The pressing need for more ships in the U.S. Navy: Commentary
Today, we’ll look at part of the “bigger picture.” It’s not pretty.
This is a reproduction of an article that first appeared on Sixty Degrees North. If you would like to read more posts by Peter Rybski, you can sign up for his blog here.
Most of my articles concerning shipbuilding are narrowly focused on icebreakers. This is for two main reasons. First, I know something about the topic. Second, the topic is not adequately covered elsewhere. Today, we will look more broadly as U.S. Naval shipbuilding, relying primarily on the work of others.
Often, readers criticize my conclusion- that the U.S. should pursue foreign construction of icebreakers- by noting that building icebreakers in allied shipyards will not directly help to rebuild the U.S. maritime industrial base.
That is somewhat true. I say somewhat, as cooperation between U.S. and allied shipyards could certainly assist U.S. shipbuilders in acquiring experience designing and building complex ships. In general, though, I respond to this criticism by offering two thoughts. The first is that the U.S. needs more ships now (or in some cases, ten years ago). For example, the U.S. Coast Guard is one engineering problem away from not being able to accomplish its Antarctic missions. Second, icebreaking is but one area in which the U.S. lacks a sufficient number of ships to meet its needs. The U.S. Navy and merchant fleet need a greater number of ships- ships that the U.S. has experience building. Trying to rebuild the U.S. maritime industrial base by building a handful of icebreakers- ships in which our allies have a comparative advantage- does not seem like the right prioritization given the wider requirements. As I think you will see, there is a lot of work to do.
Let’s jump right in and compare the United States with its most significant maritime rival- China.
The Largest Navy in the World
It might surprise some of you to learn that China’s Navy- known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), overtook the U.S. Navy in recent years to become the world’s largest. With the current trend, the PLAN’s advantage in size and capability will only continue to grow. As the Department of Defense noted in its most recent Annual Report to Congress on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (from 2025):
The PLAN is the largest navy in the world with a battle force of over 370 platforms, including major surface combatants, submarines, ocean-going amphibious ships, mine warfare ships, aircraft carriers, and fleet auxiliaries. Notably, this figure does not include approximately 60 HOUBEI class patrol combatants that carry anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM). The PLAN’s overall battle force is expected to grow to 395 ships by 2025 and 435 ships by 2030.
The U.S. Navy currently has a battle force of 296 ships and is aiming to reach 381 manned ships (+134 unmanned vessels) within the next thirty years, while the PLAN plans on having 435 ships within five years. And remember, the U.S. Navy is a two-ocean navy with a near-global presence, while the PLAN concentrates its forces in the Western Pacific, giving the PLAN a great advantage in the region. Let that sink in for a minute.
The U.S. Navy’s Plan
To reach the 381-ship goal within thirty years, the U.S. Navy needs to build an average of 10-11 ships each year. Here are the details of the annual expected deliveries, as published in the Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2025 (the Navy’s most recent shipbuilding plan):
(Note: BFSAR is Battle Force Ship Assessment and Requirement)
And this is the projected fleet size that goes along with the above number of planned ship deliveries.
Wait a minute- if the U.S. Navy receives ten new ships in FY 2025, why does the total number drop by nine ships?
It is because nineteen ships are scheduled for decommissioning:
Some ships are beyond their service life and must be retired. But there are also ‘newer’ ships that are no longer considered relevant, as demonstrated by the decommissioning of some vessels with roughly half of their service life remaining. For example, the FY 2025 decommissionings include two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and five Expeditionary Fast Transports (T-EPFs) (formerly known as Joint High-Speed Vessesl)1 that are between nine and twelve years old.
It is worth taking a closer look at what this means for future fleet.
An Aging Fleet
Claude Berube, a retired U.S. Naval Officer and former professor at the Naval Academy, keeps track of U.S. and Chinese ship production. Last month, Claude posted an update of U.S. and Chinese Surface Combatant numbers over at his Substack. The original article (linked below) is well worth a read and will only take a few minutes of your time. Be sure to subscribe, too, as Claude’s work is top notch.Here is the age pyramid from Claude’s article (used with permission):
You can see that China really overtook the U.S. in the last twelve years. Strategically, this is worse that it seems if you consider the mix of ships produced for the U.S. Navy:
The bulk of U.S. Navy Surface Combatants produced over the past decade were Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), otherwise known as the “Little Crappy Ship.” The LCS has no Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells. These are an important measure of combat power, as each VLS cell can hold a land attack missile (like the Tomahawk Cruise missile), a Standard Missile (used for air/missile defense and against other ships), or four Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (used for close in air/missile defense). CGs have 122 VLS cells, and DDGs 90 or 96. Usually, multiple air defense missiles are fired against incoming missiles, meaning that large numbers of capable air defense missiles are vital to fleet survival. For more on the LCS, see here.
This means that with the current trend, the U.S. Navy’s numerical advantage in VLS cells will erode significantly in the coming years, as older CGs the early DDGs are decommissioned.
The Navy’s Unrealistic Plan
The Navy’s plan has the same problems as the U.S. Coast Guard’s Polar Security Cutter program: Delays and cost overruns.
According to the Congressional Budget Office’s Analysis of the Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan (emphasis mine):
The Navy’s shipbuilding plan reports only the costs of new-ship construction for battle force ships. It does not report the cost of refueling nuclear-powered ships or other costs, such as those associated with outfitting new ships or purchasing ships that are not considered part of the battle force (for example, used sealift ships), that are typically funded from the Navy’s shipbuilding account. When those costs are included, the Navy’s average annual shipbuilding costs under the 2025 plan increase by a little more than $4 billion, CBO estimates.
Thus, when funding for all activities supported by the Navy’s shipbuilding account is included in the calculation, CBO estimates that the average annual cost of the 2025 plan would be $40.1 billion. That amount is 46 percent higher than the $27.5 billion the Navy has received in annual appropriations, on average, over the past five years. In real terms, CBO’s estimate of the average annual cost of this year’s plan is between 8 percent and 16 percent higher than its estimates for the alternatives in the Navy’s 2024 plan.
The cost of the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan is high not only compared with recent funding but also by historical standards. Over the past decade, funding for ship construction reached its highest level since the Reagan Administration’s defense buildup in the 1980s.
And what about schedule? It is sad that it probably doesn’t surprise anyone to learn that just about every shipbuilding program is behind schedule.
Last year, SECNAV ordered a 45-day review of significant program delays. This chart summarizes the findings:
The Constellation (FFG-62) class frigate program is particularly egregious, as it was initially intended to use the design of an existing vessel in order to speed up production. In the end, though, approximately 85% of the vessel was re-designed leading to significant delays. You can read the sad tale in the most recent Congressional Research Service Report on the program here.
Submarine Production:
I wanted to take a minute to highlight submarine production, as the chart from the official shipbuilding plans shows the U.S. Navy accepting delivery of three attack submarines in FY 25, and two or more for most years after that.
The U.S. Navy is not yet close to meeting that number, despite a significant effort to do so. Congress has been procuring (funding) two boats a year since FY 2011, but the shipbuilders simply cannot yet produce that number, despite the steady demand signal. From a March 31, 2025 report by the Congressional Research Service titled Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress:
Although Virginia-class SSNs have been procured at a rate of two boats per year from FY2011 through FY2024, the actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited by shipyard and supplier firm workforce and supply chain challenges to about 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built.
The Navy and industry are working to enhance the submarine construction industrial base with a goal of increasing the Virginia-class production rate to 2.0 boats per year by 2028, and subsequently to 2.33 boats per year, the rate the Navy states will be needed to not only execute the two-per-year procurement rate, but also build replacement SSNs for the three to five Virginia-class boats that are to be sold to Australia under the AUKUS submarine (Pillar 1) project discussed later in this report, and to reduce the accumulated Virginia-class production backlog. Congress has appropriated billions of dollars of submarine industrial-base (SIB) funding to support this effort, which is discussed further below. Whether this effort will succeed in increasing the Virginia-class production rate to 2.0 boats per year by 2028, and subsequently to 2.33 boats per year, is not clear.
But this is only half of the story. Due to a maintenance backlog, a significant number of our attack submarines are unavailable:
Not only is the U.S. struggling to build new submarines, leading to a decline in actual numbers, but at the same time the number of SSNs sidelined because of maintenance is growing.
Meanwhile, in China:
Service Capabilities and Modernization. The PLAN has highly prioritized modernizing its submarine force but its force structure continues to grow modestly as it matures its force, integrates new technologies, and expands its shipyards. The PLAN operates six nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), six nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN), and 48 diesel powered/air-independent powered attack submarines (SS). Despite the ongoing retirement of older hulls, the PLAN’s submarine force is expected to grow to 65 units by 2025 and 80 units by 2035 due to an expansion of submarine construction capacity.
Thoughts and Comments
This article grew substantially in the writing and shrank in the editing, as I originally also included logistics and sealift vessels. They are also mission areas for which the U.S. definitely needs more ships. Consider what happened when the USNS Big Horn, an oiler, ran aground last year (there was no ship available to replace her). Or that the vessels of the too-small U.S. sealift fleet are on average 45 years old. And I haven’t started thinking about how many ships would be required to build and defend a logistics bridge across the Pacific Ocean.
The direct comparison of the U.S. Navy and PLAN fleets is but one part of the problem. As mentioned, the PLAN numbers do not include all of the ships China will have as its disposal, such as the Hobei patrol boats2 and China’s coast guard vessels. And while VLS cell numbers are important, they do not account for China’s thousands of land-based missiles. As CDR Salamander recently noted here, it would be a deadly fight just get a U.S. fleet to the Western Pacific.
It should be clear that the U.S. Navy needs more ships to counter China and exert influence in the Western Pacific. The current procurement system is broken. There are multiple ongoing audits/reviews of the process. I hope that these will result in real reforms, not just more ignored reports. The numbers show that every delay will further shift the balance of power to China.
You can fully expect some ‘administrative’ actions, perhaps even a re-introduction of the 2018 effort to extend the service life of all DDG-51 ships from 35 years to 45 years with ‘the stroke of a pen.’ But such efforts do nothing to fix the problem. The U.S. Navy needs more ships- more destroyers, more frigates, more logistics vessels. Lots of them. Yesterday.
When I read the press release from Bollinger announcing the “United Shipbuilding Alliance (USA) to Aggressively Accelerate U.S Arctic Icebreaking Capabilities,” I had two thoughts. If you’re not familiar with this idea, it basically says that this alliance has at its disposal
19 strategically located shipyards and 14 fabrication facilities across Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida to optimize labor resources and accelerate project timelines.
This team-up is in response to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Request for Information concerning Arctic Security Cutters, which asks shipyards to submit designs they can build within 36 months that meet a listed set of criteria. The RFI is for up to five ships.
My first thought: Wow, they’re using Aiviq as a reference ship. That’s a bold move, and I’ll address it another post.
My second though: If they have this additional capacity, why is the priority on a handful of icebreakers? Can they not build ships for the U.S. Navy? Or sealift vessels that are desperately needed in quantity?
The U.S. Government/U.S. Navy needs to start moving now. Shipyards with this capacity should be put to work building large numbers of naval vessels, not building a handful of specialized icebreakers.
As I’ve written before, the U.S. Coast Guard can have custom-designed icebreakers that meet its exact mission requirements designed and built in about three years, if the U.S. government will look to allied shipyards.
Purchasing custom icebreakers from allies while using domestic U.S. shipyards- such as Bollinger and ECO- to build warships and sealift ships in large quantities will get the U.S. the most ships the fastest while taking advantage of steady orders and economies of scale.
There’s enough work to go around to the U.S. shipbuilders. Let’s get started on an all-of-the-above strategy. Fix the procurement process, waive processes so that the U.S. can build needed ships now (domestically and abroad), fix the backlog of maintenance, and create a long-term strategy for shipbuilding.
There is a lot more that could be said about shipbuilding. And of course, building ships is only one part of the problem- they also have to be manned and armed. These problems don’t get any easier with time. Let’s go! There’s work to be done.
All the best,
PGR
