Posted on June 10, 2026
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — The Navy’s fiscal year 2027 budget request calls for $65.8 billion in shipbuilding funds — a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before — to procure 34 vessels, bolstering the nation’s readiness at sea.
“Let it sink in — a historic budget request like we have not seen in decades,” said Chris Miller, the Navy’s portfolio acquisition executive maritime, during a panel at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference in April.
With that budget, the service aims to buy 18 battle force ships and 16 auxiliary ships, ranging from logistics vessels to a Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. The money will also go towards developing the BBG(X) Trump-class battleship, which is set to anchor the Navy’s Golden Fleet program.
Announced by President Donald Trump in December 2025, Golden Fleet envisions a strong future maritime force led by the new battleship and supported by a capable domestic shipbuilding base. However, one of the battleship’s main proponents — former Navy Secretary John Phelan — was fired a day after delivering a speech at the conference.
A 2027 budget of the proposed size — which also includes funds for a study to look into adding a fifth public shipyard — would represent “a significant down payment on strengthening our nation’s maritime capability,” Miller said.
The Navy is not the only sea service focused on growth. The Coast Guard received the single largest capital infusion in its history with $25 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year and is targeting 90 new cutters by 2034, according to Amber Stein, the service’s assistant commandant and program executive officer for surface and chief engineer.
The proposed budget plus-ups come during a time of increasing focus on the nation’s shipbuilding woes.
The Government Accountability Office in April reported that Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding programs over the last two decades have consistently failed to hit their targets, going billions of dollars over cost and falling years behind schedule.
In total, the last 11 of the most recent Navy lead ships have cost at least $8 billion more than planned, the office said in a statement for congressional testimony that referenced several previous GAO reports.
Coast Guard ship acquisitions have also struggled to stay on schedule and on budget due largely to utilizing immature designs and inexperienced contractors, according to GAO.
There is no singular solution to the longtime problems facing U.S. shipbuilding, and it will take a variety of changes to ensure smoother sailing, it said. The office has made more than 100 recommendations in recent decades detailing changes needed to improve U.S. shipbuilding programs and how the Pentagon can better support the maritime industrial base.
Nevertheless, industry leaders speaking at the conference the same week the Trump administration revealed details of the 2027 budget proposal struck an optimistic note.
“Seeing the budget document, seeing the demand, the incredible energy in this industry right now to restore, revitalize the American manufacturing — and specifically the shipbuilding industrial base — it’s an incredible period of time,” said Kari Wilkinson, executive vice president of HII and president of the company’s Newport News Shipbuilding division.
Shipyards need long-term work visibility — not highs and lows — to ensure jobs for their workers, Wilkinson said during the panel. A solid demand signal illustrated by incoming funds and policy support gives “a long line of sight” to provide stability for employees.
Ben Bordelon, president and CEO of Bollinger Shipyards, added that finding, training and retaining workers has been a challenge across the industry for generations, “and we realize a lot of that risk comes with funding.”
Bordelon recalled his grandfather — the company’s founder — often saying he did not know where they were going to find enough employees to staff the shipyard. Yet, “here we are, still finding the people.”
The more industry collectively supports Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding by recruiting new workers, the better it is for everyone, Bordelon said during the panel.
George Whittier, CEO of Fairbanks Morse Defense, described today’s climate as the most exciting time to be in the maritime industry in decades. His team is rapidly reworking its five-year plan to account for the Navy and Coast Guard’s new outlooks.
“We have confidence in the steady demand that’s out there, so that we can then make the investments that we need to make,” Whittier said during the panel.
But achieving a funding flow is only the first step for boosting U.S. military shipbuilding, where schedule and cost overruns have long been commonplace.
“Getting our shipbuilding programs back on track is going to be hard,” Miller said. “I tell my people every day: hard is authorized. Some might even say this is going to be impossible, but it’s exactly in these situations when leadership matters most.”
The Center for Maritime Strategy released a report in April analyzing five allies’ shipbuilding practices and identifying key points of transformation for the United States.
South Korea, Italy, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom have faced similar shipbuilding struggles and are adopting a variety of solutions, resulting in lessons the United States can learn as it restores its own maritime power, said the report, “Pier Review: Leveraging the Allied Maritime Industrial Base for U.S. Shipbuilding.”
The report’s recommendations included increasing allied cooperation, no contract changes after award and normalizing the use of vessel construction management models — in other words, hiring third-party entities to coordinate ship construction on the government’s behalf.
“The reality is that there’s no perfect model in shipbuilding,” said Vice Adm. Angus Topshee, commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, during a panel at the conference.
For Canada, leveraging knowledge from foreign industry to boost productivity domestically has been a helpful model — albeit not a perfect one, Topshee said.
For example, Topshee pointed to the ICE Pact — a trilateral framework between the United States, Canada and Finland enabling the U.S. Coast Guard to acquire 11 Arctic Security Cutters using two Canadian builders’ icebreaker designs, with the ships to be built in Finland and the United States.
The ICE Pact has set the stage for future deals and is a key example of how the Coast Guard is looking to change its ways to meet new goals, Stein said.
“In order to get after the largest recapitalization that our service has ever been after, we have to figure out how to do things differently and how to deliver ships fast,” Stein said during the conference.
The icebreaker agreement has moved quickly, she said. Two of the three Arctic Security Cutter contracts were negotiated in eight days but were not awarded until about 31 days to provide adequate notification to Congress.
Additionally, “all three shipbuilders are looking to deliver these ships in 2028 and 2029,” Stein said. “That’s less than three years from contract award and from starting production, and it’s the fastest the Coast Guard has built icebreakers in history.”
That pace might be remarkable in the government world, Bordelon said, but it is nothing unusual for commercial projects at Bollinger Shipyards — one of the companies building the cutters.
“We do that a lot when you have a functional design that does have maturity,” Bordelon said.
Another way the Coast Guard is looking to shake things up throughout its shipbuilding programs is with a policy of no contract changes after award, Stein said. It is going to be difficult, “but it’s the only way that we’re going to be able to deliver 90 cutters between now and 2034.”
The service is also exploring vessel construction management services, Stein said.
Meanwhile, the Navy announced in February that it will hire a management team for the new Landing Ship Medium program, “marking the first time since World War II that construction on a naval vessel has been overseen by a third party,” according to the Center for Maritime Strategy report.
“We have encouraged the Navy to think about using [vessel construction management] for naval ships, and we are now seeing the Navy move in that direction,” said Hanwha Defense USA President and CEO Michael Coulter during the conference.
Utilizing management companies would benefit Hanwha Philly Shipyard’s efficiency as it works to ramp up production, he said. Korean defense giant Hanwha Group acquired the
Philadelphia-based yard in 2024 and has since poured millions of dollars into upgrades. It intends to bring over techniques, technology and culture from its Korean facility to boost U.S. output.
“There’s a culture in Korea that we are not going to miss schedule,” Coulter said. “We are going to do everything in the world to not miss schedule, and we won’t let it slip.”
Korea “has been on [a] war footing for 70 years,” he added. “They have had to invest in industrial capacity and particularly in efficiency to scale equipment to warfighters who could be at war tonight.”
Hanwha’s yard in Korea produces about 50 ships per year, Coulter said. By contrast, the 2026 production rate at Hanwha Philly Shipyard will likely be three vessels — a bump from about one and a half annually previously — and the company’s eventual vision for the yard is 10 to 20 per year.
That production bump occurred despite Hanwha still having a ways to go in its vision for the Philadelphia site. Simply relocating Korean trainers to transform the workforce culture at the Philadelphia shipyard has already made a notable impact. Other changes such as autonomous technology to assist workers are coming soon, Coulter said.
“If the U.S. Navy wants the best capability in the hands of U.S. sailors, we should look around the world for the best technology,” Coulter said, “but ultimately we should insist that it move to the United States.”
The proposed number of U.S. military vessels is likely to increase for the remainder of the Trump administration, and a high production goal necessitates a total transformation, said Richard Hunt, president of Fincantieri Marinette Marine.
“We’ve got to do things different,” Hunt said at the conference. “We’ve got to hire more folks. We’ve got to retain better. We need to use technical capability — the advanced manufacturing that’s available — to produce differently than we’ve done in the past.”
There must also be a shift in culture from the top down, he added.
“If you don’t do that, the rest of this stuff doesn’t work at all,” Hunt said. “If we put it all together in a package — we lean on our allies, we take a look at those lessons learned and the great processes and technology that they all possess — and I think we can achieve what the administration — what the Hill — is giving us right now.”
