Foreign Policy > U.S. Navy

Shipbuilding is National Security

While the U.S. Navy remains the world’s most powerful fleet, the shipbuilding deficit is disconcerting, both militarily and from a civilian standpoint. 

Don Brown | April 27, 2026

Photographs from Naval Station Norfolk during the Obama and Biden eras showed multiple U.S. aircraft carriers moored side-by-side like sitting ducks in a barrel. One photo from 2013 showed five supercarriers, Eisenhower, Bush, Enterprise, Truman, and Lincoln all at Norfolk piers, all at once -- a foolishly-clustered megatarget for would-be adversaries.

The photo is a visual reminder of what former Navy Secretary John Lehman warned against more than four decades ago, and of the slippage in naval readiness in the years between Reagan and Trump.

Lehman, who served under President Reagan, didn’t just talk about a strong Navy -- he built one. Lehman envisioned a 600-ship Navy, combined with “strategic homeporting” to disperse our capital ships to multiple home ports along both coasts to avoid another Pearl Harbor scenario. Before the Trump administration, that vision felt like ancient history.

As of April 2026, the U.S. Navy’s battle force stands at just 291 ships. That is not a typo. We are smaller than communist China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which now commands more than 370 warships and submarines and is on track to hit 400 by the end of the decade. Even more alarming: the Navy has roughly 75 Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.

While the U.S. Navy remains the world’s most powerful fleet, the shipbuilding deficit is disconcerting, both militarily and from a civilian standpoint. Let’s square these numbers with reality. The Strait of Hormuz is the jugular of the global oil trade. But other strategic choke points also demand attention, including........

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