Members of Congress on Thursday urged Navy and Marine Corps leaders to strengthen the U.S. maritime industrial base as the Navy considered using foreign shipyards to supplement domestic production.
At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the fiscal 2027 Defense Department budget request, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith discussed the issue days after the Navy released a shipbuilding plan outlining possible overseas support.
“I will echo some of my Democrat colleagues: As many ships as we can build in the United States, we want to build them,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., said. “I understand that we have to go outside of our lines of communications right now because we just have lost the capacity, but I firmly believe that our American men and women, our tradesmen and women, are the best in the world.”
Van Orden said using overseas production to fill current gaps was acceptable if the U.S. also worked to rebuild domestic capacity.
Cao told lawmakers the Navy needed 540,000 jobs to build ships already in the pipeline, and said the U.S. needed more young workers to meet demand. He said the Navy was not investing in foreign shipbuilding, but examining whether foreign models could work for the U.S. fleet.
The Navy plan said it would “evaluate overseas options and whether allied and partner shipbuilding can supplement domestic production if U.S. industry cannot meet required timelines.” It proposed spending $2.3 billion over five years to buy five fuel-support tankers built “potentially” and “initially” at overseas shipyards. The plan also included two auxiliary ships and “flexibility for fabrication of some combatant modules overseas.”
Cao said U.S. workers would travel abroad to study shipbuilding techniques from foreign partners. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, objected.
Golden said Bath Iron Works could face layoffs as soon as next year if Congress approved what he called a weak demand signal for U.S. shipbuilding.
