Posted on December 1, 2025
Concerned experts, both civilian and military, have been warning for years about the dangers presented by the shocking decline in US shipbuilding capabilities, particularly in contrast to those of our rising geopolitical adversary, China. This week’s announcement by Secretary of the Navy John Phelan of the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate-building program only added fuel to the fire.
“After decades of apathy and neglect, there are no easy nor cheap solutions to getting the Navy on course and in time to deter let alone persevere in a war with China,” Captain Brent Sadler (U.S. Navy, Retired), senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told me via instant messaging. “Canceling the frigate program is far from adequate as it does not address the need for more shipbuilding capacity, more firepower in the western Pacific by 2027, and a needed frigate class ship to round out a perilously unbalanced fleet.”
A shipbuilding collapse
The frigate program is just one of many maritime canaries in the coal mine. American shipbuilding delivered nearly 90% of global output at its high-water mark during WWII. Today it has collapsed to just 0.2% of gross tonnage—essentially nonexistent. While China builds well in excess of 1,000 oceangoing ships per year, America makes fewer than five.
Sadler has been sounding the alarm about that for years, tying his beloved Navy’s needs to the equally urgent matter of commercial shipbuilding.
“We haven’t really done the due diligence, the hard work and commitment of resources to keep and maintain the Navy that we need,” he said during his recent appearance on my Manufacturing Talks web show and podcast. “And we’ve been for too long getting by on the backs of our sailors, many times—extra work, extra maintenance, extra everything on their backs. And this whole thing, the whole system, is starting to break.”
