Memo From the President On Shipbuilding

The Navy is currently a flaming hot mess.  It’s not even debatable and I won’t bother listing all the problems.  President Trump appears to recognize this to an unknown, but significant, degree and has issued a memo calling for various actions to improve naval shipbuilding capabilities and capacities.
 
The memo is a fascinating blend of solid, beneficial concepts and technical and legal challenges.  It also fails to address, or even mention, the root cause of the Navy’s shipbuilding woes.  Let’s take a closer look.
 
The very first sentence recognizes and states the problem (well, one of the problems) quite forcefully and succinctly.
 

The United States Navy has experienced a series of shipbuilding setbacks stemming from overly complex designs and iterative design change procedures …[1]

In plainer terms, it states that the Navy’s ship acquisition process is a steaming pile of crap and, very importantly,  identifies at least a couple of the major contributing factors.  Excellent!
 
It goes on to say,
 

The Department of War shall restore both capacity and competition to the maritime industrial base ,,,[1]

That’s nice but it’s like calling for world peace – a noble goal but pointless without specific, effective actions and none are listed.  Miss America calls for world peace every year but I’m pretty sure it’s still a problem.
 
We then see a vague recognition of part of the problem.
 

It will use proven, reliable, and affordable technologies and ship designs …[1]

This is saying that the days of trying to incorporate non-existent, leap ahead technologies are over.  That’s a great sentiment which I heartily endorse.  Now, ruthlessly enforce it.  However, there is also a potential pitfall here.  If we never incorporate new technology, we’ll never advance.  There needs to be a corresponding directive to make use of one-off prototypes specifically to evaluate and develop new technologies.
 
Now, here’s a stunner.
 

Within 60 days of the date of this memorandum, the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of the Navy, shall provide to the President, … a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of CVN-81 ...[1]

This has long been one of the President’s pet peeves and he appears to be trying to act on it.  I fully support this but the inertia and incompetence in Navy leadership is not going to take this lying down.  This will be vigorously opposed .  Unless the President has the complete agreement and backing of SecNav and CNO, this will not happen.  A great way to get such agreement and backing is to start firing people until people can be found who are on board with the President.
 
The memo repeatedly calls for foreign involvement in the shipbuilding process, both directly and indirectly.  This is a concept that has some appeal, under certain, limited circumstances, but has a great deal of potential to run afoul of legislative roadblocks.  Beyond that, what the President is calling for has been attempted and resulted in the spectacular failures of the LCS and Constellation.  Repeating a set of actions and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.  This needs to be very carefully thought out and managed and the Navy has emphatically demonstrated they have no such management capability.  Wholesale firings of the existing flag ranks would go a long way to solving this.
 
Another major problem is addressed.
 

The Navy shall not impose iterative design changes upon the original mature parent designs within the above programs implemented pursuant to the plans developed under subsections (a) through (b) of this section. No changes from parent designs shall be made without the approval of the Secretary of War ,,,[1]

This is recognizing the destructive impact of the Navy’s never-ending change orders.  Again, though, the embedded inertia of incompetent leadership will make this nearly impossible to enforce.  Remember , the Constellation was going to a parent design with only minor changes and, yet, before it was cancelled, almost all commonality with the parent design had vanished.  I enthusiastically support this but it will require ruthless enforcement.  My suggestion is that any program manager who proposes a change order be summarily fired.
 
Here’s one of the major challenges that we mentioned above.
 

… for purposes of waiving the general prohibition on Armed Forces shipbuilding in foreign shipyards.[1]

The President is going to find that getting Congress to go along with any attempt to utilize foreign shipyards is going to be poorly received and strongly opposed.  There are also practical concerns with technological security.  Still, under certain circumstances this could be beneficial.  I’d prefer to build up our own shipbuilding capacity rather than rely on foreign involvement.
 
The memo calls for establishing a new public shipyard for maintenance and support.  Challenging but outstanding!
 
Here’s another good idea.
 

… establish a Component Repair Center to receive new and refurbish old components and parts as required by the submarine repair industrial base.[1]

Outstanding!
 
And finally, a major, major action calling for a gutting and rework of NAVSEA.
 

Reforming Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). Within 120 days of the date of this memorandum, the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of the Navy, shall submit to the President, through the Director of OMB and the APNSA, a review of NAVSEA, including recommendations for implementing personnel, organizational, and structural reforms. The objective of these reforms should be to: introduce results‑based accountability for NAVSEA leadership, determined by speed of delivery of vessels and systems; reduce bureaucracy and red tape; eliminate competing priorities among different NAVSEA components, which often result in delayed, cost-prohibitive, or overly complex vessels and systems; and prevent NAVSEA from imposing redesigns or iterative design changes upon original mature parent designs.[1]

This is saying what ComNavOps has been saying for some time – that NAVSEA is a failed organization of total incompetents.  Outstanding, outstanding, outstanding!
 
 
Discussion
 
This memo has lots of good stuff in it and the Navy would be far better off if they can be implemented.  The reality, however, is that any changes will be actively opposed and unless SecDef and SecNav are willing to engage in wholesale firings, most it will never occur. 
 
I’m also dismayed that SecDef Hegseth did not implement all of this on day one of his tenure.  This reinforces my belief that he is a failure, perhaps not as bad as some but certainly a major disappointment.  One could read this memo as a criticism by the President of Hegseth and interpret it as Hegseth failing to the point that the President felt he had to step in and take over.
 
The aspect of all this that the memo failed to address is that the root cause of the Navy’s failures is irredeemably incompetent leadership from the flag officers.  That is what the memo should have led with and the solution is easy – fire them all.  Since Hegseth refuses to engage in wholesale housecleaning, the actions called for in the memo will be vigorously opposed and Trump and Hegseth will have only themselves to blame for their disappointment when this fails to materialize.
 
Let’s hope for the best but the sad reality is that most of this is a fantasy because they won’t take the necessary first step of mass firings.
 
 
 
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[1]USNI News website, “Presidential Memo: Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base”, staff, 13-Aug-2026,
https://news.usni.org/2026/08/13/presidential-memo-rebuilding-the-united-states-navy-and-americas-shipbuilding-industrial-base