Shipbuilding: –
For over seven decades, the United States has championed a rules-based global order, allowing international commerce to flourish. The 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) reaffirms this vision, specifying the United States' commitment to “an open, prosperous, and secure international order…free from aggression, coercion, and intimidation.”
Critical to fulfilling this ambition is ensuring the United States has the military capacity to protect its territory and project its global power. To achieve this, the United States Government must dedicate time and resources to modernize and strengthen its military, equipping it to successfully prevail in great power competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) while addressing acute threats such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Realizing this ambition, however, requires addressing significant deficits in the U.S. military's readiness and capabilities, particularly deficiencies in the nation's ability to efficiently build and repair vital U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels. Successfully addressing these deficits will, in turn, require cooperation and commitment among the key actors involved in United States ship production and repair: the U.S. Navy, Congress, and the defense industrial base, as well as collaboration with allies and partners. In approaching this challenge, the United States should focus on increasing the readiness of the current fleet and building the future fleet.
Increasing Readiness of the Current Fleet: Maintenance and Repair
As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote, “[the] U.S. Navy's [and U.S. Coast Guard’s] ability to repair and maintain its ships plays a critical role in sustaining readiness during both peace and times of conflict.”2 During peacetime, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard should prioritize communicating a consistent, reliable shipbuilding and repair demand signal to the industry. To aid this, the Department of Defense (DoD) should maximize the additional acquisition authorities previously provided in National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA), including block buys, multi-year procurement, and other transactional authorities (OTA), and delegate approval authority for small value dollar growth (SVDG) changes.
In combat conditions, the need for prompt repair is even more urgent. As one analyst writes, “In any future conflict in the Pacific against China, the U.S. fleet will experience battle damage on a scale not seen since World War II—a situation today’s Navy is woefully unprepared to handle.”3 Today’s fleet “lacks the parts, processes, plans and—perhaps most critically—the shipyard capacity to fix ships fast and send them back into battle.”4 This makes improving the U.S. Navy's ability to conduct maintenance and repairs at sea and overseas, leveraging our allies' and partners' talent and industrial bases, a critical national security concern.
Building for the Future: Shipbuilding to Prevail in Great Power Competition
In addition to maintaining and repairing the current arsenal of U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels, there is an urgent need to build the future fleet. A vibrant domestic, commercial shipbuilding and repair industry will only benefit the U.S. military. To improve the U.S. commercial shipbuilding sector, the U.S. government should authorize a subsidy to scrap and replace the aging U.S. Jones Act fleet, modify the Jones Act to authorize importing commercial hulls, and seek out more opportunities to directly collaborate with the commercial sector (e.g., by investing in a government-owned/contractor-operated (GO/CO) shipyard) and with allies and partners. These actions will free up U.S. labor to execute the high-value portion of shipbuilding, where the United States has a competitive advantage, bolster the economies of allies and partners, and strengthen and diversify the supply chain. By taking prompt action now, the United States can reach the Congressionally mandated goal of a 355 ship Navy, enabling U.S. forces to effectively counter the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) alarming rise.
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