Compass Points - Get to the Fight
President's focus on shipbuilding
Compass Points - Get to the Fight
President’s focus on shipbuilding.
April 16, 2025
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Two crucial questions for the Marine Corps.
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1. How are Marines going to get to the fight?
2. Where is the fight most likely to be?
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To get to the fight Marines will need more ships. Defense News reports that the Commander-in-Chief is putting new emphasis on shipbuilding.
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President Donald Trump on April 9 signed an executive order aimed at revitalizing an American shipbuilding industry that has fallen well behind production levels of its rivals from the People’s Republic of China.
. . . In an April 8 hearing of Navy leadership before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower, service officials voiced concerns regarding stagnant shipbuilding and what that could mean for success in great power conflicts.
Navy officials in March 2024 stated the service’s goal of growing its fleet of battle force ships to 381 over the next 30 years, a plan that would require investing at least $40 billion each year over the duration of the effort, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
There are currently fewer than 300 battle force ships in the fleet — and that number is expected to drop. Current projections indicate the Navy will retire close to a dozen more ships through 2027 than it expects to commission.
-- Defense News
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In recent Congressional testimony, the CBO provided a review of the Navy shipbuilding plan.
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Each year, as directed by the Congress, the Department of Defense submits a report with the President’s budget describing the Navy’s plan for its future fleet for the next 30 years. CBO has analyzed the Navy’s 2025 plan and estimated its costs. Overall, the Navy wants to build a larger fleet whose firepower is distributed among more ships than it is today.
-- Cost. The Navy’s 2025 plan would cost 46 percent more annually in real terms (that is, adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) than the average amount appropriated over the past 5 years. CBO estimates that total shipbuilding costs would average $40 billion (in 2024 dollars) over the next 30 years, which is about 17 percent more than the Navy estimates. CBO’s estimates for the 2025 plan range from 8 percent to 16 percent higher in real terms than its estimates for the three alternatives in the Navy’s 2024 plan . . . .
-- Fleet Size. The number of battle force ships would increase from 295 today to 390 in 2054. Before increasing, however, the fleet would become smaller in the near term, falling to 283 ships in 2027.
-- Purchasing Plan. The Navy would purchase a total of 364 new combat ships and combat logistics and support ships. Overall, under the 2025 plan, the Navy would buy more current generation ships and more smaller ships than it would have purchased under any of the 2024 plan’s three alternatives.
-- Fleet Capabilities. The fleet’s firepower would be reduced over the next decade, but thereafter, as the fleet grew, its firepower would increase and become distributed among more ships.
-- Industrial Base. Over the next 30 years, the nation’s shipyards would need to produce substantially more naval tonnage than they have produced over the past 10 years. The rate of production of nuclear-powered submarines, in particular, would need to increase significantly.
-- Congressional Budget Office
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Most importantly for the Marine Corps, the Navy fleet alternatives over the next three decades for building large and midsize amphibious warships, range from 11 to 25.
The 2025 30 year estimate for 25 amphibious ships includes:
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-- 8 LHA-6 amphibious assault ships,
-- 5 LPD-17 Flight II amphibious transport docks, and
-- 12 LPD(X) next-generation amphibious ships.
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Thirty years is a long time. The Marine Corps cannot wait three decades for the best case estimate of 25 amphibious ships. The Marine Corps needs new ships, refurbished ships, and alternative ships today.
There is no doubt that with a renewed focus on the global, 9-1-1, combined arms MAGTF, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, and Congress can help Marines get the amphibious ships they must have to forward deploy on the oceans of the world.
Where around the globe will some conflict or crisis require the US to send in the Marines? It might be somewhere near China or it might not.
China is not the only threat, not even the most likely.
The Council on Foreign Relations has complied a report on the top 30 global conflicts.
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Executive Summary
-- CFR’s Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) polls hundreds of foreign policy experts every year to assess thirty ongoing or potential violent conflicts and their likely impact on U.S. interests.
-- This year could be the most dangerous in the PPS’s seventeen-year history: experts predict that more contingencies have both a high likelihood of occurring and high impact on U.S. interests than ever before. Wars in Gaza and Ukraine, confrontations in the West Bank and at the U.S.-Mexico Border, and hostilities between Iran and Israel were of the greatest concern.
-- Deteriorating security conditions in the Middle East top this year’s list, followed by threats to the American homeland (domestic political violence, cyberattacks, and a security crisis at the southern border), Russian aggression in Ukraine and eastern Europe, and Chinese provocation in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
-- Severe humanitarian crises in Haiti, Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere rose in the rankings of this year’s survey relative to previous years.
-- CFR - Conflicts to Watch in 2025
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Two crucial questions for the Marine Corps.
1. How are Marines going to get to the fight?
2. Where is the fight most likely to be?
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To get to the fight the Marine Corps must advocate with a new focus for more amphibious warships. The Nation cannot afford anything less than MAGTF Marines embarked on Navy amphibious ships ready to arrive at any dangerous foreign shore to deter, assist, and fight.
Where will the next fight be? There is no way to predict. Unfortunately, in recent years the Marine Corps has turned its focus on one region and one adversary. But threats to the US are not confined to one region or adversary. The Marine Corps must restore a global focus and global capabilities. A Marine MAGTF never focuses on only one foe or stays only in one place for long. Marines onboard Navy amphibious ships are a global power with global strength and global flexibility.
Compass Points salutes all those working to restore and enhance the global, combined arms, Marine Air Ground Task Force.
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Defense News - 04/14/2025
Trump signs shipbuilding order as Navy leaders call for 381-ship fleet
By Riley Ceder, Zita Ballinger Fletcher and J.D. Simkins
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CBO - 03/11/2025
Testimony on The Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan and Its Implications for the Shipbuilding Industrial Base
Eric J. Labs - Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61240
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CFR - January 2025
Conflicts to Watch in 2025 - Preventive Priorities Survey Results
U.S. foreign policy experts rank the thirty global conflicts that could most significantly affect the United States in 2025.
By Paul B. Stares
https://www.cfr.org/report/conflicts-watch-2025
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker
Something that I think those of us not in the Merchant Marine and Maritime industry do not appreciate is just how worn ships over 20+ years can be. There are significant problems with fielding a class of ships over 20-30 years. The Navy will have ships going offline as they are bringing new hulls of the class into service. So knuckledraggers like me think budgeting for 8 ships of the same class means we'll have 8 ships (LHAs) worth of capability at the same time. We say 'Thank you, Navy'. In reality, 8 LHAs planned between 2019 and 2052 means we never have more than maybe 60 percent (4-5) of those LHAs in service (cut that by 30-41% readiness), with the first of the class going into pasture around 10 years before the the last ship is slated to be built. I understand some of the nuance here (balancing cost and resources available with need to maintain production yards). At least the references currently show 4 LPDs between 2040 and 2044....(eye roll). [Source for numbers: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61240]
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls on his defense leaders to accelerate their workforce and recapitalization plans by the end of the week, our national security ecosystem has an unprecedented opportunity to radically restructure and set itself not for yesterday’s wars, but tomorrow’s security.” – April 14, 2025
I caught this article the other day recognizing that this might help the US Navy’s amphibious ship building and maintenance problem. https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/14/hegseths_memo_what_to_do_next_1103761.html The above article mentions the “infamous 1993 Last Supper” dinner/meeting where a Deputy SecDef told defense contractors to consolidate in order to maintain profits. Apparently, consolidate they did, and DOD went from more than fifty major contractors to five. This move “reshaped” the Nation Defense Industry. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-a-1993-pentagon-dinner-reshaped-the-defense-industry
Of course competition breeds “agility, innovation, and responsiveness” and that evaporated from the process with this consolidation. The congressional mandated cost-plus contracts of 10 to 12 percent profit margins resulted in a process where “cost overruns and delays were tolerated and helped increase profits”. In other words, we innovate too slow and build too expensive.
The article concludes it is time to change. “Industry must be measured on how fast they can deliver real-world results, not how well they check the boxes of a static requirements document (which they often help write). The risks of under delivering and overspending are best mitigated by embracing a minimum viable product (MVP) mindset that focuses on rapidly fielding operating prototypes, and continually improving and adapting them. These are hallmarks of modern software development, but the mindset has a place in even the largest hardware-focused projects as well.”
I appreciate the guidance issued by the SECDEF and the implementation in the Department of the Navy is going to be interesting to watch. S/F