State of the Navy 2025
Could a new, more productive era in shipbuilding be on the horizon?
Bradley Peniston | April 18, 2025 05:55 AM ET
Navy Acquisition Defense Budget
After years of navalist hand-wringing, could this be the year the U.S. Navy gets the support, and the changes, that enable a substantially larger fleet? Maybe.
Let’s start with Congress, where the bipartisan SHIPS Act was introduced to general applause in December. The bill aims to revitalize U.S. shipbuilding—naval and commercial—along with the U.S. shipping industry and the Merchant Marine workforce. A chief sponsor was Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman before he became President Trump’s national security adviser.
That bill could work in tandem with Sen. Roger Wicker’s FoRGED Act, which proposes to speed up Pentagon contracting—including shipbuilding—by reducing bureaucracy, increasing competition, and accelerating the adoption of innovative technologies. The new Senate Armed Services chair has also pushed for a larger defense budget to fund, among other things, more warships, amphibious ships, and submarines.
Over at the White House, Waltz’s new boss is prodding the executive branch to get on with it. In an April 9 executive order, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” President Trump handed the secretaries of defense, commerce, and other agencies a Nov. 5 deadline to devise a plan to “revitalize and rebuild domestic maritime industries and workforce to promote national security and economic prosperity.” There’s also a May 24 deadline for recommendations to increase competition and reduce cost overruns in “government vessel construction.” Trump also recently announced that he would propose a defense budget “in the vicinity” of $1 trillion, up from this year’s $892 billion.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/04/state-navy-2025/404675/?oref=d1-related-article
