For more than a century, U.S. naval power has rested on an industrial base capable of building and maintaining a fleet that projects strength across the globe.

Aircraft carriers, submarines, and destroyers have long symbolized not just American power but also American industrial might.

Today, however, the question is whether the nation’s shipbuilding programs are keeping pace with a rapidly changing threat environment—or whether industrial decline has left naval readiness dangerously exposed.

Industrial Strain and Rising Costs

The U.S. Navy’s own plans reveal the scale of the challenge. To meet strategic requirements, the Navy projects the need for around 355 ships, but its current fleet hovers just under 300. Building toward that target faces steep obstacles: cost overruns, late deliveries, and shipyards stretched to capacity. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports highlight that new ships are often delivered years behind schedule and significantly over budget. This not only disrupts force planning but erodes confidence that the Navy can expand at the speed required to counter global rivals.

Workforce Shortages and Skills Gaps

Shipyards are also struggling with people as much as production lines. High attrition rates in critical trades, shortages of welders, pipefitters, and electricians, and a lack of robust apprenticeship pipelines have left shipbuilding dependent on a workforce that is aging faster than it is being replaced. Industry leaders warn that unless wages, training, and working conditions improve, the talent pool may shrink further—creating long-term bottlenecks in production and repair cycles.

China’s Challenge: Quantity vs. Quality

The industrial gap is stark when compared to China. Today, Chinese shipyards outproduce the rest of the world combined in commercial tonnage, and their navy has already surpassed the U.S. in total number of ships. While U.S. vessels are generally more advanced technologically, the raw numbers matter. A conflict in the Pacific, for instance, would not simply be a contest of high-tech destroyers versus carriers, but also a test of logistics and replenishment capacity. Here, the U.S. risks being outmatched in sheer volume if industrial capacity does not expand.

Logistics, Repairs, and the Hidden Weakness

Beyond warships, the Navy faces a shortage of auxiliary and support vessels—fuel tankers, repair ships, and sealift vessels critical to sustaining operations across oceans. Many of these ships are decades old, and repair yards are already at maximum capacity. This creates a dangerous paradox: even if front-line ships are delivered, the fleet may struggle to remain deployed for long durations without reliable repair and replenishment capacity.

Policy, Funding, and the Path Forward

Analysts estimate that sustaining a modern fleet in line with Navy ambitions will require consistent funding of at least $40 billion per year, adjusted for inflation, for the next three decades. That level of investment demands bipartisan commitment and long-term planning, both of which have historically been disrupted by shifting administrations and congressional gridlock. Beyond money, reforms are needed in contracting, modular construction, and international cooperation. Partnering with allies such as South Korea and Japan—whose shipyards excel at efficiency—could alleviate bottlenecks in non-sensitive ship types, freeing U.S. yards to focus on high-end combatants.

Conclusion: The Readiness Dilemma

The core of the issue is not whether America can build sophisticated ships—it can. The dilemma is whether the U.S. industrial base can deliver them in the quantity, speed, and resilience required to meet emerging threats. China’s rapid naval expansion, Russia’s submarine modernization, and the increasing militarization of the world’s sea-lanes place urgency on America’s response. Without revitalizing its shipbuilding industry, the U.S. Navy risks being strategically constrained, forced to do more with fewer ships in more contested waters.

The future of naval readiness, then, may depend as much on welders in American shipyards as on admirals in the Pentagon.