Editor’s Note: This essay is part two of a three-part series based on a report by the author. Read part one and part two or download the full report here.
Part III
Industry and Shipping
There is a time to pose questions, and there is a time to propose answers. Today requires that we do both in order that America’s non-military maritime industries flourish, for there can be no doubt that American shipbuilding has declined catastrophically since the end of the Korean War. Total output for this period, in terms of tonnage per year, has dropped by more than 85 percent. The reduction in American shipyards capable of building large vessels matches this decay. Without an adequate shipyard base and the maintenance of the myriad of correlated domestic industries, American naval supremacy is certain to be challenged.
In 2023, China produced 230 times the number of large commercial ships as did the United States. By the 1970s, large commercial vessel production in the United States fell to approximately 5 percent of global production; today, only 0.2 percent of commercial vessels capable of transoceanic operations are built in America. In contrast, China has passed both the Republic of Korea and Japan, to become the dominant force in the production of large, ocean-going commercial vessels; this attainment conveys massive economies of scale and workforce resilience to China’s construction of naval vessels and support ships.
Though U.S. international trade, including all exports and imports, should surpass $7 trillion in 2024, U.S.-registered vessels only transport approximately one-hundredth of these cargoes in terms of value. Chinese government-owned or affiliated shipping companies excel in the transport of goods to and from America.
China intends to control the supplies of strategically critical materials needed for the production of renewable energy and other emergent technologies; it dominates in the production of rare-earth elements including erbium, neodymium, and samarium. The Chinese Communist Party’s plan is to wage a resource war against American interests. Beneath the South China Sea is a great store of energy and minerals. Therefore, China’s creation of militarized islands in the South China Sea must be contested through freedom of navigation transits and other means.
According to the United States Geological Survey, America is dependent on imports of such materials as cobalt, manganese, and indium. All are vital in the production of products that will define this century. Only our command of the seas can secure our access to these critical materials in peace or war.
The magnitude of these interlacing woes dictates that America’s maritime emergency cannot be solved in isolation. This metastasizing disaster, which imperils our nation’s ability to support the production and transportation requirements necessitated in war, demands that we marshal the dormant dynamism of our nation as we solve multiple societal problems simultaneously.
The federal government in this decade has spent trillions on supposed infrastructure initiatives. In fact, very few projects of substantial size have actually been built.
The evisceration of America’s commercial shipbuilding industry will make the dire situation of warship production worse. Essential shipyard skills, which migrate readily between Chinese commercial and naval construction, will evaporate in our country. The present, vicious cycle of naval warship delays and inadequacies that is apparent in the LCS fleet and the nascent Constellation-class frigate program will reach an apex that could doom America’s ability to exert command of the seas at times and places of our choosing.
At a time when China and many other shipbuilding nations subsidize their commercial shipbuilding industries, America has few options. We must form public-private partnerships or American commercial vessel production will cease. Our emphasis must prize national and international associations to enhance our maritime production base and those of our closest allies.
Along America’s coasts and in areas around our Great Lakes, dormant facilities must be revived, new shipyards built, and existing structures expanded. American shipyards brace communities in decline: many are impoverished for their core industry of shipbuilding was eroded due to foreign powers’ subsidizing their own industries.
A multidimensional plan, including the expanded use of robots and artificial intelligence in construction tasks, must be instituted if American shipyards are to survive, expand, and thrive. This plan must form the core of an American infrastructure initiative designed in part to endow disadvantaged, Black, and Latino communities with vibrant career paths that permit home ownership, progress, and the creation of generational professions and wealth. The restoration and enlargement of America’s maritime industrial base can form a true solution set to many of our nation’s most vexing societal problems.
The United States Government must develop a maritime equation. American-built commercial vessels must carry an ever-increasing percentage of the trillions of dollars in goods we export and import. The majority of cruise ships that operate from our shores should be American built, flagged, and crewed.
Trade to and from our shores ultimately is guaranteed by the Navy. American merchant ships, in time of war, must form an indispensable adjunct to America’s fighting potential through the transport of essential materiel. While the Jones Act, which mandates that cargoes conveyed between American ports must be carried on U.S. flagged vessels, has not been successful in its aim of sustaining our merchant fleet, a broader program has great potential. It is thus necessary that our nation’s ocean-borne commerce support our maritime industry and the military capacity that undergirds its existence.
While mechanisms to steer the proceeds from tariffs, fees, direct subsidies, or set-asides to America’s shipbuilding industry must be the subject of intense analyses, several classes of ships warrant that they be built primarily in the United States. Large cruise ships, icebreakers, liquid natural gas (LNG) carriers, and ultra large container vessels, with capacities for carriage of 20,000 or more twenty-foot equivalent units, constitute, along with specialized scientific vessels, the most complex non-military ships constructed. These ships, if they are to serve our economy, should be built in American shipyards or in allied yards as arranged through work-sharing agreements. They must not be built by adversarial states if they are to serve our country.
The refitting of liners for battle has a storied history, which includes the service of the Queen Elizabeth 2 during the Falklands War. Whether or not cruise ships will in future ever serve this purpose, their immense size necessitates the mastery of needed skill sets within the shipbuilding industry for their construction. These abilities may subsequently migrate through repositories of shared learning to U.S. yards that build warships or other vessels.
The prioritization of LNG production and export is essential. Domestic LNG production and its export are indispensable to the achievement of American energy dominance, which is defined by the ability to marshal the production of a broad range of fuels and sources of energy, coupled with refining and distribution abilities and alliance agreements, in order that America provide for national self-sufficiency while also meeting the supplemental energy demands of key allies. By achieving energy dominance, America will be able to influence energy markets and prices globally to meet economic and national security imperatives.
The United States must not only be able to satisfy the energy needs of every American, we must export LNG across the globe, in direct competition to our adversaries’ exploitation of energy markets. We must act decisively, recognizing that LNG is a fuel that is essential to the realization of our nation’s future economic, environmental, and national security goals. Natural gas remains the bridge to the future that must, for reasons of capacity and technology, be centered on the application of fission power through the deployment of small modular reactors on land and at sea, followed by fusion power stations, should this potential source of unlimited electricity prove practicable.
Ideally, new, hardened LNG storage sites should be built near the shipyards that will construct LNG tankers. America should seek to carry the majority of its LNG exports on U.S. built and flagged LNG carriers. Our government must define a path forward to build LNG ports, facilities, and domestically produced LNG carriers.
More than 90 percent of commercial vessels are presently constructed in shipyards in China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Two of these nations are among America’s closest allies. An important salutary step will be to partner and learn from shipyards and industries within these allied nations. As America supports the defense of these crucial allies, these nations must support the revitalization of America’s shipbuilding base. Mutual defense, entrenched by new treaties and pacts, demands this exchange.
Propulsion
A new type of fission power plant holds great promise: small modular reactors are essentially self-contained nuclear plants that can be built in factories, rather than onsite, thereby achieving unprecedented economies of scale in their manufacture. In addition to the option of using steam as a coolant, these reactors may use molten salt, liquid metal, or gas. These designs promise far less radioactive waste than traditional nuclear reactors. The use of liquid metal is a technology first pioneered by the United States Navy in its construction of its second nuclear submarine, the USS Seawolf (SSN-575).
Upon its commissioning in 1957, the Seawolf first deployed with a nuclear reactor that employed the metal sodium as its liquified coolant. This advanced technology was not adequately evolved at that time and was set aside, but it is ready now, offering the potential for enhanced safety.
SMRs could convey an important comparative advantage in propulsive technology for warships, icebreakers, and ultra large container vessels built in American and allied yards. What is needed is a streamlined regulatory environment, both domestically and internationally. This is necessary in order to compete against China or Russia. If regulatory reform is not prioritized, SMR production will be sporadic and will not take place at scale. The Departments of Energy and Defense must commit to this technology if it is to succeed.
As an initial step, the Department of Defense is committed to the design, construction, and demonstration of Project Pele, which is a microreactor, akin to a miniature SMR. This reactor can be transported to power forward operating bases for our military. The deployment of reactors of its type will supply electricity to meet the needs of stationary facilities, thus increasing available stores of fossil fuels—to meet the operational requirements of in-theater aircraft, armored vehicles, and drones.
Project Pele will constitute the first Generation IV reactor built in the United States; it is a high-temperature-gas design. China demonstrated the world’s first Generation IV reactor in 2021. Thus, the Pele initiative, which is supported by the Department of Energy and other elements within our government and the private sector, is essential to our competitive posture.
Nuclear power plants, built and operated safely, can make electricity available to hundreds of millions of people. Such installations constitute the most advanced form of green energy that is not subject to the vagaries of weather, wind, wave patterns, or the diurnal cycles that govern night and day.
America’s future maritime resurgence requires that SMRs be deployed at sea, to power both merchant vessels and warships. The world’s first nuclear-powered, non-military vessel was launched on July 21, 1959; the NS Savannah was part of President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program. Though groundbreaking and safe, the Savannah did not spawn an evolution in American shipbuilding and commerce. She was deactivated in 1972, though both the Soviet Union and Japan attempted to follow her lead.
Today, Russia is building a group of immensely powerful nuclear icebreakers. Three of the projected seven ships of the new Arktika (Project 22220) class are already in service, capable of continuously breaking at least nine feet of sea ice. Remarkably, Russia is also building an even larger and more powerful nuclear icebreaker (Project 10510), named Leader. These ships set the world standard, yet their construction is taking place in an economy that is one-fourteenth our size.
The Department of Energy has recently issued a notice of intent for up to $900 million in funding to support industry teams necessary to the permitting, construction, and operation of advanced SMRs. This initiative must be supplemented by the design of navalised SMRs that may be deployed rapidly in new commercial, combatant, and underway-replenishment vessels.
The adoption of SMRs will convey many crucial advantages to new classes of surface combatants. Maintenance, serviceability, and access can be attained through proper ship design, which should permit the rapid replacement of SMR components at shore-based facilities without the need to drydock vessels under repair.
Recently, the Royal Navy announced that it will explore the use of nuclear power for its surface vessels; America should partner with the United Kingdom and other nations in this pursuit. The Department of Energy and its constellation of national laboratories must work with the Department of the Navy and our allies if these goals are to be realized in the 2030s.
SMRs will enable destroyers and cruisers to produce the electricity required for ship systems, directed energy weapons, and railguns. Electricity production of the necessary scale to power these weapons is very difficult to attain in conventionally powered warships.
Railguns use electromagnetic acceleration to propel metal rods to speeds that approach or exceed Mach 9. The muzzle velocities achieved by railguns far exceed that which is possible with traditional cannons. The kinetic energy imparted by such non-explosive rounds is thus very destructive; further, if gun durability problems are solved, individual rounds should convey cost savings in comparison to many other forms of ordnance.
China is reported to be endeavoring to deploy these weapons. America cannot, therefore, afford to relinquish this area of military technology, for the deployment of railguns will solve a significant portion of the problem of rearming America’s surface combatants with projectiles while at sea. The resilience and persistence of our fleet may thus be greatly enhanced if railguns can be made strong enough to be deployed at scale.
Destiny
International consulting companies have studied and mapped the shortcomings of America’s maritime industry. What is needed is vision and commitment to rebuild what should be the cornerstone of America’s industry and commerce. Many concerned leaders recognize the inadequate state of America’s maritime capacities. Dr. Steven Wills, of the Center for Maritime Strategy, cited an important commitment to action in a recent article:
Introduced on December 19th, the SHIPS for America Act, sponsored by Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Todd Young (R-IN) and Congressmen Mike Waltz (R-FL) and John Garamendi (D-CA) seeks to make major changes in the organization, funding, and focus of federal government programs that support the commercial maritime industry in the United States. By bringing maritime leadership closer to the President . . . the SHIPS for America Act is the radical change the United States needs to regain control of shipping as both a commercial and national security imperative.
The prompt consideration of this legislation is essential. Mike Waltz, who will serve as President Trump’s national security advisor, is ideally situated to provide pivotal leadership in this cause.
“How the mighty have fallen!” must never become an exclamation that accurately depicts the United States Navy, for it was first said by David upon his learning of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in their battle against the Philistines. To command the seas and to preserve peace, America must influence the arc of history by inducing inflection points through prudent industrial measures and enlightened discourse within and among our own branches of government and those of our closest allies.
If America’s political leaders demonstrate statesmanship and thus bar the Pentagon and other elements within our government from engaging in adventurism, mission expansion, or inadequate program management, the Department of Defense will save trillions of dollars in the next fifteen years alone, as may be deduced from our nation’s hard-won lessons reaped in the first decades of this century. Such savings will be more than enough to rebuild America’s maritime base, ensuring naval supremacy through the year 2050 and beyond. Through these means, America may once again be the world’s unrivalled maritime force.
Richard B. Levine served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy in charge of the Department of the Navy’s technology transfer and security assistance organization during the Reagan administration. Richard also served on the National Security Council staff, in the White House, as Director, International Economic Affairs, and as Director, Policy Development.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Richard B. Levine
Editor’s Note: This essay is part two of a three-part series based on a report by the author. Read part one and part two or download the full report here.
Part III
Industry and Shipping
There is a time to pose questions, and there is a time to propose answers. Today requires that we do both in order that America’s non-military maritime industries flourish, for there can be no doubt that American shipbuilding has declined catastrophically since the end of the Korean War. Total output for this period, in terms of tonnage per year, has dropped by more than 85 percent. The reduction in American shipyards capable of building large vessels matches this decay. Without an adequate shipyard base and the maintenance of the myriad of correlated domestic industries, American naval supremacy is certain to be challenged.
In 2023, China produced 230 times the number of large commercial ships as did the United States. By the 1970s, large commercial vessel production in the United States fell to approximately 5 percent of global production; today, only 0.2 percent of commercial vessels capable of transoceanic operations are built in America. In contrast, China has passed both the Republic of Korea and Japan, to become the dominant force in the production of large, ocean-going commercial vessels; this attainment conveys massive economies of scale and workforce resilience to China’s construction of naval vessels and support ships.
Though U.S. international trade, including all exports and imports, should surpass $7 trillion in 2024, U.S.-registered vessels only transport approximately one-hundredth of these cargoes in terms of value. Chinese government-owned or affiliated shipping companies excel in the transport of goods to and from America.
China intends to control the supplies of strategically critical materials needed for the production of renewable energy and other emergent technologies; it dominates in the production of rare-earth elements including erbium, neodymium, and samarium. The Chinese Communist Party’s plan is to wage a resource war against American interests. Beneath the South China Sea is a great store of energy and minerals. Therefore, China’s creation of militarized islands in the South China Sea must be contested through freedom of navigation transits and other means.
According to the United States Geological Survey, America is dependent on imports of such materials as cobalt, manganese, and indium. All are vital in the production of products that will define this century. Only our command of the seas can secure our access to these critical materials in peace or war.
The magnitude of these interlacing woes dictates that America’s maritime emergency cannot be solved in isolation. This metastasizing disaster, which imperils our nation’s ability to support the production and transportation requirements necessitated in war, demands that we marshal the dormant dynamism of our nation as we solve multiple societal problems simultaneously.
The federal government in this decade has spent trillions on supposed infrastructure initiatives. In fact, very few projects of substantial size have actually been built.
The evisceration of America’s commercial shipbuilding industry will make the dire situation of warship production worse. Essential shipyard skills, which migrate readily between Chinese commercial and naval construction, will evaporate in our country. The present, vicious cycle of naval warship delays and inadequacies that is apparent in the LCS fleet and the nascent Constellation-class frigate program will reach an apex that could doom America’s ability to exert command of the seas at times and places of our choosing.
At a time when China and many other shipbuilding nations subsidize their commercial shipbuilding industries, America has few options. We must form public-private partnerships or American commercial vessel production will cease. Our emphasis must prize national and international associations to enhance our maritime production base and those of our closest allies.
Along America’s coasts and in areas around our Great Lakes, dormant facilities must be revived, new shipyards built, and existing structures expanded. American shipyards brace communities in decline: many are impoverished for their core industry of shipbuilding was eroded due to foreign powers’ subsidizing their own industries.
A multidimensional plan, including the expanded use of robots and artificial intelligence in construction tasks, must be instituted if American shipyards are to survive, expand, and thrive. This plan must form the core of an American infrastructure initiative designed in part to endow disadvantaged, Black, and Latino communities with vibrant career paths that permit home ownership, progress, and the creation of generational professions and wealth. The restoration and enlargement of America’s maritime industrial base can form a true solution set to many of our nation’s most vexing societal problems.
The United States Government must develop a maritime equation. American-built commercial vessels must carry an ever-increasing percentage of the trillions of dollars in goods we export and import. The majority of cruise ships that operate from our shores should be American built, flagged, and crewed.
Trade to and from our shores ultimately is guaranteed by the Navy. American merchant ships, in time of war, must form an indispensable adjunct to America’s fighting potential through the transport of essential materiel. While the Jones Act, which mandates that cargoes conveyed between American ports must be carried on U.S. flagged vessels, has not been successful in its aim of sustaining our merchant fleet, a broader program has great potential. It is thus necessary that our nation’s ocean-borne commerce support our maritime industry and the military capacity that undergirds its existence.
While mechanisms to steer the proceeds from tariffs, fees, direct subsidies, or set-asides to America’s shipbuilding industry must be the subject of intense analyses, several classes of ships warrant that they be built primarily in the United States. Large cruise ships, icebreakers, liquid natural gas (LNG) carriers, and ultra large container vessels, with capacities for carriage of 20,000 or more twenty-foot equivalent units, constitute, along with specialized scientific vessels, the most complex non-military ships constructed. These ships, if they are to serve our economy, should be built in American shipyards or in allied yards as arranged through work-sharing agreements. They must not be built by adversarial states if they are to serve our country.
The refitting of liners for battle has a storied history, which includes the service of the Queen Elizabeth 2 during the Falklands War. Whether or not cruise ships will in future ever serve this purpose, their immense size necessitates the mastery of needed skill sets within the shipbuilding industry for their construction. These abilities may subsequently migrate through repositories of shared learning to U.S. yards that build warships or other vessels.
The prioritization of LNG production and export is essential. Domestic LNG production and its export are indispensable to the achievement of American energy dominance, which is defined by the ability to marshal the production of a broad range of fuels and sources of energy, coupled with refining and distribution abilities and alliance agreements, in order that America provide for national self-sufficiency while also meeting the supplemental energy demands of key allies. By achieving energy dominance, America will be able to influence energy markets and prices globally to meet economic and national security imperatives.
The United States must not only be able to satisfy the energy needs of every American, we must export LNG across the globe, in direct competition to our adversaries’ exploitation of energy markets. We must act decisively, recognizing that LNG is a fuel that is essential to the realization of our nation’s future economic, environmental, and national security goals. Natural gas remains the bridge to the future that must, for reasons of capacity and technology, be centered on the application of fission power through the deployment of small modular reactors on land and at sea, followed by fusion power stations, should this potential source of unlimited electricity prove practicable.
Ideally, new, hardened LNG storage sites should be built near the shipyards that will construct LNG tankers. America should seek to carry the majority of its LNG exports on U.S. built and flagged LNG carriers. Our government must define a path forward to build LNG ports, facilities, and domestically produced LNG carriers.
More than 90 percent of commercial vessels are presently constructed in shipyards in China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Two of these nations are among America’s closest allies. An important salutary step will be to partner and learn from shipyards and industries within these allied nations. As America supports the defense of these crucial allies, these nations must support the revitalization of America’s shipbuilding base. Mutual defense, entrenched by new treaties and pacts, demands this exchange.
Propulsion
A new type of fission power plant holds great promise: small modular reactors are essentially self-contained nuclear plants that can be built in factories, rather than onsite, thereby achieving unprecedented economies of scale in their manufacture. In addition to the option of using steam as a coolant, these reactors may use molten salt, liquid metal, or gas. These designs promise far less radioactive waste than traditional nuclear reactors. The use of liquid metal is a technology first pioneered by the United States Navy in its construction of its second nuclear submarine, the USS Seawolf (SSN-575).
Upon its commissioning in 1957, the Seawolf first deployed with a nuclear reactor that employed the metal sodium as its liquified coolant. This advanced technology was not adequately evolved at that time and was set aside, but it is ready now, offering the potential for enhanced safety.
SMRs could convey an important comparative advantage in propulsive technology for warships, icebreakers, and ultra large container vessels built in American and allied yards. What is needed is a streamlined regulatory environment, both domestically and internationally. This is necessary in order to compete against China or Russia. If regulatory reform is not prioritized, SMR production will be sporadic and will not take place at scale. The Departments of Energy and Defense must commit to this technology if it is to succeed.
As an initial step, the Department of Defense is committed to the design, construction, and demonstration of Project Pele, which is a microreactor, akin to a miniature SMR. This reactor can be transported to power forward operating bases for our military. The deployment of reactors of its type will supply electricity to meet the needs of stationary facilities, thus increasing available stores of fossil fuels—to meet the operational requirements of in-theater aircraft, armored vehicles, and drones.
Project Pele will constitute the first Generation IV reactor built in the United States; it is a high-temperature-gas design. China demonstrated the world’s first Generation IV reactor in 2021. Thus, the Pele initiative, which is supported by the Department of Energy and other elements within our government and the private sector, is essential to our competitive posture.
Nuclear power plants, built and operated safely, can make electricity available to hundreds of millions of people. Such installations constitute the most advanced form of green energy that is not subject to the vagaries of weather, wind, wave patterns, or the diurnal cycles that govern night and day.
America’s future maritime resurgence requires that SMRs be deployed at sea, to power both merchant vessels and warships. The world’s first nuclear-powered, non-military vessel was launched on July 21, 1959; the NS Savannah was part of President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program. Though groundbreaking and safe, the Savannah did not spawn an evolution in American shipbuilding and commerce. She was deactivated in 1972, though both the Soviet Union and Japan attempted to follow her lead.
Today, Russia is building a group of immensely powerful nuclear icebreakers. Three of the projected seven ships of the new Arktika (Project 22220) class are already in service, capable of continuously breaking at least nine feet of sea ice. Remarkably, Russia is also building an even larger and more powerful nuclear icebreaker (Project 10510), named Leader. These ships set the world standard, yet their construction is taking place in an economy that is one-fourteenth our size.
The Department of Energy has recently issued a notice of intent for up to $900 million in funding to support industry teams necessary to the permitting, construction, and operation of advanced SMRs. This initiative must be supplemented by the design of navalised SMRs that may be deployed rapidly in new commercial, combatant, and underway-replenishment vessels.
The adoption of SMRs will convey many crucial advantages to new classes of surface combatants. Maintenance, serviceability, and access can be attained through proper ship design, which should permit the rapid replacement of SMR components at shore-based facilities without the need to drydock vessels under repair.
Recently, the Royal Navy announced that it will explore the use of nuclear power for its surface vessels; America should partner with the United Kingdom and other nations in this pursuit. The Department of Energy and its constellation of national laboratories must work with the Department of the Navy and our allies if these goals are to be realized in the 2030s.
SMRs will enable destroyers and cruisers to produce the electricity required for ship systems, directed energy weapons, and railguns. Electricity production of the necessary scale to power these weapons is very difficult to attain in conventionally powered warships.
Railguns use electromagnetic acceleration to propel metal rods to speeds that approach or exceed Mach 9. The muzzle velocities achieved by railguns far exceed that which is possible with traditional cannons. The kinetic energy imparted by such non-explosive rounds is thus very destructive; further, if gun durability problems are solved, individual rounds should convey cost savings in comparison to many other forms of ordnance.
China is reported to be endeavoring to deploy these weapons. America cannot, therefore, afford to relinquish this area of military technology, for the deployment of railguns will solve a significant portion of the problem of rearming America’s surface combatants with projectiles while at sea. The resilience and persistence of our fleet may thus be greatly enhanced if railguns can be made strong enough to be deployed at scale.
Destiny
International consulting companies have studied and mapped the shortcomings of America’s maritime industry. What is needed is vision and commitment to rebuild what should be the cornerstone of America’s industry and commerce. Many concerned leaders recognize the inadequate state of America’s maritime capacities. Dr. Steven Wills, of the Center for Maritime Strategy, cited an important commitment to action in a recent article:
Introduced on December 19th, the SHIPS for America Act, sponsored by Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Todd Young (R-IN) and Congressmen Mike Waltz (R-FL) and John Garamendi (D-CA) seeks to make major changes in the organization, funding, and focus of federal government programs that support the commercial maritime industry in the United States. By bringing maritime leadership closer to the President . . . the SHIPS for America Act is the radical change the United States needs to regain control of shipping as both a commercial and national security imperative.
The prompt consideration of this legislation is essential. Mike Waltz, who will serve as President Trump’s national security advisor, is ideally situated to provide pivotal leadership in this cause.
“How the mighty have fallen!” must never become an exclamation that accurately depicts the United States Navy, for it was first said by David upon his learning of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in their battle against the Philistines. To command the seas and to preserve peace, America must influence the arc of history by inducing inflection points through prudent industrial measures and enlightened discourse within and among our own branches of government and those of our closest allies.
If America’s political leaders demonstrate statesmanship and thus bar the Pentagon and other elements within our government from engaging in adventurism, mission expansion, or inadequate program management, the Department of Defense will save trillions of dollars in the next fifteen years alone, as may be deduced from our nation’s hard-won lessons reaped in the first decades of this century. Such savings will be more than enough to rebuild America’s maritime base, ensuring naval supremacy through the year 2050 and beyond. Through these means, America may once again be the world’s unrivalled maritime force.
Download the full report here.
Richard B. Levine served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy in charge of the Department of the Navy’s technology transfer and security assistance organization during the Reagan administration. Richard also served on the National Security Council staff, in the White House, as Director, International Economic Affairs, and as Director, Policy Development.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.