It’s easy to be a critic of U.S. Navy programs. Bureaucratic friction, backlogged shipyards and workforce bottlenecks have made skepticism the default position. But as the Founding Father of the modern U.S. Navy Teddy Roosevelt said: It’s not the critic who counts but the man who is actually in the arena.
By George Whittier, CEO of Fairbanks Morse Defense
Contrary to skeptics, the challenges facing the fleet are not insurmountable. America can rebuild naval power. But it will require a transformation, not just at the policy level, but a practical shift in the way we design, build and acquire ships. Modular assemblies, distributed manufacturing and commonality of parts across ship classes are all critical, interconnected elements of how industry can adapt to fix the fleet at speed and scale.
The Navy’s 2026 Shipbuilding Plan takes an important step in recognizing the need for change. It demands an increase in distributed shipbuilding from 10% today to 50% in the long term. This call comes amid multi-year, multibillion-dollar backlogs at U.S. shipyards and labor shortages have stifled throughput and maintenance at key ports. Rather than pushing more work to backlogged shipyards, distributed manufacturing leans into a geographically diverse supplier base. It relies on domestic and allied original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers to deliver complete assemblies for final assembly in the shipyard. Contrary to legitimate concerns about domestic sourcing, a distributed approach does not conflict with national sovereignty. It reinforces a broader trend of localized production to regional talent and manufacturing resources to meet the demand we’re seeing from global navies.
A Geographic Solution
Many of the delays plaguing surface vessels and submarine fleets stem from an overreliance on a small number of capacity-constrained shipyards. Instead of centralizing production around a few drydocks, the industry should be looking beyond the ports to broaden and strengthen the existing supplier base.
Right now, a large portion of maritime industrial capacity is chronically underutilized. In its annual survey of companies, the Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition (AWIBC) found only 8% of suppliers were operating at full capacity. Across the industry, up to 90% of U.S. suppliers report excess capacity that is ready to be mobilized.
Similarly, shipyards are reckoning with massive labor shortfalls. The U.S. Navy has estimated industry will need to hire 250,000 new workers over the next decade to meet fleet goals. At the same time, young workers are facing disproportionate job displacement due to artificial intelligence and market uncertainty. The answer to this challenge is not to relocate thousands of new workers to already-crowded coastal hubs. The demand for skilled labor is too great not to take advantage of the geographic distribution of talent. Changing the approach will not only relieve pressure on shipyards, it will expand the talent pool and create the high-paying jobs that help rebuild local communities and economies.
The Flipside of the Same Coin
The irony is that there is nothing new about distributed manufacturing. It’s how world-class shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea produce tens of millions of tons of ships per year, compared to the tens of thousands of tons produced by the United States. The American automotive sector has used distributed manufacturing for decades, building one of the most prolific manufacturing industries in the world. These principles can and must be applied to American shipbuilding.
There is a caveat, however. For the shift to be successful, it will not only require changing where maritime systems are built, but what is being built. Commonality and standardization of parts and designs answer the question of what and serve as the flipside of the distributed manufacturing coin.
While there are valid reasons for customization and some degree of “boutique” design, commonality and interchangeability form the fundamental building blocks of an efficient, scalable maritime defense industry. Design commonality helps suppliers achieve economies of scale and benefit from large-volume orders across ship classes across allied fleets. Without it, production will remain limited to low-volume, high-cost customization.
One of the reasons the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (DDG-51) has the longest continuous production run of any surface combatant in the U.S. Navy is because of the high degree of commonality across flights. The hull, propulsion and other core structural systems have remained constant for decades, while upgrading sensors, software and combat capabilities. Stable, standardized designs are precisely what the supply chain needs to achieve accelerated demand. They provide a repeatable manufacturing baseline that drives down unit costs, improves speed, production maturity and builds workforce competency.
The advantages of modular production extend beyond industrial efficiency or workforce retention and beyond a single nation’s shipyards or supplier base. Applying a distributed approach to what and where ships are being built becomes a force multiplier. Production can be localized to domestic or allied suppliers, relying on a broader, more geographically diverse base to meet global demand and support maintenance, repair and overhaul. This is not at the expense of national sovereignty and does not mean producing identical hulls. Instead, it relies on shared standards and common designs that allow suppliers to plug into a more predictable, long-term national and multinational demand signal.
Across North America and Europe, nations are committing large portions of their defense budgets to modernize and rebuild the industrial base. The U.S. shipbuilding budget for FY2027 is $65.8 billion, with $8.6 billion dedicated to the maritime industrial base. European members of NATO are expected to spend roughly $639 billion on defense. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom are aggressively increasing naval spending. These commitments give industry an opportunity to build capacity that lasts.
The challenge for shipbuilders, suppliers and policymakers is transforming historic government investments into more ships, faster repairs and a stronger fleet. Success will depend on the production model used. We must give manufacturers stable designs and predictable orders, qualify more suppliers to produce complete assemblies, put available capacity to work across the country, then bring those assemblies together at the shipyard.
Restoring naval power is not an abstract concept. It depends on us stepping into the arena and implementing practical changes. Together, these can fundamentally alter the pace at which the Navy builds and sustains its fleet.
