The US Secretary of the Navy on Tuesday outlined US President Donald Trump’s Golden Fleet initiative, stating that revitalising the American shipbuilding industry was essential for restoring strategic maritime dominance over China.
Speaking at the Surface Navy Association symposium, Secretary John Phelan emphasised the importance of a strong industrial base, warning that the US Navy is currently unable to compete with Beijing’s production capacity.
“To be a superpower, you need a dominant military force, a robust economy and the ability to make things,” he told the event. “You cannot sustain global maritime power with a hollow industrial base.”
Describing the current US shipbuilding programmes as “a mess” and “behind schedule and over budget”, Phelan contrasted these “uncomfortable truths” with the manufacturing capabilities of China, Washington’s “most consequential strategic competitor”.
He presented data that while China has a manufacturing workforce of roughly 100 million, the United States has fewer than 13 million. In 2022, China had around 1,800 ships under construction, yet the United States had five.
“This is not a future challenge. It is happening now,” he said, urging that Washington must move to a “wartime footing”, drawing parallels to the industrial mobilisation of the second world war.
“Their leadership has been explicit about their ambitions to dominate the Indo-Pacific, reshape the international order, and displace the United States as the world’s leading economic and maritime power,” he said.
To address this disparity, Phelan unveiled details of the Golden Fleet initiative, which aims to place the largest tonnage under contract since the second world war to restore America’s shipbuilding capacity.
The Golden Fleet, announced by Trump in late December, features a proposal for a “Trump-class” battleship. Phelan said the fleet would be a “high-low mix” of platforms, including destroyers, carriers, submarines, new frigates and auxiliary ships, as well as various unstaffed vessels.
He described the controversial battleship as a “lethal, decisive response” to future conflicts, rather than a relic of the past, designed to deliver sustained fire, robust air and missile defence, and command capabilities for both manned and unmanned forces.
“A ship built to not only swat the arrows but to kill the archers,” Phelan said.
While the Trump-class battleship boasts capabilities for high-end warfighting, the production of affordable small surface combatants, like the new frigate, would also be accelerated to meet time and mission requirements, according to Phelan.
He highlighted two critical components required to project power across the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific against potential adversaries like China.
Logistics – composed of modern oilers, ammunition ships, tenders and forward staging bases – was the “backbone”, and unstaffed and autonomous systems were the “central” element of the new fleet.
Phelan added that the US shipbuilding industry needed to hire around 250,000 skilled workers over the next decade to meet demand for the fleet and that those jobs would not be replaced by artificial intelligence or automation but would be empowered by it. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
