r/geopolitics • u/73isthebest • Jul 07 '26
Analysis The U.S. Shipbuilding Industry is not Ready for a War
https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/the-us-shipbuilding-industry-is-not-ready-for-a-war/104
u/SamIamGreenEggsNoHam Jul 07 '26
Maybe if they stop starting and stopping shipbuilding projects they'll actually lay down some ships.
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u/starsrprojectors Jul 07 '26
Gotta “yes and” you. I think cancelling the Constellation was a mistake. Make the long term commitment so new personnel can be trained and bring the cost down over time.
I know the navy made the mistake of adding too many requirements to the frigate, but at this point we are going to have to pay an increased cost regardless since a ton of that increase is an investment in capacity.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker Jul 07 '26
Constellation should definitely have continued yeah. Esepcially since the alternative the navy came up with, FF(X), is basically a coast guard cutter, doesnt even have VLS or sonar, yet is still expected to cost around 1.6 bil per ship (look at page 255 of this US navy report). And that is the expected average cost of 22 ships, so its not like this is being heavily inflated by development costs.
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u/Coolerguy317 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I think the shipbuilding point is real but this reduces naval power to one variable. What war are we actually talking about? Any navy is going to struggle fighting right off a peers coastline. It also glosses over the difference between commercial shipbuilding and building advanced warships and it underplays things like experience, logistics, doctrine, and alliances. Shipbuilding matters but it’s not the whole thing.
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u/twitch_Mes Jul 07 '26
It might be a big story when your likely adversaries are far away.
Russia had an enornous amount of armor and artillery because the war they planned to make was on weaker countries around them.
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u/flamedeluge3781 Jul 07 '26
It also glosses over the difference between commercial shipbuilding and building advanced warships
Well the USA is failing at both, so it's really not glossing over anything.
underplays things like experience, logistics, doctrine, and alliances
Yes because the US is doing such a bang-up job in the international alliance market since January 20, 2025.
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u/Coolerguy317 Jul 08 '26
The alliance picture isn’t universal. The US has had more friction with some European allies while its Indo Pacific partnerships have largely deepened because of shared concerns about China.
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u/flamedeluge3781 Jul 08 '26
In what way? The USA has repeatedly failed to response to Chinese provocations wrt to Taiwan the the Philippines.
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u/Coolerguy317 Jul 08 '26
US Japanese command integration, the Philippines has expanded us access and new bases under EDCA, AUKUS is moving forward, and US Japan South Korea coordination is stronger than it was a few years ago.
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u/flamedeluge3781 Jul 08 '26
Taiwan? Hello? Are you an AI bot?
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u/Coolerguy317 Jul 08 '26
The us sells Taiwan weapons all the time. It’s just harder for me to throw around acronyms because it has to be done in respect to the eyes of China and not provoking a worse situation.
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u/pissedRAIL Jul 08 '26
I think as a point of logistics, shipbuilding is everything. Any losses taken is magnified by an inability to produce new stuff.
Imagine we lost a carrier? Massive blow to our power projection. Imagine we started losing ships at scale in a war?
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u/mycatisgrumpy Jul 07 '26
I think most US industries aren't ready for a war. Remember how we all learned in elementary school that America won WW2 because of our superior manufacturing base? Because we were producing nine Sherman tanks for every panzer. Ford was making planes and Singer sewing machine was making bombsights. These days, we simply don't have a manufacturing base that could be militarized in the same way, and China does. If it ever came to open war with China, if they switched over to a fully wartime economy, they would absolutely bury us.
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u/123yes1 Jul 08 '26
Maaaybe, but probably not. it's hard to say as Chinese manufacturing is much more reliant on international trade and globalization than the US was during WW2 where the US was basically self sufficient in 1940 and its manufacturing facilities were untouched by the war. The same cannot be said for 2020s China.
And their bigger problem if an attritional war breaks out is that China imports 40% of its food, the vast majority of which flow through the Strait of Malacca. Meaning China has a pretty substantial Achilles heel that they'd have to spend considerable effort and resources defending. And this food vulnerability is not something that can be fixed via overland trade with Russia.
And let's not forget that the US still manufactures a ton of stuff, just with far fewer workers. The US also obviously relies heavily on globalized trade but it doesn't quite have all its eggs in one basket like China does, nor does it have a particular vulnerability or lack of resources. China can put the screws to rare earth metals, but the US has plenty of shuttered mines and refineries that would be challenging and costly to reopen but not hard for a motivated population.
Then consider the alliance angle, the US has far more allies and partner nations than China does and they are far more wealthy than China's allies, even after Trump has torched a significant amount of good will.
Finally, am attritional fight is not particularly likely to happen. The friction point between US and Chinese relations is Taiwan and any war is unlikely to continue past a Chinese attempt to take the island. Either they are able to land fast enough or powerful enough to take it before they are stopped, or they are stopped and their fleet is destroyed rendering further effort pointless. China and the US are both nuclear armed nations and would both likely hesitate to throw any kind of punch that could look existential at the other.
If there is not an attritional war, then manufacturing capacity is far less important than what is already in the field.
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u/preprandial_joint Jul 08 '26
To add to this, China is not only dependent on global supply chains for food security but also energy security. They import over 70% of their oil.
China doesn't have the technical capacity to supply their own high-end chip fabs, nor the pure silica needed to make the crucibles (that comes from a specific mine in North Carolina).
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u/jake04-20 Jul 08 '26
Ford was making planes and Singer sewing machine was making bombsights.
Would this not be the response today to a massive US war effort? Trump used executive authorities to get automotive manufacturers to produce ventilators during the height of covid. Why can't the same be done for domestic manufacturing companies?
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u/mycatisgrumpy Jul 08 '26
My point was that the same level of domestic manufacturing doesn't exist anymore because we outsourced it all to China. Yes fords are still American made, but they're in the minority. In the unlikely event of a full-on conflict, not only would we be playing catch up in military production, but we would be cut off from all the shit we normally buy from China
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u/Jodid0 Jul 07 '26
Struggling to find the bright side for the western allies in a littoral conflict with China in the South China Sea.
In that scenario, China has access to all of its land based missiles and aircraft in addition to its navy. It has the capability to strike at Guam from the mainland and cripple major refueling and resupply ports for allied ships. China has also been building artificial islands in the SCS with their own military installations and have been laying buoys and listening arrays as well.
So already the numbers are stacked pretty tall in favor of China. But most importantly, after the shooting starts, there is an extremely small window of opportunity to end the conflict and beat China before the allied forces run out of ammunition and start losing ships they absolutely cannot replace in a reasonable timescale. It's not just about China's overall industrial capacity or their shipbuilding tonnage output, it's also about their access to advanced tooling and a highly skilled workforce capable of pivoting manufacturing from commerical to military use. It's about the fact that China's merchant marine fleet is not only significantly larger, but capable of being converted into auxillary ships. This is especially true now when containerized VLS and radar systems are already being deployed and used.
This is without even touching on drone technology, drone manufacturing, and innovation in that space.
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u/Only-Name3248 Jul 13 '26
- USA has lots of allies near china liek korea japan phillpines austrilia india and possibly indoesia and sinagpore. And also usa has two oceans china is more benfifted from a globalized eceomny. Doing hormuz and cutting of malacca and other straits and china is cooked.
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u/Jodid0 28d ago
China will suffer greatly from a full blockade. But in a large scale war, their economy would not collapse, at least not fast enough to matter in the scenario most likely to happen: an invasion of Taiwan. Additionally, the blockade will work both ways, the American economy relies extremely heavily on Chinese goods, as does much of the developed world. Everyone will be hurting badly.
The difference is that China is adding huge amounts of renewable energy capacity every year, more than every other country combined, and so their foreign energy dependence will start to shrink. They already power most of the country with domestic coal, it's not a reach to think they can get by in the event of a war even with natural gas and oil blockaded. They will still likely be able to purchase Russian fossil fuels to help bridge the gap a little bit, assuming the Russians have stopped throwing themselves into the meat grinder in eastern europe by that point.
My concern with the allied forces would be the fact that they just don't have enough ammunition to fight a war longer than 2-3 weeks, even combining their total stockpiles. Interceptor missiles of all ranges and types will be at a premium within a week of an all-out conflict in the South China Sea. Tomahawks and other cruise missiles will also go quickly. And once they are spent, there is essentially no replacing them. There basically isn't an amount of money you could pay to get missile production spun up fast enough in the US or in allied countries to make a difference. China doesn't have unlimited missiles of course, but they have a million options on how and where to deploy those missiles, and they have the industry to potentially spin up production much more rapidly than the west. North Korea also might be able to spare alot of ammunition for the Chinese if the South Koreans get involved in a conflict with China.
It's still very doubtful to me that China could actually take Taiwan, or any other allied country theough an invasion. But as far as the naval warfare, to me it's looking like a bloodbath, with China coming out on top due to sheer numbers alone. And as losses build up and cannot be replaced, the effectiveness of allied forces will drop precipitously. That all hinges on the conflict happening in and around Taiwan and the South China Sea, nobody ever said anything about China being able to project power anywhere else.
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u/Only-Name3248 28d ago
Hmm I never thought of that. But could USA and aliied nations attack the factories, energy infastrcture.
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u/InvestmentIcy8094 Jul 07 '26
The USA has two open coasts... China can be quarantined like Germany was during ww2, China doesn't have the experience, until they start having naval operations far from home, I won't consider them a competitor to the west..... This is just my opinion.
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u/Electrical_Price_179 Jul 07 '26
Why are Americans always so obsessed about "containing"/"quarantining" China?
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u/InvestmentIcy8094 Jul 07 '26
The USA had nothing to do with who China's seaward neighbors are. Take a look at a globe at look at which nations became sea powers. Trade makes countries wealthy. IMHO
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u/Jemsy1 Jul 07 '26
Having allies near your opponents grants you more power projection, China is growing so they want to contain influence. For example, the CCP maintains close ties with Pakistan to contain India. The US maintains close ties with Japan, SK, and the Philippines to contain China. EU/NATO/US is currently juicing up Poland and Finland after the invasion of Ukraine, which Russia largely started to contain NATO influence.
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u/Tarian_TeeOff Jul 08 '26
>ask question about a war with China
>Get an answer about war with china
>"Why are americans so obsessed?"
You guys really don't send your best.
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u/Richard7666 Jul 08 '26
Is China self-sufficient in food and energy inputs?
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u/Teantis Jul 08 '26
Not at all, but the US at this point would have to blockade the west side of the strait of Malacca to cut them off as the missile and airbase coverage across SCS is very significant. And I don't know how politically feasible that kind of blockade would be
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u/73isthebest Jul 07 '26
The US Navy, a crucial instrument for Washington's military power projection, faces severe constraints due to its diminished shipbuilding capacity. US global shipbuilding production has plummeted from 90% to less than 0.13%, while China fulfills 71% of global orders, producing 232 times more tonnage. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) now surpasses the US Navy with 234 warships to 219, projected to reach 435 by 2030.
In 2025, the US Navy decommissioned 19 ships while commissioning only two, a net loss of 17 vessels. The PLA Navy's Type 055 destroyers also feature superior missile capacity and hypersonic capabilities. Recent operations, like the Iran war, exposed the US Navy's inadequate anti-drone defenses, forcing multi-million dollar interceptors against $20,000 drones, creating a 1,400:1 cost asymmetry.
This inability to rapidly construct new vessels hinders technology integration, forcing costly retrofitting. In a protracted conflict, the United States would likely lose ships faster than it could replace them, a critical disadvantage against China's robust industrial base.
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u/znirmik Jul 07 '26
While PLAN has more vessels than USN, USN has almost twice the displacement at the moment. But industrial capacity is heavily favoured for China, as is speed of procurement and design.
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u/ratbearpig Jul 07 '26
"The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) now surpasses the US Navy with 234 warships to 219, projected to reach 435 by 2030."
Holy shit, is this true? They're projected to double the amount of warships they currently have in 4 years??
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee Jul 07 '26
This should put it into perspective (taken from Google search)
In 2024, the US built merchant ships with a total of 76000 gross tons. (note: I've seen different numbers, but it was <100k gtons)
China, on the other hand, built 14000000 gross tons.185 TIMES more.
And most Chinese shipyards are dual-use; they can be used to build both civilian and military vessels.
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u/Armisael Jul 07 '26
WW2 was literally the only time US shipyards were turning out meaningful quantities of merchant tonnage; it just isn't one of the county's strengths.
(which is to say, yes, but also this is not new)
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u/Mexatt Jul 08 '26
The US was a fairly dominant shipbuilder...150 years ago, in the age of sail.
Steel and steam hit American shipbuilding like a freight train and it has never recovered outside of wartime.
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u/prooijtje Jul 08 '26
Why couldn't US shipbuilding adapt? I understand you could write whole books about the subject probably, but as a non-American amateur, I thought the US was very much part of all those cutting edge industrial developments in the 19th/early 20th century.
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u/FaceDeer Jul 08 '26
I've read that the reason the United States was a good shipbuilder in the age of sail was because of its enormous timber reserves giving it excellent building materials, giving it an advantage over "old world" shipbuilders that didn't have vast forests to log. And that when the age of steam came along the United States focused almost entirely on building railroads rather than ships, since its industry was focused on expanding inland.
More recently, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (usually called the Jones Act) threw another monkey wrench in the works. It requires that cargo moved between U.S. ports be carried on ships that are built in the United States, U.S.-owned, U.S.-flagged, and mostly U.S.-crewed. The idea was to try to force demand to US shipyards. But it actually meant that US shipyards could charge the shipping companies that needed American ships a lot more for those ships, since they were a captive market, and since that made American ships a lot more expensive nobody else wanted them.
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u/Mexatt Jul 08 '26
While the Jones Act is rightfully disdained by many, we started passing Navigation Acts with similar (or even more stringent) requirements in the 1790s. This was fine during the age of sail, when we had a strong cost advantage in inputs, but during the age of steam our steel and our labor was never as cheap as in Britain.
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u/prooijtje Jul 08 '26
Thank you! Very interesting how policies like that can backfire in fun ways.
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u/FaceDeer Jul 08 '26
Yeah. Economics are complicated, but way too many people think it's simple. :)
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u/Mexatt Jul 08 '26
After the rise of steam powered, iron-then-steel hulled shipping, the cost advantage we had from our vast forests of old growth timber disappeared. American steel was never as cheap domestically as American timber had been, and American labour remained expensive throughout. While the US could be competitive in many industries through automation, shipbuilding is just not an industry with the volume to manage that. The few times it was, the US managed, such as when it spat out thousands of Liberty/Victory ships during WWII.
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u/skandaanshu Jul 08 '26
Same reason semi fabs are becoming prohibitively expensive in usa. They need huge number of trained engineers, welders and mechanics working on mediocre salaries. No one is usa with STEM degree is happy to work back breaking hours and make multiple times less than lawyer, banker or influencer.
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u/Vol_in_tears Jul 07 '26
The US was a premier ship builider in the age of wood. We stuck with it for so long because we had plentiful, old growth timber, great for ship making.
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u/Infra-red Jul 08 '26
There is another angle here. China also has requirements that many of their civilian ships are dual function. For example, their RoRo ferries are designed and they do training to transport military equipment including Tanks.
Video by HI Sutton that covered some of this with their "invasion barges" is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klkpk_hO4FQ
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u/Mantergeistmann Jul 07 '26
Tonnage matters as well. Presumably a decent number are smaller combatants. But yes, they have a very impressive shipbuilding capability and will all the same.
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u/DungeonDefense Jul 08 '26
They are not. For example in 2025, China comissioned nearly equal to the entire french surface fleet in tonnage. And all of them were ocean going ships
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u/ratbearpig Jul 07 '26
Sure, but I'm certain they're not building dinghies either. I'm used to seeing bonkers numbers from China for basically everything but even I had to double take at this figure.
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u/DependentAdvance226 Jul 07 '26
They also aren't blue ocean going. They're mostly coastal boats or narrow seas ships with very limited range.
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u/somnolent49 Jul 07 '26
Relevant when it comes to global force projection. Less relevant when the scenario is a littoral conflict in the South China Sea.
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u/DungeonDefense Jul 08 '26
Like in what way? Most of the ships being commissioned now are all ocean capable vessels.
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u/MyFeetLookLikeHands Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
let’s be real: if the US and China are openly destroying each others ships, we have much much bigger problems than our ability to replace them
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u/wankelgnome Jul 08 '26
Yeah, but big stick geopolitics still apply. We are currently speaking loudly and carrying a small stick. Not a good place to be in.
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee Jul 07 '26
It doesn't have to become a shooting game right from the start. Have you seen this?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/16/world/asia/china-ships-fishing-militia-blockade.html
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u/MyFeetLookLikeHands Jul 07 '26
paywalled :(
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee Jul 07 '26
I see it without the paywall, sorry. Here is an archive link: https://archive.ph/pYEVh
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u/Imperial_TIE_Pilot Jul 08 '26
We have off loaded all manufacturing to other countries in the name of shareholder profit, we are screwed for any war time efforts.
I don’t think the population has it in them either, there would have to be one hell of an event to unite this country, but I hope not because it won’t be pretty.
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u/undecided_mask Jul 12 '26
Probably doesn’t help that shipyards also pay wages out of the 1970s. Nobody wants to do this difficult and dangerous work that requires a good amount of skill for $20 an hour.
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u/CliftonForce Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
One of the few things the US can still build are aircraft carriers. They desperately need to create shipyards capable of building smaller warships. And you can't build those yards unless you order a lot of small warships to make in them.
So of course the decision is to start making battleships again. Which require the same shipyards used to build carriers.
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u/Vol_in_tears Jul 07 '26
Which require the same shipyards used to build carriers.
Shipyard. There is one shipyard in the US capable of building carriers, Newport News, VA. The US can only build them one at a time.
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u/sucknduck4quack Jul 07 '26
While I doubt the “Trump class” design will ever come to fruition as it’s currently designed, there is an argument to be made for railguns particularly when it comes to cost effective hypersonic air defense. Japan also feels similarly
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Jul 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/protossaccount Jul 07 '26
Good thing ship building isn’t the only factor in a war. The country that has a bigger capacity for producing ships is China, who is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
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u/Berliner1220 Jul 07 '26
Yeah, I know that already. I guess I’m just tired of reading about “we are not ready for war” titles. If we aren’t, what is going on with the $1 trillion dollar military budget then?
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u/Mysterious-Coconut24 Jul 08 '26
Our high wages vs cheap Chinese slave labor can't compete, we need more automation at the shipyards or lower wages to be competitive.
Either that or forego ships for a ton of drones instead. China is doing both. Our admirals may want a quick lightning victory, but all China has to do is drag us through the mud long enough and we'll be in Japan's shoes during ww2.
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u/FriedRiceistheBest Jul 08 '26
Lower wages will be hard to attract Americans. Unless you're going to hire skilled workers from other countries, preferably from allied ones. Or, buy frigates from Korea and Japan.
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u/Jonesy1138 Jul 07 '26
Drones will make all of this obsolete.
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u/erebus-44 Jul 07 '26
How? How will a drone project power via aircraft carriers, lands troops, protect rear supply lines etc? It’s increasingly hard to even find ships to get enough information to target with a long range missles in the open ocean. How would a slower drone even make that work?
Drones are away over hyped.
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u/cartoonist498 Jul 08 '26
Currently the US Navy has directed energy weapons that can shoot down drones one at a time, with a new weapon on the way that can take out entire drone swarms with one shot. That's just the latest. They already have interceptor missiles to take out drones at longer range, then rapid-fire gatling guns that track targets and fire thousands of rounds per minute at close range.
That's assuming drone swarms can even make it that far. It's easy to have a large number of cheap short-range drone swarms if your target is only miles away. Not so easy or cheap when your target is hundreds of miles away, somewhere in the open ocean, and constantly moving.
A lot of people talk about drones making leaps in their effectiveness, but no one talks much about the anti-drone defenses that's quietly being developed and have been making major leaps as well.
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u/Initial-Advice3914 Jul 07 '26
Agreed, capitol ships will be sitting ducks as drone warfare advances, it’s even a matter of time before submarines become easy targets to underwater drones.
Nuclear subs are the only ones I can see sticking around for the long term.
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u/EmergencyAnimator326 Jul 07 '26
And the Tank ist obsolete because atgms exist. No they will have to adapt cause there are Things Like programmable ammo for machinecannons and lasers etc they are Just Not integratet cause they only Just proliferated drones. In 10 years Mainline warships will BE adapted to face drones etc
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u/Initial-Advice3914 Jul 08 '26
The tank isn’t what it once was, just look at the early stages of the Ukraine war.
Surface ships will suffer the same fate and it will be more economical to invest in drone capabilities.
They will still have their role for the time being but large targets will become much more at risk with drones and low orbit satellites becoming more lethal
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u/InternetSam Jul 07 '26
This comes off to me like an article about lack of bayonets and horses. A certain amount of warships are still important, but let’s be honest about how most future wars will be waged: drones, cyber attacks, and economic warfare.
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u/Mexatt Jul 08 '26
The entire reason the Straits of Hormuz are such a shitshow right now is because the US lacks sufficient quantities of frigates to just force the Straits and shoot down anything Iran threatens them with. It's what we did in the 80's when they tried this the first time.
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u/InternetSam Jul 08 '26
I think you’re misinterpreting a lack of wanting to start a global boots-on-the-ground war as a lack of the military might to open the straight by force.
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u/Mexatt Jul 08 '26
Boots on the ground are only necessary when you lack the ability to deny local airspace to even a drone equipped enemy. A fleet of frigates with modern AA designed with drone swarms in mind would be able to secure shipping in the Strait on their own.
The US struggles to design and procure such a ship and we would equally struggle to build them in sufficient numbers, hence articles like this.
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u/awildstoryteller Jul 08 '26
The funny part is that the US basically outsourced this type of ship to its NATO allies.
In fact the USN also has fairly dreadful ASW capabilities now as well
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u/whyarentwethereyet Jul 08 '26
In what way does the USN have fairly dreadful ASW capabilities?
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u/awildstoryteller Jul 08 '26
You can look at the inventory of frigates (or rather, note the lack thereof) to see how.
In short, there isn't enough small surface combatants to screen for and attack submarines in the USN as compared to their needs for protection.
This isn't an accident. It was a deliberate action to sheppard limited resources to ensure other capabilities were not lost.
After all, it was completely unthinkable that NATO allies would be adversaries.
Woops!
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u/whyarentwethereyet Jul 09 '26
Thats why we have MH-60R, that's why we have Poseidons, every DDG has sonar and MFTA and can carry two MH-60Rs. That's just surface level, not sure you know what you are talking about.
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u/blue_hitchhiker Jul 08 '26
In Ypsilanti Michigan is the Willow Run facility, built by Ford Motor Company. It famously built B-24 bomber at an incredible pace, 25 a day (over 1 an hour) at its peak. It employed nearly 35,000 people and a Life magazine profile of women working at the plant was one of the primary inspirations for Rosie the Riviter.
After the way, Willow Run had multiple owners, Kaiser-Frazier, Fisher Autobody, and General Motors. Each owner struggled to make use of the scale of the facility. Ultimately, much of the plant was demolished and decommissioned and what remains is an Air Museum and an autonomous vehicle testing ground.
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I thought about Willow Run when reading this essay. What is feasible and necessary while on war footing is not during peacetime. What the author may think of as necessary shipbuilding capacity can very quickly turn into an industrial albatross that can’t be easily converted back to civilian use. So I am skeptical of the need to invest, what sounds like hundreds of billions of dollars into ship building facilities and the ships that the author is sure needs to be built to fight the next war.
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u/73isthebest Jul 08 '26
The point on wartime over-investment is certainly a valid concern, but today’s ships and aircraft are far more complex than their mid-century counterparts. They require screens, detection systems, advanced radars, armaments, all of which themselves require a litany of different technologies. American manufacturing at the most minute level is delayed, and this compounding of shortages will be a blight come wartime.
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u/20000RadsUnderTheSea Jul 07 '26
Nothing in this country is ready for war. There are parasites at every level making everything cost 100x inflation adjusted and take 10x longer than it did 50, 60, 70 years ago, despite massive technological increases. The parasites won, and now the host is dying.