U.S. leaders should invest at least $40 billion every year to grow and maintain the country’s fleet of battle force ships in preparation for long-term and large-scale wars, the nonprofit Navy League urged in a policy statement unveiled Thursday.
The statement also called on Congress to increase funding for a Navy plan to revitalize public shipyards, add to the Coast Guard’s fleet of polar icebreakers and spend more on producing munitions to prepare for a “possible great power conflict.”
The nonprofit, which supports the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, releases policy statements every other year to help guide lawmakers as they make decisions about maritime power.
In the wake of territorial disputes in the South China Sea, an ongoing fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, an escalating NATO-Russia contest in the Baltic Sea, increased competition between the U.S. and its adversaries over Arctic sea lanes and a looming Chinese threat to Taiwan, the Navy League focused its priorities for 2025 and 2026 on building up the fleet, as well as the shipbuilding industry’s ability to maintain more ships — and do it faster.
“America is undoubtedly a maritime nation, and our safety, security and prosperity depend on strength in this domain,” retired Rear Adm. Sinclair Harris said on a call with reporters Thursday. “American seapower is essential to global security.”
Challenges facing the country’s seapower “continue to grow with each passing day,” added Harris, the national vice president of the Navy League.
The nonprofit isn’t expecting an easy pathway to sway Congress toward huge investments in maritime power, said Jonathan Kaskin, the Navy League’s chair of Merchant Marine affairs. The policy statement would “give the Hill the background needed to provide additional resources,” he said, adding the caveat that they “will be very challenging to obtain in this fiscal environment.”
The nonprofit’s recommended $40 billion per year for battle force ships matches the cost associated with the Navy’s newest proposal to Congress. Under that proposal, the service would need to spend $40.1 billion on shipbuilding every year through 2054, for a total of more than $1 trillion, according to analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
Over the next 30 years, the Navy wants to grow its fleet of battle force ships to 381 to face swelling global threats, the Navy’s proposal states. There are currently 295 in the fleet, and that number is expected to drop to 283 ships in 2027, when the Navy is planning to retire 13 more ships than it will commission.
The Congressional Budget Office described the cost of the shipbuilding plan as high when compared with both recent funding levels and historical standards. Funding for ship construction has climbed in the past 10 years, reaching the highest levels since former President Ronald Regan pursued the idea of a 600-ship Navy in the 1980s, the office said.
In addition to more funding, it would take a larger shipbuilding workforce to make the Navy’s plans for the future fleet a reality. The country’s shipyards would need to drastically increase their productivity from what they’ve achieved over the past decade, the Congressional Budget Office said. The shipbuilding industry has faced cost overruns and labor shortages that have set the production of some ships years behind schedule.
The Navy League plans to lobby lawmakers to again take up the SHIPS for America Act, a bipartisan bill introduced at the end of the previous congressional session that the nonprofit said addresses the maritime industry’s weak points.
The bill would create the position of a maritime security adviser in the White House, establish a trust fund the maritime industry would pay into through duties and fees, launch a Center for Maritime Innovation with hubs around the country and aim to bolster the shipbuilding workforce by launching a new recruiting campaign, among dozens of other measures.
Nikki Wentling is a senior editor at Military Times. She’s reported on veterans and military communities for nearly a decade and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. Her work has earned multiple honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors and others.
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