U.S. Navy Looks to Korean and Japanese Shipyards to Address Submarine and Destroyer Delays.

Adm. Daryl Caudle used his first overseas trip as chief of naval operations to ask whether Korean and Japanese shipyards can help the United States overcome its shrinking warship output. He argues that allied industrial support could buy time as American yards struggle with labor gaps, aging facilities, and rising demand in the Pacific.

In November 2025, the U.S. Navy’s new chief of naval operations used his first overseas tour to ask a blunt question in Asian shipyards: Can allied industry help fix America’s warship shortage? Adm. Daryl Caudle’s trip through South Korea, Japan, Guam, and Hawaii put shipbuilding capacity, not fleet reviews or port visits, at the center of his agenda, with stops at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hanwha Ocean specifically to explore how partners could bolster U.S. production.
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The U.S. Navy is turning to South Korean and Japanese shipyards as it struggles with deepening production delays at home, with Adm. Daryl Caudle urging closer allied cooperation to accelerate warship output and counter China's rapid maritime expansion (Picture source: Hanwha Ocean).

In Hawaii, Caudle described expanding capacity as an all-hands-on-deck effort with rare alignment across Congress, the administration, and Navy leadership, while in Tokyo, he openly praised the scale and efficiency of Japanese yards and warned that China’s accelerating naval buildup leaves little margin for delay. Recent reporting from the region shows him framing allied cooperation as a practical way to get more hulls to sea faster, not a diplomatic talking point.

Behind the upbeat rhetoric lies a structural crisis that think tanks have been charting for years. Analysts describe a U.S. shipbuilding sector hollowed out by decades of commercial work migrating overseas, leaving the Navy as almost the lone domestic buyer and exposing chronic shortages of skilled labor, aging infrastructure, and brittle supply chains. Time in the yard for both new construction and maintenance has stretched, cost growth has outpaced inflation, and production lines struggle to absorb design changes without cascading delays.

Congressional research puts hard numbers on the gap. As of early 2025, the Navy fields fewer than 300 battle force ships against a long-standing goal of 355, with new plans still unable to reconcile the desired force structure with realistic industrial output and budgets. Submarine construction for Columbia and Virginia classes, the Constellation frigate program, and key amphibious and logistics ships all face schedule pressure, turning every additional month of delay into a lost year of available combat power in the Western Pacific.

The bottlenecks are as much technical as financial. Nuclear work is constrained by specialized welders and strict quality assurance on submarines, while surface combatant lines juggle complex radar masts, integrated power systems, and dense combat systems spaces that resist easy automation. Yard managers interviewed by Army Recognition describe propulsion modules and cable-heavy mission compartments as pacing items, with late component deliveries forcing out-of-sequence work that kills productivity. In that context, freeing up even a slice of U.S. yard capacity becomes strategically significant.

This is where South Korean and Japanese yards enter the picture. Studies from major U.S. research centers argue that the United States should treat Northeast Asian shipbuilders not just as exporters but as partners in restoring American maritime capacity, citing their ability to turn out complex hulls at high volume. A recent industrial agreement between HD Hyundai and Huntington Ingalls to jointly build U.S. Navy auxiliary ships, backed by a large South Korean investment pledge in American shipbuilding, shows that the concept is already moving from analysis to commercial reality.

In practical terms, allied yards are unlikely to start launching fully finished U.S. destroyers, but several intermediate models are on the table. A phased approach gaining traction focuses on three pillars: shifting more maintenance and overhaul work to allied facilities, creating a joint mine countermeasures effort with Japan, and using Japanese or Korean yards to fabricate Arleigh Burke–sized hulls or large modules that would then be outfitted and armed in the United States. Other options include building to print components for logistics ships or allied investment in underused U.S. yards, effectively importing Asian production know-how without exporting the entire industrial base.

Any of those paths runs into sensitive questions of sovereignty and control. U.S. shipyard advocates warn that outsourcing too much work would outsource American sovereignty, arguing that the answer is to rebuild domestic capacity rather than lean on foreign yards. China has already signaled it sees allied cooperation as a threat, imposing sanctions on South Korean defense affiliates in what was widely interpreted as an attempt to disrupt emerging U.S.-Korean industrial partnerships. Layered on top are Buy American rules and political instincts that still default to viewing naval shipbuilding as a purely national enterprise.

The geopolitical calculus for Seoul and Tokyo is equally complex: South Korea is aggressively marketing itself as a global defence exporter and sees deep shipbuilding cooperation with Washington as a way to lock in that status, but it must balance U.S. expectations, Chinese economic pressure, and domestic labor politics. Japan’s long-running debate over arms exports shapes how far its government will allow shipyards to go in building or refitting U.S. hulls, even as analysts argue that a stronger Japanese defence industrial base is essential for a stable Indo-Pacific.

The strategic urgency behind Caudle’s trip comes from the other side of the Pacific. Multiple assessments this year highlight that Chinese shipyards now enjoy a massive advantage in capacity, with one major state conglomerate reportedly producing more tonnage in a single year than the entire U.S. industry manages in decades. China’s navy is already numerically larger and continues to grow, driven by dual-use commercial and military facilities that remain on something close to a wartime footing.

Review of recent Navy budget documents and congressional testimony suggests the service is modeling scenarios in which up to 15 to 20% of auxiliary tonnage, and a noticeable share of surface ship maintenance, could be handled by allied yards by the early 2030s if legal and political barriers ease. One senior industry executive, speaking on background, described the emerging concept as using allies to buy time while domestic yards modernize. Recent imagery from Ingalls and Newport News shows expanded automated panel lines and robotic welding, but Caudle’s own comments on double-digit attrition underline how long it will take to rebuild a stable, high-skilled workforce.

AUKUS hangs over all of this. U.S. and allied studies warn that without a sharp increase in American submarine output, Washington will struggle to meet both its own Virginia class needs and its commitments to Australia, with the cumulative delay pushing into the next decade. That reality is already forcing planners to consider how a broader allied shipbuilding ecosystem, including Japanese and Korean yards, might relieve pressure on U.S. facilities so that the most sensitive nuclear work remains on American soil.

Every destroyer, amphibious ship, or oiler delivered on time widens the Navy’s options for distributed maritime operations, crisis response, and sustained presence in the Western Pacific; every year of delay narrows those options and cedes initiative to Beijing. The next 12 to 18 months will show whether Caudle’s Pacific tour marks the start of a genuine allied turn in U.S. naval shipbuilding.