Small Ships, Big Questions
WILL THE NAVY CONSIDER A CORVETTE SOLUTION TO MEET FLEET SIZE GOALS?
BY DAN TAYLOR
The U.S. Navy’s path to a larger fleet may
require thinking smaller. As the frigate program
stumbles, some are floating a solution the service has
long resisted: small, heavily armed corvettes that could
be built quickly and in large numbers to fill gaps in an
overstretched force.
The idea isn’t new, but it’s gaining traction as the
arithmetic of fleet expansion grows increasingly grim.
The Navy needs more hulls to maintain presence in three
theaters while preparing for potential high-intensity
conflict with China. Traditional shipbuilding programs
aren’t delivering quickly enough, and the industrial
base lacks capacity to build large combatants at the rate
required.
A corvette — smaller than a frigate, larger than a patrol
boat, and armed with precision missiles — could offer a
way forward. But whether the Navy will actually embrace
such a concept remains an open question, one tied to
broader debates about fleet architecture, industrial
capacity and what missions really require big ships.
The challenge facing the Navy is stark. According to
Congressional Budget OfÏce testimony from January,
the service’s shipbuilding plan would grow the fleet from
295 ships today to 390 by 2054, but only after a painful
near-term contraction.
“Over the next three years, the Navy would retire 13 more
ships than it would commission, causing the fleet to
reach a low of 283 ships in 2027 before growing again,”
CBO senior analyst Eric Labs said in the report.
That temporary dip means the Navy will operate with
fewer ships than it has today precisely when strategic
competition demands more presence worldwide. The
target is an eventual 381-ship fleet of manned vessels,
plus 134 uncrewed systems, for a total force of 515 naval
platforms. Getting there requires buying 364 new ships,
of which 293 are combatants.
Specifically, large surface combatants would drop
from 104 to 87 ships, while small surface combatants
would rise from 52 to 73, according to a March 2025
Congressional Research Service report. The report also
notes frigates would rise from 24 to 58, while littoral
combat ships would fall from 28 to 15.
The CBO testimony offers insight into why this shift is
occurring. “The increase in the number of smaller ships
results from the Navy’s abandoning a dual-crewing
concept … to maintain a specified overseas presence, the
Navy would need more small combatants.”
Enter the Corvette?
That logic points toward an opening for corvettes. If the
Navy needs more hulls to sustain forward presence, and if
industrial base constraints limit production of large com
batants, then smaller platforms that can be built faster
and in greater numbers start making strategic sense.
The CBO assessment notes under the 2025 plan,“the
Navy would buy more current-generation ships and
more smaller ships.”
Yet industrial base realities complicate execution. The
CRS report observes that “industrial base capacity
constraints for building Navy ships are present at both
shipyards and supplier firms, and arise from limits on
production facilities … [and] workforce challenges.”
The CRS report outlines potential remedies, including
possibly changing “the Navy’s planned mix of ships …
to include a larger number of smaller ships that can be
built by smaller shipyards that are not able to build larger
Navy ships.”
However, the report warns that taking this action
“would produce a fleet mix that might be less optimal for
performing missions than the Navy’s currently preferred
mix.”
If the Navy were to go this route, this is where corvettes
could theoretically fit. A small missile corvette —
perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 tons, armed with vertical launch
systems carrying anti-ship and land-attack missiles —
could provide distributed firepower without requiring the
major shipyards currently overwhelmed with frigate and
destroyer work.
Such vessels could handle lower-end missions: maritime
security operations, counter-piracy, regional deterrence
patrols and presence operations that don’t require a $2
billion destroyer. They’d free larger combatants for high
intensity missions while expanding overall fleet capacity.
But the Navy has made no official moves toward such a
program, and recent history offers cautionary lessons
about small combatant programs. The littoral combat
ship, originally conceived as an affordable, high-volume
platform, became neither affordable nor producible in
the numbers envisioned.
Brad Martin, senior policy researcher at RAND
Corporation, sees both the logic and the obstacles facing
a corvette concept.
“We really need smaller combatants that can do
maritime security operations, can carry out anti
submarine warfare, counter-piracy, that type of thing,”
Martin said. “We don’t really seem to have the industrial
capacity to do that. And even when we’ve tried to go
down to anything below the size of a destroyer, we seem
unable to do it.”
Martin pointed to the industrial base challenge: the
major Navy shipyards are oriented toward existing
programs and lack capacity to pivot toward high-volume
production of smaller vessels.
“I think they’re all oriented towards the things they
already make, and trying to get them to go into high
volume, smaller ships — the production line isn’t exactly
the same thing,” he said.
One option would be leveraging yards that currently build
offshore support vessels or other commercial platforms.
“The Navy does make offshore support vessels. We do
have that kind of capability. And if we could militarize
that, that would be beneficial,” Martin said.
Another approach would be buying designs from allied
nations with proven small combatant programs. But that
raises questions about domestic industrial base support
and technology transfer.
The fundamental challenge, Martin said, is establishing
requirements first. “What we should do is establish a
requirement. This is what we need. Then we need to go
and look and see what kind of industrial capacity is out
there.”
That process hasn’t happened, which Martin believes
is partly because the Navy was burned by the LCS
experience and remains cautious about committing to
another small combatant program that could become
costly and complex.
“The LCS program was such a disaster, I think we’re
a little bit gun-shy about being able to do it with
something else,” Martin said.
Yet the strategic logic for smaller combatants persists.
“Not everything in the military missions that the Navy
faces requires a big ship,” Martin said. The question is
whether the service can execute a program that delivers
what corvettes promise: affordable, producible platforms
in the numbers needed.
The Navy stands at a crossroads. One path continues
prioritizing large, exquisite combatants built slowly at
established yards, a path that struggles to deliver the
fleet size required. Another path accepts greater numbers
of smaller, more specialized platforms built across a
broader industrial base.
The choice will shape not just fleet architecture, but
America’s future maritime strategy in an era of great
power competition.
Dan Taylor has covered the U.S. Navy and the Pentagon since 2007 for a wide range of publications,
focusing particularly on Pentagon acquisition and the latest in defense technology. Currently, he is
technology editor for Military Embedded Systems