Energy Musings - October 27, 2025
The Navy and Trump administration are considering a radical new plan for our fleet and fighting capabilities. We are entering a new era for naval warfare, but it needs more shipbuilding capacity.
Revamping Our Naval Fleet Is Part of Reviving Shipbuilding
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about President Donald Trump’s involvement in a potential overhaul of the U.S. Navy’s fleet. The plan is to create a fleet of diverse vessels, capabilities, and more strategic firepower to counter the growing Chinese naval fleet and to address future geopolitical challenges worldwide.
Trump waded into the potential fleet revamp during his first term, backing a plan to expand the fleet to 355 ships from its prior goal of 308 ships. The larger fleet proposal was first unveiled in the last days of the Obama administration. Trump backed the proposed fleet expansion following the release of his administration’s new national security and defense strategies in 2018. At the time, the Navy’s fleet consisted of 282 warships. The Biden administration abandoned the plan and proposed conducting its own assessment of the Navy’s fleet needs.
While Trump supported the proposed fleet expansion, he was offering suggestions and criticisms about the existing vessels. He advocated for the return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from aircraft carriers. He also didn’t like the look of our current destroyers. He commented on changes to the design of the Constellation-class frigate.
The new fleet being discussed by White House and Navy officials would include a number of large warships carrying more long-range missiles, as well as smaller ships such as corvettes, which are smaller than frigates. Today’s naval fleet of 287 vessels is mostly destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, and submarines. A new class of frigates is being built.
Current and former officials involved in the discussions are considering ships that are more heavily armored, weighing 15,000-20,000 tons, and capable of carrying more powerful weapons, possibly hypersonic missiles, in larger numbers than are carried on current destroyers and cruisers. Ships in the current Navy vary in weight, with aircraft carriers weighing 110,000+ tons and amphibious assault ships weighing 40,000+ tons. Many destroyers and cruisers are in the 10,000-14,000 ton range, while submarines can be between 9,500 and 14,000 tons. Some specialty support vessels can weigh 15,000+ tons.
Interestingly, the new fleet discussions are less interested in a target fleet size and instead consider a range of 280-300 ships, with a large number of unmanned vessels, referred to as “robotic and autonomous systems,” to enhance the fleet’s fighting capabilities. This fleet would essentially have a barbell shape, with large ships at one end and small ships and unmanned vessels at the other end.
The article described comments by Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, about a model using a barbell fleet to fight a Chinese invasion of our ally, Taiwan. The Navy would flood the 100-mile waterway between China and Taiwan with unmanned submarines, surface ships, and aerial drones that would slow the invasion and provide the U.S., Taiwanese, and partner forces time to respond.
A plan to build new warships capable of carrying more and longer-range missiles is a recognition that China has an extensive anti-missile network and that the Pacific Ocean is a larger body of water with many scattered potential flashpoints that require a U.S. response. Maintaining a manned fleet size comparable to today’s would address one concern—recruiting and retaining officers and sailors. However, implementing such a massive overhaul of today’s Navy still must address existing challenges. We lack modern, efficient shipyard capacity for constructing new naval vessels. A skilled workforce is another challenge. In addition, we lack sufficient capacity to maintain naval vessels.
The Navy has been criticized in the past for its ship management failures. The most recent evaluation was presented in a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to Congress titled “NAVY SHIPBUILDING - Enduring Challenges Call for Systemic Change.” The conclusions were devastating. The first paragraph in the summary highlights the Navy’s record of problems.
“Although maritime threats have been growing, the Navy has not increased its fleet size as planned over the past 20 years. Over this period, GAO has found that the Navy’s shipbuilding acquisition practices consistently resulted in cost growth, delivery delays, and ships that do not perform as expected. For example, GAO identified schedule risks in 2024 for the Constellation class frigate program. Counter to leading ship design practices, construction for the lead ship started before the ship design work was complete, and delivery is expected to be delayed by at least 3 years.”
The GAO official testifying before the Subcommittee on Seapower, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, noted that “the Navy has no more ships today than when it released its first 30-year shipbuilding plan in 2003.” This performance has come despite an inflation-adjusted near-doubling of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget over the past two decades.
These problems are not unusual, as the GAO report noted. It pointed to its seven-year-old report on Navy shipbuilding over 2008-2018. The report found that Navy ships cost billions more and take years longer to build than planned. Furthermore, they often fell short of the quality and performance expectations. The GAO also noted that it had provided 90 recommendations to improve the shipbuilding process, but the Navy has addressed only 30 of them. Resolving the Navy’s problems will take a willingness and openness to change current practices. Demanding specifications that cannot be delivered at present is not a recipe for success.
The efforts to revive the U.S. maritime industry extend beyond the Navy’s challenges. However, the resolution will require the government to address both military and commercial maritime aspects. We must be willing to spend more, but spend smarter. Creative approaches to upgrading the nation’s shipbuilding capacity and capabilities, while also ensuring the development of a skilled workforce and expanded mariner population, are needed. Rethinking decades-old practices is necessary.
At the heart of the GAO’s criticisms of the Navy’s shipbuilding practices is that it finds the Navy a “poor steward of taxpayer money.” In an era where the U.S. government continually runs budget deficits and adds to the nation’s debt, this performance cannot be tolerated. Furthermore, our primary adversary, China, is continuing to expand its naval fleet and upgrade its capabilities. These trends are not encouraging from a national security or economic performance perspective. We expect shipbuilding and our maritime industry to be a focal point for the remainder of the Trump administration, by necessity.