails to rename the new frigate the “Constellation.” Four years later, the program that bears its name appears to have taken its cues from a similarly backward-looking approach. Rather than thinking about how to do things differently for a future fraught with increasing danger and unpredictability, the Navy has eschewed the “agility mandate” and relied on past practices that have proven reliably effective at creating severe cost and schedule overruns. The Constellation has now drawn the attention of President-elect Trump. This could be a positive development if his criticisms lead to meaningful changes in the Department of the Navy. Hopefully, sustained White House attention will shine the light on all that is broken in this program and beyond, and lead to meaningful fixes.
The new frigate acquisition was intended to be a radical departure from the shipbuilding processes the Navy had employed over the past fifty years. It relied on the selection of a ship chosen from existing, proven ship designs; some developed by foreign (allied) nations. The premise for this approach was innovative, simple—and inarguable. There was an urgent requirement to fill the gap in naval capabilities that had been created when the Navy retired its prior frigate class ships in favor of the new, unproven, and developmentally-challenged Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The objective of the new frigate program was to fill this gap quickly and to develop the ability to scale production with similar speed by shortcutting years of engineering development and design that had plagued Navy programs. Proven designs, such as the Italian “FREMM” (which was eventually selected by the Navy) were expected to have only minor modifications once in the hands of Naval Sea Systems Command for final design. The overarching mandate of the program was to deliver proven flexible capabilities at a faster speed of development and construction along with a concomitant reduction in cost per hull. In other words, “agility” in the acquisition process, “agility” in the shipyard, and most importantly “agility” on the water. To date, the exact opposite has been realized.
Many of the excruciating details of the problems plaguing the Constellation program have been detailed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and multiple professional and semi-professional experts on the current state of naval affairs. Suffice it to say the crux of these critiques can be distilled into two damning metrics: a) The first ship’s initial cost-estimate ballooned by 40% to $1.6 billion and climbing, and b) The ship’s initial delivery date of 2026 has been pushed out to 2029 and is likely to extend to the next decade.
With such spectacular underperformance the search for villains to blame is natural, and perhaps warranted. However, assigning individual blame within an acquisition and procurement system that appears to be intentionally designed to avoid accountability may be a fool’s errand. The villains are actually the arcane system itself along with the reticence to challenge it in a meaningful and sustained way. These villains have prevailed across many administrations and have essentially thrived amidst the chaos of constantly changing senior military and civilian leadership tenures. Today one must question the objectivity, if not the sanity, of anyone believing this system is capable of producing “on-time” and “on-budget” the warfighting capabilities required for our nation’s maritime security. The system has proven over and over that it is simply not designed to do that.
Although the name “USS Constellation” largely evokes proud memories of American naval glory earned on the high seas in the earliest days of our republic, that legacy is being threatened by a bureaucracy that is incapable of fixing itself. It may be fitting, albeit unfortunate, that the secretary of the Navy chose Constellation for the name of this program. Wooden ships under sail became obsolete with the emergence of steam, steel, and long range weaponry. In sinking the “USS Agility”, the Navy may have also scuttled the principles the name intended to inspire. And by expecting obsolete processes to produce something that can meet the challenges of this century, the Navy may ultimately succeed in sinking the new USS Constellation as well. If we allow that to happen, the potential victims (our taxpayers, our shipbuilding industry, our maritime security, and our sailors) will far outnumber the villains.
When challenging the status quo, or questioning some of the well-worn practices of the Navy, a common phrase I encountered during both my time on active duty and in leadership of the Department was “that’s not how we do things in the Navy.” I implored the Department to reject that reflexive response and to consider new ways to approach and address the challenges of this century. Nowhere is this attitude more required than in the Navy’s acquisition system. It is not fast, it is not efficient, it is not cost-effective, it is not agile, and to our collective detriment, it is failing the nation. In this regard, the next Secretary of the Navy must challenge “the way we do things in the Navy”. Those ways must change and they must change rapidly before catastrophic events compel it.
Thomas B. Modly is the former Under and Acting Secretary of the Navy and the author of the bestselling book, “Vectors: Heroes, Villains, and Heartbreak on the Bridge of the U.S. Navy.”
image, Pixabay license.
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