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The U.S. naval shipbuilding enterprise continues to face workforce, infrastructure, supply chain, and procurement constraints that limit its ability to deliver ships at the pace, scale, and cost the Navy requires. While allied cooperation is not a panacea for the United States' shipbuilding challenge, this report examines how deeper cooperation with allies—with a specific focus on South Korea and Japan—might realistically contribute to the United States overcoming some of these constraints. It considers four principal pathways: (1) allied investment in U.S. shipyards, (2) modular or “green hull” coproduction, (3) procurement of allied-built vessels, and (4) expanded overseas maintenance and repair.
No single pathway advances every U.S. objective. Hybrid approaches, however, could balance competing priorities by pairing near-term foreign construction with investment in U.S. shipyards, workforce development, technology transfer, and the phased expansion of domestic participation. Such models offer a method to balance the tradeoffs among speed, affordability, and long-term U.S. industrial capacity.
This report is made possible by the generous support of the Smith-Richardson Foundation.
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