Members of Congress on Thursday encouraged U.S. Navy and Marine Corps leaders to prioritize America’s maritime industrial base amid recent discussions about potentially building ships abroad.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle spoke about the fiscal 2027 Defense Department budget request at a House Armed Services Committee hearing attended by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith.
The hearing comes several days after the Navy released a shipbuilding plan that codified the possibility of the service looking to foreign partners for help.
“I will echo some of my Democrat colleagues: As many ships as we can build in the United States, we want to build them,” said retired U.S. Navy SEAL Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis. “I understand that we have to go outside of our lines of communications right now because we just have lost the capacity, but I firmly believe that our American men and women, our tradesmen and women, are the best in the world.”
Van Orden added that filling current Navy production gaps through overseas means was acceptable, so long as the onus was equally placed on reviving the maritime industrial base in the U.S.
Cao told lawmakers that the service needed 540,000 jobs to build the ships in the Navy pipeline. He also stated that a youth movement in the U.S. was needed to bring the workforce up to where it needed to be to address demand.
The acting secretary said the Navy was not investing in foreign shipbuilding, but rather exploring whether foreign models would work for the U.S. fleet, especially with some foreign shipbuilders churning out one to two destroyers a year.
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The Navy’s shipbuilding plan said that the service would “evaluate overseas options and whether allied and partner shipbuilding can supplement domestic production if U.S. industry cannot meet required timelines.”
The sea service wants to spend $2.3 billion over the next five years to purchase five tankers for fuel support, built “potentially” and “initially” at overseas shipyards, the plan says.
This includes two auxiliary ships and the “flexibility for fabrication of some combatant modules overseas.”
Cao also said that U.S. workers, under the new shipbuilding plan, would be traveling abroad to learn shipbuilding techniques from foreign partners to increase efficiency and speed back home.
The sentiment didn’t sit right with some.
“I don’t think you would want to go to a yard of American workers and tell them that you think they need to go overseas to learn their craft,” said Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, a Marine Corps veteran.
Leading U.S. Navy ship manufacturer Bath Iron Works would be forced to lay off workers as soon as next year if a “weak demand signal” for American shipbuilding was approved by Congress, according to Golden.
Republican lawmakers weren’t necessarily opposed to building ships overseas, provided that U.S. resources were still relied upon.
Retired Marine Corps pilot Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said he wanted to ensure that assembling vessels abroad meant bringing technology and work ethic back to the U.S. to reinvigorate what previously made it a world leader in shipbuilding.
“China’s outproducing us about 200 to one and has about 50 times more ports,” McCormick said. “That’s a problem.”
Retired Navy SEAL Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, expressed concern over whether foreign-built ships would utilize integral construction materials made in America.
“I would hate to see the steel that we use on our ships and subs come from another country, if we have the capability inside of the United States,” Luttrell said.
While Luttrell echoed the desire to fabricate Navy vessels in America, Caudle stressed the importance of expanding the aperture of shipbuilding to address the need for ships amid threats from adversaries.
“That will … require some foreign shipyards to actually help me do that, to … deliver the actual ships I need in a time frame when that’s important,” Caudle said.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.