Donald Trump said it is time for a fifth Navy shipbuilding yard and ordered the Defense Department to lay out a way forward within 120 days. The plan, disclosed in a National Security Presidential Memorandum released Thursday, is aimed at expanding repair capacity for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth must submit the proposal within that 120-day window. Trump’s memorandum also says the Pentagon should use both the private sector and an additional shipyard to improve submarine and aircraft carrier readiness.
Daryl Caudle’s April warning
Chief of Naval Operations Daryl Caudle told reporters in April that the service was studying a new public shipyard. He also questioned whether the Navy could find enough workers to staff another one and raised concerns about the price tag.
That concern tracks with the scale described by Eric Labs, who said new shipyards would take at least a decade, maybe more, to build. Labs, a senior analyst for naval forces and weapons at the Congressional Budget Office, said a shipyard for nuclear-powered ships could cost about $10 billion to $20 billion in today’s dollars.
Navy shipyards in Virginia, Maine, Washington and Hawaii
The Navy now has four public shipyards in Virginia, Maine, Washington and Hawaii. Its former shipyards — Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Charleston Naval Shipyard, Mare Island Naval Shipyard and Long Beach Naval Shipyard — were shuttered in the 1990s after Congress passed the Base Realignment and Closure Act in 1988.
Bradley Martin, a senior policy researcher at RAND and a retired Navy captain, said the main challenge is finding people to do the work. “It’s not really a political problem supporting ship maintenance and ship construction, it’s more like a practical problem of who you’re going to get to come do it,” he said.
What Hegseth must deliver
The memorandum leaves the Defense Department to turn a broad shipbuilding order into a concrete proposal. The open question is whether that means a completely new shipyard or a revival of one of the Navy’s former facilities, and that choice would shape the cost, timeline and workforce demands of the project.
Jamie Dimon Backs $24 Million Jpmorgan Shipbuilding Investment in Philadelphia shows how shipbuilding spending can quickly move from policy to financing, but this Pentagon plan still starts with the basics: where to build, who will staff it, and how to pay for it.
