‘Shipbuilding, Shipbuilding, Shipbuilding’: Getting the Navy’s Priorities Right By Mark Antonio Wright
I was very happy to see secretary of the Navy nominee John Phelan tell the Senate in his confirmation hearing that President Trump’s guidance to him is “shipbuilding, shipbuilding, shipbuilding.”
In a similar vein, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted this week, “It is urgent that the Trump Administration build up the Navy.”
I couldn’t agree more. If the goal is to deter Communist Chinese aggression in the east, there’s no matter more urgent than strengthening and, yes, growing the U.S. Navy as fast as possible.
We need to build more ships, we need to stop retiring older ships, and we need to look at bringing some mothballed hulls back into the fleet.
I commend to everyone Jerry Hendrix and Brent Sadler’s essay in National Review magazine on this very subject, “Restoring Our Maritime Strength,” which lays out a detailed First Hundred Days blueprint for getting the Navy back on track. The two retired Navy captains know of what they speak, and I endorse their thinking to all those interested in rebuilding America’s naval power.
Here’s a taste:
Expanding the Navy to 333 ships would require adding almost 40 warships to the fleet. The Biden administration has ordered too few ships and not supported authorizations to accelerate the delivery dates of ships already under construction. Given that it takes between three and five years to commission a ship into the Navy from the time a contract is signed, simply planning to build more ships will not guarantee the necessary expansion over a four-year presidential term. The next administration should therefore recommend a “five-ocean Navy act” along with a 35 percent increase in the Navy’s budget, or about $90 billion more in spending, in line with the pre–World War II and Reagan-administration precedents. The Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 effectively began the construction of many of the ships that entered the fleet in 1943 and turned the tide of World War II, and Reagan’s massive investment in the Navy during his first term helped to win the Cold War. A new naval act should fund the building of proven stable-design warships currently planned for construction. Naval shipbuilders could be assured that orders are fixed, making it both necessary and financially smart to make capital investments in labor and shipyards to increase shipbuilding and repair capacity.
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