What project 3085 buys
The FF(X) Frigate is a strategic necessity to close a significant shortfall in the Navy's small surface combatant inventory and to build a more balanced, flexible fleet. Frigate directly supports the 2025 National Security Strategy which calls for, "A more suitable Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis". FF(X) will be a vanguard of the Navy's Hedge Strategy, within the General-Purpose Force handling routine missions across the globe and freeing the Main Battle Force to remain focused on high-end combat. FF(X) will act as the command ship for Tailored Offsets, specifically Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS), and integrating with RAS to lead Tailored Forces into a cohesive warfighting approach. As the low-end anchor of the Golden Fleet high-low mix, the Frigate will relieve high end assets such as Arleigh Burke-Class destroyers from missions that do not require large multi mission combatants, including maritime interdiction and counter drug operations. Its primary role is to execute surface warfare, Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS), and Command and Control (C2) of Unmanned Systems missions as well as others as enabled through containerized payloads, all through a highly producible, cost effective and adaptable platform. These containerized payload capabilities are aligned with and supported by the Navy's dedicated containerized payloads program, enabling rapid integration and fielding of mission modules, including containerized Vertical Launch System (VLS) payloads. This ensures that while Flight I of the FF(X) Class (currently planned as at least the first 2 ships) does not incorporate a traditional fixed VLS battery, it retains the capability to deploy VLS-equivalent payloads through modular, mission-tailored configurations. To deliver at speed and scale, the Navy is acquiring its new class of Frigates based on Huntington Ingalls Industry's (HII) Legend-class National Security Cutter (NSC) design - a proven American built ship that has been operational for 17 years with ten delivered cutters, protecting U.S. interests at home and abroad.
- Product Development
- Support
- Test and Evaluation
- Management Services
Project 3085 funding, FY2025–FY2031
Prior years are actuals, the budget year is the request, and the outyears are the FYDP plan. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure. Projects carry the full five-year plan; the activities inside them stop at the budget year.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 81.2 |
| FY2027 | Request | 212.0 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 247.6 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 193.7 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 197.3 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 195.6 |
2 accomplishments / planned programs
The R-2A exhibit — the only level of the budget that describes work that has not happened yet. Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only, no five-year plan. Each describe FY2027 work in enough detail to have their own page; the rest are shown here in full. Coverage is partial across the corpus, so count activities, never total them.
Continue systems engineering and platform integration efforts for C4I, Combat, and Aviation systems. Begin System Qualification Testing (SQT) of the Combat Management System (CMS) and initiate Combat System Integration (CSI) Testing to verify system functionality, interoperability, and readiness for integration into the total ship combat…
Read the FY2027 plan →Execute live-fire tests in support of generating empirical LFT&E survivability data for verification, validation, and accreditation of multiple LFT&E survivability models. Conduct Cyber Range testing to assess system performance in a representative operational cyber environment and to validate the system's ability to operate securely…
Read the FY2027 plan →Named performers on project 3085
Performers named in the R-3 exhibit under this project. Share is of the project's whole FY2027 R-3 total — the same denominator the program-element split uses, so the two read on one scale and will not sum to 100% when unnamed or government work is in the mix. Budget-justification contract funding, not obligations.