Japan's stealth frigate — and its first big arms export — the Mogami-class packs firepower, mine warfare and unmanned systems into a low-signature hull run by a small, automated crew. In 2025 Australia picked the upgraded version over Germany's — Japan's first major overseas defence contract.
Italy's shape-shifting warship — a Fincantieri ship that scales from a lightly-armed patrol vessel to a full FREMM-class combatant by configuration, and can be up-gunned over its life. The "Multipurpose Combat Ship" that bets one hull can be many warships.
Spain's new Aegis frigate — a Navantia-built warship pairing Lockheed Martin's SPY-7 radar and the Aegis combat system with a Spanish-designed integrated mast and a digital-twin "Shipyard 4.0" build. The high-end ASW-and-air-defence successor to the F100.
Britain's cheap, fast-build frigate — a 5,700-tonne general-purpose warship designed to a fixed ~£250m price on a proven Danish hull, lightly armed at first but built with the space and power to grow. The Royal Navy's bet that hull numbers and flexibility beat gold-plating.
France's "digital-native" frigate — a 4,500-tonne multi-mission warship with a fixed four-panel AESA radar, Aster air-defence and Exocet anti-ship missiles, and a cyber-hardened combat system designed from the keel up. Built for France and Greece, where it has already fought drones in the Red Sea.
Spain's Álvaro de Bazán-class frigate — the first European Aegis air-defence combatant, carrying 48 Mk 41 VLS cells and shaping a generation of allied frigate designs.
The People's Liberation Army Navy's most numerous modern surface combatant — a 4,000-tonne multi-role frigate with a 32-cell VLS, YJ-83 anti-ship missiles, and a global operational footprint built on Gulf of Aden anti-piracy deployments.
A Russian Black Sea Fleet frigate class, the Admiral Grigorovich (Project 11356R/Krivak V) delivers Kalibr cruise-missile land-attack strikes and provides multirole escort — a workhorse of Moscow's naval strike from the Black Sea.
The Royal Navy’s next-generation ASW frigate — a quiet, acoustically optimized design that became one of the most successful Western surface-combatant exports of its era, selected by Australia, Canada, and Norway, and building for the UK as the City-class.
The US Navy's FREMM-derived next-generation frigate — intended as a 20-hull class to close the force-structure gap, cut to 2 half-built hulls when the program was canceled in November 2025 amid runaway redesign and cost growth.
The Franco-Italian FREMM multimission frigate — combining anti-submarine warfare excellence with long-range land-attack and air defence, and the design parent of the US Constellation class.
Russia's most modern surface combatant — a multirole frigate built around long-range precision strike with Kalibr and Zircon hypersonic missiles, and the anchor of its future surface fleet.