The US budget submission for the next financial year includes US$1.85 billion for a study on outsourcing parts of the design and construction of frigates and destroyers, according to media reports last month.

USNI News, the news service of the US Naval Institute, reported that the study would look at the feasibility of adopting or co-producing advanced hulls such as Japan’s Mogami-class and South Korea’s Daegu-class frigates to supplement the US Navy’s overstretched production lines.

This comes as Washington aims to accelerate naval shipbuilding to narrow the gap with China, which has at least 350 vessels, making it the world’s biggest naval fleet. Meanwhile, the US Navy has 291 battle force ships – far fewer than the 355 vessels required by law.

US naval shipbuilding has faced frequent delays, budgetary constraints and labour shortages due to a lack of domestic shipbuilding capacity. This contributed to the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate programme in November.

Troy Stangarone, a visiting senior fellow focusing on defence industrial issues at the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI), said the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigates was “symptomatic of the challenges for US defence procurement”. He added that the programme had faced too many design changes and a lack of workers, driving up costs and delaying production.