“Without a respectable Navy—alas, America!”

— John Paul Jones
Letter to Robert Morris, October 17, 1776

Sea power rests not only on the ships that sail but on the industrial system that builds and sustains them. The United States enters the next era of maritime competition with a simple but unforgiving truth: deterrence depends on replacement. A fleet that cannot regenerate cannot credibly deter a peer competitor capable of sustaining losses and restoring combat power. At the end of the Second World War, the United States possessed an industrial base capable of launching thousands of vessels—6,768 naval vessels by 194 —and roughly 60 percent of global merchant shipping tonnage. During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy expanded again to meet strategic demands, peaking at 594 ships in 1987 under the Reagan administration’s 600-ship Navy initiative, before declining sharply after the Cold War ended by 1992. Today, the Navy deploys 296 ships, supported by shipyards struggling with infrastructure strain, workforce shortages, and production cycles measured in years.

The causes are well understood. From the 1980s onward, globalization and cost-driven offshoring hollowed out U.S. manufacturing capacity, dispersing supply chains and eroding domestic competencies in forging, casting, machining, and advanced fabrication. The commercial shipbuilding industry—critical to sustaining skilled labor and production lines—shrank dramatically. In 2024, U.S. yards launched about 30,000 gross tons of commercial shipping, roughly 0.04 percent of the global output. The naval sector endured similar headwinds, as expanding technical complexity, unstable design requirements, and aging facilities slowed production across major programs.

Meanwhile, China’s industrial rise has fundamentally reshaped the global shipbuilding landscape. After securing a record share of new global ship orders in 2024, China’s shares moderated slightly in 2025 amid geopolitical tensions and a cooling global economy.  Even so, by late 2025, China still held more than 60 percent of the world’s commercial ship orderbook—3,454 of 5,735 vessels—exceeding the combined total of the rest of the world.

That industrial dominance translates directly into naval output. Open-source reporting indicates that Chinese shipyards continue to commission multiple large surface combatants annually,  maintaining a production tempo unmatched by any other navy. While recent programs emphasize larger, more capable platforms rather than sheer numerical growth, the underlying signal remains consistent: China possesses the industrial capacity to replace and expand its fleet at a pace that the United States currently cannot match. It is this capacity for regeneration—more than any individual platform—that defines the strategic challenge.

Yet this chapter is not about Chinese shipbuilding. It is about the United States—and how America can renew its maritime advantage through industrial modernization, design discipline, and above all, allied integration. The United States does not need to replicate China’s scale or return to the shipbuilding tempo of the 1940s. It needs a modern, distributed, resilient industrial network capable of supporting the fleet at speed.

The question that matters is not whether the United States has fallen behind in shipbuilding capacity. It has. The real question is whether it can align its own strengths with those of its allies to build, repair, and regenerate a fleet that remains ready when it matters most. It can.

https://doi.org/10.71236/6nreh48c