Foreign Policy > U.S. Navy

Shipbuilding is National Security

While the U.S. Navy remains the world’s most powerful fleet, the shipbuilding deficit is disconcerting, both militarily and from a civilian standpoint. 

Don Brown | April 27, 2026

Photographs from Naval Station Norfolk during the Obama and Biden eras showed multiple U.S. aircraft carriers moored side-by-side like sitting ducks in a barrel. One photo from 2013 showed five supercarriers, Eisenhower, Bush, Enterprise, Truman, and Lincoln all at Norfolk piers, all at once -- a foolishly-clustered megatarget for would-be adversaries.

The photo is a visual reminder of what former Navy Secretary John Lehman warned against more than four decades ago, and of the slippage in naval readiness in the years between Reagan and Trump.

Lehman, who served under President Reagan, didn’t just talk about a strong Navy -- he built one. Lehman envisioned a 600-ship Navy, combined with “strategic homeporting” to disperse our capital ships to multiple home ports along both coasts to avoid another Pearl Harbor scenario. Before the Trump administration, that vision felt like ancient history.

As of April 2026, the U.S. Navy’s battle force stands at just 291 ships. That is not a typo. We are smaller than communist China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which now commands more than 370 warships and submarines and is on track to hit 400+ by the end of the decade. Even more alarming: the Navy has roughly 75 Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.

While the U.S. Navy remains the world’s most powerful fleet, the shipbuilding deficit is disconcerting, both militarily and from a civilian standpoint. Let’s square these numbers with reality. The Strait of Hormuz is the jugular of the global oil trade. But other strategic choke points also demand attention, including the Taiwan Strait and the Strait of Malacca, the largest choke point where most of the world’s sea commerce transits. In a crisis -- even beyond the current conflict with Iran -- we would need dedicated escort vessels for tankers moving through those choke points -- while still meeting commitments in the Indo-Pacific, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. The math does not work. In the Hormuz Strait alone, over 100 tankers per day transit on a normal day. That’s 3000 per month. We do not have enough hulls to do the job our commanders might be asked to do.

This is not a failure of American sailors or shipbuilders, but the predictable result of chronic under-investment and strategic complacency in the years between Reagan and Trump. While China poured money into shipyards that now produce vessels at an alarming rate of 200–230 times our own capacity, Washington debated fleet sizes as if numbers no longer mattered, and neglected American shipbuilding. Quality still matters -- our submarines, carrier air wings, and Aegis systems remain superior -- but quantity has a quality all its own when the fight is measured in weeks and oceans.

Lehman understood this. His 600-ship Navy vision marked the minimum force required to execute a forward strategy: control the seas, protect the sea lanes, and deny any adversary the ability to dictate terms. Strategic homeporting marked the insurance policy -- spread the fleet over multiple ports so no single strike could cripple us. Because of the national leadership malaise between Reagan and Trump, today we have concentrated risk at a handful of bases, and the photos from Norfolk prove it.

Shipbuilding is not just a Navy issue. It is a national-security imperative that includes a larger and more robust U.S. merchant marine. We currently operate fewer than 200 ocean-going U.S.-flag commercial ships capable of supporting wartime sealift. Ninety percent of military cargo still moves by sea, yet we have outsourced our shipbuilding industrial base to foreign competitors -- notably China. A stronger merchant fleet is essential: it provides the surge capacity and trained mariners needed to crew auxiliary vessels in wartime, ensuring we are never dependent on foreign shipping during conflict. The result of today’s weakness is a hollowed-out workforce, atrophied yards, and a strategic vulnerability that no amount of rhetoric can paper over.

The good news? The current Administration gets it. President Trump’s Executive Order 14269 and the administration’s America’s Maritime Action Plan, together with the recent leadership transition at the Department of the Navy, demonstrate the Administration’s continued determination and commitment to reversing our naval decline and accelerating shipbuilding at the pace our national security demands. The FY2027 budget request for $65.8 billion in shipbuilding -- aiming for 34 new hulls -- along with initiatives to recapitalize the Ready Reserve Force and incentivize domestic construction, represent the kind of decisive action we have not seen in decades. Trump’s recent change in Navy leadership, including removal of the Navy Secretary, reinforces the administration’s commitment to this worthy vision.

Critics will call it expensive. They always do. What they never explain is the alternative cost: a Navy too small to deter, a merchant fleet too weak to sustain, and a nation forced to rely on foreign yards and foreign-flagged ships in the next major conflict. History shows that deterrence is cheaper than war.

Consider Britain’s experience in the 2026 Iran crisis. When Iranian-backed attacks hit a UK base in Cyprus and the Strait of Hormuz was threatened, London could not deploy its only available aircraft carrier -- HMS Prince of Wales -- or even a single destroyer without weeks of notice, frantic maintenance, and begging European allies for escorts.

The Royal Navy -- once the world’s gold standard -- had pulled its last warship out of the Gulf after decades of military cuts while the British government poured money into the British welfare state. Most of Britain’s tiny escort fleet was in refit or tied to other commitments. The result? America’s major ally was sidelined while the U.S. carried the load. That is the price of a weakened fleet: a sudden inability to deter aggression, and a view from the pier when an international crisis strikes.

John Lehman’s 600-ship Navy helped win the Cold War without firing a shot in anger at sea. While America doesn’t need exactly 600 ships, we must recapture the same urgency and strategic clarity. America must rebuild the industrial base, disperse the fleet, and produce hulls -- combatant and commercial -- at a pace matching the threat. Thankfully, Trump gets it.

The photographs from Norfolk should be remembered as a warning. The question now is whether Congress will treat shipbuilding not as pork, but as survival.

Don Brown is a nationally bestselling author and commentator on national security, foreign policy, and legal matters. A former U.S. Navy JAG officer with service at the Pentagon, and a former United States Senate candidate, he completed the International Law program at the Naval War College while stationed in San Diego.

Image: National Archives

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