Why Doesn’t the US Navy Have Frigates Anymore?
August 3, 2026
By: Harrison Kass
The US Navy retired its frigates to concentrate on a revolutionary new vessel that it envisioned in their role: the littoral combat ship. This was a mistake.
“Frigates”—generally described as escort vessels with intermediate size, larger than corvettes but smaller than destroyers—are versatile mid-sized surface combatants. The warships’ flexibility has led to their widespread adoption, and most modern navies operate them. Yet the United States, which has the most powerful navy in the world, does not have a single frigate in its fleet.
The US retired its final remaining frigates in 2015 and has yet to commission a replacement. This leaves a notable gap between the US Navy’s small patrol vessels and its large Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and Nimitz– and Ford-class supercarriers. That gap was intentional at the time, but the Navy is now having second thoughts; it is spending billions to reverse that decision and field something capable of bridging the middle ground.
Why America Gave Up on Frigates
For much of the Cold War and the early 21st century, the US Navy relied on the Oliver Hazard Perry class of frigates, which entered service in the late 1970s. Built as an affordable, multi-mission escort, the Perry class fulfilled a range of roles for the Navy: convoy escort, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), maritime security, counter-piracy, and protecting logistics ships. This allowed expensive destroyers and cruisers with more pressing mission sets to focus on high-end combat. More than 50 Perry-class vessels were built, making them one of the Navy’s most successful Cold War surface combatants.
After the Cold War, the Soviet naval threat abruptly vanished, and America’s defense budgets tightened considerably. Faced with a friendly geopolitical environment in the 1990s, the Navy concluded that a large blue-water escort fleet was simply no longer a necessity. Missile launchers were removed from the remaining Perry-class ships, significantly reducing their combat capability, before the final frigate was retired in 2015. This strategy assumed a new generation of ships would replace them.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-doesnt-us-navy-have-frigates-anymore-hk-080326
