Op-Ed: Admiral Lorin Selby and Erik Bethel: How Donald Trump is reimagining shipbuilding and the future of naval warfare
As the U.S. Navy charts its course through the 21st century, it faces a pivotal moment in global security. For decades, traditional naval strategies relied on large, expensive platforms like aircraft carriers, but this approach fails in today’s evolving threat landscape. To maintain superiority, we must abandon reliance on massive, complex, and costly platforms and build a more distributed force. We call it “the small, the agile, and the many.”
The case for urgency
The 2020s are reshaping great power competition, and America’s adversaries are exploiting emerging technologies to challenge the balance of power. Historical superiority no longer guarantees dominance. Just as battleships became obsolete with the rise of air power, today’s large naval platforms face the same risk. If the Navy fails to adapt, it will fall behind.
A new administration, a new shipbuilding opportunity
The new administration presents a rare opportunity to challenge entrenched mindsets, drive innovation, and inject fresh thinking into the Navy’s force structure. A key pillar of this effort is President Donald Trump’s bold shipbuilding strategy, which prioritizes reshoring ship production, leveraging tariffs, tax incentives, foreign direct investment, and acquisition reform to revitalize the U.S. maritime industrial base. This shift aligns with the Navy’s need for a distributed, resilient, and AI-driven fleet that can maintain operational superiority in contested environments.
Shipbuilding as a strategic imperative
Trump’s shipbuilding plan recognizes that the United States no longer builds ships at scale, with only five commercial vessels constructed domestically in 2022 compared to China’s 1,794. The administration’s proposed tariffs on Chinese-built vessels and incentives for U.S.-based shipyards create an opportunity to accelerate the production of unmanned platforms and small, agile combatants that can enhance deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
The plan incorporates:
A new White House Office of Shipbuilding to drive policy coordination;
Congressional proposals for shipbuilding tax credits and investment incentives;
Increased collaboration with allied shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea to expedite naval production;
Maritime Opportunity Zones modeled after successful economic revitalization programs to attract private investment into shipbuilding hubs.
Lessons from history: Hedge strategies in naval power
On December 8, 1941, battleships lay crippled at Pearl Harbor, but the Navy’s investment in aircraft carriers and submarines proved decisive. That hedge ensured victory in the Pacific. Today, we face a similar challenge. What is our hedge against the potential obsolescence of aircraft carriers and other large platforms?
The answer lies in autonomous systems and modular shipbuilding, leveraging U.S. and allied shipyards to expand production capacity for swarms of unmanned assets operating above, below, and on the ocean surface.
Organizational change: What needs to evolve?
To reimagine naval power, we must transform leadership, processes, and culture. Key steps include:
Transform leadership — develop and reward leaders who prioritize innovation, embrace disruption, and think beyond traditional platforms.
Encourage a “challenger” mindset — apply lessons from Silicon Valley to question and replace outdated structures.
Break down barriers — address why new ideas fail to scale, and empower decision-makers to embrace transformative concepts.
The small, the agile, and the many
The Navy’s future must be anchored on formations that are digitally native, distributed, and highly adaptable. Rather than relying on large, individual platforms, these future formations should consist of interconnected networks of unmanned systems, sensors, and weapons working together in real time.
Digitally native systems — Just as tech giants operate with software-driven agility, naval systems must be designed for rapid updates and adaptability.
Agility and scale — Large, rigid platforms must give way to mass-produced, rapidly deployable, and continuously evolving systems.
Reshoring industrial capacity – Leveraging Trump’s shipbuilding policies will enable faster domestic production of modular naval assets and unmanned systems.
Harnessing the power of partnerships
Reimagining naval warfare is not the Navy’s mission alone. It requires the full spectrum of American ingenuity. History proves that major breakthroughs — such as wartime industrial mobilization or SpaceX’s innovations — come from partnerships.
This effort must extend beyond traditional defense contractors to small businesses, startups, and independent innovators. Trump’s plan to incentivize shipbuilding through tax credits, public-private partnerships, and direct investment in commercial yards will help achieve this vision.
Additionally, South Korea and Japan—with their robust shipbuilding ecosystems—will play an integral role. The administration’s emphasis on defense industrial collaboration with U.S. allies ensures that naval expansion occurs at the necessary scale and speed.
Building the future with urgency
To achieve this vision, the Navy must adopt a “minimum viable” mindset. This means rapidly prototyping, testing in real-world environments, and iterating at speed.
The traditional acquisition system must give way to modern methodologies such as DevSecOps, digital twin modeling, and integrated at-sea experimentation.
Success also requires leadership capable of managing not just technical risks but portfolio risks — ensuring that we are prepared for a future where the dominant force structure may differ radically from today’s.
Answering the call
The call to reimagine naval warfare is a call to action. It requires embracing bold ideas and building a force ready for tomorrow’s threats. Instead of relying on “the large and the complex,” we must invest in “the small, the agile, and the many.”
By aligning Trump’s shipbuilding revitalization efforts with a digitally native, unmanned, and distributed naval force, the U.S. can rapidly expand deterrence capabilities while ensuring supply chain resilience and industrial independence. This fusion of national security and economic policy is key to maintaining maritime dominance in an era of contested seas.
The time for change is now. By challenging stagnant and outdated structures, rethinking operations, and embracing transformative concepts, we will ensure that America’s Navy remains the most dominant and adaptable force on the seas for generations to come.
Admiral Lorin Selby (ret.) is a Partner at Mare Liberum Fund. He is a former US Navy Chief Engineer, Chief of Naval Research, and spent over 30 years as a submarine officer.
Erik Bethel is a Partner at Mare Liberum Fund and Fellow at CSIS. Bethel is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and a Board Member of the Naval War College Foundation.