Ensign Adam Nix, U.S. Coast Guard
Logistics capabilities to meet future gray-zone operations. Currently, the sealift fleet is aging and unprepared for future conflicts. Considering the Chinese maritime militia’s increasing role in the Pacific, U.S. military sealift shipping should be a priority.
Lieutenant Commander Sankey Blanton, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
Escort (“jeep”) carriers—inexpensive (imagine that) and able to carry helicopters or advanced vertical takeoff aircraft to amphibious events in small problem areas. The Battles of Jutland or Midway may not be the entire future of naval forces.
Lieutenant Colonel Dave Henderson, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
The amphibious transport dock (LPD) is the one ship the Navy should base its future shipbuilding program around. The LPD is a multipurpose ship capable of transporting Marine combat ground and air elements and special operations forces and also of conducting antisubmarine warfare.
The San Antonio–class amphibious transport dock ship USS Arlington (LPD-24). Icelandic Coast Guard
Midshipman Third Class Webster Lowe, U.S. Naval Academy
The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. Strategic deterrence is the optimal factor to prevent direct military conflict between great powers while allowing other avenues of competition to be pursued.
Lieutenant Kyle Cregge, U.S. Navy
Besides the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, fielding the large unmanned surface vehicle as an arsenal ship. There is no other economical way for Navy ships to scale vertical launch cells at speed to meet China’s ever-growing capacity.
Chief Petty Officer John M. Duffy, U.S. Navy (Retired)
An aggressive surface warship building campaign similar to the Kidd-class guided missile destroyers initially bound for Iran that wound up in the Taiwanese Navy. These heavily armed destroyers had both guns and guided missiles and could fill the gap left by the former Perry-class frigates and the outgoing littoral combat ships.
Lieutenant Commander Jordan Keough, U.S. Navy
Not shipbuilding but shipbuilding infrastructure! The priority should be a drydock in Guam capable of handling forward-deployed ship and submarine maintenance. If we can’t keep the fleet we currently have at sea, what hope do we have for any fleet we may need to build?
Captain Kavon Hakimzadeh, U.S. Navy
Put as many missile launchers as possible out to sea. The next fight will require a high volume of distributed, long-range fires. These can come from destroyers, frigates, submarines, and large unmanned vessels on and below the surface.
Michael H. Adams
A new class of medium-to-long-range high-speed transport/cargo vessels that can obviate the ability to patrol sea lanes entirely while delivering assets. They must be able to outrun torpedoes and evade targeting systems while resupplying carrier strike groups from secure land masses.
Ensign Ryan Burke, U.S. Navy
U.S. shipbuilding must reaffirm its ability to deliver new construction reliably, on time, and with minimal overrun. This applies to established platforms and new classes, both necessary in this era of great power competition. Sailors are ready to fight; give them the tools to do so.
The Honorable Juan Garcia, Former Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Innovation in shipbuilding is critical. But without erasing our current maintenance backlog, there is no way to reach our congressionally mandated inventory of 355 (much less 500) ships. We must transform our four World War II–era shipyards to drive the Navy’s 4th revolution—from sail, to steam, to nuclear . . . to digital.
Lieutenant Commander Sean P. Walsh, U.S. Navy (Retired), Life Member
Although not glamorous, we need to build at least two and preferably four floating drydocks and the same number of tenders to provide relocatable maintenance and battle-damage repair. In peacetime, some of these can be used to support forward deployers and the remainder back in the continental United States to supplement existing repair facilities. In wartime they would be deployed and relocated as necessary, like they were used in World War II.
Captain David L. Teska, U.S. Coast Guard Reserve (Retired)
Icebreakers. The Russians are the clear competitor and, as the polar ice cap continues to shrink, the Arctic region will continue to expand geographically as will the U.S. need to remain a player with the Coast Guard resources to crew and operate an expanded icebreaker fleet.
Captain Charles Gallagher, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
The installation of handling requirements for as many different types of unmanned aerial, surface, and subsurface vehicles as possible on as many ships as possible while not disclosing which ships have which capabilities and vehicles.
A Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel sails in the Arabian Gulf. U.S. Army (Natianna Strachen)
William Prom, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran
To build, maintain, and repair a Navy capable of reacting to a renewed great power competition, the United States must invest in large commercial shipyards and the skilled workforce employed at them. We have no ability to accelerate naval shipbuilding without the proper infrastructure and human capital to support it.
Bill Strupczewski
Reviving the “jeep carrier” concept. Small, light carriers that can augment the fleet carriers with a suite of vertical and/or short takeoff and landing aircraft to cover greater areas of contested ocean.
Captain Lawrence J. De Meo, Jr., U.S. Army (Retired)
Light carriers to get every non-attack/strike aircraft off the big carriers! Every time one of them is launched or recovered it delays the launch of a strike package. We learned hard at Midway whichever side gets its strike aircraft in the air first usually wins!
Commander Jim Moses, U. S. Navy (Retired)
Get the Navy back in the shipbuilding business. Industry seems incapable of doing it themselves. Restore the Naval Sea Systems Command preliminary design function and rescind the prohibition against naval shipyards constructing ships so the Navy can experiment and prototype.
John Cogorno, U.S. Air Force Veteran
Submarines and submersibles designed for speed, diversity, versatility, stealth that can carry nuclear and conventional cruise missiles, drones, mines, and specialized frogmen and small units of specialized land forces. Aircraft carriers and all surface ships are obsolete and expensive, big, slow, rich targets.
Carlos Suarez
The Common Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform (CHAMP) program should be modified and funded to build low-cost, strategic-sealift vessels for 10 to 15 years of service. Then the vessels could be leased for commercial or other national interests, vice attempting to make do with converting commercial vessels. A stable of ship repair/building private yards could be established to provide a trained workforce for the Navy’s shipyards.
Lieutenant Commander Scott A. Wallace, U.S. Navy
Relaxing the Jones Act. While some argue it protects the industrial base, the act stymies the international competitiveness of U.S. shipbuilding. A strong shipbuilding capacity is necessary for a maritime nation and maritime power, as noted by Alfred Thayer Mahan more than 100 years ago.
Keith Borelli
Aircraft carriers to project sea power but, now more than ever, to assure allies the United States will support them in this contentious climate. Especially with the war in Ukraine, the United needs to show the world it is a nation fully capable of standing by its commitments.
Bob Morabito, U.S. Navy Veteran
From a former surface ship driver—submarines!
Mark Henzel
Build ships at costs that allow the Navy to buy enough ships to compete with China's rapidly expanding fleet.
Captain Lawson W. Brigham, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)
The highest priority must be shipbuilding capacity related to undersea warfare. We must maintain U.S. superiority not only for nuclear submarine development, refinement and construction, but also for a new arsenal of underwater assets including smaller combat submarines and autonomous underwater vehicles for global operations.
Colonel Jeffrey Acosta, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Retired)
Bring back the landing ship tank (LST). LSTs were the most versatile ships of the 20th century. They could support a plethora of missions, and with embarked Marines meet all the qualifications of the type of amphibious assault ship needed to support the Marine Corps’ littoral regiments.
Judge Thomas Grady
The most internationally useful shipbuilding project would be to repurpose the SS United States, the finest ocean liner ever built, now wasting away at Philadelphia Harbor. The masterpiece of the brilliant naval architect William Francis Gibbs, this should be the next hospital ship to get to a wide variety of ports in emergencies. She is ready and cleared for modified interior plans. Modern engines and modified decks for helicopters would complement her famous hull design.
Mark Stahley, U.S. Army Veteran
Elon Musk’s development of methane as a renewable rocket fuel is interesting. As nuclear systems charge batteries, could they generate methane from the air to fuel secondary assets? This process is endothermic, so would reduce heat signature?
Louis DiFrancesco
Commercial-off-the-shelf carrier vessels (light) on hydrofoils. Cargo containers are lashed together to form 600 ft x 320 ft flight decks (192,000 square ft), two hanger decks (180,000 sqare ft/deck) and 9,000,000 cubic ft volume), two pontoon catamaran hulls (600 ft x120 ft x 50 ft), 10,000-ton cargo capacity, 10,000-ton control ship, 5,000 tons of fuel, and robust airfield of at least 50 F/A-18 Hornets, and 12 C-130 Hercules or 6 C-17 Globemasters.
John Longhurst
A fleet mix focused on survivability, lethality, and perseverance. The likeliest contingency will be in the South or East China Sea, where China’s land-based assets and navy enable escalation dominance and persistent overmatch. Survivable U.S. platforms are needed that can host large volumes of accurate long-range fires and effectively deny Chinese long-range and underwater capabilities.
Robert Lee Conner, U.S. Navy Veteran
First, required reading for anyone involved in setting ship building priorities should include Superiority by Arthur C. Clark. Second, we need more low-end ships. Namely, relatively inexpensive frigates similar to the Danish Absalon class, built with existing technology. Builtin flexibility will allow them to be useful for decades.
Captain Tom Arminio, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Any answer to this question requires some familiarity of the 2022 National Defense Strategy and the linkage with component commander operational plans. These documents must also align with the National Security Strategy. Budget priorities must also be synced. Does anyone still use the ends-ways-means paradigm?
John Sladek, Consulting Engineer
The cornerstone of an extended western Pacific conflict is rapid, long-range logistical support. Surface ship priority is the 26-knot, single-screw, diesel-powered container ship modified for underway replenishment and offloading to smaller vessels. See Vaclav Smil’s Prime Movers of Globalization, chapter 5 for details. Have South Korea build them.