Maritime (formerly Sea Domain): –
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, China’s maritime interests (the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), Chinese Coast Guard, and Maritime Militia) have rapidly accelerated on a path to challenge United States’ naval supremacy. As a result, the United States is moving to modernize its Naval Service, defined collectively as the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard, into an integrated all-domain force that excels in Distributed Maritime Operations to maintain the advantage at sea and enforce foreign policy objectives.
What does success look like for a Maritime Nation? Mahan would argue it includes a robust, domestic Maritime Industrial Base (MIB), trade partners overseas, and merchant and military shipping, which he termed sea power. This paper focuses on the unprecedented challenges and pressures facing the MIB that impede innovation and the country’s ability to mobilize during a crisis. Unfortunately, the MIB has been in decline since the end of World War II, and its downturn has only accelerated since the early 1980s. Post-Cold War MIB consolidation has further reduced the number of private shipyards building ships and submarines, and decades of Base Realignment and Closure decisions have reduced the number of public shipyards capable of performing warship and submarine maintenance. As the risk of conflict with strategic competitors is higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War, the United States faces an important strategic question – Can the MIB mobilize during a time of crisis to defeat a near peer strategic competitor by transitioning from peacetime production to a wartime effort?
The Maritime Industry Study Seminar, comprised of 16 uniformed military officers, Department of Defense (DOD) civilians, interagency fellows, and international partners, spent the last five months visiting shipbuilders, material suppliers, research facilities, and educational institutions in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Gulf Coast, and the Midwest to frame the wicked problems facing the MIB. Additionally, the seminar examined published literature and met with different components of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, U.S. Navy, and senior executives in the private sector. The seminar members’ diverse backgrounds and experiences produced valuable insight and diverse ideas regarding the challenges facing the country’s maritime interests and the MIB. These challenges include inconsistent shipbuilding demand signals to industry, a dwindling workforce of skilled laborers, supply chain fragility, and an uncompetitive domestic, commercial shipbuilding market. The seminar found no immediate, easy, or painless fixes to right the ship. These collective challenges will be difficult to overcome in the next decade without a whole-of-nation approach that builds on the strengths of our country and the power of innovation. Overall, the seminar determined that the current MIB lacks sufficient mobilization capacity to quickly meet the wartime requirements of a protracted war against a strategic competitor.
The seminar determined four lines of effort to solve the nation’s MIB challenges incrementally. These proposed lines of effort include (1) resolving the skilled labor shortfall, (2) increasing ship affordability, (3) increasing commercial shipbuilding competitiveness, and (4) developing a coordinated MIB strategy with partners and allies. All four lines of effort interconnect and are essential to revitalizing the MIB so it can sustain United States naval supremacy and better mobilize in a time of crisis.
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