
This post is part of a series looking back at the top naval stories from 2024.
This year the U.S. Navy struggled to keep its major acquisition programs on schedule, as shipyards and the industrial base across sectors face mounting workforce challenges.
Almost every major shipbuilding program is running behind schedule or at risk of a delay, including the Pentagon’s top acquisition program, the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, which recapitalizes the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad.
Meanwhile, the Navy’s effort to modernize and create a hybrid fleet of manned and unmanned platforms appears to be stalled, as the future of several unmanned programs is unclear.
The Navy and Marine Corps also remain at an impasse over the Landing Ship Medium, a platform crucial to how the Marines plan to fight in a future conflict where they move between islands and shorelines to help the fleet.
The Marine Corps continues to buy the Amphibious Combat Vehicles to replace the aging Assault Amphibious Vehicle, and weapons and ground-based defense systems for its inventory.
Surface Ships

The Navy’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget submitted earlier this year sought to buy two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, as the service keeps the line at HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works humming along with another Flight III multi-year procurement deal inked last year.
Service officials say the Navy will continue to buy Flight III destroyers and have a three-year construction overlap between them and the next-generation destroyer known as the DDG(X) program, USNI News reported earlier this year. With DDG(X) set to begin construction in Fiscal Year 2032 and the current multi-year going through FY 2027, the Navy is pursuing another multi-year procurement deal for more Flight III destroyers.
“The plan right now is to continue to go after multi-years,” Capt. Seth Miller, the DDG-51 program manager, said this month at an American Society of Naval Engineers symposium. “So looking at already starting to think about how we would do a ‘28 to ‘32 multi-year and what that might look like, having conversations about the baseline, being mindful … build a little, test a little, learn a lot.”

Meanwhile, the Constellation-class frigate program is still experiencing design and workforce challenges. A service-wide shipbuilding review unveiled last spring showed that the lead ship in the class may deliver to the Navy three years late, as Fincantieri Marinette Marine struggles to hire and retain workers and the Navy continues to modify the FREMM parent design.
Navy acquisition executive Nickolas Guertin recently said that by May the design should be mature enough for Fincantieri to enter continuous production. In Fiscal Year 2027, the service hopes to start a competition for a planned second yard to build frigates.
Amphibious Ships

After several budget cycles of disagreements over amphibious ship procurement, the Navy and Marine Corps are moving forward.
In August, the Navy notified lawmakers of plans to issue a $11.5 billion award for a four-ship buy of three LPD 17 Flight II San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks and one America-class big deck warship.
That deal has the Navy continuing to buy the LPDs on two-year centers, a procurement cadence suggested by the only amphibious warship yard, Ingalls Shipbuilding, to keep the workforce and production lines healthy. Under the multi-year deal, the service would purchase LPD-33 in Fiscal Year 2025, LPD-34 in FY 2027 and LPD-35 in FY 2029. The service would buy the America-class ship, LHA-10, in FY 2027.
While the large amphibious warship procurements os tracking to the 31-hull goal of the services, the Navy and Marine Corps are struggling with the Landing Ship Medium. After receiving higher-than-expected cost estimates from industry, the Navy recently canceled the LSM request for proposals.

Plans for the platform, which is meant to shuttle Marines between islands and shorelines to set up ad-hoc bases and fire weaponry in a potential future conflict, are on hold.
“We had a bulletproof – or what we thought – cost estimate, pretty well wrung out design in terms of requirements, independent cost estimates,” Guertin said at the ASNE symposium this month.
“We put it out for bid and it came back with a much higher price tag,” he added. “We simply weren’t able to pull it off. So we had to pull that solicitation back and drop back and punt.”
The Navy and Marine Corps are assessing requirements for an LSM Block I and the Navy plans to buy a “non-developmental vessel” in the meantime.
The service asked to buy one LSM in the FY 2025 budget proposal, something lawmakers authorized in the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act. Senate defense appropriators included funding for the program in their draft of the defense spending bill, while House defense appropriators cut most of the funding, so the final decision will come in the future FY 2025 spending package.
Submarines

The Navy’s ambitious plan to ramp up submarine construction in the next decade continues to hit roadblocks due to inflation and difficulties in hiring the workforce needed to build the boats.
The year started with the Navy asking for one Virginia-class submarine in the FY 2025 budget request, a departure from the service’s commitment to buy two attack boats per year. Seeking to justify the decision, officials at the time cited industry’s inability to reach the two-per-year cadence.
Instead, Navy officials said they would inject billions of dollars into the submarine industrial base to shore up suppliers so they can build the two attack boats per year and eventually to a rate of 2.33 so the U.S. can sell Virginia-class boats to the Australians under the AUKUS agreement.
Meanwhile, the Navy has struggled to reach a deal with the submarine builders for 17 boats, including multi-year procurement contracts for five Build II Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and ten Block VI Virginia-class boats, and two Block V Virginia-class boats purchased with FY 2024 funds.
Price growth on the two FY 2024 boats due to an increase in the cost of labor and inflation has been a sticking point in the negotiations, USNI News understands. To get after that problem, the Navy came up with the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support proposal, also known as SAWS, which could help General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII increase workers’ wages by pulling some funding forward for boats not yet under contract. But the White House and lawmakers have chosen not to use this funding strategy for now.
Citing the SAWS proposal, lawmakers also recently accused the Navy of withholding information about submarine costs and funding strategies from both Congress and the White House.
“We are concerned with the lack of transparency that has occurred between the Navy and Congress over the last 18 months,” reads the joint explanatory statement accompanying the FY 2025 NDAA.
“The Navy negotiated a funding strategy with industry that would have addressed cost growth, future cost to complete, workforce wage increases and infrastructure investments at both shipyards. The Navy did this in isolation and failed to not only inform Congress but also the Office of Management and Budget.”
Carriers

Construction at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, the only yard that builds the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered carriers, continues.
The yard is working to deliver John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), the second ship in the new Ford-class program, in 2025. The next ships in the class, the future USS Enterprise (CVN-80) and USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), are also under construction in Virginia.
The yard is still wrenching on the mid-life refueling and complex overhaul of USS John Stennis (CVN-74), which has been at Newport News since 2021. This year the Navy disclosed that the RCOH is running 14 months behind schedule, with the carrier expected to deliver to the service in October 2026 instead of August 2025.
Program executive officer for carriers Rear. Adm. Casey Moton cited workforce challenges and material shortfalls on USS George Washington (CVN-73), the last carrier to complete an RCOH at Newport News, as reasons for the delay. That work included replacing steam turbines aboard the carrier, USNI News reported. Naval Sea Systems Command said Stennis’ RCOH has also experienced growth work.
Aviation

After months of negotiations in 2023, the Navy in March of this year issued Boeing a $1.1 billion contract for the last 17 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. The service also finally secured the rights to the technical data package. At the time of the contract award, the Navy said the aircraft should start delivering at the end of 2026 and finish by the spring of 2027.
As the service winds down the Super Hornet line, it continues to develop the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. The idea is for a manned platform known as F/A-XX to operate in conjunction with a family of manned and unmanned systems for the sixth-generation fighter program.
Unlike the Air Force, which has spoken publicly about the pursuit of its own NGAD sixth-generation program, the Navy has kept most details of its NGAD development classified, including the dollar figures spent on research and development efforts in prior years.
Unmanned Systems

While the fleet has tested commercial off-the-shelf drones in the Pacific under the Defense Department’s Replicator initiative, the future of several of the Navy’s planned unmanned surface vessel programs is unclear.
The service recently announced that it performed 720 hours of ongoing operation for an engine that would go on USVs, a feat the Navy described as a crucial benchmark.
“The latest test marked the final system to be evaluated,” reads a Navy news release issued this month. “Engine development and operation is critical for the expansion of unmanned naval operations and for realizing the future vision of a manned-unmanned Hybrid Fleet.”
But the Navy continues to delay procurement for the high-profile USV programs that it was pressing Congress to buy quickly several years ago. In the Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal, the Navy projected buying the first LUSV in Fiscal Year 2025. But the FY 2025 proposal released this year kicked that date out to FY 2027.

But the Navy continues unmanned testing. Earlier this year, the service stood up a new squadron, the “Hell Hounds” of Unmanned Surface Vessel Squadron 3, in California to test small USVs using the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft. The squadron sits under Surface Development Squadron 1.
“We collectively are writing the instruction manuals, qualification standards, concepts of operations and developing the tactics, techniques and procedures for employment of these platforms as we strive to accelerate delivery of USV capability to the fleet,” Capt. Shea Thompson, the commander of Surface Development Group 1, said at the time.
The Navy is also working toward the delayed initial operating capability of the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial refueling tanker, which is now expected to reach the IOC milestone in FY 2026 due to production delays. The platform is the first major unmanned program scheduled to deploy on American aircraft carriers.
Marine Corps

The Marine continues to buy the Amphibious Combat Vehicle to replace the Amphibious Assault Vehicle.
After several mishaps with the ACV, including one fatal rollover that killed a Marine at Camp Pendleton in 2023, and delays to the program, the Marine Corps deployed the vehicles for the first time earlier this year with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. During that deployment, the service delivered the first ACVs to Marines based in Okinawa, Japan.
The Marine Corps is also still buying the CH-53K King Stallion, its new heavy-lift helicopter, which is purchased out of the Navy’s aircraft procurement account.
The Marines continue to buy Naval Strike Missiles, which the service is putting on an unmanned Joint Light Tactical Vehicle chassis and using a Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary (ROGUE) Fires for the launcher. The ROGUE NMESIS program has emerged as the Marine Corps’ key anti-ship weapons capability.