The Navy’s future gets decided in the next four months. Not in a speech, not in a hearing — in a conference committee most Americans have never heard of, deciding whether $350 billion actually gets spent on American shipyards or gets quietly stripped out before anyone notices.
Here’s what’s happening, and what we’re asking you to do about it.
What’s Actually at Stake
The FY27 NDAA — the annual bill that funds the military — carries the core pieces of the SHIPS for America Act inside it. Right now, the House and Senate versions don’t match, and a small group of lawmakers in a conference committee will decide which pieces survive, get watered down, or disappear entirely. That includes funding that could total up to $350 billion for shipbuilding, and a proposed Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival — a dedicated congressional body to keep this problem from falling through the cracks the way it has for decades.
None of that happens automatically. Bills this size get shaped by who shows up — and right now, the loudest voices in Washington on this issue are the lobbyists paid to slow it down.
Three Things You Can Do Right Now
1. Call your rep before the NDAA conference.
Use our Contact Your Representative tool to find your member of Congress and reach their office directly. Tell them you want the shipbuilding provisions kept in the final NDAA — not traded away in conference.
2. Back the Select Committee for Maritime Revival.
Congress created single-purpose committees before when the stakes demanded it. Shipbuilding capacity — the thing that decides whether America can surge sealift in a crisis — deserves the same standing attention, not a rotating cast of committees that each own a slice of the problem and none of the whole picture.
3. Make Congress pass the $350B.
This isn’t a blank check — it’s the difference between shipyards with the capacity to build and shipyards limping along on year-to-year funding fights. Tell your rep this number matters, and that “we’ll get to it next year” isn’t good enough anymore.
Why Now
Conference committees move fast and mostly out of public view. By the time a compromise bill becomes public, it’s usually too late to change it. The next four months are the window — not because we’re saying so, but because that’s how the calendar actually works this year.
Second in a series on the Maritime Security Advisor role created by the SHIPS for America Act.
In our last piece, we made the institutional case for why the Maritime Security Advisor role matters: a new Executive Office of the President post, chairing a Maritime Security Board with authority spanning Defense, Commerce, State, and the Coast Guard—the closest thing American sea power has ever had to a single point of accountability [1]. That piece deliberately named no candidate. This one does.
We believe Captain Brent Sadler (U.S. Navy, Retired) is the right person for this role. Before laying out why, we want to address something directly rather than let it surface as a discovery later.
He Didn’t Just Study This Problem. He Proposed the Solution.
Sadler is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security. In a July 2025 report, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” he wrote the recommendation that a Maritime Security Advisor be named—co-equal to the National Security Advisor and the Director of the National Economic Council—and argued the President “should not wait” for legislation to make it happen [2].
That means the case we’re making here isn’t “a qualified person happens to be available.” It’s narrower and more direct: the person who designed this office is also, in our view, the person suited to run it. We think that’s a strength worth stating plainly, not a coincidence to talk around. Anyone can point to a resume. Few people can point to the institutional argument for the job itself, in their own name, a year before the position existed in statute.
The Rest of the Case
Set the authorship point aside, and the conventional qualifications are still substantial. Sadler was nominated by the White House for MARAD Administrator in March 2025—a nomination later redirected to another candidate, but one that means the hardest part of any new appointment, a completed White House vetting process, is largely already behind him [3].
His career built the cross-agency fluency this specific role demands: 26 years in the Navy, including operational tours as a nuclear submariner and service as a military diplomat in the Indo-Pacific helping direct billions in regional defense funding under the rebalance initiative [3]. That is not a resume built around one narrow lane of maritime policy. It’s built around coordinating defense, diplomatic, and industrial priorities simultaneously—precisely what the Maritime Security Board exists to do.
It’s also not a case he’s making for the first time under pressure. Sadler is the author of two books laying out this same argument at length: U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat (2023 Naval Institute Press Author of the Year, National Security Book Award finalist), and the more recent Naval Power in Action: Seizing the Initiative in the New Cold War with China [5]. He has also testified before Congress, including before the House Foreign Affairs Committee [6]. Between the books, the Heritage report, and his record of testimony, this is a case he has been building in public, consistently, for years—not a position adopted for the occasion.
The Maritime Security Advisor isn’t a research fellowship. It’s an execution role. The strongest evidence someone can do it isn’t that they’ve written about the problem—it’s that they’ve already been trusted to act on it, at exactly this altitude, before.
Where This Stands Right Now
The FY27 NDAA, which carries the SHIPS Act’s core provisions, remains stalled in the Senate as of this writing [4]. As we noted in our last piece, that’s not actually a reason to wait: Sadler’s own 2025 report argued the President could name this Advisor today, tied to the existing April 2025 executive order on maritime dominance, without Congress acting at all [2]. If that argument was right then, it’s right now—a stalled bill doesn’t change who should hold the chair once it exists, whether that happens by statute or by executive action.
What We’re Asking
We’re not asking for a formal nomination process to be short-circuited, and we’re not claiming inside knowledge of how this decision will be made. We’re making a public case, on the merits, for a specific person—because we think the public argument matters as much as the private one, and because decisions like this benefit from being made in the open rather than settled quietly.
If you agree, add your name. We’ll be sharing the count as it grows, and using it to make the case directly to the people who can act on it.
References
[1] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “The Case for a Maritime Security Advisor,” StrongerNavy.org, September 2026.
[2] Brent D. Sadler, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” The Heritage Foundation, July 24, 2025.
[3] Brent Sadler biography, The Heritage Foundation staff page; White House MARAD Administrator nomination, March 2025.
[4] H.R. 8800 (FY27 NDAA), House passage 216-212, July 22, 2026; S. 4784 cloture failed 50-46, July 14, 2026; no further Senate floor action as of Sept. 2026.
[5] Brent D. Sadler, U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat, Naval Institute Press, 2023; Naval Power in Action: Seizing the Initiative in the New Cold War with China, Naval Institute Press, 2025.
[6] Brent D. Sadler, witness biography, House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, April 29, 2021.
A recent C-SPAN clip of President Trump discussing South Korea has been circulating, and it’s worth pausing on — not for the politics, but for the arithmetic. Trump described renegotiating South Korea’s cost-sharing agreement for U.S. troop protection, contrasting the roughly $3 billion Seoul agreed to pay against an initial ask of $10 billion, and questioning why the U.S. maintains 39,000 troops defending a wealthy ally that declined to assist with a related Middle East operation [1]. He extended the same complaint to NATO, noting the hundreds of billions the U.S. spends defending Europe from Russia [1].
Set aside whether you think that negotiation was handled well. The underlying question — who pays for the protection America provides? — is one we’ve been asking about naval power for three years, and it’s one the country can no longer afford to leave unanswered.
The Number That Changes the Conversation
As of this month, the U.S. gross national debt stands at roughly $40 trillion — up more than $2.8 trillion in the past year alone, or about $7.9 billion in new borrowing every single day [2]. Net interest now consumes nearly 14 percent of federal outlays, a share the Congressional Budget Office expects to keep climbing [2]. Debt held by the public is already above 100 percent of GDP, and CBO’s own long-term outlook shows that ratio climbing toward 120 percent by the mid-2030s absent reform [3].
That’s the fiscal backdrop against which every naval modernization request, every shipbuilding appropriation, and every forward-deployed carrier strike group now has to be justified. Taxpayers are not wrong to push back on open-ended commitments funded by more borrowing. As Washington debates spending, the Navy’s own leadership has been blunt that this is fundamentally a resource issue, with the Chief of Naval Operations citing a Congressional Budget Office estimate that an adequate fleet requires something on the order of $38 billion a year in shipbuilding funding alone [4] — funding that has to come from somewhere.
The Gulf Act: Burden-Sharing Where It Belongs
This is exactly the gap the Gulf Maritime Protection and Burden-Sharing Act is built to close. The Strait of Hormuz example is almost too on-the-nose: the U.S. Navy underwrites the security of a chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil, much of it bound for nations that are not proportionally sharing the cost of keeping that lane open. China alone receives well over a third of the crude that transits the Strait, with India, Japan, and South Korea rounding out the bulk of the remainder — while the United States itself, thanks to domestic shale production and a supply chain built on Canada and Mexico, takes in only a small fraction of that flow [5].
The Iran war earlier this year gave us a live test of what happens when that lane actually closes, and the results make the case for burden-sharing sharper, not weaker. China and Japan largely rode out the closure on strategic reserves and pipeline diversification; India surprisingly weathered it too, on the strength of a decade of stockpile-building [6]. But none of that resilience came free. It meant months of elevated prices, emergency reserve drawdowns, and — for economies like Vietnam with thin buffers — real shortages and rationing [6]. Self-insuring against a closed strait is expensive and imperfect. A functioning U.S. Navy presence that keeps the strait open in the first place is the far cheaper alternative — which is precisely why it’s in these nations’ own economic interest to help fund it, not simply a matter of fairness to the American taxpayer. Trump’s complaint about allies who “don’t want to get involved” in guarding their own energy lifeline is, functionally, the same diagnosis the Gulf Act was written to fix. The Act doesn’t ask American taxpayers to absorb more debt to police a chokepoint for other nations’ benefit — it asks the beneficiaries to pay a proportional share for a service that is, by their own recent experience, worth far more to them than its cost.
The SEAS Act: A Demand Signal That Doesn’t Touch the Debt
The Strategic SEAS Act applies the identical logic domestically. Rather than asking Congress to appropriate still more borrowed dollars into shipbuilding, the Act’s Strategic Technology Responsibility Contribution draws a modest, offset-eligible assessment from U.S. companies with the deepest revenue dependence on China’s economy — the same offshoring era that hollowed out American shipyard capacity in the first place. It creates a dedicated, predictable demand signal for shipbuilders, which is the single thing industry has said it needs most to justify capital investment, without adding a dollar to the $40 trillion balance sheet [7].
That “no new debt” framing matters more today than it did when we first proposed it. Fiscal conservatives, China hawks, and taxpayers who are simply tired of watching the debt clock spin are, for once, aligned on the same conclusion: national defense funding mechanisms that don’t require more borrowing are worth building.
Builders, Not Critics
We’re not in the business of scoring political points off a South Korea negotiation. We’re in the business of pointing out that the underlying math — protection without proportional payment — shows up everywhere, from allied burden-sharing to Wall Street’s China exposure to a shipbuilding budget the Navy itself says is underfunded by billions a year. The Gulf Act and the SEAS Act are the constructive answer: mechanisms that ask the actual beneficiaries of American sea power, foreign and domestic, to help sustain it — instead of asking an already over-leveraged taxpayer to do it alone.
References
[1] C-SPAN, “Trump says Kim Jong Un has responded to overtures,” transcript, 2026. [2] Joint Economic Committee (Republicans), Monthly Debt Update, August 2026. [3] Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036, February 2026. [4] Remarks by Adm. Daryl Caudle, CNO, West 2026 conference, San Diego, February 12, 2026, as reported by Janes. [5] International Energy Agency, “Strait of Hormuz Factsheet,” February 2026; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Q1 2025 destination data. [6] Gulf International Forum, “Hormuz Disruptions and Asia’s Energy Resilience,” March 2026; The National Interest, “How China Turned the Strait of Hormuz Crisis into an Advantage,” June 2026; India Narrative, “The Strait That Didn’t Break India,” July 2026. [7] Americans for a Stronger Navy / Center for Maritime Strategy, “Defense Reinvestment as Naval Strategy,” March 2026.
Today is National Maritime Day — May 22 — and for the first time since Richard Nixon sat in the Oval Office, there is genuine presidential attention on reviving America’s maritime and naval power. A 30-year Navy shipbuilding plan. Executive orders. Legislative proposals. And now, a compelling call from one of Washington’s sharpest naval analysts for the President himself to break the legislative logjam.
The vision is finally taking shape. The ambition is real. But a bold maritime revival still has a critical gap at its center: how do you sustain it?
Sadler’s TRUMP Act: The Right Diagnosis
On May 20 — two days before National Maritime Day — Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Defense, published a powerful op-ed in The Washington Times calling for President Trump to invoke his constitutional authority under the Recommendation Clause (Article II, Section 3) to personally propose legislation to Congress.[1]
Sadler’s argument is straightforward: the SHIPS for America Act — a bipartisan, bicameral bill first introduced in December 2024 — has stalled in Congress. Again. Presidential sponsorship, he argues, is the only force capable of breaking that logjam before Congress heads into summer recess and political attention fractures.
He proposes calling it the Transformative Revival and Urgent Maritime Program — the TRUMP Act. The branding is deliberate, and Sadler knows exactly what he’s doing.
His three modifications to the existing SHIPS Act framework are sound:
Adjusted incentives for workforce and shipbuilding infrastructure reinvestment
Regulatory relief through Maritime Prosperity Zones to accelerate industrial investment
A new Maritime Department consolidating the Coast Guard, MARAD, FMC, and NOAA into a unified commercial maritime revival body
“More navel-gazing in Washington is unacceptable. With Congress’ summer recess fast approaching, national political attention will shift from bipartisan endeavors, such as a national maritime revival, to vote-seeking.” — Brent Sadler, The Washington Times, May 20, 2026 [1]
He’s right. And the constitutional argument is well-constructed. James Madison’s Federalist No. 47, FDR’s first 100 days, Eisenhower’s Congressional Relations office — Sadler lays the groundwork for a president who likes to move fast.
Notably, Sadler elaborated further on the Lunch Hour Podcast this week, framing the entire challenge as an engineering problem first, a business problem in the middle, and an engineering problem again at the end. On the Jones Act debate consuming Washington, he was direct: the real problem is that “leadership and industry have not had the appropriate focus or incentive structures.”[2] That is a precise diagnosis — and it points directly to the gap this article addresses.
The Navy’s 30-Year Plan: The Ambition Is There
Sadler’s op-ed lands against a significant backdrop. On May 11, the Navy published its 2026 Shipbuilding Plan — a 30-year vision for what it calls the “Golden Fleet.”[3] The fiscal year 2027 request alone is $68.5 billion, a 57 percent increase over the prior year.[4]
The plan explicitly acknowledges what advocates have been saying for years: decades of inconsistent demand and misaligned priorities left the fleet smaller, the shipyards atrophied, and American workers facing unacceptable risk.[3] Executive Order 14269, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” and the February 2026 Maritime Action Plan are cited as the catalyst for a long-overdue reindustrialization.[3]
That’s the right framing. The harder question is whether the funding architecture can sustain the ambition across political cycles.
The Pier Review: Even Navalists Are Sounding the Alarm
On the same day Sadler published his TRUMP Act proposal, the Center for Maritime Strategy — the Navy League’s policy arm — released a landmark 141-page report titled Pier Review: Leveraging the Allied Maritime Industrial Base for U.S. Shipbuilding.[5] Authored by a team including Steve Wills, Admiral James Foggo, and Nick Weising, with a foreword by 77th Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite, the report delivers a sobering conclusion: the United States cannot rebuild its maritime industrial base alone.
The Pier Review examined allied shipbuilding nations — South Korea, Italy, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — and returned with a frank assessment. The domestic industrial base is so severely hollowed that a bridge strategy involving allied yards, allied supply chains, and allied skilled workers may be necessary while American capacity is rebuilt.
These are not critics of American seapower. These are its most dedicated advocates. That they felt compelled to reach this conclusion is itself a measure of how deep the hollowing runs.
The Pier Review cites Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy as the model worth emulating — a multi-decade, consistent demand signal that ended the boom and bust cycle and gave the industrial base something durable to build around. The report calls for the United States to create a similar structure.
What neither the Pier Review nor the TRUMP Act provides is the funding mechanism that makes that structure mandatory and durable across administrations. That is the gap the SEAS Act is designed to close.
The Sustainability Gap No One Is Talking About
Here is what every current maritime proposal — the SHIPS Act, the TRUMP Act, the 30-year plan — has in common: they are all dependent on annual congressional appropriations. Fund it one year, gut it the next. That is precisely the cycle that produced the hollow fleet we are now trying to rebuild.
The last time sustained naval investment actually worked was 1982 to 1992 — a decade of consistent political will, consistent funding, and consistent production signals to the industrial base. Shipyards plan in decades, not fiscal years. They hire and train workforces over years, not budget cycles. The industrial base doesn’t respond to hope or headlines. It responds to durable, multi-year demand signals it can build a business around.
Presidential legislation — even landmark presidential legislation — does not by itself solve that problem. A bill passed in one Congress can be defunded by the next. The SHIPS Act stalled once. The TRUMP Act, if passed, could face the same gravitational pull the moment political attention shifts, a budget fight erupts, or a new administration arrives with different priorities.
That is the sustainability gap. And it is the one gap that no current proposal directly addresses.
The SEAS Act: Closing the Sustainability Gap
The Strategic SEAS Act — Shipbuilding Economic Acceleration and Security Act — is designed to do precisely that.
Rather than competing for annual appropriations against entitlements, healthcare, and every other priority in the federal budget, the SEAS Act proposes a 2 percent Strategic Technology Responsibility Contribution from U.S. companies with significant revenue from China operations, directed into a dedicated Naval Modernization account.[6]
This is a structural funding mechanism, not a budget line item. It creates the kind of durable, mandatory investment signal that the shipbuilding industrial base can actually plan around — the modern equivalent of the sustained commitment that made 1982 to 1992 work, and the American answer to the Canadian model the Pier Review recommends.
The logic behind the contribution is grounded in history. The “Triple Whammy” — the End of History complacency after 1989, the responsible stakeholder framework that opened WTO access in 2001, and the mass migration of American corporate manufacturing to China — created the conditions for naval hollowing.[7] American companies that benefited from that migration helped create the problem. The SEAS Act creates a mechanism for them to contribute to the solution.
Sadler himself named the core problem on the Lunch Hour Podcast: the wrong incentive structures. The SEAS Act corrects that — not through legislation alone, but through a mandatory funding architecture that changes the calculus permanently.
Former House Select Committee on China Chairman Mike Gallagher documented the PRC’s systematic exploitation of U.S. export control gaps and argued that Commerce consistently prioritized industry revenue over national security.[8] Palantir’s “The Technological Republic” — currently a national conversation — makes a parallel argument about Silicon Valley’s moral debt to the hard power that underwrites its commercial freedom.[9]
The SEAS Act turns that argument into a funding architecture.
National Maritime Day 2026: Vision Needs Architecture
Brent Sadler is right that presidential action is needed, and the constitutional case he makes is compelling. The TRUMP Act framework — if it moves — will be the most significant maritime legislation in a generation. The Pier Review is right that the industrial base crisis is deep and requires a generational commitment to fix.
But a generational commitment cannot be built on an annual appropriation. The 30-year shipbuilding plan requires a 30-year funding architecture. Presidential legislation opens the door. The SEAS Act keeps it open regardless of which party controls Congress or who sits in the Oval Office.
National Maritime Day has a theme each year. This year’s should be simple: build the vision, build the architecture to sustain it.
The SEAS Act is not a competitor to Sadler’s proposal or the Pier Review’s recommendations. It is the missing piece that makes them last.
Americans for a Stronger Navy will continue to advocate for all three pillars: the presidential legislative action Sadler rightly calls for, the allied cooperation framework the Pier Review recommends, and the structural funding mechanism that makes both durable. That is the complete architecture a generational maritime revival requires.
References
[1] Brent D. Sadler, “National security demands that White House act on maritime legislation,” The Washington Times, May 20, 2026.
[2] Brent D. Sadler, Lunch Hour Podcast with Andrew Langer, May 2026.
[3] U.S. Navy, 2026 Shipbuilding Plan, May 11, 2026.
[4] “U.S. Navy unveils 30-year plan to rebuild American shipbuilding,” The Washington Times, May 12, 2026.
[5] Matt Reisener, ed., Pier Review: Leveraging the Allied Maritime Industrial Base for U.S. Shipbuilding, Center for Maritime Strategy, Navy League of the United States, May 2026. Foreword by Secretary of the Navy Kenneth J. Braithwaite.
[6] Americans for a Stronger Navy, Strategic SEAS Act framework, StrongerNavy.org.
[7] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “The Triple Whammy,” StrongerNavy.org.
[8] House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Export Control Enforcement Reports, 2023–2024.
[9] Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, The Technological Republic, 2025.
Brent Sadler at The Heritage Foundation just published one of the most comprehensive naval shipbuilding blueprints in recent memory. The 40-page Special Report, To Build the Golden Fleet, released March 25, 2026, is required reading for anyone serious about what it will actually take to rebuild American sea power. We’ve read every page. Sadler gets it right.
But the report has a gap. And we’ve spent two and a half years building the mechanism to fill it.
First, the numbers that should stop every American cold.
As of March 2026, China’s fleet stands at 474 warships. Ours stands at 291. Since September 2016 — when Congress set a goal of 355 ships — China’s fleet has grown by more than 100 warships. We added 17. [1]
The 2016 Force Structure Assessment identified the real requirement as 459 warships. Budget pressure compressed that to 355. And 325 ships was assessed as “maximum acceptable risk” — a floor, not a goal. We are operating below that floor today.
Submarine production currently runs at 1.1 boats per year. The requirement is 2.33 per year — and above 3.0 per year once AUKUS demand kicks in. [1]
Secretary Phelan has said 250,000 new shipyard workers will be needed over the next decade. And according to the Navy’s own acquisition executive, 50 to 60 percent of new industrial base hires quit within their first year. [1]
There are eight U.S. shipyards capable of building vessels over 400 feet in length. Eight. For a nation that needs to build a generational fleet larger than the Reagan-era 600-ship buildup.
These are not advocacy numbers. These are Sadler’s numbers, sourced from the Pentagon, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Navy’s own planning documents.
What the Golden Fleet Report Gets Right
Sadler’s blueprint is built around two simultaneous imperatives that most naval commentary treats as separate problems. He holds them together correctly.
The first is getting firepower to sea now. The bridge fleet — largely unmanned platforms deploying existing weapons like Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 missiles, built faster at smaller shipyards — addresses the 2027 Davidson Window without waiting for the industrial base to catch up. The USV Ranger’s successful SM-6 launch in September 2021 is the proof of concept. This is executable today.
The second is the generational industrial revival. New public shipyards in the Pacific. Design sprint teams collocated with shipbuilders. Vessel Construction Manager models that consolidate accountability. Modular construction techniques. Robotic welding systems that South Korean and Japanese shipyards have shown increase productivity by 20 percent. Block buys that give industry the funding predictability to invest in workforce and infrastructure rather than managing quarter-to-quarter. [1]
Sadler is particularly sharp on a point that rarely gets named directly: budgets must not predetermine the size or delivery schedule of the Golden Fleet. The threat informs the requirement. The requirement informs the budget. Not the other way around. Budget-led planning is how we got from a real requirement of 459 ships to a compromise of 355 to an actual fleet of 291 — while China added 100 warships.
The Gap the Report Doesn’t Fill
Sadler calls for novel contracting mechanisms — specifically SAWS, the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support contracting approach — matched with reformed tax structures that incentivize capital investment in shipbuilding capacity over pleasing Wall Street. He calls for a Naval Act with block buy authority. He calls for a fifth public shipyard in the Pacific at an estimated cost of $20 billion, with Congress appropriating initial funding now. [1]
These are the right prescriptions. But they share a structural dependency that the report doesn’t fully resolve: they all require sustained, predictable, mandatory funding that the annual appropriations process has consistently failed to deliver.
The White House Maritime Action Plan, released February 13, 2026, directed OMB to propose a legislative mechanism for a Maritime Security Trust Fund — a dedicated, mandatory funding stream. The directive was clear. The mechanism was left unspecified.
That mechanism is the Strategic SEAS Act.
The Funding Engine
The Strategic SEAS Act — the Shipbuilding Economic Acceleration and Security Act — proposes a sector-based defense reinvestment framework. Companies whose global operations depend on the maritime security the U.S. Navy provides contribute to a Maritime Security Trust Fund dedicated to shipbuilding capacity, fleet expansion, and maritime workforce development.
The logic is direct. American technology, developed with public investment and deployed at global scale, enabled the commercial operations that now depend on open sea lanes. China’s own shipbuilding capacity — the one producing more tonnage annually than the entire U.S. fleet — relies on logistics networks and advanced manufacturing that trace lineage to American innovation. The companies that benefit most from maritime security should have a structural stake in sustaining it.
This is not a new tax. It is a reinvestment framework — the same principle Sadler invokes when he calls for incentive structures that reward capital investment in shipbuilding over short-term financial returns.
The SEAS Act provides what SAWS and block buys cannot provide on their own: a funding stream that does not depend on annual appropriations decisions, does not compete with other defense priorities in the FYDP, and does not evaporate when political priorities shift between administrations.
Sadler’s Golden Fleet blueprint is the architecture. The SEAS Act is the funding engine that makes it executable across budget cycles.
In the comments section of Sadler’s September 2025 Washington Times piece, a reader identifying himself as the leader of the 2016 Force Structure Assessment study team wrote the following:
“I led the study team that developed the 2016 force structure assessment and just wanted to point out that the different numbers were based on assessed risk. CNO chose the 355-ship force that we assessed as ‘moderate risk’ while the 459 was minimal risk. We even had a 325-ship ‘maximum acceptable risk’ — which should say something about our current force level.”
Read that carefully. Three hundred twenty-five ships was the floor — the maximum acceptable risk threshold established by the people who ran the assessment. We have 291. We are not below the goal. We are below the floor.
That is not a readiness problem. That is a national security emergency dressed in budget language.
What Comes Next
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan confirmed this week that the Golden Fleet is no longer a blueprint — it is an active program. In a public statement, Phelan outlined decisive action already underway: canceled programs not delivering results, new Portfolio Acquisition Executives with accountability for integrated capabilities, a Rapid Capabilities Office to accelerate technology delivery, and Ship OS now scaled to two major shipbuilders, four public shipyards, and 100 suppliers. Most significantly for the funding argument, Phelan stated plainly that “the era of free money is over — industry now has skin in the game and investing in their own expansion.” That is the SEAS Act’s core logic stated from the highest level of Navy civilian leadership. The reinvestment principle is no longer outside advocacy. It is official policy direction waiting for a legislative mechanism.
The Golden Fleet details will emerge in the coming days as the Navy’s budget and 30-year shipbuilding plan follow the report. Sadler’s three metrics for judging whether it’s worthy remain the right standard: firepower to sea, new operational concepts to deter China, and maritime industrial revival.
The third metric — industrial revival — cannot be sustained by legislative authorization alone. It requires a funding architecture that outlasts administrations and survives budget cycles. The SEAS Act is that architecture.
Americans for a Stronger Navy has been building toward this moment for two and a half years. Eight hundred published posts. A nonpartisan record. A framework developed in consultation with naval policy experts, constitutional scholars, and defense industry stakeholders.
The blueprint exists. The funding mechanism exists. What remains is the political will to connect them.
That is what we are working on. And we are not going anywhere.
[3] White House Maritime Action Plan, February 13, 2026.
Bill Cullifer is the founder of Americans for a Stronger Navy and a former blue-water destroyer sailor who served aboard USS Henry B. Wilson (DDG-7). StrongerNavy.org.
For years, maritime decline has been treated as a niche issue — something for defense insiders, shipyard executives, or Navy circles to debate quietly. That is beginning to change.
Recently, Senator Todd Young published, in American Affairs Journal a thoughtful piece arguing that rebuilding America’s maritime industrial base is essential to both economic strength and national security. He traced the issue back to the Revolution, through Mahan, and into the present-day competition with China.
That matters.
Not because of who wrote it. But because of what it signals.
Maritime Power Is Back in the Conversation
For decades, America has allowed its commercial fleet to shrink. Shipyards have closed. Skilled labor has aged out. Foreign-flagged vessels now move the overwhelming majority of our trade.
Meanwhile, China designated shipbuilding a strategic industry and built accordingly.
This is not about panic. It is about arithmetic.
Eighty percent of global trade moves by sea. Most of America’s trade does too. If we cannot build, repair, and crew ships at scale, we are strategically exposed — economically and militarily.
The encouraging sign is that leaders are once again speaking openly about maritime strength.
That is progress.
Policy Is Necessary — But Not Sufficient
Legislation like the proposed SHIPS Act is an important step. Tax incentives, regulatory reform, maritime academy modernization — these are serious proposals.
But here is the harder truth:
Industrial revival cannot be sustained by legislation alone.
Shipbuilding capacity requires:
Workforce development Steel production Port modernization Cybersecurity resilience Long-term capital investment And, above all, public understanding
Without public buy-in, even well-crafted policy fades with political cycles.
This Is Not a Coastal Issue
One of the most overlooked truths in this debate is that maritime strength touches every American.
Indiana steel feeds shipyards. Midwestern grain moves to global markets by sea. Energy exports rely on tankers. Supply chains run through ports.
Sea power is not about nostalgia. It is about jobs, commerce, resilience, and deterrence.
When ships deploy longer because the fleet is too small… When maintenance backlogs grow… When sealift capacity shrinks…
Those are not abstract statistics. They are signs of strain in a system Americans depend on every day.
Civic Engagement Is the Missing Ingredient
We can debate fleet numbers. We can debate funding mechanisms. We can debate industrial policy.
But unless Americans understand why this matters — and choose to participate in the conversation — nothing lasting will change.
Rebuilding sea power is not simply a government project. It is a civic project.
It requires voters who ask informed questions. Taxpayers who demand accountability. Educators who teach maritime history and strategy. Industry leaders willing to invest long-term.
America’s maritime strength has always rested on the character and engagement of its people.
That spirit has not disappeared.
The conversation is shifting. That is a good sign.
Now the responsibility shifts to us.
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.
I want to give a huge shout-out to CDR Salamander for consistently providing the “intel” that helps advocates like us stay informed. We are all part of this maritime endeavor, and the more we learn, the stronger our Navy becomes.
A recent post of his was just a simple image: a map of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Two words above it: “America’s superpower.”
No explanation. No thread. Just a map.
But for anyone who understands naval logistics, industrial capacity, and how wars are actually sustained, that image says more than a thousand white papers.
This is not a river map. This is a national supply chain diagram.
The Bench That Wins Wars
Wars are not won by the best starting lineup. They are won by the deepest bench.
The Mississippi River system connects:
Farms to factories
Mines to mills
Rail to ports
The American heartland to the sea
From Minnesota to Louisiana, from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, this inland waterway network moves grain, steel, coal, petroleum, chemicals, machinery, and countless other goods at a scale and efficiency no rail or highway system can match.
Long before most Americans ever think about ships, fleets, or carriers, this river system is quietly doing the work that makes naval power possible.
This is the bench.
Why This Matters to Naval Power
The U.S. Navy does not exist in isolation. It is supported by a vast civilian industrial ecosystem that begins far inland.
Shipyards require steel. Steel requires ore and energy. Factories require raw materials and transport. Ports require cargo to move.
That cargo comes from here.
This river system is why the United States was able to mobilize so rapidly during World War II. It is why American industry could surge production. It is why America became a maritime power before most Americans even realized we were one.
You cannot understand American sea power without understanding this map.
Geography Is Destiny
Other nations build ports. America inherited a continent designed for logistics.
The Mississippi and its tributaries create a natural internal highway system that feeds directly into the Gulf of Mexico and global sea lanes. It is an unmatched geographic advantage that has quietly powered American prosperity and military capability for over a century.
This is strategic geography in its purest form.
Why Americans Should Care
Most Americans think naval strength begins with ships and sailors.
It doesn’t.
It begins with rivers, rail, roads, ports, trades, factories, and supply chains. It begins with civilian infrastructure that allows the Navy to exist at scale.
If this system weakens, naval power weakens. If this system thrives, naval power thrives.
Understanding this connection is essential if Americans are to understand what it really means to support a Stronger Navy.
Implications for the Navy
The Navy’s strength is tied directly to the health of:
Inland logistics networks
Industrial capacity
Shipbuilding trades
Port infrastructure
Maritime commerce
When we talk about the industrial base, we are talking about this map.
When we talk about sealift, replenishment, and sustainment, we are talking about this map.
When we talk about readiness, we are talking about this map.
Implications for Our Allies
America’s ability to project power and keep sea lanes open for our allies is made possible by this inland capacity. Our partners rely on the stability created by U.S. naval presence, and that presence is supported by the economic engine that flows down these waterways.
This is not just an American advantage. It underwrites global stability.
Seeing the Whole System
CDR Salamander’s simple post is a reminder that naval power is a system, not a platform.
A fleet is the visible tip. This river system is the foundation beneath it.
The more Americans understand this connection, the more clearly they can see why supporting maritime infrastructure, shipbuilding, and industrial resilience is not optional—it is essential.
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 a narrow stretch of ocean between three landmasses has shaped 80 years of naval strategy — and why Americans need to understand it now
Introduction
A recent debate centered on whether China or Russia pose an imminent military threat to Greenland. The answer from intelligence sources appears to be no. But that answer, while technically correct, misses the deeper strategic point that has guided U.S. thinking for over two centuries.
The real issue is not invasion. The real issue is strategic positioning in geography that matters to naval power.
Greenland sits in one of the most important pieces of maritime real estate on the planet. And the United States has understood that for a very long time.
The GIUK Gap: A Naval Choke Point Since World War II
Greenland forms the western anchor of what naval strategists call the GIUK Gap — the sea space between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom.
This is not a modern concept. During World War II and throughout the Cold War, this gap was the primary maritime passage between the Russian Northern Fleet and the Atlantic Ocean. Soviet submarines had to pass through this space to threaten U.S. and NATO shipping lanes.
The U.S. and NATO built an entire system of surveillance, patrols, air bases, and anti-submarine warfare doctrine around this geography. This was one of the most heavily monitored naval regions on earth for decades.
That geography has not changed.
What has changed is public memory of why it mattered.
Greenland and the U.S. Military Presence
The United States has maintained a military presence in Greenland since World War II. Today, Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) remains a critical U.S. installation for:
Missile warning
Space surveillance
Arctic operations
Early warning radar coverage of the North Atlantic and polar approaches
This is not symbolic. It is operationally significant to U.S. homeland defense and NATO maritime awareness.
The Monroe Doctrine and Western Hemisphere Strategy
In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine established a foundational principle of U.S. strategy:
Foreign powers establishing strategic footholds in the Western Hemisphere is a U.S. security concern — even if that presence appears commercial or political rather than military.
This was never about invasion. It was about presence.
Because presence becomes leverage.
That thinking has guided U.S. behavior for 200 years across the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and the Arctic.
Greenland fits squarely into that tradition.
China’s Pattern of Strategic Positioning
There is no evidence China plans to invade Greenland. But there is extensive documentation of China’s interest in:
Arctic shipping routes as ice recedes
Rare earth and mineral projects in Greenland
Financing infrastructure projects, including attempted airport construction
Expanding its presence in Arctic research and commercial ventures
This pattern is not unique to Greenland. Similar approaches have been seen in Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, and Australia.
The pattern is not military. It is long-term positioning.
That is what concerns strategists, not headlines.
Why This Matters to Naval Strategy
Naval strategy is built around geography, choke points, and access.
Greenland is not important because of its population or economy. It is important because of where it sits on the map.
Control and awareness of the GIUK Gap means control and awareness of submarine movement between the Arctic and the Atlantic. That has been true for 80 years.
It is still true today.
Why This Is Urgent Now
Three developments make Greenland’s strategic position more critical today than at any point since the Cold War:
1. Arctic ice recession is opening new shipping routes and resource access, increasing activity in waters the U.S. has monitored for decades.
2. Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has returned to Cold War levels, but U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities have atrophied.
3. China’s systematic positioning in Arctic governance, research, and commercial ventures is establishing presence before the U.S. fully recognizes the competition.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy faces its smallest fleet since 1916 and readiness challenges that limit sustained presence in multiple regions simultaneously.
The stake is not hypothetical: If the U.S. cannot maintain awareness and presence in the GIUK Gap, it cannot guarantee:
Protection of transatlantic commerce that underpins the American economy
Early warning of submarine-launched threats to the homeland
Credible deterrence that prevents crises from starting
Why Americans Should Care
Most Americans think of naval strength as ships and aircraft carriers. Few think about the map.
But naval power is first and foremost about geography.
The sea lanes that carry global trade, energy supplies, and military movement pass through predictable choke points. Greenland anchors one of them.
Understanding this is key to understanding why the United States watches foreign interest in Greenland closely — not because of paranoia, but because of history.
Implications for the Navy
For the U.S. Navy and NATO maritime forces, Greenland and the GIUK Gap remain central to:
Monitoring Russian submarine activity
Securing North Atlantic shipping lanes
Maintaining Arctic awareness as access increases
Supporting homeland and allied defense from the maritime domain
This is classic naval statecraft.
Implications for Our Allies
Denmark, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Canada, and NATO partners all share an interest in maintaining control and awareness of this region.
Greenland is not just a U.S. concern. It is a NATO maritime concern.
The Real Debate
The debate is not about whether China or Russia plan to invade Greenland.
It is about whether we recognize the long pattern of strategic positioning that great powers use long before conflict.
Geography doesn’t change. Neither does its importance to naval strategy.
Understanding Geography Is Just The Beginning
Greenland matters because of where it sits on the map. But knowing why geography matters doesn’t answer the harder questions:
How did the U.S. Navy — which once dominated these waters without question — reach a point where we’re debating our ability to maintain presence in strategically vital regions?
What decisions, what budget choices, what policy shifts brought us here?
And most importantly: what must happen next?
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. We connect the dots between geography, strategy, budgets, readiness, and national will. Our goal is simple: educate the public on the fundamentals of naval power so Americans understand what’s at stake — and what it will take to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
As I continue to learn from naval professionals, analysts, and thoughtful voices like CDR Salamander, Brent Sadler, and Steven Wills, one reality keeps coming into sharper focus: wars between major powers are not decided by what we start with, but by what we can replace after the fighting begins. Many of our most advanced systems today are designed in ways that make rapid replacement, repair, and adaptation extremely difficult. This is not simply a funding or acquisition issue — it is a design, industrial, and national alignment issue. Understanding this is essential if Americans are to understand what true naval power requires in the 21st century.
Bill Cullifer, Founder
Introduction
As I continue this journey with Americans for a Stronger Navy, I find myself learning as much as I am advocating.
One of the most valuable parts of this work has been listening to and reading professionals like CDR Salamander, retired U.S. Navy Commander and widely read naval commentator; Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology at The Heritage Foundation and former U.S. Navy submariner; and Dr. Steven Wills, naval historian and former U.S. Navy officer, who are describing a reality that should concern every American — not just those in uniform or working in the defense industry.
Here’s the light-bulb moment. Imagine two football teams. One starts the game with the best players in the league — faster, stronger, more skilled. The other starts with good players, but has a deep bench. When players get hurt, they substitute quickly. When equipment breaks, they replace it. When fatigue sets in, they rotate fresh players onto the field. By the fourth quarter, the first team is exhausted, short-handed, and can’t keep up. The second team wins.
Wars between major powers work the same way. It’s not the starting lineup that decides the outcome. It’s the depth of the bench.
Today, we have an impressive starting lineup. What professionals like Salamander, Sadler, and Wills are warning us about is the size of our bench.
That was true in World War II. It is proving true in Ukraine today. And it will be true in any future conflict in the Pacific.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: many of the systems we build today are extraordinarily capable — but they are not designed to be built, repaired, or replenished at wartime scale.
The Lesson We Forgot from World War II
In World War II, America did not win because our tanks, ships, and aircraft were perfect. We won because they were designed to be built in massive numbers by the factories we already had. Design matched industrial strength. Throughput, not elegance, won the war.
What CDR Salamander Is Warning Us About
“In a fight defined by attrition, adaptation, and industrial endurance, the winning systems will not be the perfect ones on paper but the ones that can be produced, replaced, and improved the fastest.”
Brent Sadler and Maritime Statecraft
Sadler calls this maritime statecraft — naval power tied directly to shipyards, logistics, trade, workforce, and industry.
Steven Wills and the Structural Slide
Wills shows this is a structural capacity problem, not a readiness statistic.
What This Means for Middle America
Factories, trades, ports, shipyards — naval power begins in American towns long before a ship leaves port.
How We Got Here — The Quiet Erosion of Industrial Depth
This didn’t happen overnight. Industrial redundancy gave way to efficiency. What was once economic change is now understood as national security fragility.
Maritime Commerce — The Part Most Americans Never See
Over 90 percent of global trade moves by sea. Naval strength protects American prosperity.
How the Country Benefits
Stable supply chains, energy security, jobs, reliable trade, and deterrence.
The Good News
The good news is this: America has solved this problem before. In the 1930s, we did not yet have the industrial capacity that would later win World War II. What we had first was understanding. Once Americans understood what was required, industry, workforce, and national focus followed. We are at a similar moment now.
Why Americans Should Care
If war comes in the Pacific, it will not be decided in the first month. It will be decided in month six by who can replace losses fastest.
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.
A few days ago, we published a piece about rust on Navy ships. Not because rust is the problem, but because rust is the symptom of something deeper: a governance system that doesn’t fund the unglamorous, essential work of maintaining a ready fleet.
Now Captain John Konrad has walked through the 2025 Military Sealift Command handbook page by page in a detailed podcast, and he’s telling the exact same story—from the other side of the hull.
What Konrad Found
Captain Konrad, founder of gCaptain and a licensed Master Mariner with decades at sea, attended the Surface Navy Association’s National Symposium and picked up what he calls “the most important book the Navy publishes every year”—the MSC handbook.
His conclusion after reviewing it: “We are completely unprepared for a war in the Pacific.”
Here’s what the handbook reveals:
$5 billion annual budget for Military Sealift Command—the organization responsible for 90% of everything the military moves overseas, including fuel, ammunition, food, and equipment for all services across all theaters worldwide.
As Konrad puts it bluntly: “Ships are expensive, people. Crewing ships are expensive. Maintaining ships are expensive. And you just can’t do it with a $5 billion budget.” That’s less than 0.5% of the $1.1 trillion defense budget to sustain the logistics backbone that enables everything else.
17 ships laid up—not because they’re broken, but because there aren’t enough licensed merchant mariners to crew them. The workforce crisis isn’t theoretical. It’s operational right now.
A command authority mismatch: MSC is a one or two-star command trying to support operations across all numbered fleets, which are three and four-star commands. When they compete for resources in Congress, they get outranked by everyone.
The Single Point of Failure Inventory
Konrad methodically documents what “running on fumes” actually looks like:
1 Missile Range Instrumentation Ship (to track adversary weapons development)
4 Ocean surveillance ships (we had dozens during the Cold War to track Soviet submarines)
4 Submarine support ships (submarines can’t safely enter or leave port without them)
4 New John Lewis-class replenishment oilers—with only one or two actually deployed due to environmental scrubber requirements making them too tall to fit under 70% of bridges
The oiler situation is particularly critical. As Konrad notes, a former Commandant of the Merchant Marine wrote that we’re 100 tankers short of minimum requirements to fuel the fleet in a Pacific campaign.
This Is the Same Story We’ve Been Telling
In our earlier post on rust, we made a simple point: rust isn’t a Navy problem. It’s an American one.
We showed this governance chain:
National will → budgets → priorities → behavior → readiness
When that chain breaks down, you get rust on deckplates. But as Konrad’s breakdown proves, you also get:
Ships that can’t deploy because bureaucracy matters more than mission
Mariners overworked to the point of tragedy (he references the officer who died by suicide aboard the USNS Amelia Earhart from stress and overwork)
Single ships doing missions that require dozens
A logistics fleet averaging 40 years old with no replacement plan adequate to requirements
The Governance Failure at Every LevelKonrad’s evidence maps directly to our framework:
National will: Americans support the Navy—surveys prove it. But they picture aircraft carriers and destroyers, not oilers and cable repair ships. They don’t know Military Sealift Command exists. They don’t understand that 90% of military logistics moves by ship, or that the Air Force’s entire airlift capacity is less than what China can fit on one modern container ship.
Budgets: When the public doesn’t understand what naval power requires, Congress doesn’t fund it. MSC gets 0.5% of the defense budget to do what Konrad calls “the most important mission” because logistics wins wars.
Priorities: MSC is outranked by every other command. When it’s time to fight for resources, they lose. The result is predictable: deferred maintenance, aging ships, no replacement pipeline, and a workforce crisis.
Behavior: With inadequate funding and low command priority, you get exactly what Konrad documents—ships laid up, mariners burned out, critical capabilities down to single digits, and new ships stuck pier-side because nobody fixed the bureaucratic tangles.
Readiness: We can move the fleet to the Pacific. But we can’t sustain them there. We can win the first battle, but we can’t win the campaign.
What “Lack of Support” Actually Means
This isn’t about public indifference. It’s about invisibility.
The American public sees:
Carriers launching jets (thrilling)
Destroyers shooting missiles (dramatic)
Submarines running silent (mysterious)
They don’t see:
The oiler keeping the carrier’s air wing flying
The dry cargo ship bringing ammunition to the destroyers
The cable repair ship maintaining secure communications
The ocean surveillance ship tracking enemy submarines before they become threats
The submarine tender ensuring boats can safely enter and leave port
What’s invisible doesn’t get funded.
This is why the governance failure at the top of the chain matters so much. If national will doesn’t include understanding what naval power actually requires, budgets will never prioritize the systems that make it work.
Naval Power Is Systems, Not Platforms
We’ve been making this point for months: naval power isn’t platforms. It’s systems.
You can have the most advanced destroyers and carriers in the world, but if you can’t fuel them at sea, resupply them with ammunition, track enemy submarines approaching your bases, repair undersea cables when they’re cut, or crew the ships you already have—then you don’t have naval power. You have expensive hulls that can’t sustain operations.
Konrad’s handbook walkthrough proves this from the logistics side. The platforms get the attention and the funding. The systems that enable them get $5 billion and a two-star admiral.
A Call to Action: DOD and Congress Must Act
We know from surveys that Americans support a strong Navy. They want us to be ready. But readiness isn’t just about how many ships we have—it’s about whether those ships can operate, sustain, and prevail in extended campaigns.
The Department of Defense must:
Elevate MSC to a three-star command so it has the authority to compete for resources
Fix bureaucratic tangles keeping new capabilities pier-side
Properly recognize civilian mariners to improve recruitment and retention
Stop treating logistics as an afterthought in force structure decisions
Congress must:
Fund MSC and the maritime industrial base at levels that match strategic requirements, not political convenience
Expand the Maritime Security Program, especially tankers
Invest in the mariner training pipeline and Strategic Sealift Officer program
Demand readiness reporting that focuses on systems and sustainability, not just platform counts
Acknowledging Captain Konrad’s Work
Captain Konrad has been a persistent, credible voice highlighting America’s maritime readiness crisis. Through gCaptain, his podcasts, and media appearances on NPR, BBC, the New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, he’s documented the decline of our merchant marine, the shipbuilding crisis, and strategic sealift challenges.
His latest breakdown of the MSC handbook is a public service. He’s showing Americans what their Navy actually depends on—and how fragile that foundation has become.
At Americans for a Stronger Navy, we’ve been making the case that rust is a symptom and the system is the cause. Konrad just proved it from the logistics side. His work validates our concerns and strengthens the case for urgent action.
The Bottom Line
Rust isn’t a deckplate problem. It’s a governance one.
Ships laid up for lack of crews isn’t a manning problem. It’s a governance one.
Oilers stuck pier-side because nobody fixed the bureaucracy isn’t a maintenance problem. It’s a governance one.
And a $5 billion budget for the logistics backbone that enables 90% of military power projection isn’t a budget problem—it’s a national priority failure.
Captain Konrad is right: we’re not ready for a sustained fight in the Pacific.
But the solution isn’t just to build more ships. It’s to fix the governance chain that determines whether we fund, crew, maintain, and deploy the capabilities we already need.
The American people support a strong Navy. Now we need DOD and Congress to match that support with the resources, priorities, and leadership that readiness actually requires.
