A Moneyball Strategy for America's Shipbuilding Crisis

Section I – Asking the Wrong Question

Congress and the Trump administration are engaged in a growing debate over whether the United States Navy should be permitted to acquire ships built in allied foreign shipyards. At first glance, the issue appears straightforward: should American warships be built exclusively in American shipyards, or should trusted allies such as South Korea or Japan help meet the Navy's growing requirements?

It is an important question—but it is not the most important one.

The real challenge facing the United States is not where every ship is constructed. It is whether America possesses the industrial capacity to build, repair, modernize, and sustain the fleet required to compete with China over the coming decades. Framing the debate solely around geography risks overlooking the far larger strategic problem: the steady erosion of America's maritime industrial base.

Today's shipbuilding crisis did not emerge overnight. It reflects decades of declining commercial ship construction, shrinking supplier networks, workforce shortages, aging infrastructure, and inconsistent procurement policies. The consequences are now visible in delayed warship deliveries, submarine maintenance backlogs, rising costs, and growing concerns about the Navy's ability to expand the fleet at the pace required by an increasingly competitive security environment.

The instinctive response is to argue that every solution must begin and end within America's borders. In the long run, that should remain the objective. A nation that depends upon sea power must ultimately possess a healthy domestic maritime industrial base capable of sustaining its own fleet.

The difficulty is that rebuilding such capacity cannot occur overnight.

Baseball confronted a similar problem more than two decades ago. In Moneyball, Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane recognized that his team could not simply replace expensive star players with equally expensive replacements. Instead, he challenged long-held assumptions and recreated lost production through the combined strengths of multiple players. The objective was not to replace one player with another; it was to assemble a winning team using the resources available.

America's shipbuilding challenge requires a similar shift in thinking. Rather than debating a false choice between domestic production and allied participation, policymakers should ask a different question: How can the United States assemble the industrial capacity necessary to field the fleet it needs while rebuilding the American shipbuilding base for the future?

That is the real strategic challenge—and the answer requires a true Moneyball strategy.

Section II – The Real Problem: Industrial Capacity

The current debate assumes that America's greatest challenge is deciding where ships should be built. In reality, the more pressing question is whether the United States possesses sufficient industrial capacity to build and sustain a global fleet at all.

Recent years have exposed the depth of the problem. New construction programs have experienced repeated delays, submarine maintenance backlogs have reduced operational availability, and the Navy continues to struggle with rising costs and constrained production schedules. At the same time, China has expanded its commercial and naval shipbuilding capacity at a pace unmatched by any other nation, creating an industrial advantage that extends well beyond fleet size.

The causes are neither mysterious nor recent. America's maritime industrial base has steadily contracted over decades. Commercial shipbuilding largely disappeared, supplier networks consolidated or closed, experienced tradesmen retired faster than they could be replaced, and shipyards were left to operate under procurement cycles that too often rewarded uncertainty rather than sustained investment. These trends affected not only naval construction but the entire maritime ecosystem upon which military shipbuilding ultimately depends.

The result is a vicious cycle. Limited capacity increases costs and delays. Higher costs reduce procurement quantities. Lower production discourages long-term investment in facilities, equipment, and skilled labor, further reducing capacity. Breaking that cycle requires more than increasing defense appropriations; it requires rebuilding the industrial foundation that supports maritime power.

This is where the current political debate risks missing the larger strategic objective. The measure of success should not be whether every hull is welded inside the United States over the next five years. It should be whether the nation emerges a decade from now with a stronger, larger, and more resilient shipbuilding industry than it possesses today.

That objective requires recognizing an uncomfortable reality. Building new shipyards, expanding existing facilities, training welders, electricians, naval architects, pipefitters, and marine engineers, and restoring supplier networks cannot be accomplished within a single budget cycle. Industrial capacity is measured in years, often decades.

For that reason, policymakers should view America's maritime challenge not as a choice between domestic production and allied participation, but as a transition. The strategic objective remains clear: restore a self-sustaining American maritime industrial base. The question is how best to maintain fleet readiness while that rebuilding effort is underway.

A successful strategy therefore must pursue two goals simultaneously: accelerate the regeneration of American shipbuilding while making prudent use of trusted allied capacity where doing so reduces operational risk without compromising national security. That is not a substitute for rebuilding American industry—it is a means of ensuring that the Navy remains capable while that rebuilding takes place.

Section III – A Moneyball Strategy for Maritime Power

If the objective is to rebuild American maritime strength rather than simply win a political argument, then the United States requires a procurement strategy that allocates scarce industrial resources where they produce the greatest strategic return.

That begins by recognizing that not every vessel presents the same national security challenge.

A ballistic missile submarine is not a fleet oiler. An aircraft carrier is not an icebreaker. A guided-missile destroyer does not present the same strategic sensitivities as a logistics vessel. Yet much of today's debate treats every ship as though it requires identical industrial and security controls.

A more effective approach is to prioritize construction according to strategic sensitivity.

The nation's most sensitive platforms—including ballistic missile submarines, attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and other vessels incorporating the most critical technologies—should remain overwhelmingly the responsibility of American shipyards. These ships represent unique strategic capabilities and contain propulsion systems, acoustic signatures, combat systems, and classified technologies that should remain under direct domestic control.

Other classes of ships present greater flexibility. Fleet oilers, sealift vessels, hospital ships, auxiliary support ships, certain amphibious platforms, icebreakers, and selected surface combatants may offer opportunities for carefully structured cooperation with trusted allies, provided that the United States retains authority over sensitive combat systems, software integration, cybersecurity, and final acceptance. The objective is not simply to purchase hulls abroad, but to expand overall production capacity while preserving control over the technologies that matter most.

This represents what might be called Strategic Bridge Capacity—the temporary use of trusted allied industrial capability while the United States rebuilds its own maritime industrial base.

The word temporary is critical.

The goal is not to replace American shipbuilding. The goal is to restore it.

Every allied partnership should be accompanied by measurable investments in domestic shipyards, workforce development, supplier expansion, apprenticeship programs, and modernization of America's public and private industrial infrastructure. Success should be measured not by the number of ships built overseas, but by whether reliance on allied construction steadily declines as American capacity grows.

This approach reflects the central lesson of Moneyball. Billy Beane did not replace one star player with another equally expensive player. He recreated the team's lost production by combining the strengths of multiple contributors. America's maritime challenge demands the same mindset. No single shipyard, contractor, or policy initiative will reverse decades of industrial decline. But together, American shipyards, allied industrial partners, workforce development, commercial shipbuilding, supplier revitalization, and stable procurement can recreate the industrial capacity necessary to field and sustain the fleet the nation requires.

The measure of success should never be whether every ship is built in one place. It should be whether the United States possesses the resilient industrial ecosystem necessary to deter conflict, sustain combat operations if deterrence fails, and remain the world's leading maritime power for decades to come.

Section IV – Winning the Long Game

The debate over foreign-built warships is, at its core, a debate about risk. Some fear that any reliance on allied shipyards weakens America's industrial independence. Others argue that current production shortfalls leave the Navy with little practical alternative. Both perspectives contain elements of truth—but neither fully addresses the strategic challenge.

The United States should reject the false choice between rebuilding its domestic shipbuilding industry and leveraging the capabilities of trusted allies. It must do both.

The long-term objective should remain unmistakable: restore America's ability to design, build, maintain, repair, and sustain the fleet required to defend its interests without depending upon foreign capacity. But strategic patience cannot become strategic paralysis. If allied industrial partnerships can responsibly accelerate fleet readiness while the United States rebuilds its own shipyards, expands its workforce, and strengthens its supplier base, they should be viewed as instruments of national strategy rather than admissions of national decline.

Like the Moneyball revolution, success should not be measured by whether every player looks like the one who came before. It should be measured by whether the team wins.

America's maritime challenge demands the same perspective. The question is not whether every ship is built in the same place or by the same company. The question is whether the United States can assemble the industrial capacity necessary to deter conflict, prevail if deterrence fails, and sustain maritime superiority over the long term.

A true Moneyball strategy recognizes that victory will not come from a single shipyard, a single contractor, or a single policy decision. It will come from intelligently combining domestic investment, trusted allied capacity, commercial maritime revitalization, workforce development, and disciplined procurement into a coherent national strategy.

Congress should therefore focus less on where every hull is welded and more on how America's maritime industrial base can be rebuilt into one capable of supporting the Navy for generations to come. The goal is not to outsource American sea power. The goal is to restore it.

Francis Bell is an independent maritime strategy researcher and author of Blue Web Doctrine: Maritime Strategy for the Twenty-First Century. His work focuses on maritime strategy, industrial resilience, and the integration of economic statecraft with naval power.