Over the years, I’ve watched with pride as the United States Navy continues to answer the call — anywhere, anytime. We remain the most capable blue-water navy on earth. Our carriers project power globally. Our submarines dominate beneath the waves. Our sailors perform with professionalism and discipline that few nations can match.
But there’s a hard truth we need to confront as Americans.
We are running our fleet — and our sailors — very hard.
The USS Gerald R. Ford and the Bigger Pattern
When the USS Gerald R. Ford deploys, it represents American industrial power, advanced engineering, and decades of naval aviation expertise. It is the most technologically advanced aircraft carrier ever built.
And yet, like so many ships before it, it has faced extended deployments, compressed maintenance cycles, and intense operational tempo.
This is not about one ship.
It’s about a pattern.
For more than two decades, global demand for U.S. naval presence has increased — while fleet size has not kept pace. The Navy today operates fewer ships than it did during much of the Cold War, yet it is tasked with deterring conflict in the Western Pacific, reassuring allies in Europe, maintaining stability in the Middle East, countering threats in the Red Sea, and responding to crises in the Caribbean and beyond.
The math is unforgiving.
The Carrier Debate — And the Irony
We often hear arguments that aircraft carriers are obsolete, too vulnerable, or relics of a past era.
Yet when tensions rise, when diplomacy tightens, when regional stability wavers — who gets called?
The carrier.
Because nothing else can:
• Deliver sustained airpower without relying on host nation permission • Generate massive sortie rates from international waters • Provide immediate, sovereign options to a president • Signal deterrence visibly and credibly
Critics focus on vulnerability. Decision-makers focus on options.
That is the carrier irony.
We debate their relevance in peacetime — and depend on them in crisis.
The Real Issue: Capacity, Not Capability
The U.S. Navy is still the strongest in the world.
But strength without depth creates strain.
Extended deployments affect more than headlines. They impact:
• Sailor fatigue and family stability • Training cycles • Shipyard scheduling • Long-term readiness
When maintenance gets compressed, the effects don’t show up immediately. They show up later — in availability gaps, repair delays, and cascading readiness challenges across the fleet.
This is not alarmism.
It is operational reality.
Why Americans Should Care
Most Americans assume we have a massive Navy that can surge indefinitely.
They see a carrier sent to a region and feel reassured.
They do not see the maintenance backlogs, the stretched crews, or the industrial bottlenecks behind the scenes.
Sea power underwrites global commerce. Roughly 90 percent of global trade moves by sea. Energy flows, supply chains, and strategic chokepoints all depend on maritime stability.
When the Navy is stretched thin, that stability becomes more fragile.
This isn’t about war. It’s about deterrence, economic security, and preventing conflict before it starts.
The Path Forward
The answer is not to bash carriers.
The answer is not to overuse them either.
The answer is depth:
• More ships • Stable deployment cycles • Stronger shipbuilding capacity • Investment in maintenance infrastructure • Support for the sailors and families who carry the burden
America’s Navy belongs to the American people. And if we expect it to remain the strongest in the world, we must understand what it actually takes to sustain that strength.
We can be proud of our Navy.
But pride alone does not build ships.
Public understanding does.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
Why the organization everyone loves to criticize is actually implementing the solutions research says work
Bill Cullifer, Founder
Introduction
As founder of Americans for a Stronger Navy, I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to help Americans understand why ships, shipyards, maintenance, and industrial capacity matter. I’ve written about rust and readiness, shipbuilding delays, logistics shortfalls, and why design choices can make replacement and repair painfully slow.
Coming from the tech sector in the 1990s, I thought I understood organizational complexity. I’d seen enterprise software projects involving dozens of stakeholders, competing departments, entrenched interests, and billion-dollar budgets. I understood how egos, biases, and financial incentives complicate even straightforward objectives.
Then I started studying how the Navy actually builds and maintains ships.
Building rockets is complex. Building naval warships makes rocket science look straightforward by comparison. SpaceX has one customer, one set of requirements, and Elon Musk making final decisions. Naval shipbuilding? Dozens of organizations, hundreds of contractors, thousands of specialized workers, decade-long timelines, competing requirements from multiple stakeholders, physical irreversibility of design decisions, Congressional funding cycles that change annually, acquisition regulations written over decades, technical standards that must account for 30-year service lives, and operational demands that shift with geopolitical reality—all coordinated through a system most Americans have never heard of.
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).
If you want to understand why the Navy struggles to build, fix, modernize, and field ships at the pace today’s threats require, you need to understand NAVSEA. And to keep this fair and grounded, we should also look at what independent watchdogs and researchers have reported over the years.
NAVSEA is the Navy’s engineering and ship sustainment backbone. It provides the technical standards, oversight, and support that make shipbuilding, modernization, and maintenance possible. If the Navy were a body, NAVSEA would be the circulatory system—not glamorous, but absolutely essential for life.
NAVSEA has become Washington’s favorite punching bag. Recent headlines tell the story: a Government Accountability Office report revealing $1.84 billion wasted on cruiser modernization, maintenance delays plaguing the fleet, acquisition timelines stretching into decades, and contractor quality failures that forced expensive rework. Critics paint NAVSEA as a bloated bureaucracy incapable of delivering ships on time or on budget—the personification of everything broken in defense acquisition.
But here’s what the critics miss: NAVSEA doesn’t build ships. NAVSEA doesn’t fund programs. NAVSEA doesn’t set operational requirements.
What NAVSEA does is provide the technical backbone that makes an impossibly complex system function at all. They’re trying to coordinate dozens of organizations with competing interests, conflicting incentives, different accountability
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).
If you want to understand why the Navy struggles to build, fix, modernize, and field ships at the pace today’s threats require, you need to understand NAVSEA. And to keep this fair and grounded, we should also look at what independent watchdogs and researchers have reported over the years.
NAVSEA is the Navy’s engineering and ship sustainment backbone. It provides the technical standards, oversight, and support that make shipbuilding, modernization, and maintenance possible. If the Navy were a body, NAVSEA would be the circulatory system not glamorous, but absolutely essential for life.
NAVSEA has become Washington’s favorite punching bag. Recent headlines tell the story: a Government Accountability Office report revealing $1.84 billion wasted on cruiser modernization, maintenance delays plaguing the fleet, acquisition timelines stretching into decades, and contractor quality failures that forced expensive rework. Critics paint NAVSEA as a bloated bureaucracy incapable of delivering ships on time or on budgets the personification of everything broken in defense acquisition.
But here’s what the critics miss: NAVSEA isn’t the source of the Navy’s readiness crisis. They’re the people actually trying to fix it.
The problems NAVSEA faces today deferred maintenance, inadequate shipyard capacity, antiquated acquisition processes, workforce shortages, supply chain fragility weren’t created in the last five years. They’re the accumulated debt of decades of underinvestment and poor policy choices. NAVSEA inherited a broken system and has been methodically rebuilding it while simultaneously keeping the current fleet operational during a period of unprecedented strategic pressure.
As the professionals inside NAVSEA know from hard experience, this work happens where strategy collides with physics and time. They’re doing extraordinary work inside a system carrying more demand than its capacity and processes can reliably support.
That’s not failure. That’s heroism under impossible conditions.
Before we judge too harshly, Americans deserve to understand what NAVSEA actually does, where it came from, why large defense projects typically fail, and why the scale of today’s challenge shouldn’t be confused with the quality of the response.
A History Lesson: 230 Years of Keeping Ships Ready
The Beginning: Commodore John Barry and the Foundation (1794)
NAVSEA’s lineage extends back to June 14, 1794, when President George Washington gave Commodore John Barry, the Irish-born naval hero who held Commission Number One in the United States Navy a seemingly impossible assignment: build America’s first frigates and ensure “all business harmonized and conformed to the public’s interest.”
Barry had distinguished himself during the Revolutionary War, capturing the first British warship taken in combat and commanding the frigate Alliance in the final naval engagement of the war. Now Washington tasked him with something harder than fighting: creating the systems, standards, and oversight needed to build a navy from nothing.
Barry supervised construction of the frigate USS United States, which launched on May 10, 1797. More importantly, he established the principle that would define NAVSEA’s mission for the next two centuries: technical excellence in service of national defense, with accountability to the American people for every dollar spent and every ship delivered.
The Bureau System: Organizing for Industrial War (1842-1966)
The informal arrangements that worked for Barry became inadequate as the Navy grew. In 1842, Congress abolished the ineffective Board of Navy Commissioners and created the Bureau System specialized administrative units to manage the increasingly complex work of designing, building, and maintaining warships.
Initially, five bureaus divided responsibility: Construction, Equipment and Repair; Ordnance and Hydrography; Provisions and Clothing; Medicine and Surgery; and Yards and Docks. Over time, this evolved into separate bureaus for Construction and Repair, Steam Engineering (later the Bureau of Engineering), Equipment, and Ordnance.
By World War I, this system managed a dramatic expansion. The Bureau of Engineering alone oversaw the fleet’s growth from 350 ships to nearly 2,000 by mid-1918, including all propulsion, communications, and electrical systems. The Bureau of Construction and Repair handled hull design and structural work.
But World War II exposed fatal flaws in this divided authority. In 1939, the Navy discovered that new Sims-class destroyers were dangerously top-heavy because the Bureau of Engineering had underestimated machinery weight and the Bureau of Construction and Repair lacked authority to catch the error during design. When separate organizations controlled different aspects of the same ship, nobody owned the complete integration.
The Bureau of Ships: Integration Under Pressure (1940-1966)
On June 20, 1940 with war clearly approaching Congress merged the Bureau of Construction and Repair with the Bureau of Engineering to create the Bureau of Ships (BuShips). The new bureau would control everything related to ship design, construction, conversion, maintenance, and repair from a single unified command.
Timing mattered. BuShips immediately faced the Fiscal Year 1940 naval procurement plan: 11 aircraft carriers, nine battleships, six large cruisers, 57 other cruisers, 95 destroyers, 73 submarines, and dozens of auxiliary vessels. Then Pearl Harbor turned ambitious plans into desperate necessity.
During World War II, BuShips delivered over 7,000 vessels nearly 1,200 major warships including battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. They pioneered radar integration, advanced damage control systems, and amphibious warfare craft. They managed four naval shipyards, coordinated hundreds of private contractors, and solved unprecedented logistics challenges while maintaining the fleet in combat.
The postwar period brought new challenges: nuclear propulsion, guided missiles, advanced electronics, and the Cold War submarine arms race. BuShips managed development of USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, which demonstrated the technology’s strategic potential by steaming 62,000 miles on its initial reactor core and completing the first underwater transit of the North Pole in 1958. The bureau then scaled nuclear propulsion to ballistic missile submarines, creating the sea-based deterrent that remains the most survivable leg of America’s nuclear triad.
Systems Commands: McNamara’s Reorganization (1966-1974)
By the mid-1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara pushed for centralized management to control rising costs and complexity. The traditional bureau system, rooted in 19th-century administrative thinking, seemed inefficient for managing advanced weapons systems that integrated multiple technologies.
On March 9, 1966, DoD abolished BuShips and created the Naval Ship Systems Command (NAVSHIPS), adopting a systems engineering approach that emphasized integration across technical disciplines. On July 1, 1974, NAVSHIPS merged with the Naval Ordnance Systems Command to form the Naval Sea Systems Command NAVSEA.
The new organization combined responsibility for ships, submarines, combat systems, and weapons into a single command. NAVSEA would engineer, build, buy, and maintain the fleet. It inherited four shipyards, ten warfare centers, and a global network of maintenance facilities. It became the Navy’s largest systems command, eventually managing nearly $30 billion annually roughly one-quarter of the entire Navy budget.
The Essential Continuity
From Commodore Barry in 1794 to Vice Admiral Downey today, the mission remains fundamentally unchanged: deliver warships that work, maintain the fleet so it can fight, and ensure every dollar spent serves the national defense.
What has changed is scale and complexity. Barry supervised construction of a few frigates. Today’s NAVSEA manages 150 acquisition programs simultaneously, maintains a fleet of over 200 ships and submarines, operates four massive shipyards, coordinates work across hundreds of contractors, and keeps the world’s most technologically sophisticated naval force operational in every ocean.
The criticism NAVSEA faces today isn’t new either. Every generation has complained about maintenance delays, cost overruns, and acquisition timelines. What’s different now is the consequences of failure and the impossibly narrow margin for error.
Why Large Projects Fail: Lessons from Research
Before examining NAVSEA’s current challenges, we need to understand what research tells us about why large, complex projects typically fail. This context is essential for evaluating NAVSEA’s performance fairly.
The Megaproject Failure Rate
Oxford University’s Bent Flyvbjerg has compiled the world’s largest database on megaproject performance 16,000 projects from 136 countries spanning infrastructure, defense, IT, and construction. Working with New York-based writer Dan Gardner, Flyvbjerg distilled this research into How Big Things Get Done, published in 2023. The results are sobering.
Only 8.5% of megaprojects meet their cost and schedule targets. Just 0.5% also satisfy their benefit goals. As Flyvbjerg writes, “Most big projects are not merely at risk of not delivering as promised. Nor are they only at risk of going seriously wrong. They are at risk of going disastrously wrong.”
Naval shipbuilding and maintenance programs are textbook megaprojects technically complex, politically visible, spanning multiple years, involving numerous contractors, requiring specialized workforces, and operating under intense scrutiny. They face all the pathologies Flyvbjerg identifies.
The Root Causes: Human Nature and System Design
Flyvbjerg traces megaproject failures to several interconnected factors:
Irrepressible optimism. Project leaders consistently underestimate costs, timelines, and technical challenges. This isn’t dishonesty it’s human nature. We want to believe our plans will work. We discount risks. We assume everything will go smoothly.
Political expediency. Projects get approved based on optimistic projections because realistic estimates would kill political support. Once committed, stakeholders have incentives to downplay problems until they become undeniable.
Poor planning. Projects start without sufficient detail. As Flyvbjerg notes, the Sydney Opera House became notorious for delays and cost overruns because it began construction based on “sketchy designs.” In contrast, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao succeeded through “meticulous, iterative development.”
Adding requirements. Every stakeholder wants their priorities incorporated. Each addition seems reasonable in isolation. Collectively, they drive cost growth and schedule delays. Nobody owns the integration.
Inadequate capacity. Projects assume resources, workers, facilities, materials will be available when needed. Reality proves otherwise. Workforce gaps emerge. Supply chains fail. Facilities need repair.
What Actually Works: The Solutions
Flyvbjerg’s research identifies characteristics common to successful megaprojects:
Empirical planning using reference-class forecasting. Instead of building plans from the ground up based on optimistic assumptions, examine historical data from similar projects. Use actual performance data to forecast realistic timelines and costs. Flyvbjerg developed this technique for the British government; it’s now used in multiple countries.
Iterative development. Test ideas early. Learn from small failures. Refine designs before committing to full-scale production. Pixar’s Oscar-winning director Pete Docter describes his animation process as requiring “an insane amount of work as constant iteration and testing. But it produces better outcomes.
Modularity. Flyvbjerg found that solar, wind, thermal power plants, electricity transmission, and highway projects “do not have considerable risk of going disastrously wrong” because “they are all modular to a considerable degree, some extremely so.” Modular designs allow parallel work streams, reduce integration risk, and enable faster problem-solving.
Accumulated experience. Organizations that repeatedly execute similar projects get better at them. They develop expertise, refine processes, and build institutional knowledge. One-off unique projects are inherently riskier.
Realistic timelines with adequate planning windows. Contractors need time to secure materials, hire workers, and coordinate subcontractors before work begins. Compressed planning periods guarantee problems.
The NAVSEA Connection
Every principle Flyvbjerg identifies applies directly to naval acquisition and maintenance:
The cruiser modernization failure? Classic megaproject pathology poor planning, unplanned work, contractor quality issues, and optimistic timelines.
But here’s the critical insight: NAVSEA’s recent reforms align almost perfectly with what research says actually works.
They’re using empirical data (reference-class forecasting) through Perform to Plan initiatives. They’re extending planning windows from 60 to 228 days. They’re adopting modularity with containerized payloads on FF(X). They’re pursuing “build, learn, evolve” iterative approaches instead of trying to perfect designs upfront.
NAVSEA is implementing the solutions that megaproject research validates. The question is whether they’ll get the sustained support, resources, and realistic expectations needed to make those reforms work.
The Current Reality: Fixing Decades of Deferred Maintenance
The Inherited Crisis
When Vice Admiral William Galinis took command of NAVSEA in June 2020, he inherited a readiness catastrophe years in the making. In Fiscal Year 2019, ships collectively overran their planned maintenance schedules by more than 7,000 days. Carriers and submarines were staying in maintenance availabilities 30-40% longer than planned. The maintenance backlog was crushing fleet readiness, forcing longer deployments and creating a vicious cycle where rushed operations led to more maintenance problems.
Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on anecdotes. Independent watchdogs have documented these problems extensively:
Government Accountability Office findings:
GAO found that over an extended period, the Navy was unable to begin or complete most attack submarine maintenance periods on time, resulting in significant lost operational days (GAO-19-229).
The majority of aircraft carrier and submarine maintenance periods between 2015 and 2019 were completed late, with primary causes being unplanned work discovered after planning began and workforce capacity constraints (GAO-20-588).
In 2025, GAO emphasized that shipbuilding and repair capacity itself is a strategic constraint, calling for a more coherent long-term industrial base approach to support the fleet the Navy says it needs (GAO-25-106286).
RAND assessments:
RAND research highlights that maintenance capacity is a long-term structural issue that cannot be corrected quickly, with public shipyard capacity identified as a limiting factor for submarine and carrier availability (RAND RR1951).
Navy acknowledgment:
USNI News reported that Navy leaders acknowledged that only a small percentage of attack submarines completed maintenance on time over a ten-year period, even as operational demand increased.
The root causes ran deep:
Inadequate shipyard capacity. America’s four naval shipyards Portsmouth, Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, and Puget Sound had been chronically underfunded for decades. Facilities were antiquated. Dry docks needed repair. Cranes were obsolete. The physical infrastructure couldn’t support efficient work.
Workforce shortages. The skilled trades that keep ships operational welders, pipefitters, electricians, machinists were in desperately short supply. Years of hiring freezes had created a demographic cliff. Experienced workers were retiring faster than new workers could be trained.
Poor planning. The Navy awarded maintenance contracts only 60 days before work was scheduled to begin far too late for contractors to secure materials, hire workers, or plan efficiently. Contracts often started without complete work packages, guaranteeing unplanned growth work that blew schedules.
Supply chain failures. Critical parts weren’t arriving when needed. Ships sat idle waiting for components. Nobody was coordinating material delivery across the enterprise.
Unrealistic schedules. Maintenance durations were based on optimistic assumptions rather than empirical data. Ships were consistently planned for availabilities shorter than they actually needed, creating the appearance of delays that were really planning failures.
This wasn’t NAVSEA’s fault. This was the bill coming due for decades of decisions made by Congress, administrations, and Navy leadership that prioritized new procurement over maintenance, allowed shipyards to deteriorate, and failed to invest in workforce development.
The NAVSEA Response: Data-Driven Reform
Rather than making excuses, NAVSEA leadership got to work. They implemented a series of interconnected reforms designed to address each element of the maintenance crisis:
Perform to Plan (P2P). NAVSEA conducted detailed analysis of what actually happened during maintenance availabilities versus what was planned. They examined every step: work package development, execution planning, material delivery, testing requirements, contractor performance. The data revealed systematic planning failures availabilities were being planned too short based on outdated assumptions.
The solution wasn’t to lower standards or move goalposts. It was to reset maintenance duration baselines using empirical data about how long complex work actually takes. New baselines created realistic schedules that contractors could execute.
The results were dramatic. By Fiscal Year 2020, total maintenance delays dropped from 7,000 days to approximately 1,100 days. Measured against the new realistic baselines, that represented an 80% reduction in delays. Even measured against the old optimistic baselines, delays dropped 40%.
Contracting Reform. NAVSEA extended contract award timelines from 60 days to 120 days before maintenance start, then pushed toward 180 days. Rear Admiral Andrew Biehn, NAVSEA’s director of surface ship maintenance, explained that industry had been clear: “60 days was not enough time to plan and prepare for a successful maintenance period.”
In 2026, NAVSEA awarded a maintenance contract for the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima 228 days ahead of times”nearly eight months for the contractor to order materials, hire workers, and coordinate with subcontractors.
Longer planning windows created predictability. Contractors could maintain stable workforces. Suppliers could plan material delivery. The entire ecosystem became more efficient.
Material Management. NAVSEA stood up a dedicated Material Management Group with a single mission: ensure all materials needed for a maintenance availability arrive at the shipyard by day one of the work period. No more ships sitting idle waiting for parts. No more scrambling to source critical components mid-availability.
This required intense coordination across supply chains, better forecasting of material needs, earlier ordering of long-lead items, and tighter integration between maintenance planning and logistics.
Workforce Development. NAVSEA hired thousands of new workers for the naval shipyards. They invested in training programs to develop skilled trades, partnered with community colleges and trade schools, and created apprenticeship programs to transfer knowledge from experienced workers to new hires.
This wasn’t quick. Training a journeyman shipyard worker takes years. But NAVSEA understood that long-term readiness required long-term investment in people.
Unplanned Work Reduction. Growth work unplanned maintenance discovered after an availability begins was a major driver of delays. NAVSEA worked to stabilize class maintenance plans, pushing more routine work into “directed work” categories that could be planned in advance. They scheduled activities most likely to generate growth work—like tank inspections early in availabilities so discoveries could be incorporated into the plan.
The goal was to minimize surprises through better forecasting and more thorough advance planning.
Current Status: Real Progress Under Pressure
At the Surface Navy Association symposium in January 2026, Vice Admiral Brendan McLane, Commander of Naval Surface Forces, outlined continued progress: “On-time completion remains our number one goal as we drive towards zero days of maintenance delay.”
Vice Admiral James Downey, NAVSEA’s current commander, reported that 90 ships are under contract for construction, 57 are actively under construction, and 52 ships are in maintenance availabilities. Keeping those maintenance periods on schedule is NAVSEA’s top priority.
Rear Admiral Dan Lannamann, who runs the Navy Regional Maintenance Centers, acknowledged the challenge honestly: “I got 41 percent [on-time completion], so we missed the mark. We reset the mark for this year. I’m looking at north of 60 percent, and I’m on plan to make that.”
That’s the right approach: set ambitious goals, measure performance honestly, adjust based on results, and keep pushing forward. NAVSEA isn’t claiming victory. They’re showing their work and committing to improvement.
Addressing the Legitimate Criticisms
The Cruiser Modernization Failure
The GAO report on cruiser modernization is damning, and NAVSEA deserves criticism for significant failures. The Navy planned to modernize 11 Ticonderoga-class cruisers, extending their service life by five years and upgrading combat capability. The program became a $3.7 billion disaster. Only three cruisers will complete modernization, none will gain the intended five years of service life, and $1.84 billion was wasted on four cruisers that were divested before deploying.
The failures included:
Poor planning leading to 9,000 contract changes
Contractor performance issues and quality problems (such as the botched sonar dome work on USS Vicksburg)
Weak oversight and reluctance to use monetary penalties
Failure to identify root causes or develop prevention strategies
This was a significant acquisition failure, and the GAO correctly identified systemic problems that must be fixed before future modernization efforts.
But here’s the important context: NAVSEA acknowledged the problems, is conducting root cause analysis, and is applying lessons learned to the next major surface ship modernization effort 23 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The question isn’t whether NAVSEA made mistakes with cruiser modernization. They clearly did. The question is whether they’re learning from those mistakes and implementing better processes.
The early evidence suggests they are. The destroyer modernization program is incorporating improved planning processes, more realistic schedule baselines, and better quality control measures. NAVSEA is being held accountable for past failures while working to prevent future ones.
Acquisition Timelines
Critics rightly point out that NAVSEA acquisition programs take 10+ years to field capability. By the time ships are delivered, the strategic environment has evolved and technology has advanced. As one Navy leader noted, it’s like “fielding a 2015 iPhone today already obsolete on arrival.”
This is a real problem, but it’s not primarily NAVSEA’s fault. The acquisition system is designed for risk reduction rather than speed. Complex requirements processes allow every stakeholder to add requirements, increasing cost and delaying delivery. Acquisition regulations slow decision-making. Testing requirements are thorough but time-consuming.
NAVSEA operates within the constraints of federal acquisition law, DoD regulations, and Navy requirements processes. They can advocate for reform, implement process improvements where they have authority, and try to accelerate timelines. But they can’t unilaterally override the legal and regulatory framework Congress and DoD have created.
The recent announcement of FF(X) the Navy’s new frigate program based on a proven Coast Guard design shows NAVSEA learning from past mistakes. Chris Miller, Executive Director at NAVSEA, emphasized a “design that is producible, it has been proven, it is operationally in use today, and it will evolve.” The approach prioritizes getting ships into production quickly, then evolving capability over time through modular containerized payloads.
That’s the right philosophy: field capability fast, then improve it incrementally. It’s a significant departure from past programs that tried to incorporate every possible requirement upfront.
Bureaucratic Processes
Yes, NAVSEA is a large bureaucracy with 84,000 personnel, nine directorates, eight affiliated Program Executive Offices, and a budget approaching $30 billion. Complex organizations develop complex processes. Some of those processes are valuable ensuring safety, maintaining technical standards, managing risk. Some are unnecessary bureaucracy that slows things down.
The challenge is distinguishing between essential process and wasteful bureaucracy. NAVSEA has been working to streamline operations, eliminate redundant approvals, and empower decision-making at lower levels. But this is genuinely difficult work that requires balancing speed with safety, innovation with standards, and delegation with accountability.
Anyone who has worked in a large organization knows that reforming bureaucratic processes is harder than criticizing them.
Why NAVSEA Matters: The Unglamorous Work of Maritime Power
They Turn Policy into Hardware
Every naval strategy document, every force structure assessment, every geopolitical analysis ultimately depends on one thing: ships that work. NAVSEA is where strategy meets reality.
When the 2026 National Defense Strategy emphasizes “First Island Chain denial defense,” NAVSEA is responsible for delivering the submarines, destroyers, and combat systems that make that strategy viable. When Navy leadership commits to 80% of ships being deployable at any given time, NAVSEA is responsible for the maintenance performance that achieves that readiness.
The National Commission on the Future of the Navy can recommend force structure changes. The CNO can publish new operational concepts. Congress can authorize new ship construction. But none of it matters without NAVSEA doing the unglamorous work of engineering systems, managing contracts, supervising construction, training workers, and fixing broken ships.
They Manage Impossible Tradeoffs
NAVSEA operates under contradictory demands:
Keep the current fleet operational while building the future fleet
Maintain aging ships past their design service life while investing in new construction
Move fast to meet urgent threats while ensuring ships are safe and effective
Manage cost while meeting expanding requirements
Take acceptable risk without catastrophic failures
Every decision involves tradeoffs. Extend maintenance contracts to give contractors more planning time? That delays ship availability. Accelerate new construction? That stresses the industrial base. Prioritize nuclear work? That means surface ships wait longer. Fund facility upgrades at public yards? That’s money not available for procurement.
NAVSEA leadership makes these tradeoffs every day, often with incomplete information, under intense pressure, with billions of dollars and potentially lives at stake. It’s easy to criticize specific decisions in hindsight. It’s much harder to make better decisions in real time.
They Build National Capacity
NAVSEA’s mission extends beyond today’s fleet to building the industrial capacity America needs for tomorrow’s challenges. That means:
Investing in shipyard modernization even when those facilities won’t generate returns for decades
Training workers who might spend entire careers maintaining ships
Developing domestic suppliers for critical components
Maintaining technical expertise in specialized fields
Preserving institutional knowledge about complex systems
These long-term investments don’t generate headlines. They don’t produce quick wins. But they’re essential for sustained maritime power.
When Vice Admiral Downey reports 90 ships under construction contract and 57 actively being built, that represents years of NAVSEA work managing industrial capacity, negotiating contracts, coordinating suppliers, and solving technical problems most Americans never hear about.
They Carry the Weight of Institutional Memory
NAVSEA maintains continuity through strategic transitions, political changes, and shifting priorities. They remember what worked during the Reagan-era naval expansion. They carry lessons learned from the post-Cold War drawdown. They apply hard-won knowledge from decades of maintaining nuclear-powered vessels.
When new leadership arrives with new ideas, NAVSEA provides the institutional ballast that prevents dramatic swings between extremes. They explain why certain technical standards exist, what happened when past programs cut corners, and which shortcuts lead to catastrophic failures.
This conservative instinct can seem like resistance to change. Sometimes it is. But often it’s the voice of experience preventing repeated mistakes.
What NAVSEA Needs: Support, Not Just Criticism
Legislative Authority for Acquisition Reform
NAVSEA has identified acquisition processes that slow capability delivery. They’ve proposed reforms. But many changes require legislative action that only Congress can provide.
The FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act included provisions for expedited technology qualification processes. That helps, but more comprehensive acquisition reform is needed:
Delegating more decision authority to program managers
Streamlining requirements processes
Reforming testing protocols to enable faster iteration
Creating exemptions for proven commercial technologies
Congress needs to give NAVSEA the authority to move faster while maintaining appropriate oversight.
Sustained Funding for Shipyard Modernization
America’s four naval shipyards need billions in infrastructure investment: new dry docks, modern cranes, upgraded facilities, environmental improvements. These investments take years to design and decades to recoup. They’re perfect targets for budget cuts because the consequences won’t appear immediately.
But without modern shipyards, NAVSEA cannot maintain readiness. Period.
Vice Admiral Moore noted in 2016 that private shipyards like Newport News have invested heavily in their physical plants while public yards have been neglected. NAVSEA needs Congress and Navy leadership to make the business case for MILCON funding and stick with those investments over multiple budget cycles.
Workforce Development Support
Training skilled shipyard workers requires partnerships with community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs. NAVSEA needs support from federal, state, and local governments to:
Fund training programs
Provide housing assistance in expensive shipyard communities
Offer tax incentives for workers entering skilled trades
Create pathways from military service to civilian shipyard careers
The workforce crisis won’t be solved by NAVSEA alone. It requires a national commitment to rebuilding America’s maritime industrial base.
Realistic Expectations
Most importantly, NAVSEA needs Americans to understand that fixing decades of deferred maintenance and underinvestment takes time. Maintenance delays won’t disappear overnight. Acquisition timelines won’t collapse to 18 months. Industrial capacity won’t triple in two years.
Progress is happening. Delays are declining. Planning is improving. But the work is difficult, the challenges are real, and setbacks are inevitable.
NAVSEA deserves credit for confronting these problems honestly, implementing data-driven reforms, and making measurable progress under extraordinary pressure. They deserve support, not just criticism.
Conclusion: The Builders, Not the Critics
Americans for a Stronger Navy exists to advocate for the naval power America needs to secure its economic prosperity and defend its interests. We’re builders, not critics. We focus on implementation mechanisms, not just policy positions.
That’s why we defend NAVSEA.
The men and women of NAVSEA are doing the hardest work in naval policy: turning strategic concepts into operational capability. They’re managing the impossible tradeoffs inherent in maintaining today’s fleet while building tomorrow’s. They’re learning from failures, implementing reforms grounded in what research tells us actually works, and making measurable progress.
NAVSEA’s reforms align with proven megaproject success principles:
Using empirical data for planning (Flyvbjerg’s reference-class forecasting) → Perform to Plan
Extending planning windows → 60 to 228 days for contract awards
Pursuing modularity → Containerized payloads on FF(X)
Iterative development “Build, learn, evolve” philosophy
Building accumulated experience training thousands of new shipyard workers
Are they perfect? No. Should they be held accountable for failures like cruiser modernization? Absolutely. Do acquisition processes need reform? Without question.
But the fundamental criticism of NAVSEA that they’re a bloated bureaucracy incapable of delivering results is wrong. NAVSEA has reduced maintenance delays by 80%, extended contract planning windows from 60 to 228 days, hired thousands of new shipyard workers, stood up dedicated material management groups, and delivered 90 ships under construction contracts while maintaining over 200 ships and submarines.
That’s not failure. That’s competent management under extraordinarily difficult conditions.
This is bigger than the Navy. It is a national industrial and governance challenge.
You cannot surge ships. You cannot surge shipyards. You cannot surge skilled engineers and nuclear-qualified trades overnight. Naval power is built years, often decades, before it is needed. Deterrence depends on industrial reality, not speeches. When maintenance runs late, fewer ships are available for training, presence, and crisis response. That affects America’s leverage and our allies’ confidence.
When Commodore John Barry accepted his commission from President Washington in 1797, he established a standard: deliver ships that work, ensure all business serves the public interest, and do it with integrity. NAVSEA has upheld that standard for 230 years through wars hot and cold, through periods of expansion and drawdown, through technological revolutions from sail to steam to nuclear power.
They deserve our support as they confront the most challenging period in American naval history since World War II. The criticism will continue some of it deserved. But Americans should understand who’s actually doing the work of keeping the fleet ready.
It’s the 84,000 people of NAVSEA. Give them the resources, authority, and realistic expectations they need to succeed.
Americans cannot support what they do not understand. NAVSEA is not a political talking point. It is where naval power becomes real, or fails to. If you want a Stronger Navy, you need to understand NAVSEA and support the industrial strength that makes NAVSEA’s mission achievable.
The security of our maritime commons depends on it.
This article is part of Americans for a Stronger Navy’s “Charting the Course: Voices That Matter” ongoing series educational initiative breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
This week, one of our own — Captain Thomas Edwin Scheurich Sr., a U.S. Navy aviator from Norfolk, Nebraska — finally returns home after more than five decades listed as missing in action. On November 14, 2025, he will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors
The End of a Long Wait
For 57 years, Captain Scheurich’s name stood among the missing. A dedicated Naval Aviator, he was lost on a night mission over Vietnam on March 1, 1968. For over half a century, his family waited, remembered, and honored his memory with unwavering strength.
The notification this past May that his remains had been identified brought not just closure, but the sacred opportunity to welcome him home with the honor he has always deserved—a moment for the nation to formally thank a hero.
The Price of Freedom
Captain Scheurich represents the very best of naval service: courage under fire, dedication to mission, and unwavering commitment to shipmates and country. He flew into harm’s way, fully aware of the risks involved.
At just 34 years old, he gave everything. He never came home to see his children grow, to meet his grandchildren, to build boats or play his banjo in the years that should have been his. He made the ultimate sacrifice for the liberties we enjoy today.
To the Scheurich Family: We Never Forgot To the Scheurich family: your father, grandfather, and loved one embodied the warrior spirit that has protected this nation for generations. His sacrifice was not in vain. Because of sailors like Captain Scheurich, America remained free. And because of families like yours, who carried on with grace and strength, we never forgot what was owed to those who did not return.
As we work every day to ensure today’s Navy has the resources, readiness, and support it needs, we are constantly reminded why this mission matters:
It matters because of sailors like Captain Scheurich.
It matters because the watch must continue.
It matters because freedom is never free—it is earned by those willing to stand in the gap.
Welcome home, Captain Scheurich. Your courage endures. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten.Fair winds and following seas, sir. With profound respect and gratitude, Americans for a Stronger Navy
As a crewman aboard the guided missile destroyer Henry B. Wilson (DDG-7) in the mid-1970s, and with family members tragically scarred from the ravages of war, Veterans Day has always carried deep meaning for me. It’s a day to pause—not just to thank—but to truly remember. To remember those who served, those captured or killed, and those who still stand the watch today.
Why This Matters
Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s shaped how my generation understood service. We played with G.I. Joe action figures modeled after real Medal of Honor recipients. We watched John Wayne storm the beaches in black-and-white war films. We practiced duck-and-cover drills beneath our school desks, Cold War tension seeping into our childhood games.
But today’s America looks different. More than half of our population was born after 1980—long after the draft ended, after Vietnam, after the Cold War. For many Americans under 45, military service is something distant, something other families do. Only about 7% of living Americans have served in uniform. The connection between civilian and sailor, between hometown and ship, has quietly frayed.
That disconnect matters more than ever.
Service Without Fanfare
For many who wore the uniform, service wasn’t about recognition. It was about duty. For some, like the sailors of the Vietnam era, there were no parades waiting when they came home. For others, like my shipmates during the Cold War, their battles were fought in the shadows—quiet missions, constant vigilance, and readiness that helped keep the peace. And for those who have served through the long years in the Middle East and beyond, their courage continues the legacy of those who came before.
Every generation of sailors shares the same bond—service, sacrifice, and love of country.
A Navy of Many Missions
The U.S. Navy has always been more than ships and sailors—it’s a reflection of America’s strength, innovation, and resolve. Across decades, each generation of naval service has carried its own unique challenges.
Vietnam Era: From the blue-water carriers and destroyers offshore to the brown-water patrols on the Mekong Delta, Navy men and women served in every corner of the conflict. Aircraft carriers launched thousands of sorties into hostile skies. River patrol boats navigated treacherous waterways where the enemy could be anywhere. Many came home quietly. Some never did. Too many were forgotten.
Cold War Service: During the tense decades that followed, our ships sailed the world’s seas not to fight—but to deter. We tracked Soviet submarines beneath the Arctic ice. We escorted convoys through contested waters. We maintained an unbroken presence that reminded adversaries of America’s reach. It was a different kind of war—one measured in vigilance rather than victories—but no less vital to our nation’s freedom.
Middle East and Modern Conflicts: From the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, from the Horn of Africa to the South China Sea, today’s sailors face danger in new forms—terrorism, piracy, cyber warfare, and constant deployments that stretch families to the breaking point. They serve aboard destroyers, submarines, carriers, and expeditionary units—standing between chaos and stability, often far from home, always ready.
The POW/MIA Legacy
No tribute is complete without remembering those who never returned—and those who survived against impossible odds.
Some Did Make It Home—But Paid a Heavy Price
Captain Charlie Plumb, a Navy fighter pilot from Kansas who flew F-4 Phantoms off the USS Kitty Hawk, completed 74 successful combat missions over North Vietnam. On his 75th mission—just five days before the end of his tour—he was shot down over Hanoi. He spent the next 2,103 days as a prisoner of war. Nearly six years in an 8-by-8-foot cell. Torture. Isolation. Yet Plumb became a lifeline to his fellow POWs through underground communications, serving as chaplain and inspiration when hope seemed impossible. He came home. He continued flying for the Navy for decades, retiring as a Captain after 31 years of service. His survival reminds us that some battles don’t end when the guns fall silent—they continue in the hearts and minds of those who endured.
Others Waited Decades to Come Home
Captain Thomas Edwin Scheurich Sr., a Naval Aviator from Norfolk, Nebraska, was designated missing in action following a night mission on March 1, 1968. For 57 years, his name stood among the missing. His wife Eileen raised their four children without him. His family grew—grandchildren he would never meet, milestones he would never witness. But they never forgot. On May 23, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency notified his family that his remains had been identified and recovered. This Veterans Day week—November 14, 2025—Captain Scheurich will be laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
He was 6’4″ tall and somehow squeezed his whole family into a tiny blue Austin-Healey Sprite. He taught himself banjo and accordion, played in a Dixieland band, and built a boat from scratch. He lived life to its fullest. His journey ended far too soon at age 34.
Captain Plumb made it home. Captain Scheurich finally came home. But thousands of their brothers and sisters never will.
These stories remind us: some debts can never be fully repaid. But they can be remembered. They must be remembered.
Welcome home, Captain Scheurich. Your courage endures. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten.
Why Americans Should Care
Freedom doesn’t sustain itself—it depends on those willing to protect it. Whether in Da Nang or the Persian Gulf, in the Pacific or the Arctic, the spirit of America’s sailors remains constant.
These men and women come from every corner of our country—from farming towns and inner cities, from both coasts and everywhere in between. They stand the watch, often without thanks, but always with pride. They miss birthdays and holidays. They sacrifice time with children who grow up in their absence. They do this so the rest of us don’t have to.
As citizens, we owe them more than gratitude—we owe them understanding, support, and the tools they need to succeed. We owe them a Navy that’s ready, maintained, and respected. We owe them leaders who remember that ships don’t sail themselves, and that every capability gap puts sailors at risk.
Let’s Roll
On this Veterans Day, let us honor every sailor—past and present. From the jungles of Vietnam to the carrier decks of today’s fleet, from the Cold War’s silent service to the visible wars of the 21st century, they’ve carried America’s strength across the seas.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter—a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
The watch continues. The mission endures. And America’s sailors deserve our unwavering support.
An Open Letter to Silicon Valley and the American People
Bill Cullifer, Founder
If you’re confused by all this, you’re not alone. By “this,” I mean the tangle of headlines, policies, and talking points that have defined America’s relationship with China for the past decade — tariffs and trade wars, tech bans and chip controls, speeches about “decoupling,” and endless debates between the so-called hawks and doves in Washington. There’s a lot to unpack. The truth is, most Americans are burnt out. After years of rising prices, supply chain chaos, and political talk about tariffs and trade wars, people are tired of trying to figure out who’s right, who’s bluffing, and who’s actually working for them. They hear about new restrictions on chips, debates over TikTok, or tariffs on Chinese steel — but they don’t always see how any of it helps put food on the table or keeps the country safe.
Here’s the reality: for years, Washington and Wall Street were divided into two camps. The “China doves” believed that trade, investment, and partnership would bring peace—that if we did business together, China would grow more open and the world would grow more stable. The “China hawks”, on the other hand, warned that the Chinese Communist Party was using that same economic engagement to build leverage, dominate industry, and prepare for confrontation.
The tariffs you’ve heard about—the ones that started during the Trump administration and carried through in various forms—were part of that battle. They weren’t just about steel, aluminum, or semiconductors. They were about whether America would keep surrendering its manufacturing and shipbuilding capacity to a regime that has made no secret of its ambitions in the Pacific.
Most Americans didn’t pick a side. They were too busy working, paying taxes, and hoping someone in Washington would finally get it right. But the truth is, both parties let this happen. We were told that engagement meant peace—when in reality, it built dependency. And now, the same country we helped enrich is threatening our allies, our trade routes, and our future.
That’s why voices like Shyam Sankar’s matter. Over the past week, the Palantir CTO and Hudson Institute trustee laid out a hard truth that America can no longer ignore. In his essay “Why the China Doves Are Wrong,” he calls out a generation of business and technology leaders who misread Beijing’s intentions. These so-called “doves” believed engagement and profit could buy peace. They were wrong.
Sankar singles out Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, who recently said the future “doesn’t have to be all us or them; it could be us and them.” Sankar’s answer is clear: the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t believe that. Its rise depends on America’s decline—and our own money, technology, and industrial retreat helped make that possible.
He’s right. For decades, U.S. capital and know-how flowed into China, building the very industrial and military capacity that now threatens the free world. America’s overreliance on Chinese supply chains—from semiconductors to shipyards—has turned interdependence into a weapon aimed back at us.
Rebuilding our domestic base—our factories, shipyards, and maritime strength—isn’t nostalgia. It’s national security. Sankar’s warning echoes what many of us have been saying for years: hard power and industrial resilience are the foundation of peace.
At Americans for a Stronger Navy, we believe this isn’t just a policy debate. It’s a call to every citizen. This moment demands that Americans—not just policymakers—take responsibility, stand together, and act before it’s too late.
The Tide Is Turning
For years, Americans for a Stronger Navy has been saying what Shyam Sankar just put into print: we didn’t lose ground to China overnight—it happened one contract, one shipment, one investment at a time. When someone from inside Silicon Valley finally says it out loud, it means the conversation is shifting.
This isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s about facing facts. The same innovation hubs that built the digital future also hollowed out America’s industrial core. And now, even the insiders see it: the CCP isn’t looking for balance—it’s looking for dominance. Sankar’s words confirm what we’ve been warning all along.
Sankar didn’t pull punches. He wrote:
“The U.S. is partially to blame for turning China into a juggernaut. American companies have invested vast sums over decades to build China’s industrial base. … Chinese military contractors securitize weapons contracts in global capital markets, meaning that American pension funds and 401(k) investors have financed missiles aimed at U.S. ships.”
That’s the uncomfortable truth. We financed the very threat we now face. While many Americans were working hard and trusting their savings to grow, their own retirement dollars were indirectly funding China’s military expansion.
This isn’t a partisan issue or a Wall Street issue—it’s an American issue. And fixing it means facing it head-on.
Call to Silicon Valley and the Financial Sector
If there’s one thing Americans know how to do, it’s rebuild. We did it after the Great Depression, after World War II, and after every storm that’s hit this country. But this time, the rebuilding must start with those who helped hollow out the core—our own financial and tech elites.
Silicon Valley didn’t mean to weaken America. Wall Street didn’t set out to fund our rivals. But good intentions don’t excuse bad outcomes. The truth is, while innovators were chasing the next big breakthrough, and investors were chasing the next big return, our shipyards rusted, our supply chains moved offshore, and our industrial base became dependent on the very system now aligned against us.
That’s why this open letter isn’t just a warning—it’s an invitation. We need the same creativity, drive, and innovation that built the digital world to help rebuild the physical one. The next frontier isn’t in code; it’s in steel, in sensors, in shipyards, and in the men and women who keep the seas open and the nation free.
We’re calling on America’s tech and finance leaders to put their talent and capital back to work here at home—where it matters most. Invest in shipbuilding. Partner with maritime innovators. Reimagine logistics, automation, and infrastructure. Help America regain the ability to build, move, and defend.
Because the same companies that helped wire the world now have a moral obligation to help secure it. And if we do this right, we won’t just restore our strength—we’ll rebuild trust between Main Street, Wall Street, and the American people.
Closing: The Hard Truth and the Hope
The American people have every right to feel weary. We’ve been told for decades that global integration would make the world safer, that cheap goods would make us richer, and that innovation alone would keep us ahead. But somewhere along the way, we lost sight of something simple and sacred—the idea that America must be able to stand on her own.
Shyam Sankar reminded us that while our leaders talked about partnership, the Chinese Communist Party was planning for dominance. And he’s right—we built part of that machine. But now we have a chance to build something better: a stronger, more united, and more self-reliant America.
That’s why this isn’t just a letter to policymakers—it’s a letter to all of us. To the shipbuilder and the software engineer. To the machinist and the venture capitalist. To every citizen whose pension, paycheck, or passion helped shape this nation. The future of American power depends on our willingness to face what’s broken and fix it together.
Rebuilding our shipyards and restoring our maritime strength isn’t about preparing for war—it’s about securing peace. It’s about ensuring that no foreign power can hold our economy, our sailors, or our future hostage. It’s about remembering that deterrence isn’t aggression—it’s readiness.
So yes, Americans are tired. We’ve been misled, overextended, and divided. But fatigue is not failure—it’s a signal. A signal that it’s time to get serious, to get focused, and to get back to work.
That’s what Americans for a Stronger Navy stands for—peace through strength, transparency through accountability, and unity through shared responsibility. Together, we can rebuild the strength that keeps us free.
by Bill Cullifer, founder Americans for a Stronger Navy
As America marks the Navy’s 250th birthday, Captain Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.) recent essay reminds us this milestone is not just a moment to celebrate—it’s a call to action. From two ships in 1775 to the world’s most powerful fleet, the Navy has carried our flag, defended our freedom, and guarded the arteries of global commerce. But as Sadler rightly warns, the next few years will not be smooth sailing.
A Fleet Stretched Thin
Today, over a third of our fleet is more than 20 years old. Shipbuilding delays and maintenance backlogs are pushing the limits of readiness. Our sailors, the heart of the fleet, continue to perform with unmatched skill and resolve—but they are doing so aboard aging platforms. China is fast closing the gap, and they are not waiting for us.
Lessons Written in Blood
History teaches that there are no cheap shortcuts to sea power. Survivability and lethality come from hard-earned experience, superior training, and a robust industrial base. Sadler recalls the typhoon of 1944 that claimed three destroyers and hundreds of lives—a stark reminder that nature and conflict alike punish complacency. Competence, leadership, and technical mastery remain our sailors’ greatest weapons.
For the Skeptics: China’s Long Game Is Already Underway
To those who still doubt that China poses more than a distant “threat,” here is a sharper look at how Beijing is already laying the foundations of a rival maritime order—and why ignoring it is perilous.
“Unrestricted Warfare” and Strategic Pluralism
Chinese strategists have long argued that war is no longer limited to the battlefield. Unrestricted Warfare (1999) openly promoted using economic, cyber, legal, and informational tools to weaken stronger powers—a doctrine now reflected in Beijing’s global behavior.
Dual-Use Shipbuilding and External Support
China’s commercial and naval shipyards work side-by-side, leveraging subsidies and state control to produce more hulls than the rest of the world combined. These facilities give Beijing the ability to surge production during crisis—something the U.S. industrial base cannot yet match.
The “Great Underwater Wall” and Maritime Surveillance
Beijing is constructing a vast undersea sensor network across the South China Sea—an integrated web of hydrophones, drones, and seabed nodes designed to detect U.S. and allied submarines. It’s surveillance on a scale the world has never seen.
“Cabbage” Tactics and Incremental Control
China surrounds disputed islands layer by layer—fishing boats, coast-guard cutters, and finally warships—gradually converting “gray zones” into permanent possessions without firing a shot.
The “String of Pearls” Strategy
Ports and logistics hubs from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic give China reach far beyond its shores. Each node tightens its grip over the world’s vital maritime choke points.
Global Projection and Signaling
China’s navy now sails the Tasman Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and beyond—exercising in waters where it once had no business. These deployments make one thing clear: China’s maritime ambitions are global, not regional.
Don’t Take My Word For It — Listen to the Experts
Over the past 24 months, Americans for a Stronger Navy has been mapping a story few citizens have ever been shown: how China’s campaign against the United States unfolded, who knew what and when, and what it will take to pull back from the brink. We didn’t start with opinions—we started with evidence. Here’s what the experts have been saying for years, and how their warnings fit together.
Strategic Intent and Military Buildup
Admiral James Lyons Jr., former commander of the Pacific Fleet, said what few in Washington wanted to hear as early as 2013: “We’re in our second Cold War with another communist totalitarian regime.” He warned that China has “built the navy specifically to go against the United States Navy” and that their anti-ship ballistic missiles are “not geared to go against the Bangladesh navy.” When a fleet commander speaks that bluntly on national television, that’s not politics—that’s professional judgment.
Brigadier General Douglas P. Wickert has shown how far that judgment has proven correct. In the Gobi Desert, China has built full-scale mock-ups of Taiwan’s Taichung International Airport and a “one-for-one silhouette of the Ford-class aircraft carrier” for target practice. They are not hiding their intentions. They are practicing to sink our ships and invade our allies.
The scale of China’s buildup is staggering. As Sadler and others have documented: “They have 230 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States in terms of shipyard infrastructure and potential output. Just one shipyard in China last year alone, in 2024, built more tonnage of ships than the U.S. did since the end of World War II.” One shipyard outproduced our entire nation’s post-WWII shipbuilding in a single year. That’s not competition—that’s a wake-up call.
A Time for Revival
The path forward demands both vision and accountability. We need new ships—but also a paradigm shift in how America thinks about sea power, alliance networks, and industrial mobilization. Unmanned systems, resilient architectures, and faster acquisition must be part of the solution. So must shipyard revitalization, recruitment, and public understanding.
Why Americans Should Care
A strong Navy isn’t about seeking conflict—it’s about preventing it. The sea connects our economy, allies, and security. Every container safely delivered, every undersea cable protected, every freedom-of-navigation operation maintained depends on a Navy that’s ready, credible, and resilient. The choices we make now will determine whether we can deter China in 2027 and beyond—or whether others will write the next chapter of maritime history for us.
Charting the Next 250 Years
As we honor our Navy’s proud history, we must also rally around its future. That means bringing Americans into the conversation—not just policymakers and admirals, but citizens, veterans, and industry alike. Our sailors deserve ships that match their courage and leaders who match their commitment.
Sadler’s message is clear: vigilance and strength are the surest remedies against any adversary’s ambitions.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter—a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late. Let’s roll.
Somewhere in the South China Sea right now, a Filipino coast guard crew is preparing to head back to Second Thomas Shoal. They know what’s waiting—Chinese vessels that will shadow them, harass them, maybe hit them with water cannons or attempt to ram their boats.
They’re going anyway. They’re bringing supplies to their troops stationed on a rusting ship grounded on a reef that lies well within Philippine waters, recognized under international law.
They’re going because some things are worth standing up for. Because sovereignty matters. Because the rule of law at sea isn’t optional.
As the United States Navy marks its 250th anniversary, there’s no better example of why we exist than the U.S.–Philippine partnership—complicated, hard-won, and stronger than ever.
The Long Road to Partnership
Our relationship with the Philippines began painfully. After defeating Spain in 1898, America annexed the Philippines. Filipinos who had fought for independence resisted fiercely. The Philippine–American War was brutal—thousands of U.S. service members killed, tens of thousands of Filipino combatants lost, and many more civilians dead.
That legacy still shapes Filipino attitudes toward foreign military presence. Their wariness isn’t ingratitude—it’s rooted in history.
But World War II forged a different bond. Filipino and American forces fought side by side at Bataan and Corregidor. An estimated one million Filipino civilians died during the occupation. General MacArthur’s promise—“I shall return”— and the liberation that followed forged bonds in blood that endure.
After independence in 1946, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base became crown jewels of U.S. power in the Pacific. During Vietnam, Subic Bay handled over 200 ship visits a month. These bases were economic engines but also symbols of resentment. By 1992, rising nationalism and environmental damage forced the U.S. military to leave.
For two decades, the alliance drifted. Then China changed the equation.
What Brought Us Back
Beijing’s growing assertiveness—seizing Scarborough Shoal in 2012, building militarized artificial islands, and harassing Filipino fishermen—forced Manila to turn again to Washington.
The 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) provided rotational access to Philippine bases without creating new U.S. installations—a distinction that matters for Filipino sovereignty. By 2023, the Philippines had opened nine EDCA sites, facing both Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Today, U.S. and Philippine forces conduct more than 500 joint activities each year. The Balikatan exercises now involve 14,000 troops in full-scale scenarios. New U.S. funding—$500 million in 2024—underscores how central this partnership has become.
The Risks We Should Acknowledge
No alliance is without risks.
The 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty could pull the U.S. into conflict over reefs or shoals. Americans could find themselves at war in disputes they barely understand.
Some argue we should fix our own maintenance backlogs and shipbuilding delays before investing abroad. Others warn our expanded presence could accelerate Chinese militarization instead of deterring it. And Philippine politics—sometimes turbulent—carry reputational risk for the U.S.
These are real concerns. But the alternative—a South China Sea dominated by Beijing, where international law collapses and small democracies are swallowed by larger neighbors—is far more dangerous.
The Bigger Picture: China’s Campaign
The Philippines is not the issue—it’s the line in the sand. Incidents at Second Thomas Shoal are part of a systematic campaign of Chinese aggression.
Harassment of U.S. forces: Military lasers aimed at U.S. aircraft, fighters buzzing within feet of American planes, warships cutting across our destroyers.
Rapid naval buildup: The PLA Navy is on track to field over 395 ships by 2025—outnumbering our Navy in its own region.
Encirclement of Taiwan: Beijing rehearses blockades and missile strikes, preparing to coerce neighbors and challenge U.S. access.
Cyber warfare: Groups like Volt Typhoon have penetrated U.S. power grids, water systems, and telecom networks. These intrusions aren’t hypothetical—they’re pre-positioning for conflict.
Disinformation and espionage: From spy balloons to propaganda campaigns, Beijing is shaping the information battlefield.
The message is clear: this is not about a shoal, it’s about the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
Why Americans Should Care
Freedom of Navigation: Nearly a third of global trade flows through the South China Sea. If Beijing can dictate access there, every sea lane becomes vulnerable.
Economic Security: This isn’t just about faraway reefs. Those sea lanes carry the fuel that powers your car, the medicine in your cabinet, and the goods that stock your shelves. During COVID, Americans got a hard lesson in what happens when supply chains break—higher prices, empty shelves, and uncertainty.
If China controls those routes, disruption won’t be temporary. It would mean sustained leverage over the American economy: higher grocery and gas prices, layoffs in U.S. factories, and rising costs on everything from mortgages to credit cards.
Control of the South China Sea isn’t an abstract problem overseas. It’s leverage over the American economy—and your family’s budget.
Alliance Credibility: Our 1951 treaty with Manila sends a message to allies everywhere—do U.S. commitments mean anything?
Democratic Solidarity: Manila is modernizing, partnering with Japan and Australia, and standing up to pressure. Supporting them means supporting a network of democracies.
The Choice Ahead
For 250 years, the United States Navy has defended freedom of the seas. At its best, it has enabled smaller nations to prosper without massive militaries of their own.
Today, Filipino coast guard crews at Second Thomas Shoal embody the courage and loyalty of a steadfast ally. They aren’t backing down, even when outnumbered.
The question is whether America will do the same.
As we celebrate our Navy’s 250th anniversary, we face a choice: Do we stand with democracies under pressure? Do we defend international law at sea? Do we maintain a Navy strong enough to prevent wars rather than fight them?
I know my answer. It’s why I write. It’s why Americans for a Stronger Navy exists. Because a strong Navy is what allows the world to prosper under the rule of law—not the rule of the biggest bully.
A Quarter Millennium of Service On October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress resolved to establish a swift sailing vessel armed with carriage guns to defend American commerce from British forces. From that moment, the United States Navy was born. Two and a half centuries later, the Navy remains at the heart of American security and prosperity.
This week, despite a government shutdown that has paused some ceremonies, the Navy will celebrate its 250th birthday in Philadelphia — the city where both the Navy and Marine Corps trace their roots. Ships will parade on the Delaware River, bands will play, and the public will tour vessels new and old, from USS Arlington to the historic battleship New Jersey. Flyovers, displays, football, and fireworks will honor the sailors who have stood the watch in times of peace, crisis, and war.
Heritage and Resilience The Navy’s legacy is rich with examples of ingenuity and determination. We’ve told the story of USS R-14, whose crew in 1921 literally sailed their submarine home when fuel ran out. We’ve revisited Midway, where pilots flew through chaos and confusion to deliver a decisive victory. We’ve remembered Cold War destroyer sailors who carried out missions day after day with little fanfare but enormous consequences.
These stories remind us that the Navy’s strength lies not only in steel, but in sailors — their resilience, creativity, and courage.
Doing More With Less Today, we ask much of those sailors. The U.S. Navy remains the most powerful in the world by tonnage and capability, but it is no longer the largest by sheer numbers. Our adversaries are building at speed, while we face strained shipyards, aging infrastructure, and stretched resources.
As Vice Adm. John Gumbleton said ahead of the 250th celebrations, the heritage of “mighty warships and service members who sailed proudly at sea” continues today. But heritage and resilience are not enough without investment. Our sailors are doing more with less — and that cannot remain the strategy for America’s future.
Why Americans Should Care The oceans are lifelines of trade, energy, and security. A strong Navy keeps those lifelines secure and deters those who would threaten them. Philadelphia may be the birthplace of the Navy, but the mission it carries belongs to all Americans.
A Call to Action Happy 250th, U.S. Navy. We honor your past, salute your sailors, and celebrate your legacy. But the best way to mark this anniversary is to ensure the next 250 years are just as strong. That means supporting shipbuilding, revitalizing industry, and giving our sailors the tools they need to prevail.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
Chart of the disposition of ships the night of 8 August
Bill Cullifer, Founder
Introduction
On this solemn anniversary of the Battle of Savo Island, Americans for a Stronger Navy joins our Australian allies in remembering the courage and sacrifice of those who gave their lives in the dark waters off Guadalcanal on August 9, 1942.
The loss of HMAS Canberra and her 84 brave sailors, alongside over 900 American naval personnel, represents more than numbers—it represents the ultimate sacrifice made by free nations standing together against tyranny. This battle, while tactically a defeat, demonstrated the unbreakable bond between Australian and American naval forces that continues to secure the Pacific today.
The lessons of Savo Island—the critical importance of naval readiness, advanced training, and technological superiority—remain as relevant now as they were 82 years ago. As we face new challenges in the Pacific, from contested sea lanes to emerging threats, we honor these fallen heroes by ensuring our Navy maintains the strength, capability, and resolve they died defending.
Their sacrifice reminds us that freedom of navigation and maritime security are not abstract concepts, but principles worth defending with our lives. Today, as then, a strong Navy remains America’s first line of defense and our greatest tool for preserving peace through strength.
We stand with Australia in remembering these heroes and recommit ourselves to the naval strength that protects both our nations.
A Salute to Those Who Remember
To all who pause today to honor these fallen sailors—veterans, families, historians, students, and citizens both American and Australian—thank you. Your remembrance keeps their sacrifice alive and their lessons relevant. Whether you’re a descendant of a Savo Island survivor, a naval history enthusiast, or simply someone who understands that freedom isn’t free, your attention to this anniversary matters.
Special recognition goes to our Australian friends, military historians, naval societies, and educators who ensure these stories continue to be told. In an age of shortened attention spans, those who preserve and share naval history perform a vital service to both our nations.
Why Average Americans Should Care About the Battle of Savo Island
Economic Security The Pacific carries over $1.4 trillion in annual trade vital to American prosperity. These are the same trade routes where sailors died in 1942. Today, 40% of America’s imports cross these waters, along with critical shipping lanes for oil, gas, and renewable energy components that power our economy.
Historical Lessons for Today Savo Island showed the cost of being caught unprepared—a lesson directly applicable to current Pacific tensions. The battle demonstrated why strong allies like Australia are essential to American security, and how technological superiority matters. Japanese superiority in night-fighting capabilities led to their victory; today’s tech gaps could prove equally costly.
Personal Connection Many American families have ancestors who served in the Pacific Theater. Understanding what military service truly costs helps inform decisions about defense spending and foreign policy. The battle reminds us that the freedoms Americans enjoy came at tremendous cost and weren’t guaranteed by geography alone.
Current Relevance The same strategic waterways remain crucial to American interests today. Modern tensions in the South China Sea echo the naval competition of WWII, and historical battles like Savo Island inform current debates about naval funding and capabilities.
Strengthening Allied Partnerships
The Battle of Savo Island reminds us that America’s security depends not just on our own naval strength, but on the strength of our alliances. Today, this means:
The AUKUS Partnership with Australia and the UK builds on the naval cooperation forged in battles like Savo Island, sharing submarine technology that strengthens all three nations. Joint training exercises with Australian, Japanese, and other Pacific allies ensure we won’t repeat the communication failures of 1942 that contributed to the defeat.
Shared intelligence networks and integrated defense relationships born from WWII sacrifices now provide early warning and coordinated responses to regional threats. Allied shipbuilding and defense manufacturing strengthen both nations’ naval capabilities, creating an industrial base that supports deterrence.
The Battle of Savo Island isn’t just history—it’s a reminder that American prosperity and security depend on naval strength and strong alliances. The sailors who died there died protecting the world we live in today. Their legacy lives on not just in our memory, but in the enduring partnerships their sacrifice helped forge.
If we want peace, we must master this new domain.
It’s time to embrace it. It’s time to invest. It’s time to lead.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter—a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
On September 27, 2023, Congressman Mike Waltz published “America Needs a National Maritime Strategy,” warning that the United States lacked the shipbuilding capacity and strategic alignment needed to counter China and sustain a maritime advantage.
Nearly two years later, that warning has materialized into policy.
On April 9–10, 2025, the White House issued the executive order “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” launching the Maritime Action Plan and creating the new Office of Shipbuilding under the National Security Council.
Then, on July 31, 2025, South Korea’s Finance Minister confirmed the formal launch of Make America Shipbuilding Great Again (MASGA)—a $150 billion industrial partnership investing in U.S. shipyards, workforce development, and dual-use naval-commercial platforms.
What MASGA Does
MASGA is the largest public-private shipbuilding effort since the Cold War and includes:
Investment from South Korean giants like Hanwha Group into American yards (including the acquisition of Philly Shipyard)
Joint U.S.–ROK workforce training programs to close skilled labor gaps
New production of replenishment, patrol, and logistics vessels for both Navy and commercial use
Maintenance and drydock support for U.S. Navy ships on U.S. soil
It’s a big step forward—but one that must be matched with urgency.
Admiral Caudle’s Stark Warning: “We Need a 100% Industrial Surge”
On July 29, 2025, during his confirmation hearing for Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle delivered a sobering message to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
To meet U.S. obligations under the AUKUS agreement—selling up to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia while sustaining our own fleet—the Navy must double its submarine output:
Current production: ~1.3 Virginia-class submarines per year
Required output: 2.3 per year
“We need a transformational improvement,” Caudle testified. “Not a 10 percent improvement, not a 20 percent—a 100 percent improvement.”
He added that international partnerships would be essential as the U.S. works to rebuild its organic capacity:
“There are no magic beans to that. The solution space must open up. We need ships today.”
Committee Chairman Roger Wicker stressed creativity, outsourcing, and urgency. Admiral Caudle agreed, calling for “an all-hands-on-deck approach.”
This is precisely where MASGA comes in.
Why MASGA Matters for the Navy
MASGA’s structure provides the kind of foreign capacity support and workforce relief Caudle explicitly called for. It aligns directly with the Navy’s urgent need for:
Surge production of submarines and surface combatants
Expanded maintenance infrastructure
Shipyard partnerships to relieve domestic pressure
Congressman Waltz anticipated this crisis in 2023. MASGA is the first large-scale step toward solving it.
The Broader Navy Production Challenge
Submarines aren’t the only problem. The Navy’s broader industrial needs remain acute:
Destroyer production has slipped behind plan; the Navy aims to buy 51 new destroyers over the next 30 years, but current yards are falling short.
Aircraft carriers like the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN‑79) are years behind schedule.
The Navy’s long-term fleet goal of 381 ships by 2042 will remain aspirational without massive industrial acceleration.
And even with MASGA, the Navy is still contending with an aging Military Sealift Command, an undersized Merchant Marine, and shipyard repair backlogs.
Modernization Means Autonomy—And We’re Behind
Modernizing the fleet doesn’t just mean more hulls—it means smarter platforms. The future of naval warfare will be shaped by autonomous surface and undersea vehicles, from uncrewed missile boats to AI-enabled minehunters and refueling drones. China is already fielding swarms of semi-autonomous systems in contested waters. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy’s efforts under programs like the Medium and Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV/LUSV) remain limited by slow procurement and industrial bottlenecks. MASGA can accelerate the integration of autonomous systems by expanding modular shipbuilding capacity, repurposing civilian infrastructure, and enabling faster tech deployment across the fleet. Without autonomy, we fall behind—not just in numbers, but in survivability and battlefield adaptability.
What Must Come Next
MASGA is a launchpad, not a destination. To restore maritime power, the U.S. must:
Expand submarine production Reach 2.3 attack subs/year by 2030. This requires labor, capital, and process modernization on a scale not seen in decades.
Accelerate surface fleet output Ramp up destroyers, amphibious vessels, and support ships. Congress must deliver multi-year procurement and budget certainty.
Fix regulation and finance Incentivize private capital to flow into U.S. shipyards, not Chinese ones. Close loopholes and create new maritime investment channels for Americans.
Grow the skilled workforce Welders, naval architects, systems engineers—we need tens of thousands more. Joint international training must be paired with U.S. educational investments.
Modernize the Merchant Marine We once had over 5,000 ships. Today, we have fewer than 80 engaged in international trade. This is a critical national vulnerability.
Closing Message: MASGA Is a Start, Not a Solution
MASGA validates the vision Mike Waltz articulated in 2023. It meets Admiral Caudle’s call for relief through allied partnerships. It aligns with the Navy’s production and readiness needs.
But China is still building. Delays persist. And the decision space for national security continues to shrink.
Let’s not wait another decade to act like a maritime power. Let’s build, now.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter—a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
Let’s move beyond slogans. Let’s build understanding, accountability, and strength—before the next crisis comes knocking.
