The Dire State of Our Shipbuilding Infrastructure

Background

In 2018 Congress mandated 355 combat force ships for the Navy. According to the United States Naval Institute as of October 2025, we now have 287, a deficit of 68 or 20% fewer ships than required to protect the country. Naval experts, Defense think tanks, national security strategists, members of Congress, concerned citizens and the Navy itself call for much higher numbers of ships. Rising threats in every region of the globe substantiate the demand for more ships. More ships at sea to face these rising threats can be provided from two only sources…. existing ships in commission actually ready for sea or building more new ships. Exacerbating the dangers caused by a low number of ships in commission is the fact, at any given time, a large percentage are in long-term maintenance, most of them either awaiting being worked on or if actively worked on, behind schedule. The United States Naval Institute reports that ~100 ships are deployed forward at any given time. Fleet Forces command’s goal is surge ability for another 75 ships quickly. However, they acknowledge that presently only about 50 ships could surge rapidly to join deployed forces when required. Result, today the Navy can only put ~150 ships to sea to fight our enemies around the world. The actual requirement is much more than double that. The reasons for a lack of ships is too few shipyards that build and maintain our ships. The shipbuilding industry has been seriously neglected since the end of WWII. This article will examine the infrastructure, public and private, that we have to build new ships and to repair existing ships such that they are actually deployable. A ship sitting in a shipyard waiting to be overhauled or repaired is of no use in fighting our nation’s wars. The existing infrastructure we have to both build and maintain the nation’s combatant force ships will be examined and unfortunately, the picture is not pretty.

Facilities we have for shipbuilding and repair/overhaul

Public (Government-Owned) Shipyards for Overhaul, Maintenance and Repair

The U.S. Navy has four public shipyards. They are Norfolk (VA), Portsmouth (ME), Puget Sound (WA), and Pearl Harbor (HI). These are the backbones of depot-level maintenance and modernization for nuclear carriers and submarines. All are old and outdated, originally built for the wooden and steel fleets of the 19th and early 20th centuries. For contrast, at the end of WWII, the nation had 11 public (Navy) shipyards and 60+ private shipyards, a decline to the present of 80%.

Navy’s physical plants—dry docks, machine shops, foundries, and utilities are in outdated configurations that detract from efficiency. Norfolk was established in the early 1800s; Portsmouth, founded in 1800, is the oldest continuously operating naval yard in the U.S.; Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor are more recent but likewise developed for pre-nuclear ships and are outmoded in comparison with modern shipyards in the private sector or overseas. None were designed for today’s ships, especially our massive carriers and our exquisitely complex submarines.