Tag: U.S. Navy

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Steady Orders, Steady Yards — Michael Roberts

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy, supported by U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Shipbuilders, mariners, industry, the Navy community and policy experts answer the same three questions about rebuilding America at sea: What’s working? What’s in the way? What would you fix firstOur guest is Mike Roberts, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology and a nonresident senior fellow with the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy [1][2]. Before Hudson, Mike spent decades inside the American maritime industry. He was general counsel and senior vice president of government relations at Crowley, and he served as president and chairman of the American Maritime Partnership [1][2]. He works from Jacksonville, Florida, and has spent the last few years talking with members of Congress from both parties about how America gets back into the business of building and sailing its own ships.

Question 1: What’s working now?

Mike starts with something easy to overlook: the country is waking up. For decades, he says, Americans have had “sea blindness.” Most people didn’t know where their stuff comes from or why the commercial maritime industry matters, and had at best a vague idea of why the Navy matters. “That is changing,” he says. “The good news is it’s changing. The bad news is it’s changing because there’s a real reason for that.”

He points to three things that are working.

A serious bill in front of Congress. The SHIPS for America Act is bipartisan and bicameral, with support in both the House and the Senate. Mike calls it what would be “the most consequential legislation since 1936,” the year of the Merchant Marine Act. More than 100 lawmakers are now pushing to include it in this year’s defense bill [4].

Trade tools are in play. The Section 301 case at the U.S. Trade Representative put fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-owned ships calling at U.S. ports. The investigation began under the Biden administration, and the Trump administration imposed the fees in 2025. They were suspended for a year in November 2025 under a U.S.-China trade deal, and USTR has proposed extending the pause to January 2027 [5]. “We’ll see where that goes,” Mike says, “but at least that’s in play.”

Private capital is leaning in. The poster child is Hanwha, the Korean shipbuilder that bought Philly Shipyard [6]. Fincantieri owns the Marinette yard in Wisconsin, and other allied shipbuilders are looking at U.S. partnerships because Washington is signaling that real investment may pay off.

“We are well ahead of where we were in terms of an understanding of the need to move forward. And that’s encouraging.”

Question 2: What are the barriers?

The big-picture barrier, Mike says, is a mindset stuck in the 1990s, and it cuts across both parties. In his view, progressives struggle to accept that America has real enemies, while conservatives cling to the idea that the market will solve every problem. Both views made sense for most of a generation, from about 1990 to 2015. “But they leave us very vulnerable,” he says. “We have real enemies, and they are playing a totally different game than we’re playing when it comes to free trade and economics.”

The specific barrier is the lack of a consistent source of demand to build commercial ships in U.S. shipyards and sail them under the U.S. flag. He is not talking about Navy or Coast Guard ships, where demand is way up. He means cargo ships, whose buyers have no reason to be loyal to American yards and buy Chinese ships because that’s where they get the best deal.

Growing that commercial base matters for two reasons. It would diversify and grow the shipbuilding industrial base, meaning the workforce, the facilities and the supplier base, using commercial dollars on top of government dollars. And a larger U.S.-flag fleet gives the Pentagon more ships and more skilled American mariners to keep troops supplied in a conflict. It’s the same dual-use idea America has relied on before.

So where does the demand come from? The domestic Jones Act market is small, about a hundred self-propelled cargo ships, with limited room to grow. The international market is huge, around 60,000 ships, by Mike’s count. But U.S. costs run two to three times China’s before you count Chinese subsidies. American workers have options and need decent pay to work in a shipyard or spend months at sea. Chinese steel is heavily subsidized and costs roughly half as much as American steel. Even Korea, he notes, gets a large share of its steel and components from China.

Mike offers two cautions. First, cutting regulation won’t close the gap. “I have fought unnecessary regulation my whole career,” he says, but the idea that we can make up much ground on China that way “is not remotely realistic.” Second, innovation alone won’t get us back in the game. China builds far more ships than we do – almost 300 for every one of ours (corrected from the 75-to-1 estimate mentioned in the video).  And China has more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined. “We can’t expect to lead in shipbuilding if we’re not actually building ships.”

“Shipyards don’t invest in capacity or in upgrades for episodic, ship-by-ship procurement. They do that when they can see a 10-to-15-year production horizon with a lot of contractual certainty.”

Everything tried over the last 50 years, from the Maritime Security Program to Title XI loan guarantees to cargo preference, has been piecemeal. Each program is modest, and none is guaranteed to continue. Meanwhile, Mike says, China holds 75 percent or more of new ship orders, close to 90 percent for some ship types like VLCC supertankers.

“They see decades of guaranteed demand. Our shipyards see appropriation cycles.”

Question 3: What would you fix first?

Mike’s answer is specific: pass and fund the Strategic Commercial Fleet program in the SHIPS for America Act [3][7]. “It’s the one piece of the SHIPS Act that creates sustained demand,” he says: 250 U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged ships over 15 years. Shipyards would get the demand signal, plan against it and innovate.

He likes many other parts of the bill, like rejuvenating Kings Point and the state maritime academies, and grants for shipyards to upgrade. But his test for any provision is how many commercial ships it actually gets built and flagged in the United States. “If we don’t have demand for the ships, there won’t be jobs for the people when they graduate,” he says, and the grant money won’t be used without customers.

The ships in the program would sign emergency preparedness agreements, a national security commitment. Mike says commercial freight revenue would cover roughly half the cost, about a dollar for every federal dollar, and that includes money from Chinese exporters. “It’s not a subsidy program. It’s an industrial policy program that’s disciplined by a competitive bidding process.” The federal share is meant to be covered by trade-related fees through the Maritime Security Trust Fund. He puts the cost at about $1.8 billion a year gross, or $1.3 billion net after savings, such as replacing part of the aging Ready Reserve Force. That fleet keeps about 40 ships, many of them 45-year-old steamships, in storage.

“In federal budget terms, it’s a rounding error. In maritime terms, it will rebuild the industry.”

“If we don’t act on it in this Congress, we’ll be having the same conversation five years from now, and we’ll have an even bigger hole to fill.”

The takeaway

Mike sees real progress: a public waking up, a bipartisan bill, trade tools in play and private money coming in. His core point is simple, though. Shipyards build to steady demand. Training programs, grants and regulatory fixes help, but they don’t put orders on the books. For Mike, the Strategic Commercial Fleet is the piece that does, and the time to act is this Congress. As always, these are the guest’s views, and featuring them is not an endorsement. What do you think?

About America at Sea: Voices That Matter

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy, supported by U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Shipbuilders, mariners, industry, the Navy community and policy experts answer the same three questions about rebuilding America at sea. Views expressed are the speaker’s own, and featuring a view is not an endorsement.

Join the conversation on X. What’s working? What’s in the way? What would you fix first?

About the Guest

Michael G. Roberts is a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology and a nonresident senior fellow with the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy. His work focuses on policy affecting the American commercial maritime industry in light of competition with China. He joined Hudson in 2022 after a decades-long career in the maritime industry, including service as general counsel, board secretary and senior vice president of government relations at Crowley, and as president and chairman of the American Maritime Partnership. With Bryan Clark, he co-authored the Hudson report Shoring Up the Foundation: Affordable Approaches to Improve US and Allied Shipbuilding and Ship Repair [1][2][8].

References

[1] Hudson Institute, “Michael Roberts.” https://hudson.org/experts/1427-michael-roberts

[2] Center for Maritime Strategy, “Michael Roberts.” https://centerformaritimestrategy.org/experts/michael-roberts/

[3] Michael Roberts, “The Strategic Commercial Fleet Program: How America Rebuilds Its Maritime Industry,” Hudson Institute. https://www.hudson.org/politics-government/strategic-commercial-fleet-program-how-america-rebuilds-its-maritime-industry-michael-roberts

[4] gCaptain, “More Than 100 Lawmakers Push to Include SHIPS for America Act in Defense Bill,” October 29, 2026. https://gcaptain.com/more-than-100-lawmakers-push-to-include-ships-for-america-act-in-defense-bill/

[5] Holland & Knight, “USTR Proposes 2-Month Extension of Suspension of Section 301 Actions,” October 2026. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/10/ustr-proposes-2-month-extension-of-suspension-of-section-301

[6] gCaptain, “Hanwha Completes $100M Acquisition of Philly Shipyard, Marking First Korean Shipbuilder in U.S.” https://gcaptain.com/hanwha-completes-100m-acquisition-of-philly-shipyard-marking-first-korean-shipbuilder-in-u-s/

[7] FreightWaves, “Updated Shipping Bill Calls for 250-Vessel US Cargo Fleet.” https://www.freightwaves.com/news/updated-shipping-bill-calls-for-250-vessel-us-cargo-fleet

[8] Midrats, “Improving US & Allied Shipbuilding & Repair, with Michael Roberts & Bryan Clark.” https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/improving-us-and-allied-shipbuilding

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America at Sea: Clay Wirsing on Momentum, Shipyard Capacity and Building What We Know

America at Sea: Voices That Matter continues with Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action. Clay started his career as a welding engineer at Newport News Shipbuilding. He answers the same three questions we ask everyone, from the shipyard floor up.

New to the SHIPS for America Act? Clay gets into the details, so you may want to start with our plain-English primer.

Join the conversation. Reply to the post above on X and tell us what’s working, what’s in the way, and what you’d fix first.

What we heard

What’s working: momentum. Clay sees real energy behind the SHIPS for America Act and more public attention to maritime policy than ever. He calls it “an overwhelmingly positive bill for the maritime industry.”

What’s in the way: shipyard capacity. Clay walks through j JM mmthree parts of the bill and asks whether our yards can deliver. The cargo rules for government cargo, imports from China and LNG exports would each call for more U.S. ships than today’s yards can build quickly. The yards that build commercial ships produce about five ships a year at peak, many are tied up with government work, and there’s already a shortage of welders and other tradesmen.

“I like the initiative behind this. I think it’s just getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.” — Clay Wirsing

What he’d fix first: start with what we know how to build. Begin with standard tankers, container ships and bulk carriers, including bulk carriers to secure supply chains like rare earth elements, before moving to complex LNG carriers. Phase the government cargo requirement in, at something like 75 to 90 percent, as the fleet grows.

The long view. China revisits its maritime policy every five to ten years. The United States hasn’t made a major update since the Merchant Marine Act of 1970. “It’s long overdue,” Clay says, and the work shouldn’t stop with one bill.

The three questions

1. What’s working right now that we should do more of?
2. What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?
3. If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

Transcript

Lightly edited for readability.

Bill Cullifer: Bill Cullifer here with Americans for a Stronger Navy. Welcome back to America at Sea: Voices That Matter. Today we hear from Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action in San Diego. He started his career on the shipyard floor in Newport News, Virginia. Same three questions as everyone: what’s working, what’s in the way, and what he’d like to fix first. Clay, over to you.

Introduction

Clay Wirsing: My name is Clay Wirsing. I started off as a welding engineer back in 2017 at Newport News Shipbuilding. At the time I really didn’t have any idea what the global situation was with shipbuilding or maritime. And I can remember about a year after I started, some high-level officials from the Navy came in and talked to us about speeding up the pace of our shipyard in order to compete with China. That was kind of my first introduction to how far we’ve fallen behind as a maritime nation, especially in shipbuilding.

Unfortunately, not a lot has changed since then in terms of actual shipbuilding capacity, but we do now see a ton of momentum, which has been great to see, with the SHIPS for America Act, and a lot more public recognition of what’s going on. And so I just want to continue to contribute to that, and hope to see more people join the movement and let our politicians know that maritime is an important space for both our economy and national defense, and we need to have the right laws and policies that allow us to succeed in that domain.

What’s working right now that we should do more of?

I love the momentum that’s being built up behind the SHIPS for America Act. It’s great to see that there’s a lot of attention to our maritime policy and laws, and that’s becoming more recognized by the public. And I think we need to just continue to join that discussion and get as many people involved, to let our politicians know that maritime policy is an important part of our country.

The SHIPS for America Act is an overwhelmingly positive bill for the maritime industry. I think there are some little tweaks that I would urge our politicians to consider, to better suit the needs of our maritime industry and also have realistic policy.

What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?

In section 412 of the bill, there is a mandate for 100% U.S. government cargo preference going to U.S.-flag ships. I think this is a great initiative, but we might be a little bit ahead of ourselves just because of the small size of the U.S. fleet. If we increase this more modestly, to something like 75% or even 90%, then it does give us a little bit of flexibility when we don’t have U.S. ships available to take our government cargoes. And I think that’s something we could revisit down the line. Assuming our fleet does grow, we will be able to have 100% government cargo preference in the future.

Section 415 mandates that within 15 years, 10% of all cargo imported from China to the U.S. will be carried on U.S.-flagged vessels. Currently there are about a million TEU, twenty-foot equivalent containers, shipped from China to the U.S. each year. We’re only carrying about 2 to 3% of that trade currently, and that’s all through Matson’s CLX line. So to carry 10% of that trade, I think we’re looking at either 10 very large ships or around 50 container ships. And the shipyards we have doing commercial work right now aren’t really large enough to build these huge container ships. It’ll basically lead to a point where we need to build a lot of ships in a very short amount of time, which I don’t think is realistic. Again, I like the initiative behind this. I think it’s just getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.

Another section that might be problematic is section 420, which requires that 15% of total seaborne LNG exports be carried on U.S.-flag vessels by 2043. This is going to require somewhere between 15 and 25 LNG ships, depending on their size. LNG ships these days are quite large. They’re actually much bigger than the ships currently built at General Dynamics NASSCO or Hanwha Philly Shipyard, and those shipyards are building about five ships per year in total at their peak capacity. We currently see a lot of these shipyards tied up with government contracts, so I don’t think there’s a lot of capacity to take on LNG work. On top of that, LNG vessels are pretty complex to build, especially their containment tanks. And we already have shortages of welders and other tradesmen, which will make it difficult to build these in a cost- and time-effective manner.

If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

I think it would be better to start off with a more reasonable ship type, things that we’ve already built: standard oil tankers, container ships, or maybe even a simple ship type like bulk carriers to secure our rare earth elements or other parts of our supply chain, rather than going straight for the complex LNG vessels. Again, I like the sentiment behind this. I just think we’re not quite where we need to be with yard capacity to pull off some of the shipbuilding requirements laid out in this bill.

A lot of countries, especially China, are revisiting their maritime policy every five years, maybe a decade or so. The U.S. hasn’t really had a major effort in revisiting or revising its policy since the Merchant Marine Act of 1970. So it’s long overdue. I hope to see some bills like the SHIPS for America Act come through and pass in Congress, and then, not only that, but as we continue to move forward as a nation, that we continually revisit these issues and make sure that our maritime laws and policies are appropriate for the conditions we face in our current period.

While we argue, China plans. It’s time we started building.

Americans for a Stronger Navy is a nonpartisan not for proft organization. 

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Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet

Part 1 of 4 in our series, “Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet: September 24 to November 9 — what happens to a fee meant to protect American shipyards.”

What This Series Covers

– How a 2024 labor petition turned into a real trade penalty on Chinese shipping — and why it barely survived a week
– Who’s financially backing the fight to kill that penalty, and what’s separately been reported about that same company
– What to watch for when President Trump hosts Xi in Washington on September 24
– What the people actually building ships and running unions told Congress this month, in their own words
– What happens on November 9 — the day the fee’s one-year suspension runs out

Where Things Stand, Briefly

For readers who want the fuller picture: three years in, there’s real progress and real gaps. On the plus side — an executive order creating a national maritime strategy, a $65.8 billion Navy shipbuilding request for FY2027, and a new submarine-component factory in Alabama already producing parts. On the other side — the U.S.-flagged oceangoing fleet actually shrank to 178 ships last year, the Maritime Security Trust Fund still isn’t law, and the industrial base has lost up to 40% of its waterfront facilities over two decades. Read the full three-year accounting →

A fee designed to protect American shipbuilding jobs lasted six days before someone made it disappear. This is the story of who did it, and why it should bother you even if you’ve never thought about a shipyard in your life.

Three years ago, we started asking a simple question: who pays for American naval readiness? Congress. Taxpayers. Shipyard workers who show up at 5am to weld hulls in the summer heat. That question is the whole reason Americans for a Stronger Navy exists.

This year we learned there’s a second question hiding behind the first one: who pays to make sure we never have to.

Two facts below are worth reading side by side. We’ll let you draw your own conclusion.

Let’s walk through it.

The Fee Nobody Remembers Was Labor’s Idea

This didn’t start in Washington. It started with the people who actually weld the hulls.

In March 2024, five American labor unions — not a think tank, not a senator, not us — petitioned the U.S. Trade Representative to investigate China’s dominance of global shipbuilding.[1] They’d watched it happen up close for years: American shipyards closing, skilled jobs disappearing, an entire industrial base hollowing out while China built ships by the hundreds. Nobody in Congress had acted on it yet. The workers went first anyway.

USTR agreed there was a real problem, opening a Section 301 investigation — a legal process the government uses to investigate unfair foreign trade practices. By early 2025, nearly a year after the unions first raised the alarm, the investigation confirmed what they’d been saying all along: China’s practices were “unreasonable” and burdened U.S. commerce.[2] The remedy: a modest port fee on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated vessels calling at U.S. ports — money that would help fund the rebuilding of America’s own shipbuilding capacity.[3]

The fees took effect October 14, 2025. Six days later, at a summit in South Korea, they became a bargaining chip.[4] By November 10, they were suspended for a full year — paused at $0, with the scheduled 2026 rate increase simply never happening.[5]

Two senators, one from each party, have since asked the obvious question: what exactly did the United States get in exchange for giving that leverage away?[6] As of this writing, nobody in the administration has given them a straight answer.

Who Wanted the Pause

We already knew part of this story. Our 2025 Navy year-in-review documented over $3 million in lobbying spent fighting the SHIPS for America Act and the fees meant to fund it — six times what was spent supporting it.[7] The National Retail Federation alone spent $2.27 million. The American Apparel & Footwear Association, the Consumer Technology Association, the Travel Goods Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rounded out the list.

What we didn’t know then was how organized that campaign actually was. In March 2025, NRF and the Retail Industry Leaders Association — joined by more than thirty other organizations — jointly commissioned an economic study designed to make the case to USTR that the fees would hurt American consumers.[8] Their own words: “U.S. businesses and consumers will take the brunt of these service charges… many, if not all, of the leading ocean carriers capable of meeting U.S. shipping needs use Chinese-built vessels in their fleets.”

Read that sentence again. Their argument for keeping shipping cheap is that America has become so dependent on Chinese-built ships that we can’t afford to stop being dependent on them.

The Part Nobody’s Said Out Loud

Here’s what we found that nobody else has connected: the same interests fighting these fees include the company the fees were written to counter.

Companies are legally required to disclose who pays them to lobby the government — public paperwork anyone can look up. Those U.S. Senate filings show COSCO — China Ocean Shipping Company — and China Shipping Group are named directly, by address and by percentage of ownership, as the entities behind the World Shipping Council’s American lobbying activity.[9] Not a shell. Not an inference. Their names are on the federal paperwork, filed through two U.S. law and government-relations firms: Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies, and Shamrock Maritime Consultants.

In April 2025, Maritime Executive ran a headline that should have gotten more attention than it did: “Shipping Industry Joins with China Calling for U.S. to Reconsider Port Fees.”[10] The World Shipping Council’s objections and Beijing’s official objections were, functionally, the same argument, published within days of each other.

What Kind of Company Is Paying for This

Separately: just over a week ago, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported that COSCO uses concealed equipment aboard its own ships to intercept U.S. military communications near American coastlines.[11] The Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to the Chinese military back in January 2025.[12] Chinese law requires companies like COSCO to support state intelligence work whether they want to or not.

We’re not going to tell you what to make of those two facts sitting next to each other. Americans can draw their own conclusions.

What Wasn’t Said at Hudson

On September 16, the Hudson Institute hosted senators, industry, and labor to talk through the SHIPS Act’s path forward. Heritage’s Brent Sadler raised Chinese state shipping as an espionage vector, in general terms.[13] Sen. Todd Young described, without naming anyone, an uncomfortable conversation with congressional colleagues who wouldn’t answer whether they were comfortable continuing to route cargo through Chinese-owned shipping companies given what’s now known about tracking and targeting systems aboard some of those vessels.[14]

Nobody drew the line all the way through. Nobody said: the resistance you’re describing has a name, an address, and a line item on a federal disclosure form.

We’re Not Anti-Business. We’re Pro-Paying-Your-Share.

We’ve said from the start that this isn’t about picking a fight with retailers or the shipping industry. Companies are allowed to lobby for their interests — that’s how the system works, and we’re not interested in relitigating that.

What we’re saying is simpler than that: here are the facts, here’s who’s named on the paperwork, and here’s what’s been separately reported about that same company. Judge for yourself what it means that they line up the way they do.

The Clock

The fee suspension expires November 9, 2026. That’s the next real decision point — not a hearing, not a letter, an actual expiration date with a binary outcome: reinstate, extend, or let it lapse further.[5]

There’s an earlier date worth watching first. On September 24 — 46 days before that expiration — President Trump hosts Xi Jinping in Washington for their second summit of the year. The first time these two men met at a summit, the port fees became a bargaining chip within six days.[4] The Heritage Foundation’s own pre-summit brief argues this meeting should be judged by whether China shows “measurable progress on its previous commitments,” not by how many new deliverables get announced.[16] We’d add the obvious corollary: that standard should apply to what the United States gives up, too.

If the port fee comes up again on or around September 24 — as a “goodwill gesture,” a “de-escalation step,” or anything else dressed up as diplomatic progress — that won’t be a new development. It will be the same pattern repeating, with the same question still unanswered: what did the first suspension buy us?

Sen. Mark Kelly put the underlying stakes plainly at Hudson: 400 U.S. oceangoing ships during Desert Storm. Eighty today.[15]

Three years in, we’ve learned who’s supposed to pay for rebuilding the fleet. This year we learned who’s paying, quietly, to make sure that never happens.

Next in “Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet”: what to watch for when Trump hosts Xi in Washington on September 24 — and whether the same trade happens twice.

References

[1] Petition to USTR, five national trade unions, March 12, 2024, cited in Clyde & Co, “USTR Section 301 Fee and Tariff Measures and Their Impact to Charterparties.”
[2] USTR, Section 301 investigation determination, January 16, 2025.
[3] Federal Register, “Notice of Action and Proposed Action in Section 301 Investigation,” April 23, 2025.
[4] White House Fact Sheet, November 1, 2025; Hellenic Shipping News, “US-China Port Fee Truce.”
[5] Federal Register, “Notice of Modification of Section 301 Action,” November 13, 2025.
[6] Sens. Mark Kelly and Elizabeth Warren, letter to USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer, June 2026.
[7] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “2025 U.S. Navy Year in Review — Follow the Money: Who’s Fighting Against American Shipyards.”
[8] Textile World / National Retail Federation, “Retailers Submit Comments In Opposition To USTR Shipping Remedies Proposal,” March 24, 2025.
[9] U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings, Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies and Shamrock Maritime Consultants, LLC, client World Shipping Council.
[10] Maritime Executive, “Shipping Industry Joins with China Calling for U.S. to Reconsider Port Fees,” April 18, 2025.
[11] Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Yes, China’s State-Owned Shipping Giant Is Spying on the United States,” September 9, 2026.
[12] U.S. Department of Defense, list of companies linked to the Chinese military, January 2025.
[13] Hudson Institute, “Fixing Shipping and Shipbuilding: Plotting the Course Ahead,” September 16, 2026.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Andrew Harding, “Xi Comes to Washington: Expectations for the Trump-Xi Summit,” The Heritage Foundation, September 9, 2026.

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My 9/11 Story: Windows of the World & Let’s Roll

Two Weeks Before

In late August 2001, I was in Manhattan, kitty-corner from the Twin Towers, to deliver a web design course to community college instructors. I was there on behalf of the World Organization of Webmasters — WOW, for short an organization I founded in 1996. 

On the final day of the course overview to the program managers, around 5:30 in the evening, I walked into the World Trade Center and rode up to the Windows of the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. I was still wearing my WOW blue denim. The staff took one look at the shirt, assumed I was a friend of the owner, and treated me like one — a glass of wine, an open table, no questions asked. I sat there taking in the whole of Manhattan below me, having no idea what that room, and that building, would mean to the country two weeks later.

The Week Everything Changed

That week, the course was taught to the Borough of Manhattan Community College web design instructors — BMCC, just blocks from the towers. It would become a command center within hours of the attack.

My two trainers that week were themselves community college instructors, my partners on a national train-the-trainers program run in collaboration with Apple Education and Cisco Systems, part of a $1.2 million U.S. Department of Education grant. Within an hour of the first plane hitting, my instinct took over: get them in a rental car and get them out of the city, to family in Pennsylvania. That drive — through a Manhattan that no longer had a skyline, past a country that didn’t yet know what was happening to it is a memory I still carry.

I think about that room at Windows of the World often. The wine, the view, the ordinary kindness of strangers who thought I belonged there — and then, seventeen days later, a building full of people who did belong there, gone.

Let’s Roll

Todd Beamer was a passenger on United Flight 93 that morning, a civilian with no training for what came next. When the hijackers took the cockpit, he got on an airphone with a GTE supervisor named Lisa Jefferson, learned what had already happened on the ground, and then turned to the passengers around him. His last recorded words were simple: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.” [1] Minutes later, Flight 93 went down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — the only hijacked plane that day that didn’t reach its target. [2]

Beamer a devoted husband and father wasn’t Navy. He wasn’t a first responder. He was a father of two who saw what needed doing and organized the people around him to do it. That’s the whole of the “Let’s Roll” campaign at Americans for a Stronger Navy: not a slogan borrowed for effect, but a standard. When something needs doing — for a shipmate, a fleet, a country — you don’t wait to be asked twice.

Why I Still Tell This Story

I didn’t lose anyone I loved on 9/11. I lost a room I’d sat in two weeks earlier, and I spent that week getting two people I was responsible for out of a city that had just become a battlefield. That’s a small story next to the ones this country carries from that day. But it’s mine, and it’s why “Let’s Roll” isn’t an abstraction to me — it’s a debt.

Beamer saw the writing on the wall before anyone else on that plane did, and he acted. That’s the point of this story, and it’s the point of everything we do at Americans for a Stronger Navy: the world isn’t getting safer, and the Navy is going to carry more of the weight of that fact, not less. The 2026 National Defense Strategy says as much. We don’t have the luxury of waiting to see how it plays out. Every year on this day, I pay a little of that debt forward — it’s time to roll.

“Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”
— Todd Beamer, United Flight 93, September 11, 2001

Non sibi sed patriae. Not self, but country. Let’s roll.

References

[1] “Let’s roll,” Wikipedia, accessed September 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_roll
[2] Daily Herald, “‘Let’s roll’: Todd Beamer’s father on the valiant fight for Flight 93,” accessed September 2026, https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20210910/lets-roll-todd-beamers-father-on-the-valiant-fight-for-flight-93

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THE CASE FOR A MARITIME SECURITY ADVISOR

WHAT IS THE SHIPS FOR AMERICA ACT?

For readers new to this: the SHIPS for America Act (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151) is a bipartisan, bicameral bill—introduced by Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Todd Young, Rep. Trent Kelly, and Rep. John Garamendi—aimed at reversing decades of decline in the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base and the American-flagged merchant fleet. Its core provisions include rebuilding domestic shipyard capacity, growing and training a maritime workforce, expanding cargo preference requirements that favor U.S.-flagged vessels, and establishing a Maritime Security Trust Fund to reinvest industry fees back into maritime infrastructure. Its core provisions are currently riding inside the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 8800), which passed the House in July but remains stalled in the Senate as of this writing. One of its most structurally important provisions is the subject of this piece: the creation of a Maritime Security Advisor and Maritime Security Board inside the White House.

BACKGROUNDER — FIRST IN A SERIES

This is the first in a series examining the Maritime Security Advisor role created by the SHIPS for America Act—a new White House post that could end up mattering more than almost anything else in the coming maritime revival. This piece lays the groundwork: what the role actually controls, why it was created, and why the decision about who leads it deserves public attention now, before it’s resolved one way or another. Later pieces in this series will look more closely at the landscape of who could fill it, how it fits into the broader package of maritime legislation moving through Congress this fall, and what coordination work is already happening inside the administration to prepare the ground for it.

Most of the public debate over the SHIPS for America Act has focused on ships—fleet targets, funding mechanisms, shipyard capacity. Getting far less attention, though it’s been argued for by the people actually working this issue for well over a year, is a provision in Title I of the bill that may end up mattering as much as any of that: the creation of a new Maritime Security Advisor, housed in the Executive Office of the President. If the bill becomes law, this single office could do more to fix America’s maritime coordination problem than any funding mechanism in the bill.

The Problem This Position Is Designed to Solve

Right now, no single person in the federal government is responsible for American maritime strategy as a whole. The Navy, the Coast Guard, the Maritime Administration, and Military Sealift Command all operate in their own lanes, reporting up through different departments, with different budgets and different priorities [1]. The National Security Council has directors for regions and for functional issues like counterterrorism—but nobody with a standing brief to ask “what is America’s maritime strategy?” and get everyone else in the building to answer to it [1].

The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis of the maritime legislative landscape makes a related structural point: with four separate bills moving through different committees—SHIPS for America, the Shipbuilding Investment and Workforce Act, the FLEETS Now Act, and the Ready Reserve Force Modernization Accountability Act—the risk isn’t a shortage of good ideas. It’s that good ideas arrive at conference as competing claims on the same floor time rather than as a coordinated package [2]. A standing coordinating office would help avoid that same fragmentation once bills become law and start needing joint implementation.

What the Job Actually Controls

The bill text gives the Maritime Security Advisor real authority, not just a podium. As a Special Advisor to the President, the position chairs a Maritime Security Board that spans every federal agency with a stake in the maritime domain [3]. Its responsibilities include:

— Developing, updating, and implementing the National Maritime Strategy [3]
— Setting fleet-size targets for the U.S.-flagged commercial fleet [3]
— Independent oversight of federal cargo preference programs [3]
— Coordinating the national maritime workforce buildout [3]
— Setting R&D priorities for next-generation shipbuilding technology [3]
— Aligning federal policy to favor U.S.-flagged vessels in international commerce [3]
— Protecting U.S. vessels from physical and cyber threats [3]

Put simply, this office doesn’t just advise on maritime policy from the sidelines—it runs point on it, across every department that touches a ship, from the Pentagon to the Department of Commerce to the Federal Maritime Commission.

A position with real cross-agency authority is only useful if the person in it can actually use that authority—which means the credentials and judgment of whoever fills this chair will matter as much as the statute that creates it.

Why This Is Bigger Than It Looks

It’s worth being precise about scale here. The Maritime Administrator at MARAD is a real and important job—but it’s a single-agency post inside the Department of Transportation, with authority bounded by MARAD’s own statutory mission. The Maritime Security Advisor sits above that, in the West Wing, with a mandate that spans defense, commerce, transportation, and diplomacy simultaneously. It’s the closest thing the American maritime enterprise has ever had to a single point of accountability.

This Office Doesn’t Need to Wait for Congress

Here’s what’s easy to miss: the President doesn’t need the SHIPS Act to sign this office into existence. In a July 2025 Heritage Foundation report, Senior Research Fellow Brent Sadler argued exactly that—the President “should not wait for the [SHIPS Act] to reach his desk” and could name a Maritime Security Advisor directly, tied to the interagency framework already called for in his April 2025 executive order “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” [5]. On that reading, the SHIPS Act doesn’t create this idea so much as it would make permanent, by statute, something the executive branch already has the authority to stand up on its own.

Where the Legislation Actually Stands

The House passed its version of the FY27 NDAA (H.R. 8800) on July 22, 216–212. The Senate’s companion bill (S. 4784) has stalled: a cloture vote to begin floor debate failed 50–46 on July 14, and as of early September, the Senate had taken no further procedural steps to bring it up [4]. Recent NDAA cycles have often skipped a formal conference committee in favor of informal House-Senate negotiation, so even “conference” may understate how this ultimately gets resolved.

None of that changes the underlying stakes. If anything, a stalled bill is exactly the moment when it’s worth being public about what’s riding on it—and a reminder that the executive branch doesn’t have to wait on the Senate to act.

References
[1] Heritage Foundation research on maritime coordination gaps across Navy, Coast Guard, MSC, and MARAD.
[2] The Heritage Foundation, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Factsheet No. 285, August 12, 2026.
[3] SHIPS for America Act of 2025 (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151), Sec. 101, Title I—Oversight and Accountability; Senate Commerce Committee, “SHIPS for America Act Section-by-Section,” Apr. 30, 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, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” The Heritage Foundation, July 24, 2025.

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One Committee, One Conference, One Chance: Why Congress Needs a Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival

By Bill Cullifer | Americans for a Stronger Navy

The Heritage Foundation published a factsheet this month that does something rare in this space: it lays out, in plain language, exactly where the nation’s maritime revival stands and exactly what Congress needs to decide next [1]. We want to highlight one recommendation in particular, because we think it’s the single most important structural fix available to Congress right now and because it’s the kind of nonpartisan, process-focused idea a nonpartisan organization like ours can endorse without reservation.

Heritage recommends that, whether or not the Senate consolidates the current maritime bills into one, congressional leadership should create a Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival to coordinate across the committees that currently have jurisdiction [1]. We think that recommendation deserves support from anyone who has watched this effort unfold over the past three years.

The Problem the Committee Would Solve

The maritime revival effort is not lacking for good bills. The April 2025 version of the SHIPS for America Act carries genuine bipartisan support — 29 Senate cosponsors (15 Republican, 14 Democrat) and 140 House cosponsors (75 Democrat, 65 Republican) as of its last recorded action [1]. Alongside it sit the Shipbuilding Investment and Workforce Act, the FLEETS Now Act, and the Ready Reserve Force Modernization Accountability Act — each addressing a different piece of the same problem, each sponsored by different members, and each currently routed through different committees [1].

That’s not a failure of ideas. It’s a failure of coordination. A House amendment to the FY27 NDAA passed with two of these maritime provisions attached, and the whole package is now headed to House-Senate conference in September [2]. Conference is exactly the moment when overlapping, uncoordinated bills either get reconciled into something workable or get quietly dropped in the scramble to close out a defense authorization. A Select Committee — standing up now, ahead of that conference — is the difference between these bills arriving as a coordinated package and arriving as competing claims on the same limited floor time.

Why This Matters Beyond the Bills Themselves

We’ve spent three years arguing that naval readiness is fundamentally a “who pays” problem — allied burden-sharing through the Gulf Act, and a debt-neutral corporate demand signal through the SEAS Act’s Strategic Technology Responsibility Contribution [3]. Neither of those mechanisms competes with what’s already in SHIPS for America. Heritage’s own factsheet shows SHIPS for America’s funding model leans on shipping-side fees — non-U.S.-flagged vessel fees and Section 301 penalties tied to Chinese-built ships feeding a self-sustaining Maritime Trust Fund [1]. That’s a shipping-side answer to “who pays.” The SEAS Act is a corporate-side answer. The Gulf Act is an allied-side answer. None of these ideas need to compete for the same dollars or the same bill number — but they do need a body capable of seeing all of them at once, which is precisely what a Select Committee would provide.

What We’re Asking

We’re not asking Congress to adopt any specific funding mechanism in this post — ours or anyone else’s. We’re asking Congress to create the structure that would let good mechanisms be evaluated on the merits rather than lost to committee turf. A Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival, stood up before September conference, would let Congress treat this as the “generational task” Heritage rightly calls it [1], instead of a jurisdictional scramble.

The nation’s maritime revival has been, in Heritage’s words, a bipartisan, bicameral effort since its inception [1]. It should stay that way through conference. A Select Committee is how it does.

References

[1] The Heritage Foundation, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Factsheet No. 285, August 12, 2026.
[2] H.R. 8800 (FY27 NDAA), House passage with maritime amendments, 2026; expected House-Senate conference, September 2026.
[3] Americans for a Stronger Navy / Center for Maritime Strategy, “Defense Reinvestment as Naval Strategy,” March 2026.

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The “China + 1” Illusion: What Global Trade Shifts Mean for U.S. Naval Readiness

Maritime analyst Dr. Sal Mercogliano recently highlighted a critical dynamic shaping modern trade: “The world is diversifying around China, not away from it.”

While economic headlines often celebrate Western supply chains “decoupling” from Beijing, maritime shipping data tells a very different story. Between 2023 and 2025, Chinese containerized exports surged to regional manufacturing hubs—up 40% to India, 36% to Vietnam, and 37% to Thailand.

Rather than pulling manufacturing out of China’s sphere of influence, companies are increasingly relying on a “China + 1” strategy. Raw materials, components, and machinery are still produced in Chinese factories, shipped to South and Southeast Asia for final assembly, and then sent onward to Western markets.

For the U.S. Navy and the defense industrial base, this isn’t true decoupling—it’s re-routing. And it presents serious risks to American sea power.

The Hidden Risks to the Fleet

Naval power relies on secure, resilient supply chains. The expansion of China’s sub-tier manufacturing network impacts U.S. naval readiness across three primary fronts:

  • Deep Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Vulnerabilities: Federal regulations strictly forbid purchasing major military hardware directly from strategic competitors. However, Tier-3 and Tier-4 sub-suppliers—who provide basic electronics, circuit boards, and specialized alloys—remain heavily dependent on Chinese inputs. In a crisis, Beijing could restrict exports of critical sub-components, stalling U.S. ship construction and maintenance.
  • The Critical Mineral Bottleneck: Modern warships depend on Rare Earth Elements (REEs) for permanent magnets, radar systems, sonar arrays, and electric motors. An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer requires roughly 5,200 lbs of rare earth elements, while a Virginia-class submarine requires 9,200 lbs. Because China controls over 80% of global REE refining capacity, shifting final assembly to third-party nations does not resolve this primary vulnerability.
  • Strained Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs): Multi-leg supply chains (China \rightarrow Southeast Asia \rightarrow U.S.) make maritime trade routes longer and more fragmented. This places greater operational demand on the U.S. Navy to monitor, protect, and maintain freedom of navigation across critical maritime chokepoints like the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca.

Policy Action: The Return of Domestic Industrial Mobilization

Recognizing these deep supply chain risks, federal leaders recently announced the revival of a World War II-era model: the Smaller War Plants Commission (SWPC), spearheaded by the Department of Defense and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Because roughly 70% of the defense industrial base consists of small businesses, this initiative targets the exact lower-tier chokepoints that threaten naval readiness. By expanding capital access and streamlining support for small domestic manufacturers, the SWPC focuses on critical areas:

  • Domestic production of microelectronics and legacy chips.
  • Critical mineral refining on American soil.
  • Specialized castings, forgings, and shipbuilding components.

Rebuilding the U.S. Fleet requires ensuring American warships aren’t grounded by missing foreign-sourced parts during a crisis. Programs like the SWPC are essential steps toward restoring true maritime sovereignty.

Rebuilding True Maritime Strength

Securing U.S. naval readiness requires moving past the illusion of trade diversification:

  1. Map Deep-Tier Supply Chains: Track sub-tier components to eliminate single-point dependencies on foreign raw materials.
  2. Onshore Critical Refining: Leverage domestic programs to build processing facilities for critical minerals and defense components.
  3. Expand Shipyard Infrastructure: Invest directly in U.S. commercial and naval shipyard capacity so the fleet can build, maintain, and repair vessels independently.

As Dr. Mercogliano’s analysis reminds us, trade routes may shift on paper, but strategic dependencies remain. Rebuilding American sea power means securing the industrial foundation behind every ship, sensor, and sailor.

Take Action for American Sea Power

Join Americans for a Stronger Navy in advocating for policies that rebuild domestic shipbuilding, secure defense supply lines, and maintain a fleet capable of protecting global freedom of navigation.

  • Sign up for updates at strongernavy.org
  • Share this analysis on social media to spread awareness about U.S. maritime security.

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The Jones Act Waiver: A Diagnostic Report on America’s Maritime Capacity Gap

Bill Cullifer, Founder
Bill Cullifer, Founder

The Jones Act Waiver: What It Actually Revealed

I am not a maritime economist. I am not a Jones Act scholar. I am a former blue-water destroyer sailor who stood watches aboard USS Henry B. Wilson (DDG-7) in the 1970s, and a former telecommunications and web engineering executive who spent three decades watching American industry move offshore — including firsthand business travel to China during the early 2000s tech transfer era. I come to this the way I come to most naval policy questions: as a student, not an expert.

I have a bias, and I want to name it up front. I watched American manufacturing hollow out in real time. So when someone argues the fix for a hollowed-out merchant marine is removing one of the last laws requiring any of it to be American-built, -owned, -flagged, or -crewed, my instinct is skepticism.

That instinct is what sent me digging. Over the past several weeks I’ve read the primary MARAD compliance filings behind the 2026 Jones Act waiver, followed the public arguments of four people who know this issue far better than I do, and engaged two of them directly. What I found didn’t confirm my bias. It refined it.

What the Waiver Actually Is

On March 17, 2026, during the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the federal government waived the Jones Act’s cabotage rules, allowing foreign-flagged vessels to move fuel, fertilizer, and related cargo between U.S. ports. That waiver has been extended twice, is now the longest suspension of Jones Act rules in the program’s history, and by August was being driven substantially by gasoline prices ahead of the midterms rather than the original national-security rationale.

I went to the primary source: MARAD’s own compliance filings, which every operator is legally required to submit within 10 days of each waiver voyage, including a specific field — an “Explanation of National Defense Interest.” What I found in those filings surprised me. A meaningful share of operators listed that required field simply as “Not Applicable.” Most of the rest reused identical boilerplate language, word for word, across unrelated shippers and vessels. That’s not proof the waiver is bad policy. It is proof that its stated legal basis — a case-by-case national defense necessity — isn’t being documented as case-by-case in practice, for a real share of its use.

Four Voices, One Diagnosis

Public debate over the Jones Act has been framed as a binary choice: repeal the century-old law, or defend it as written. I went looking for the strongest version of every position I could find, and heard from four people who do not agree with each other, or always with me:

Colin Grabow of the Cato Institute has built the most detailed public data tracking waiver voyages, and reads it as proof the law suppresses legitimate demand.

Dr. Steven Wills of the Center for Maritime Strategy argues reform, not repeal — that the law is connective tissue between America’s commercial shipyards and naval surge capacity, and removing it without building a replacement trades a flawed foundation for no foundation at all.

Dr. Sal Mercogliano, historian and host of “What’s Going On With Shipping,” rejects both camps. As he put it directly:

“It’s not the Jones Act that’s the issue. It’s our maritime policy. We’ve been asleep at the wheel while China woke up and has seized the reins.”

William P. Doyle, a former U.S. Federal Maritime Commissioner, adds a sharper security dimension — documenting a Chinese state-owned vessel operating in U.S. coastwise trade under the waiver while qualified American tonnage sat idle.

Four different prescriptions. But underneath the disagreement, a shared diagnosis: a shipyard base too thin to survive between crises, a mariner workforce that shrinks every drought cycle, and a country that let China take over 70 percent of global shipbuilding orders while looking the other way.

The Question Nobody’s Asking

None of these four voices, in their public positions, centers a funding mechanism as the answer. That’s the gap I wrote this report to address. Not repeal or defend — who actually pays to rebuild the capacity everyone agrees we’ve lost.

Read the Full Report

I’ve written up the complete research — the MARAD filings analysis, all four positions in full, and where I’ve landed — as a diagnostic report rather than a single post, because the material deserved more room than a blog format allows.

Download the full report: The Jones Act Waiver — A Diagnostic Report on America’s Maritime Capacity Gap

I’ll be tagging Colin, Sal, Steven, and William when this goes live. Their work is half of what’s in it, and I’d value their read.

Stronger together. Break the silos.

— Bill Cullifer
Americans for a Stronger Navy | StrongerNavy.org

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The Carrier Irony: The Strongest Navy in the World — Worn Thin

Bill Cullifer, Founder
Bill Cullifer, Founder

Introduction

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

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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.

Let’s roll.

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The Next War Will Be Won by the Bench, Not the Starting Lineup

Abstract

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
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.

Let’s roll.