Fixing U.S. Maritime Starts With the Navy

(Article originally published in Nov/Dec 2025 edition.)

The U.S. faces national security issues that President Donald Trump has acknowledged and is addressing.

The solution begins by revitalizing the U.S. maritime industry to both address the Navy's shortcomings and enhance the country's global shipping presence. The steps are multifaceted. We must rebuild our shipbuilding industry. New yards are needed. Existing yards must be upgraded, and operating efficiency must be improved. We need more skilled shipyard workers and more mariners to sail our ships.

In concept, these steps appear simple, but in reality they're challenging and will require time and money, both of which are in short supply.

In recent years, concern has grown over China's Navy having more ships than the U.S. Navy, even though our firepower is substantially greater. However, military experts note that the firepower gap is narrowing. No one knows the actual Chinese numbers, but for decades its large fleet has been primarily focused on coastal defense with significant numbers of smaller, faster, but less powerful vessels. Now, its fleet is expanding with larger, more powerful ships to protect China's global ambitions, assets and energy vulnerabilities.

The Trump Administration is considering an overhaul of the Navy's fleet. To counter China's growing global presence, the U.S. Navy is planning to create a fleet of diverse vessels and capabilities and more strategic firepower. Rather than back a specific target fleet size, the Administration is focusing on a range of 280-300 ships with a large number of unmanned vessels, referred to as "robotic and autonomous systems," to enhance the fleet's fighting capabilities. This fleet would essentially have a barbell shape with large ships at one end and small ships and unmanned vessels at the other end.

RETHINKING PROCUREMENT

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled a new approach to military hardware purchases aimed at addressing the shortage of missiles and ammunition as well as the long, often-delayed delivery times of strategic weapons, including warships. The purchasing system overhaul is a dramatic rethinking of procurement processes.

Hegseth says the Pentagon has identified overregulation, diffused accountability and insufficient competition as weaknesses in the existing procurement process. The Pentagon aims to make a faster, more flexible system the norm, enabling the private sector to contribute to solving military problems. A challenge the Pentagon faces is overcoming the shrinking share of government spending going to our military at a time of increased geopolitical risks.

The decision to reduce defense spending in the mid-1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, led defense contractors to consolidate, cut capital investments and focus on developing new and glamorous weapon systems. What happened on the supplier side was aided by failures within the military's procurement process.

The Navy has been criticized for its ship management failures. The most recent evaluation was presented in a March 2025 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to Congress titled "NAVY SHIPBUILDING - Enduring Challenges Call for Systemic Change." The conclusions were devastating. The first paragraph in the summary highlights the Navy's record of problems:

Although maritime threats have been growing, the Navy has not increased its fleet size as planned over the past 20 years. Over this period, GAO has found that the Navy's shipbuilding acquisition practices consistently resulted in cost growth, delivery delays, and ships that do not perform as expected. For example, GAO identified schedule risks in 2024 for the Constellation class frigate program. Counter to leading ship design practices, construction for the lead ship started before the ship design work was complete, and delivery is expected to be delayed by at least 3 years.

The Constellation class frigate was to replace the seriously flawed Littoral Combat Ship platform, which was designed as a low-cost, flexible and modular answer to the Navy's modern warfighting needs. Instead, the program led to delays, cost overruns and malfunctioning ships, many of which have been repurposed or retired. A ProPublica investigation put the lifetime cost of the failure at $100 billion.

Testifying before the Senate's Subcommittee on Seapower, a GAO official noted that "the Navy has no more ships today than when it released its first 30-year shipbuilding plan in 2003." This has occurred despite a near-doubling of the Navy's shipbuilding budget in inflation-adjusted terms over the past two decades.

Such problems are not unusual, as the GAO report noted.

It pointed to its seven-year-old report on Navy shipbuilding, covering the period from 2008 to 2015. The report found that Navy ships cost billions more and take years longer to build than planned. Furthermore, they often fell short of quality and performance expectations. The GAO also noted that it had provided 90 recommendations to improve the shipbuilding process, but the Navy has addressed only 30 of them.

Resolving the Navy's problems will take a willingness and openness to change current practices. Demanding specifications that cannot be delivered at present is not a recipe for success. Fortunately, it appears that Hegseth is willing to address these shortcomings.

REVAMPING THE FLEET

The new fleet being discussed by White House and Navy officials would include a number of large warships carrying more long-range missiles as well as smaller ships such as corvettes, which are smaller than frigates. Today's 287-ship fleet is mostly destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and submarines.

Current and former officials involved in the fleet revamp discussions are considering ships that are more heavily armored, weighing 15,000-20,000 tons, and capable of carrying more powerful weapons, possibly including hypersonic missiles, in larger numbers than are currently carried on destroyers and cruisers. Ships in the current Navy vary in weight with aircraft carriers weighing over 110,000 tons and amphibious assault ships weighing over 40,000 tons. Many destroyers and cruisers fall within the 10,000-14,000 ton range while submarines typically weigh between 9,500 and 14,000 tons. Some specialty support vessels can weigh 15,000+ tons.

A plan to build new warships capable of carrying more and longer-range missiles is a recognition that China has an extensive anti-missile network and that the Pacific Ocean is a larger body of water with many scattered potential flashpoints that require a U.S. response. Maintaining a manned fleet comparable to today's helps address one concern – recruiting and retaining officers and sailors.

However, implementing such a massive overhaul of today's Navy must address existing challenges such as our lack of modern, efficient shipyard capacity to construct and maintain new naval vessels and our lack of a skilled shipyard workforce.

PARTNERING WITH SOUTH KOREA

Recent news about the shipbuilding relationship between South Korea and the U.S. suggests the Trump Administration may be making headway in its maritime revitalization effort.

Last year, South Korea's Hanwha Group purchased Philly Shipyard for $100 million, promising to invest upwards of $5 billion to improve and expand operations. The deal has led to joint U.S.-Korean projects including the repair of U.S. warships, the design of Navy supply ships and assisting American firms in expanding capacity, training shipyard workers and improving production efficiencies.

The Administration is also endorsing the construction in the Philly Shipyard of a nuclear submarine destined for South Korea. The idea is controversial, given the extent to which the U.S. controls its nuclear technology, and raises questions about the shipyard's preparedness for such a project.

However, the Hanwha U.S. shipping subsidiary earlier placed an order for 12 tankers and LNG carriers, the largest order in decades. The first ship is targeted for delivery in 2028. The new ships will significantly expand the U.S.-flag fleet, which currently consists of 188 vessels.

Philly Shipyard has delivered one ship a year recently, equivalent to the weekly output from Hanwha's Korean yards. The plan for the American shipyard is to boost production to 20 vessels a year. It will require expanding the shipyard's physical capacity while adding additional component manufacturing sites and significantly expanding its labor force.

Philly Shipyard has an apprentice program, which is also being expanded. Hundreds of people are applying for the company's 24 available openings in each class. Currently, the program adds more than 120 apprentices each year with plans to increase that to 500 annually.

FOCAL POINT

At the heart of the GAO's criticisms of the Navy's shipbuilding practices is that it finds the Navy a "poor steward of taxpayer money."

In an era when the U.S. government continually runs budget deficits and adds to the nation's debt, such performance cannot be tolerated. Furthermore, our primary adversary, China, is continuing to expand its naval fleet and upgrade its capabilities.

These trends are a threat to our national security. We expect shipbuilding and the maritime industry to be by necessity a focal point for the remainder of the Trump Administration. Correcting the Navy's problems is a good place to start.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.