Will the US Navy build new cruisers?

The U.S. Navy's Ticonderoga-class cruisers are nearing the end of their service life and will be decommissioned in the coming years. By 2027, all of the cruisers will be gone. What will replace them, and will the U.S. Navy build new cruisers to replace them?

The US Navy launched the Next-Generation Cruiser (CG(X)) program in November 2001 to design and replace the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. The CG(X) program was canceled in 2010. In place of the CG(X) program, the US Navy decided to acquire Flight III DDG-51s, improved versions of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

According to the June 10, 2010, Congressional Research Service (CRS) report to Congress, the CG(X) program was announced on November 1, 2001, when the Navy declared that it was launching a Future Surface Combatant program to acquire a family of next-generation surface combatants. This new family of surface combatants, the Navy said, would include three new classes of ships.

a destroyer called DD(X) later renamed DDG-1000 or Zumwalt class for the long-range precision strike and naval gunfire mission,

a cruiser called the CG(X) for the AAW [Anti-Air Warfare] and BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] mission, and

a smaller combat ship called the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) to counter submarines, small surface attack vessels, and mines in heavily contested littoral (near-shore) areas. The Zumwalt-class tilt-hull destroyers (DDG-1000) and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) were indeed built, but the CG(X) program did not become a reality.

In June 2024, Naval News requested information from the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) on cruiser replacements and the possibility of reviving the CG(X) program. NAVSEA forwarded my request to the Office of the Chief of Naval Information (CHINFO), which responded:

The Navy has no plans to replace the Ticonderoga-class cruisers with CG(X). In the short term, the DDG 51 FLT III and the long-term DDG(X) meet the requirements historically supported by the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. “While the capabilities of the DDG 51 Flight III enable the surface force to manage adversary threats into the future, after 40 years of production and 30 years of upgrades, the DDG 51 hull form has inadequate space, weight, power, and cooling (SWaP-C) margins for future upgrades. The DDG(X) represents an evolutionary, not revolutionary, approach that will provide the Navy with the combat capabilities and SWaP-C margins to replace both the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer DDG 51 and the Ticonderoga-class cruiser CG 47 as the next enduring hull form.”

Asked about the reasons for the cancellation of the CG(X) program and the program's ongoing requirements, the CHINFO spokesperson said that the CG(X) program represented a revolutionary vision for the future of the Navy. However, the CG(X) program was based on the DDG 1000 hull form, which had significant technical and cost issues. The requirements that were met by the Ticonderoga-class cruiser are now met by the DDG 51 FLT III in the near term and the DDG(X) in the long term. The Navy's current capabilities residing in the DDG 51 FLT III and DDG(X) ship classes are sufficient to meet the requirements that the CG(X) program was intended to meet. These capabilities are deemed sufficient to support the Navy's surface mission across the full range of military operations. Accordingly, there are no plans to continue the CG(X) program.

Some of the first theoretical renderings of the next-generation CG(X) cruisers show the different hulls and stealth superstructures. Graphic: GlobalSecurity.org

Naval News then reached out to two global nonprofit research institutes and spoke with two military analysts.

RAND weighs in on U.S. Navy CHINFO comments

Naval News reached out to the RAND Corporation and spoke with Dr. Bradley Martin, director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute and a senior policy fellow at RAND. Dr. Martin is a retired U.S. Navy captain featured in Naval News here, here, and here.

I don't consider class designations to be particularly important.

Dr. Bradley Martin, Senior Policy Researcher at RAND

I don't consider class designations to be particularly important. The fundamental consideration is capability versus [the] “There are some things that the CGs could do that the DDGs couldn’t do, mostly in the command and control area, but overall they’re just big surface combatants,” Dr. Martin said of the fact that the U.S. Navy will have no active-duty or newly built cruisers by 2027. Again, we’re looking at nomenclature rather than actual capability. The DDG(X) will have the same radar and battle management system that the CG(X) likely would have had. The CGs were major commands and the ships were commanders [Commanding Officer] could be appointed commander of air defense [ADC] and CG had a bit more staff to accommodate this, but with the ability to distribute operations I doubt this difference would be noticed.

Operations and C2 widely distributed [Command and Control] Integrated defense capabilities have reduced the need for a ship whose primary purpose is to support the ADC. Integrated air and missile defense is a widely distributed joint architecture. The absence of a CG in the network is not likely to compromise C2.

US Navy destroyers have fewer vertical launch system (VLS) cells than cruisers. Dr. Martin opined on this, noting that a destroyer has fewer VLS cells and one fewer gun than a cruiser. This depends on how many cells are ultimately designed into the DDG(X), but between FFG(X) [USS Constellation frigate] and legacy DDGs, the total number of cells across the fleet will likely remain about the same (indeed, the limitation will not be on cells but on the missiles to be placed in the cells). Weapons for the NSFS [Naval Surface Fire Support] are at best a legacy capability. With one or two guns, it's difficult to get a ship close enough to actually do any good with surface fire support.

The DDG(X) can likely be configured to accommodate an air defense commander if desired. The ability to swap payloads provides versatility and allows for the distribution of different missions across similar ships. However, there are not many capabilities that CGs currently possess that DDGs, and especially the DDG(X), do not already have.

Dr. Martin gave his final thoughts on the US Navy’s decision not to build new cruisers. Cold War-era CGs were originally designated as DLGs, so there is nothing particularly significant about these designations, which are largely matters of convention. The US Navy may have overinvested in large and complex surface combatants, and the problem may not be that the Navy is losing significant capabilities by decommissioning CGs, but that it is adding very expensive manned platforms that end up looking exactly like a CG.

CSIS weighs in on U.S. Navy CHINFO comments

Mark Cancian, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and senior adviser to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), weighed in on the U.S. Navy's decision not to build new cruisers.

The distinction between cruisers and destroyers blurred over time as destroyers became larger.

Mark Cancian, Senior Advisor to CSIS

The distinction between cruisers and destroyers has blurred over time as destroyers have become larger. The Flight III weighs nearly 10,000 tons fully loaded, 1,500 tons more than the original Flight I. The DDG-51 class has a displacement twice that of the Adams-class destroyer of the 1980s and four times that of a World War II Fletcher-class destroyer. In effect, its displacement is that of a World War II light cruiser.

The loss of VLS cells is a problem because the Ticonderoga class had many of them. The number of VLS, according to the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan, remains constant through the 2030s despite fleet expansion plans. The Navy's shipbuilding plans emphasize submarines and SSBNs [USS Columbia class] have top priority. The various fleet architectures show a decline in large surface combatants. It is therefore not surprising that the Navy has decided to stick with the DDG 51 upgrades and not invest resources in a new class of cruisers.

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