HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division has been awarded a $283 million contract for preparatory work on the U.S. Navy’s future FF(X) frigate programme.
As per a recent company press statement, the deal will mean Ingalls can start to procure construction materials with long lead times, and carry out design work ahead of building the first ship in the class.
Ingalls was selected in December 2025 to design and build the FF(X) class warships, which will be based on its existing Legend‑class national security cutter (NSC). The shipyard has already built ten NSCs for the U.S. Coast Guard.
The move came after then-Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan announced the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate programme beyond the first two ships, claiming the U.S. Navy needed its warships delivered at a faster pace.
Ingalls Shipbuilding president Brian Blanchette commented: “We are proud of our past performance in engineering, design and production of warships that meet U.S. military standards, a performance that gave the Navy confidence to select the national security cutter as the basis for the next small surface combatant and to choose Ingalls as the programme’s lead yard.”
He added: “We are excited to partner with the Navy to bring these preproduction steps under contract to accelerate delivery of the frigates that our warfighters need.”
The FF(X) ships are expected to be 128 metres long, displace about 4,750 tonnes, have a range of about 12,000 nautical miles and be capable of a top speed of about 28 knots.
It’s expected they will be armed air defences including a 21-cell Mk 49 RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile Launcher as well as either 16 Naval Strike Missiles (NSMs) or 48 AGM-114 Hellfire missiles for CUAS operations.
Future potential adaptations include provision of vertical launch systems (VLS), directed energy weapons (DEW) or other other close-in weapon systems (CIWS).
- You can read more details on the HII website