4 days ago
Making Our Navy Supreme Again
Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., one of the world's largest shipbuilders, is leading the global shipbuilding industry. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
It's a true emergency: Our Navy is falling dangerously behind China's. Beijing has been relentlessly building up its naval power. Its purpose is simple: to make global commerce dependent on its goodwill.
Freedom of navigation for international seaways has been a U.S. policy fixture for more than two centuries. China firmly intends to end freedom of the seas. It has built numerous islands in and near the South China Sea which are ocean-based military bases. The U.S. just stood by and let this happen. China has been bullying Filipino fishing vessels in international waters that China claims as its own. The message to Indo-Pacific nations: Kowtow to us politically, or your economic well-being will be in serious jeopardy.
China now has more naval vessels than the U.S. does. Sure, we have qualitative advantages, but these will be transitory if we don't act quickly—and creatively. Our military shipbuilding is a shadow of what it should be, and our commercial shipbuilding is a farce. China has 700 oceangoing vessels, the U.S. fewer than 300. Chinese shipyards are the largest in the world. In 2023 they had 1,700 ships on order. U.S. shipyards had all of five.
The cost of building a commercial vessel in the U.S. is almost five times what it costs in South Korea and Japan. More ominously, American technology lags theirs, and we lack the necessary skilled workforce.
South Korea's largest shipbuilder is Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI). The company is presently constructing a destroyer for Korea's navy that is much like our Aegis destroyers. However, HHI is doing so at less than half the cost and in far less time than the U.S. does. This destroyer is loaded with American parts and technology. As an HHI executive told the Wall Street Journal, 'This is basically a U.S. warship.'
Hyundai shipyards are also building naval vessels for New Zealand, the Philippines and Peru.
Clearly, the gap between the U.S. and China is too big to close. But there's a solution staring us in the face: Contract with the advanced shipyards in South Korea and Japan to build naval vessels. Of course, we must simultaneously move ahead to vastly improve U.S. shipbuilding.
Recently, Huntington Ingalls Industries, America's largest military shipbuilder, and HHI signed a memorandum of understanding to examine opportunities for collaboration on accelerating ship production for defense and commercial projects.
HHI and another major South Korean shipyard have received approval for repair and maintenance work on certain U.S. naval vessels. That's all well and good, but given the nature of our naval emergency, we must also start constructing vessels in South Korea and Japan.
Under current law, foreign companies are banned from building U.S. naval and commercial ships. But President Trump could issue an exemption on national security grounds. To do its part, Congress should cement that ex- emption into law and should also repeal the Jones Act, a law that in the name of protecting American ship-building has ended up wrecking it.
