The US Navy considers buying foreign warships

The US Navy appears to be considering buying foreign-made warships, ending a practice that has lasted more than a century.

The US Naval Institute's USNI News website on September 1, citing three sources familiar with the matter, said that the White House and the US Navy are reviewing the design of defense ships from Japan, South Korea and Türkiye, in an effort to find a faster method to rebuild the surface fleet.

The list of candidates includes export versions of Japan's Mogami-class corvettes, South Korea's Chungnam and Türkiye's Istanbul.

The US Navy could apply a procurement model similar to the one the US Coast Guard uses for the new icebreaker program, which is the first ships to be built abroad while manufacturers invest in facilities in the US, transfer shipbuilding knowledge and support the building of domestic manufacturing capacity.

Only a maximum of two corvettes will be built abroad, the rest will be built at factories in the US. However, this still breaks long-standing practice, as the US Navy has not purchased capital ships from foreign shipyards for more than a century.

The White House in August issued a memorandum paving the way for the Pentagon to use the national security exemption mechanism, allowing the construction of US warships abroad.

The US Navy was then tasked with evaluating foreign warships, as well as ships equipped with ramps for ro-ro vehicles and support ships for the US Naval Sealift Command. This force is expected to complete the assessment on November 12.

The above plan is facing opposition from the US Congress. In the draft defense policy bill for fiscal year 2027, the US Senate Armed Services Committee eliminated the exemption mechanism allowing warships to be built abroad. The draft of the US House Armed Services Committee also has an amendment to prevent using funds to sign contracts to buy warships built in other countries.

The US accelerated efforts to find new solutions to rebuild the navy after the collapse of the Constellation-class corvette program. Developed based on the FREMM multi-purpose guard ship design jointly produced by France and Italy, the Constellation-class warship is expected to bring a new model of guard ship with relatively low investment risk to the US Navy.

However, major changes proposed by the US Navy caused the warship to move further and further away from the original design, contributing to the program's slow progress and increasing complexity, until the project was largely canceled in November 2025. The first two ships of this class were retained because they were unfinished at that time.

The US seems to have learned a lesson from the failure of the Constellation-class corvette program, as the memorandum issued by the White House prevents the navy from continuously modifying completed foreign designs without approval from senior officials.