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The United States Can’t Deter China Without Allied Shipyards

March 9, 2026 Guest Author Leave a comment

By Patrick M. Cronin and David Glick

Introduction

Industrial endurance and allied integration are indispensable to making deterrence-by-denial against China credible under the 2026 National Defense Strategy. The Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan rightly elevates cooperation with South Korea and Japan. But viewing these allies as a temporary bridge to U.S. revitalization understates the scale and longevity of the China challenge. What is needed is a fully integrated, long-term allied shipbuilding ecosystem, that can generate surge capacity, distributed production, and wartime repair across the Indo-Pacific. Without that durable industrial architecture, denial remains declaratory rather than operational. This essay makes that case.

If a war erupts over Taiwan, what will sink the U.S. Navy first: Chinese missiles or American shipyards? Analysts have catalogued the widening gap between China’s defense industrial base and America’s. Shipbuilding sits at the center of that imbalance. What began the decade as a pacing challenge has become a structural industrial advantage for Beijing. In the Indo-Pacific, deterrence now depends less on the number of hulls afloat than on the ability to replace, repair, and regenerate them under fire. On that measure of industrial endurance, the United States is dangerously behind.

The U.S. fleet lacks the scale, resilience, and regenerative capacity to compete with China’s expanding navy and the industrial base behind it. Even with higher funding and domestic reform, the United States alone cannot build the fleet required to match–let alone “overmatch”–China’s output. The U.S. Navy fleet currently stands at 290 ships compared to China’s 331. That gap, by itself, is not decisive. But Beijing can draw on a vast coast guard, merchant marine, and dual-use civilian fleet that allows Beijing to surge up to 5,500 hulls for support, refueling, and transport. The United States has roughly 80 comparable auxiliary and sealift vessels. This disparity reflects more than fleet size; it exposes structural constraints in American industrial capacity.

America’s defense industrial base, and shipbuilding in particular, has become structurally brittle after the collapse of commercial shipbuilding, decades of consolidation and specialization, workforce attrition, and highly inconsistent demand signals. Today, a remarkable degree of U.S. Navy major combatants are constructed at a handful of specialized yards run by two defense juggernauts: Huntington Ingalls Industries and General Dynamics.

These structural limitations matter because deterrence against Beijing now requires maritime power at a level the U.S. industrial base cannot produce independently. Attempts at domestic reform including President Trump’s ambition to build a “Golden Fleet” reflect a correct diagnosis of the problem, and executing the Maritime Action Plan may be key to reviving America’s claim to be a maritime nation. But execution is far from guaranteed. Previous U.S. efforts to slow China’s seapower ascendancy, including during Trump’s first term, have focused on massive increases in defense spending, radical policy changes, or both and many of these plans have stalled out.

As one of America’s top naval analysts, Ronald O’Rourke, argues, U.S. shipbuilding shortfalls reflect a systemic, self-reinforcing failure in which unaffordable plans, industrial limits, workforce bottlenecks, and flawed acquisition processes have collectively undermined capacity. The bottom line is that no amount of additional spending on ships or marginal policy reform within the United States alone can resolve the problem, especially as China’s larger, dual-use shipbuilding ecosystem turns American naval production capacity into a strategic liability.

“America First” rightly underscores the imperative to rebuild U.S. industrial capability, including its shipbuilding. But America alone, or cooperation limited to full onshoring, is insufficient. Unless Washington fully leverages the capabilities of allied seapowers, China’s maritime edge will grow. As Brent Sadler notes in Naval Power in Action, China has managed to “out-Mahan” the United States through an “aggressive and focused prioritization of a powerful civil-military national maritime sector.” His proposed remedy of a G-7-like consortium of maritime nations to meet the challenge is sound, but the foundational starting point must be to better harness the collective shipbuilding capabilities of the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

Although President Trump may instinctively support integrating allied shipbuilding capacity, current policy concentrates on comprehensive onshoring. The Maritime Action Plan, for all its strengths, largely confines allies to providing foreign direct investment in U.S. shipyards and maritime infrastructure. That contribution is important but insufficient.

A politically sustainable solution requires durable mutual benefit. Deterring China at scale will demand the systematic integration of allied shipbuilding capacity, especially from South Korea and Japan, into U.S. naval force planning. Capital that flows into American docks from threats of tariffs and placing conditionality on security alliances will undermine the alliance bonds on which our strategy depends. Without deep industrial cooperation, the United States will lack the industrial and thus operational resilience needed for credible Indo-Pacific deterrence. Absent complementary reforms, such as targeted modifications to the Jones Act and related statutes that tether shipbuilding exclusively to domestic yards, Washington will struggle to erect a shipbuilding defense industrial base that is both politically acceptable at home and economically sustainable for South Korea and Japan.

But let us start by briefly considering the strategic objective of deterrence by denial of China, because that is at the heart of calls for reviving shipbuilding capacity in the first place.

The Deterrence Challenge: Responding to Pressure with Endurance

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy identifies China’s bid for dominance within and beyond the First Island Chain as a direct challenge to regional stability, while the National Defense Strategy prioritizes a defense-by-denial approach anchored along that same geography. This framework highlights that successful deterrence must operate not only against invasion, but across the subtler and more pervasive forms of coercion that Beijing prefers. Xi Jinping appears to recognize that a forcible seizure of Taiwan would carry extraordinary risks, yet his purging of senior generals heightens the danger of miscalculation and reinforces the need for full-spectrum deterrence.

A central danger is that Beijing seeks to exhaust Taiwan psychologically, economically, and militarily rather than gamble on an all-out invasion. China commands a broad menu of coercive options, ranging from gray-zone harassment and maritime quarantine to incremental blockade or amphibious assault, all designed to impose cumulative pressure while exploiting gaps in allied endurance and logistics rather than inducing a single decisive battle. For example, China has recently rehearsed navigating some 1,400 fishing vessels to form a 200-mile-long sea barrier that could support a blockade of Taiwan. This, alongside other graduated options, allows Beijing to vary pace and intensity, steadily degrading Taiwan’s resilience while testing allied political will.

China’s sprawling military-industrial complex further broadens its operational choices. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can field large quantities of long-range anti-ship missiles, submarines, and other systems designed to deny U.S. forces freedom of action at increasing distances. Operating close to home, Chinese forces benefit from interior lines of communication, proximate shipyards, and rapid repair and replacement capacity. These advantages allow the PLA to absorb losses and continue operations in ways that impose disproportionate strains on allied forces. In this context, deterrence erodes not through dramatic battlefield defeat, but through persistent pressure that gradually constrains Taiwan’s strategic breathing room.

China’s approach is reinforced by Xi’s “Overall National Security Outlook” and military-civil fusion, which together harness military, economic, technological, and political instruments into an integrated system for applying sustained pressure. The PLA Navy has increasingly revealed strategies of exhaustion, strangulation, and decapitation, all of which hinge on wearing down an opponent’s ability to regenerate combat power. These concepts can only be countered by adversaries whose own industrial and logistical systems can absorb shocks, reconstitute forces, and continue operating under demanding wartime conditions.

The human reality of protracted conflict underscores this requirement. Carl von Clausewitz reminded strategists that war is a “dangerous business” defined by fear, friction, and the grinding down of human will. E. B. Sledge’s graphic portrait of amphibious warfare at Peleliu and Okinawa captures how terror and attrition consume both personnel and equipment. Deterrence, therefore, fails not only when forces are defeated in battle, but when political will, logistics networks, and industrial capacity collapse under constant pressure. Industrial sustainment is not an afterthought but the oft-neglected backbone of strategic endurance.

History underscores this lesson. The high watermark of American shipbuilding came in World War II, when the rapid production of Essex-class carriers transformed U.S. naval power and reshaped the global maritime balance. This capacity for rapid regeneration was a strategic capability in its own right, enabling the United States to outlast a determined adversary in a prolonged contest of endurance.

The same logic applies today. Against a peer competitor prepared for protracted conflict, deterrence requires a fleet designed not only for initial advantage but for the ability to fight, absorb blows, and regenerate combat power over time. This demands a large, balanced, and modern force supported by industrial capacity for rapid maintenance, repair, and replacement. Such depth must underpin a “hedge force” emphasizing quantity, distribution, and survivability across manned and unmanned platforms, and avoiding over-reliance on a small number of exquisite, vulnerable assets.

Ultimately, regeneration becomes a deterrent mechanism. A force that can endure is a force that can deny, dissuade, and defeat an opponent.

United States Constraints

The U.S. Navy’s strengths are not well matched to the challenges of a conflict with China. Although American platforms may possess momentarily superior individual capability, a fight in the South China Sea would unfold inside a dense Chinese A2/AD envelope, sustained by large inventories of land-based anti-ship missiles. In a missile-saturated battlespace, deterrence cannot rest on qualitative superiority alone. It requires layered capability, what the Hudson Institute defense team has conceptualized as “edge,” “pulsed,” and “core” forces, all supported by critical enablers. Industrial endurance is indispensable to field such layers while retaining the capacity to absorb and regenerate losses. Combat experience and alliance exercises enhance readiness, but qualitative advantages cannot offset numerical and industrial imbalance in a protracted war fought in China’s near seas.

Countering Beijing’s coercive strategy therefore demands endurance as much as lethality. Taiwan must demonstrate the political will, societal resilience, and frontline resistance to withstand sustained pressure. The United States and Japan, supported by South Korea as a rear-area sustainment, repair, and replacement hub, must present a unified posture that undercuts Chinese confidence across the spectrum of coercion. Any visible alliance seams will be exploited, perhaps as suggested by a recent U.S.-China air encounter in the Yellow or West Sea.

A credible deterrence-by-denial strategy integrates these elements: resilient frontline forces at the edge; long-range strike forces that can be surged or “pulsed” into theater; sufficient “core” forces to sustain operations over time; and the enabling architecture of ISR, logistics, command and control, and industrial capacity, that binds them together. Without this layered military and industrial integration, the United States military will display significant operational gaps and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific will remain vulnerable.

The United States currently lacks the industrial foundation required to meet this challenge. While the PLA Navy has been built primarily for high-intensity regional conflict, much of the U.S. fleet reflects decades of emphasis on power projection and presence missions in permissive environments. At the same time, as China’s shipbuilding capacity has swelled, the U.S. Navy has struggled merely to sustain a large and ready fleet to meet its global commitments.

The United States has particularly lagged behind China in the construction of platforms suited to navigate the South China Sea’s littoral and archipelagic geography. Fast, maneuverable frigates are likely to be central to distributed operations in the Indo-Pacific. China can now launch multiple modern frigates annually, with construction timelines measured in months. By contrast, the United States’ Constellation-class frigate program has yet to deliver a single operational hull after nearly a decade of effort amid design instability and cascading delays. At the same time, the United States has been upgrading cutters designed for the Coast Guard as stopgap naval vessels, despite their lack of vertical launch systems, even as China has shifted naval platforms into its formidable coast guard.

These and other difficulties stem from persistent structural weaknesses in domestic shipbuilding and maintenance infrastructure, as suggested at the outset of this essay. Consolidation has reduced competition and flexibility. Skilled labor shortages constrain manufacturing. Inconsistent procurement planning disrupts both workers’ lives and capital investment. Regulatory red tape slows production and increases cost. New construction routinely runs late and over budget, while maintenance backlogs keep operational ships tied to the pier. Industrial shortcomings sap U.S. naval credibility.

Civilian and military leaders alike acknowledge the shipbuilding gap with China. President Trump’s “Make Shipbuilding Great Again” initiative, calls for a Golden Fleet, and proposal for defense spending approaching $1.5 trillion, all of which preceded the Maritime Action Plan of February 2026, underscore growing recognition of the problem. These gestures matter, but slogans and topline numbers do not build ships. Reviving U.S. shipbuilding will require sustained political discipline, industrial reform, workforce development, and years of execution. For example, the idea of 100 maritime prosperity zones sounds appealing, but risks overreach without delivering serious production. None of this is guaranteed. Failure would leave the United States attempting to deter a maritime peer with an industrial base unfit for protracted competition.

The reality is that U.S. domestic shipbuilding capacity cannot expand fast enough to match Chinese production rates within the timeframe deterrence demands. Building new shipyards or dramatically expanding existing ones requires time, secure supply chains, and skilled labor that the United States currently lacks. The Trump administration has recognized this constraint and begun to pursue serious allied cooperation. Agreements with Australia, Japan, and South Korea are steps in the right direction, but they remain insufficient. Incremental progress will not produce the fleet needed to compete with China.

Allied Shipbuilding Capacity

Integrating allied industrial capacity into U.S. naval force planning offers several advantages.

First, allied shipyards represent an immediate force multiplier by bolstering collective shipbuilding. South Korea and Japan possess advanced shipbuilding industries with available capacity, skilled workforces, and resilient supply chains. Leveraging these yards would allow the United States to accelerate production without waiting years for domestic capacity to mature. In key areas such as automated manufacturing and AI-enabled shipbuilding, allied firms already lead global best practices.

Second, forward-deployed repair and maintenance capacity in allied countries would provide crucial operational benefits during a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency. Damaged ships could reach allied yards in days rather than weeks, preserving combat power and reducing exposure during trans-Pacific transits. This distributed sustainment architecture materially enhances fleet readiness and resilience.

Third, allied cooperation can modernize the combined naval industrial base. Different engineering traditions and production methods can complement U.S. designs and spur innovation. Key U.S. allies remain leaders in advanced manufacturing and high-tech shipbuilding. Collaborative development will spread research and development costs while expanding the menu of available platforms, particularly for modular and unmanned systems.

Fourth, integrated allied production strengthens deterrence by signaling coalition resolve. When allies invest directly in building U.S. naval power, they demonstrate commitment to collective defense and complicate Chinese strategic calculations by expanding the scale and durability of any potential response.

The accompanying graphic demonstrates not only scale but trajectory. While U.S. naval tonnage has remained stagnant over the last 15 years, China’s has more than doubled. South Korea and Japan’s rates of growth make it clear that their shipbuilding ecosystems have remained dynamic, making them key partners in an American shipbuilding resurgence.

South Korea

South Korea hosts some of the world’s most capable and efficient shipyards and is second only to China. Firms such as Hanwha Ocean, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, and Samsung Heavy Industries routinely deliver complex naval vessels at lower costs and faster timelines than U.S. yards. Their success rests on a comprehensive industrial ecosystem encompassing regional steel production, automation, lifecycle sustainment, and a deep pool of trained shipbuilding engineers.

Korea’s advantage is not only in cost and speed, but also in their advanced technical shipbuilding ecosystem. Seoul’s leading yards operate cutting-edge digitally integrated production systems that use 3D modeling and advanced simulation tools to improve workflow and enhance efficiency. Korea is prioritizing developing their technological advantage and government officials have pledged to spend over 320 billion won ($240 million) on artificial intelligence driven shipbuilding, a 23% increase from the previous year.

Cooperation is already expanding. Shipbuilding is a core element of South Korea’s strategic investment in the United States. Hanwha Ocean is investing heavily in its Philadelphia shipyard and exploring additional U.S. facilities, even as it pursues contracts with Canada that might help strengthen Hanwha’s massive Geoje shipyard that produces about 45 commercial and naval ships a year. Seoul’s decision to develop a nuclear-powered submarine represents a political breakthrough made politically conceivable by signals of greater U.S. flexibility on nuclear cooperation; with sustained U.S. support and a willingness to allow submarine production in South Korea, the SSN could deepen alliance industrial integration while advancing shared maritime capabilities.

Strategic alignment reinforces the case for cooperation. Both Washington and Seoul view China’s military modernization with concern and share an interest in stability in the Taiwan Strait. South Korea’s geography and industrial capacity make it a pivotal partner in any strategy to expand U.S. naval power, particularly given the strategic aim of defending the First Island Chain.

Japan

Japan, the world’s third-largest shipbuilder, offers complementary strengths. While its shipyards operate at a smaller scale than South Korea, they excel in precision manufacturing and systems integration. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries leads a group of seven major shipbuilders in Japan. Mitsubishi Shipbuilding was created in 2018 to bring cutting-edge technology and a new business model to building a wide variety of ships. Its shipyard at Nagasaki, founded in 1857 by the Tokugawa Shogunate, will build the first three Mogami-class frigates for Australia. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force operates sophisticated warships incorporating advanced sensors, propulsion, and weapons, and Japanese yards have proven adept at integrating complex systems to exacting standards.

Cooperation has moved from concept to execution. U.S. naval vessels have already undergone maintenance in Japanese yards, establishing technical interoperability and operational trust. Agreements reached in late 2024, reaffirmed and substantially enlarged by President Trump and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, outline frameworks for expanded joint shipbuilding capabilities and potential co-production.

Japan’s strategic incentives are strong. Chinese military activity near Japanese territory has intensified, prompting Tokyo to accelerate defense spending and once again revise and update key national security documents. This political commitment provides a durable foundation for long-term industrial partnership. Prime Minister Takaichi’s landslide LDP victory in the lower house enhances Tokyo’s determination to strengthen alliance cooperation in general and defense industrial cooperation in particular.

Other Regional Partners

Other Indo-Pacific allies can provide vital supporting capacity. Australia’s participation in AUKUS (the Australia, UK, U.S. defense partnership) demonstrates allied willingness to make substantial, generational investments. Canberra’s pledge to invest $3 billion in U.S. submarine shipyards is among the most concrete steps toward revitalizing American undersea production capacity, and Australian yards may eventually contribute more broadly.

Southeast Asian allies and partners also matter. The Philippines, as a treaty ally and frontline state facing persistent Chinese coercion, is also ranked among the world’s leading shipbuilding nations by commercial gross tonnage. Thus, Manila can contribute beyond providing critical access through implementation of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. Expanded development of Subic Bay could support forward maintenance and overhaul, especially as Manila grows its naval and coast guard forces. Korean investment has helped reopen the long-dormant Subic Bay shipyard, offering a potential hub for additional allied maintenance and repair. Japan is another critical source of maritime support and its acquisition and cross-servicing agreement with the Philippines thickens the web of cooperation among America’s key maritime allies.

Together, these initiatives point to the emergence of an allied maritime industrial network across the Indo-Pacific, still uneven but increasingly consequential. While some leading regional analysts argue for formalizing this cooperation into a treaty-based Asian alliance, the more feasible and immediate task is to build the industrial sinews that would give any future alliance real weight in the form of shared production capacity, repair and regeneration capacity, and interchangeable shipbuilding and sustainment ecosystems. Industrial integration is not a substitute for alliance commitments, but it is the foundation that makes alliance commitments credible in crisis and resilient over time.

Current Partnerships and Their Limits

Existing initiatives underscore both promise and limitation. AUKUS is the most ambitious effort to date, while agreements with South Korea and Japan on repair, maintenance, and potential co-production reflect growing momentum. Yet these efforts remain fragmented and largely ad hoc. Many rely on waivers, pilot programs, or working groups without permanent institutional backing.

Even sanctioned initiatives face friction. The Korean-operated Philadelphia shipyard has encountered regulatory and workforce hurdles, illustrating the difficulty of scaling cooperation under current rules. Execution risk remains substantial. Regulatory friction, workforce constraints, and shifting political priorities on both sides of the Pacific could delay or derail even well-intentioned initiatives. Allies contemplating major capital investments remain uncertain whether U.S. policy will endure across administrations or whether cooperation will move beyond pilot programs and waivers. These risks do not weaken the case for allied shipbuilding integration; they strengthen it. Without early institutionalization, deterrence will rest on assumptions about capacity that may never materialize.

Areas for Cooperation: Destroyers

A U.S. fleet capable of countering China will require a strong destroyer fleet. Destroyers offer exceptional operational versatility through their anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-submarine capabilities. In describing the hedge force needed to confront China, Bryan Clark identifies the destroyer as a central element of the force mix because of its role in air and missile defense and in protecting other ships. As China expands its missile arsenals and extends their range, the United States must continue to build and expand its destroyer program to keep pace.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (DDG 51), first commissioned in the early 1990s, remains the vital pillar of the U.S. surface fleet. The United States currently has 74 of these destroyers in service, with 23 more hulls in the planning pipeline. Yet frequent cost overruns and delays make relying on this program alone a precarious bet. The ship has been repeatedly updated to meet changing needs, but these modifications have been imposed on a deteriorating industrial base. The result has led the Congressional Budget Office to conclude that average construction delays for the ship class have worsened significantly in recent years, with new ships now taking more than eight years to build. Meanwhile, China reportedly takes roughly two years to build its 52D destroyer and approximately three years for its more advanced Type 055.

While destroyers are crucial in a conflict against China, Beijing has more capacity to build these ships, and its advantage is only increasing. South Korea, however, is one of the world’s leading builder of destroyers. The Korean Jeongjo the Great-class destroyer is approximately one-quarter larger than the Arleigh Burke-class. The Korean destroyer also features a mix of U.S. and Korean systems on board which allow it to fire both long- and short-range missiles. Most impressive is the speed and cost with which South Korea has been able to build this ship. The destroyer was built in about three years. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, noting the quick timeline, also observed that Korean shipyards can build this class at roughly a third of the cost of a comparable U.S. destroyer, attributing this performance to yard efficiency, workforce skill, and limited regulatory friction.

South Korea is thus a world leader in a military technology that the United States urgently needs. Working with Korea to reform U.S. yards, integrate Korean building techniques, expand co-production and licensing, and eventually purchase Korean-designed military technology will be key to developing the destroyer fleet that the United States requires.

Areas for Cooperation: Advanced Technologies

Another common criticism of U.S. shipbuilding is that the industry does not make sufficient use of advanced technologies to support the shipbuilding process. A report by the GAO found that naval shipyards have been slow to adopt digital modeling, planning tools, and other advanced technologies that can speed construction and reduce delays. Additionally, outdated equipment and reliance on labor-intensive processes rather than automation reduce U.S. efficiency. While there is a legitimate balance between preserving jobs and adopting new technology, both suffer if strategic objectives cannot be delivered on time and at scale.

Policymakers have identified increased automation as essential to improving shipbuilding effectiveness. Palantir Technologies has been working on a $448 million project to integrate AI into naval shipbuilding through the ShipOS initiative, and senior naval leaders have pledged to prioritize automation and digitalization in public and private yards. As the United States continues to develop these capabilities, South Korea and Japan should be treated not merely as investors or licensees, but as core partners.

Both South Korean and Japanese shipyards are renowned for leveraging cutting-edge technologies to improve efficiency. In South Korea, HD Hyundai is building a world-class digital shipyard that uses automation and digital modeling to enhance speed and precision; yards have begun using AI robots to weld, cutting down welding times by one-third in the process. Japanese shipbuilders employ similarly advanced 3D modeling and are investing in laser-arc hybrid welding and other techniques. South Korea and Japan have the tools and expertise to be key collaborators in identifying, developing, and deploying the technologies that will shape the future of naval shipbuilding.

As the war in Ukraine has shown, Soviet-era weapon systems and battle plans struggle to hold up in modern warfare shaped by cutting-edge technology, including AI-enabled systems and increasingly advanced requirements for speed, precision, and accuracy. In several of these areas, China faces limitations, while Korea and Japan possess notable strengths. For instance, China’s submarines have long faced criticism for acoustic noise. Meanwhile, Korean yards are building some of the most advanced conventional submarines, setting high standards for stealth and effectiveness. Working with allies to continue pushing the frontier of military technology is a valuable way to achieve economies of scale while leveraging some of the world’s most capable technical talent.

Naval shipbuilding integration would not be limited to destroyers or technology sharing. A U.S.-South Korean nuclear-powered submarine could ultimately be joined by Japan, too. Another project with lower hurdles would be an “Asian corvette” produced by the United States, Japan, and South Korea, with the aim of exporting the VLS-equipped, fast-attack vessel to help regional partners and ASEAN navies facing Chinese maritime coercion.

Barriers to Cooperation

Despite the potential for cooperation, two constraints loom largest. First, U.S. ambitions remain too narrow. Outside AUKUS, cooperation focuses mainly on maintenance, with limited progress on new construction, technology co-development, or integrated force planning. Second, legal and regulatory barriers deter sustained partnership.

The U.S. defense establishment lacks a single, empowered senior official responsible for international defense industrial cooperation. The 2018 reorganization of acquisition leadership, while intended to sharpen innovation and procurement, had the effect of diffusing authority across multiple offices. Allies were left without a clear counterpart for industrial coordination.

Even as South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other partners increase investment in U.S. and allied dual-use and defense industrial capacity, cooperation remains managed through existing channels within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense/War for Acquisition and Sustainment. These mechanisms are functional but insufficiently empowered for the scale and strategic importance of emerging allied industrial integration. Expanding cooperation requires commensurate authority.

The Defense Innovation Board’s proposal to establish an Undersecretary of Defense for International Industrial Cooperation therefore merits urgent consideration. Shipbuilding may not be strategy, but a maritime strategy without a fleet will not sail.

Statutory constraints–including the Jones Act and the Byrnes-Tollefson Amendment, which restrict foreign-built ships in U.S. domestic trade, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which govern technology transfer–serve legitimate purposes but significantly hamper cooperation on hull construction, systems integration, and design data sharing. Case-by-case waivers, such as those granted under AUKUS, may suffice in the short-term, but they also create uncertainty and administrative burden that can hinder long-term success. Recent legislative proposals, including the SHIPS for America Act and the Ensuring Naval Readiness Act, offer partial relief and deserve prompt consideration.

Brent Sadler’s recommendations in Naval Power in Action rightly emphasize that restoring American sea power requires more than mere fleet modernization. He underscores the need to rebuild U.S. merchant shipping and shipyard capacity, while advancing a maritime alliance able to integrate industrial regeneration as deliberately as operational planning. This logic points toward a more comprehensive solution: establishing a “trusted shipbuilding partner” framework with allies such as South Korea and Japan, whose advanced shipyards, skilled workforces, and shared security standards make them natural anchors for allied naval production and sustainment. By streamlining contracting, enabling secure technology transfer, and aligning long-term production planning, such a framework would reduce friction, accelerate fleet regeneration, and transform allied shipbuilding capacity into a standing component of deterrence rather than an ad hoc supplement in crisis.

Conclusion

The United States faces a narrowing strategic choice. One path is to attempt to outbuild China domestically, but trends suggest that approach will fail. China’s shipbuilding dominance is the product of decades of focused policy and massive state-led investment. The United States cannot replicate that achievement on its own within the timeframe effective deterrence demands.

The alternative is to integrate allied shipbuilding more fully into American maritime power. The combined industrial capacity of the United States, South Korea, Japan, and other capable allies can match Chinese output while producing a force that is more resilient and adaptive over time.

Achieving this will require institutional reform, legal change, and sustained political commitment. Without such integration, however, the United States risks entering the 2030s with insufficient naval power to deter Chinese aggression, inviting the very conflict it seeks to prevent. With systematic allied integration, the United States can build the fleet required to maintain stability across the Indo-Pacific while strengthening alliances that are effective rather than entangling.

This is not about outsourcing responsibility. It is about aligning industrial reality with strategic necessity. Successful military alliances rest on shared goals, shared burdens, and shared decision-making. The purpose of integrated allied shipbuilding is not cooperation for its own sake, but the preservation of U.S. influence and therefore peace in the world’s most consequential region, what Nicholas Spykman famously described as the “Asiatic Mediterranean.”

A stronger homegrown U.S. shipbuilding and maritime industry remains essential. But domestic revitalization and allied integration are not alternatives; they are mutually reinforcing. A revitalized U.S. industrial base working closely with selected, capable, and willing maritime allies is indispensable to a strategy of deterrence along the First Island Chain. Understood in this light, allied shipbuilding is not optional. It is imperative.

Dr. Patrick M. Cronin is Asia-Pacific Security Chair at the Hudson Institute and a Scholar in Residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Strategy and Technology (CMIST), where David Glick is a student.

Featured Image: Newport News, Virginia (Mar. 16, 2000) — The lower bow unit of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) is lowered into place at the Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding facility. (U.S. Navy photo)

Force Structure

Mass Drones to Save Missiles: A High–Low Mix for the Pacific

March 6, 2026 Guest Author Leave a comment

By Connor Keating

The future of conflict in the Western Pacific will hinge on sustaining firepower over vast distances with finite magazines and vulnerable logistics. The Russia‑Ukraine war and much of history show that victory has never relied on a small inventory of exquisite, high‑cost weapons.¹Instead, success increasingly rests on combining massed, affordable drones with a more limited stock of precision‑guided munitions—a munitions‑centric high–low mix. To deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression, the U.S. should build a mix of long‑range, payload-modular drones. This approach is about designing an economically favorable, attrition‑resilient strike architecture that forces an adversary into unfavorable cost‑exchange ratios.

Originally a Cold War concept that paired high‑ and low‑end manned platforms against the Soviet Union, the high–low mix has re-emerged in a new form centered on munitions rather than platforms. A munitions‑centric high–low mix forces adversaries to choose between defending against slow, numerous drones or conserving interceptors for higher‑end threats, thereby creating gaps in their air defenses.²In a theater defined by extended supply lines and constrained magazines, such a mix will be essential to sustaining combat power and imposing escalating costs on the People’s Liberation Army.

Lessons from Ukraine

At the onset of the war, Russia relied heavily on conventional combined arms but quickly transitioned—much as Ukraine did earlier—to a new toolset of drones to contest the land, sea, and air domains. Two lessons stand out for U.S. planners preparing for a conflict in the Pacific.

First, Ukraine has effectively combined maritime drones with traditional missiles and employed “mothership” drones to extend range at sea. The integration of sea drones with missile air defense systems significantly degraded Russia’s presence in the Black Sea by simultaneously threatening ships and their helicopter escorts.^{3, 4}The operations in the Black Sea demonstrate how relatively inexpensive unmanned systems, when integrated with existing traditional weapons, can constrain an adversary’s freedom of action and impose enduring costs.

Second, and most importantly, both sides utilized one‑way attack drones in conjunction with precision munitions to saturate and exhaust air defenses. Russia pummeled Ukraine with long-range drones, depleting valuable interceptors and straining Ukrainian air defense.^{5, 6}This pattern would likely repeat in any high‑intensity air and maritime campaign in the Western Pacific. Therefore, the grinding stalemate in Ukraine is less a model to emulate than a warning of the nature of future war.

Requirements for a Pacific High-Low Mix

In the Pacific, drones will require operational ranges approaching 2,000 nautical miles to be meaningful, with a minimum of 100 nautical miles for tactical systems if basing rights near key terrain can be established. Longer‑range systems provide greater operational leverage but will substantially increase costs and reduce temporal fires volume (the weight of effects delivered per unit of time). With these facts in mind, three key requirements emerge.

First, missiles and drones must be deployable from land, sea, and air. Cross‑domain employment or launch-system interchangeability reduces platform-specific dependencies and mitigates the need for extreme‑range systems that may arise in a contested single domain. Interchangeability will streamline supply chains and logistics, as a munition can be fired from multiple platforms with minimal modification, usually with a simple software update.⁷The Harpoon anti-ship missile illustrates this principle by being employable from surface, subsurface, and airborne platforms. A surface launch from a ship or ground launcher achieves greater than 70 nautical miles. From an aircraft, the effective range is boosted by the aircraft’s range, often over 500 nautical miles, and can be extended via aerial refueling.⁸The same logic should guide the integration of drones against integrated air defense systems.

The risk posed by Chinese long‑range ballistic missiles will likely push the effective denial boundary for surface forces greater than 1,000 nautical miles.⁹The U.S. faces a shortfall in strategic sealift capacity, and any Pacific campaign will expose sustainment ships and aircraft to long‑range strike.¹⁰To reduce risk, sustainment forces may be pushed even further from the fight. To sustain combat power, mass must be delivered efficiently and quickly at acceptable risk levels. Taken together, these constraints imply that the U.S requires families of drones binned by range: shorter‑range systems that exploit forward bases near key terrain and longer‑range systems that can operate from well outside threat weapons’ reach.

Because of the ranges involved, purpose‑built drones for the Pacific theater will be more expensive than those used in Europe or the Middle East. In Ukraine, Shahed or Geran drones, with ranges of up to roughly 1,600 nautical miles, provide Russia with coverage of the entire battlespace with multiple routing options, offering significant operational flexibility at relatively low cost.¹¹By comparison, a similar drone launched from Guam would be on a straight-line attack, approaching its maximum range.

Long-range drones typically use small reciprocating engines and thus avoid some of the solid‑rocket‑motor supply‑chain constraints that affect missiles, as well as the technical complexity associated with gas turbines.¹²LUCAS, a new one‑way attack drone reportedly based on the Iranian Shahed‑136, has an estimated range of approximately 1,500 nautical miles and may be among the most promising near‑term options.¹³Other candidates include systems such as Altius and Barracuda, with ranges from roughly 100 to over 500 nautical miles.^{14, 15, 16}While the exact design line between drones and cruise missiles may be blurred, their ability to carry multiple payloads and operate autonomously places them conceptually within the drone portion of the high–low mix. Forcing an adversary to divert resources or believe that one effort is more important than another can have far-reaching strategic effects.

For example, expending large numbers of expensive interceptors against relatively cheap drones increases an adversary’s defensive missile expenditures and creates temporary windows when their air defenses are saturated. During those windows, U.S. forces can employ exquisite missiles against high‑value targets at lower risk, as already seen in Ukraine.¹⁷This tactic increases the effectiveness of individual exquisite munitions and, over time, reduces the cost per target of the combined effect. It also forces adversaries into persistently unfavorable spending patterns and increasing long‑term operational costs. This may potentially force a shift in money or production away from other key weapon systems to fill gaps in air defenses.

For example, the conflict between Israel and Iran following the October 7th attacks. Across three major engagements in October 2024, April 2025, and June 2025, Iran employed more than 1,000 drones and 500 missiles.¹⁸By the end of the exchange, reports indicated that Israel was running critically low on interceptors, and the U.S. had significant shortages of THAAD missiles, while Iran was assessed to still have thousands of missiles and drones remaining in its inventory.^{19, 20}

Moreover, Iranian attacks became increasingly effective over time. By the final round of strikes, more than 60 missiles were impacting Israeli territory—over twice the number that got through in the initial October attack.²¹ The most consequential aspect of this campaign was not the tactical success but the operational effects Iran achieved. The time and cost required for Israel to repair infrastructure and replenish high-end interceptors are many times greater than the expense of the relatively low-cost, improvised missiles and drones that Iran employed. Iran consumed valuable maintenance hours and sortie-generation capacity that would otherwise support offensive strike missions. If Iran possessed a more capable air force, this kind of coercive, resource‑draining approach could be decisive in shifting the operational balance in its favor by steadily degrading Israel’s ability to generate credible offensive power.

The core operational lesson is that a sustained high–low mix can impose continuous defensive burdens, consume precious economic capital, and erode an opponent’s ability to sustain offensive operations. For the Indo‑Pacific, U.S. and allied forces must be prepared to wage a drawn‑out contest in which the key question is not who fields the most exquisite platforms on day one, but who can afford to keep firing on day one hundred.

The U.S. fields broad capabilities but limited depth in its weapons inventory. A perfect example is the U.S. pursuit of hypersonic weapons since the early 2000s, with little advancement in programs’ operational numbers despite Russia and China likely now fielding operational systems at scale.²² The simple fact regarding U.S. weapons is this: specialized but less scalable than many of their potential adversaries. That creates limits and risks for the platforms that provide the “punch” in potential conflict. To remain competitive, U.S. planners should prioritize modular, cross‑domain-capable drone and missile platforms that can be field-modified and mass‑produced, with an emphasis on range, speed, and flexibility.

Sustainment and Modularity for the High-Low Mix

Modern war is a voracious consumer of munitions. Therefore, the ability to conduct sustainment at scale is critical. Containerization for transport and employment should be the baseline requirement for any drone adopted into U.S. military service. Standardized launch containers can be dispersed on ships, barges, trucks, and austere airstrips across the theater. This distribution complicates adversary targeting, reduces the risk of preemptive strikes on centralized depots, and eases movement into the theater, potentially allowing contracted non-traditional shipping to carry containerized drones and freeing dedicated military sealift for other cargo. The CONSOL concept, in which fuel from civilian tankers is delivered to U.S. Navy oilers and warships, could serve as a model for sustaining containerized drones with minor modifications.²³ In practice, this would allow containerized drones to move through commercial and military logistics channels much like fuel or standard cargo, enabling surge munitions flows into the theater without overexposing scarce sealift and major logistics hubs.

The final key enabler is the use of modular drone payloads. A common airframe that can be configured as a jammer, decoy, sensor, or one‑way attack munition allows commanders to tailor each salvo to the mission. Existing systems already demonstrate this potential, carrying payloads ranging from electronic‑attack packages to surveillance sensors.^{24, 25, 26, 27} Modularity achieves two ends. First, it reduces sustainment risk by minimizing the number of unique systems or components that must be transported into the theater. Second, it increases the probability of a salvo’s success by integrating jammers, decoys, and attack drones into a single, coordinated attack. Determining the optimal drone-to-missile mix requires experimentation to identify force packages that achieve the desired outcomes at minimal cost. Modularity also improves cost‑exchange performance by allowing commanders to reconfigure existing airframes for new tasks rather than fielding separate, specialized systems for each mission set.

Drone-from-Drone and Mothership Concepts

Recent testing of a Switchblade 600 one‑way attack drone launched from a larger MQ‑9A Reaper, the same drones synonymous with the War on Terror, illustrates how drone‑from‑drone concepts can extend the reach and responsiveness of unmanned systems.²⁸ Because the MQ‑9 has roughly twice the speed and greater range than a LUCAS‑type drone, this approach could increase engagement options and compress timelines.²⁹

A more resilient system would include theater‑range modular drones and a dedicated mothership, such as the MQ-9 or other long-range drone, which would carry shorter‑range attack drones. Modular theater drones conduct missions requiring greater payload and power, such as jamming. This nested architecture reduces dependence on manned, high‑value platforms and provides additional means to generate the force mass required to penetrate layered defenses.

Mothership concepts introduce additional command‑and‑control and deconfliction challenges that will require rigorous experimentation and wargaming before adoption at scale. Yet if implemented effectively, they would confront adversary commanders with overlapping dilemmas: theater‑range modular drones launched from ground, sea, or air; shorter‑range munitions deployed from motherships; and exquisite missiles capable of rapid, penetrating strikes. Together, these elements complicate air defense planning and increase the likelihood that some portion of each salvo reaches its targets. Crucially, the U.S. must not lose sight of the fact that China is also experimenting in this field. To maintain its edge, the U.S. must begin rapid live‑fire experimentation to formalize doctrine, create feedback loops for software, and refine command‑and‑control architectures for the inevitable drone‑on‑drone fights.

Conclusion

A future war in the Western Pacific will not be decided by which side fields the most exquisite platforms on the opening day of combat, but by which side can afford to keep firing on day one hundred. The U.S. is currently organized around a force-and-munitions paradigm that assumes short, decisive campaigns that do not exist in reality. Against a peer with a large, industrialized economy and an asymmetric approach designed to circumvent U.S. short-range precision strike, the result is likely paralysis if not outright defeat.

This is not a call for more technology for its own sake, but for different economics in how we design and employ firepower. Containerized, cross‑domain‑launchable drones; modular payloads that can be rapidly reconfigured between jamming, sensing, decoy, and strike; and drone‑from‑drone or mothership concepts that multiply the reach of each sortie—all are tools for building a strike architecture that can absorb attrition and generate effects at scale.

If the U.S. fails to make this shift, it risks entering a Pacific conflict on China’s terms: overextended logistics, shallow magazines, and a force trapped in a defensive, interceptor-driven pattern of expenditure. But if senior leaders move now and implement the suggested changes, the balance changes.

The choice, then, is straightforward. The U.S. can continue to organize its Pacific posture around a shrinking set of exquisite platforms and munitions and hope they survive long enough to matter. Or it can accept that the defining contest of a Western Pacific war will be industrial and economic output at scale. The window to make that choice is closing fast.

Lieutenant Connor Keating commissioned from the Virginia Tech NROTC and served aboard a forward-deployed destroyer in Yokosuka, Japan. On shore duty, he was a protocol action officer to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is an integrated air-and-missile defense warfare tactics instructor and participated in the Naval War College’s Halsey Alfa Advanced Research Project as a resident student.

References

1. Trevor Phillips-Levine, Andrew Tenbusch, and Walker D Miles. “Gilded Capability: Overinvestment and the Survivability Paradox.” War on the Rocks, February 12, 2026. https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/gilded-capability-overinvestment-and-the-survivability-paradox/.

2. Trevor Phillips-Levine. “Return of the Gunfighters.” Behind The Front, August 15, 2024. https://behindthefront.substack.com/p/return-of-the-gunfighters.

3. Mark Temnycky. “Ukraine Has Innovated Naval Warfare – Center for Maritime Strategy.” Center for Maritime Strategy – Center for Maritime Strategy, July 25, 2025. https://centerformaritimestrategy.org/publications/ukraine-has-innovated-naval-warfare/.

4. Stefano D’Urso and Andrea Daolio. “Ukrainian Surface Drone Equipped with R-73 Air-to-Air Missiles Shot down Russian MI-8 Helicopter.” The Aviationist, January 1, 2025. https://theaviationist.com/2024/12/31/ukrainian-magura-usv-r-73-vs-mi-8-helicopter/.

5. Matthew Bint and Fabian Hinz. “Russia Doubles down on the Shahed.” The international institute for strategic studies, April 14, 2025. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/04/russia-doubles-down-on-the-shahed/.

6. Vytis Andreika. “Russia’s Changes in the Conduct of War Based on Lessons from Ukraine Adapting Technology, Force Structures, and the Defense Industry.” Military Review, 5, 105, no. September-October 2025 (September 2025): 109–24. https://doi.org/Professional Bulletin 100-25-09/10.

7. Trevor Phillips-Levine and Andrew Tenbusch. “Allied Arsenal: Building Strength through Shared Production.” War on the Rocks, July 22, 2025. https://warontherocks.com/2025/07/allied-arsenal-building-strength-through-shared-production/.

8. No author. “AGM UGM RGM-84 Harpoon Anti Ship Missile SSM SLAM-ER.” n.d. www.seaforces.org.https://www.seaforces.org/wpnsys/SURFACE/RGM-84-Harpoon.htm.

9. No author. “Missiles of China | Missile Threat.” 2018. Missile Threat. 2018. https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/china/.

10. Andrew Rolander. “The Dangerous Collapse of US Strategic Sealift Capacity | the Strategist.” The Strategist. March 25, 2025. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-dangerous-collapse-of-us-strategic-sealift-capacity/.

11. Joe Emmett, Trevor Ball, and N.R. Jenzen-Jones. n.d. Review of Shahed-131 & -136 UAVs: A Visual Guide. Open Source Munitions Portal. Open Source Munitions Portal. Accessed February 12, 2026. https://osmp.ngo/collection/shahed-131-136-uavs-a-visual-guide/.

12. Theresa Hitchens, “With the Boom for Solid Rocket Motors for Missiles, a Perilous Crunch in the Supply Chain,” Breaking Defense, January 12, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/with-the-boom-for-solid-rocket-motors-for-missiles-a-perilous-crunch-in-the-supply-chain.

13. No author. “US Develops Lucas Kamikaze Drone to Surpass Iranian Shahed as Loitering Munitions Become Core to Future Warfare.” US develops LUCAS kamikaze drone to surpass Iranian Shahed-136 as loitering munitions become core to future warfare, July 18, 2025. https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-develops-lucas-kamikaze-drone-to-surpass-iranian-shahed-136-as-loitering-munitions-become-core-to-future-warfare.

14. Shield AI, “V-Bat,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://shield.ai/v-bat.

15. Anduril Industries, “Altius,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/altius.

16. Anduril Industries, “Barracuda,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/barracuda.

17. Hugo Bachega, “Russian Air Strikes Get Deadlier and Bigger, Hitting Ukraine’s Very Heart,” BBC News, September 9, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrqwpee05ro.

18. Sam Lair. “Shallow Ramparts: Air and Missile Defenses in the June 2025 Israel-Iran War – Foreign Policy Research Institute.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 17, 2025. https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/10/shallow-ramparts-air-and-missile-defenses-in-the-june-2025-israel-iran-war/.

19. Ibid.

20. Rising, David, and Sam Metz. “Iran’s Military Degraded by 12-Day War with Israel, but Still Has Significant Capabilities.” AP News, February 13, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-us-trump-military-carrier-war-931c25411eeef7d8cee679b3544b792a.

21. Sam Lair. “Shallow Ramparts: Air and Missile Defenses in the June 2025 Israel-Iran War – Foreign Policy Research Institute.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 17, 2025. https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/10/shallow-ramparts-air-and-missile-defenses-in-the-june-2025-israel-iran-war/.

22. No author. “Hypersonic Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress.” February 20, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45811.

23. Sarah Burford. Review of Tanker Ships Deliver Fuel to MSC Ships via CONSOL in Support of RIMPAC 2022. U.S. Navy. U.S. Navy. July 25, 2022. https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/3103496/tanker-ships-deliver-fuel-to-msc-ships-via-consol-in-support-of-rimpac-2022/.

24. No author. “US Develops Lucas Kamikaze Drone to Surpass Iranian Shahed as Loitering Munitions Become Core to Future Warfare.” US develops LUCAS kamikaze drone to surpass Iranian Shahed-136 as loitering munitions become core to future warfare, July 18, 2025. https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-develops-lucas-kamikaze-drone-to-surpass-iranian-shahed-136-as-loitering-munitions-become-core-to-future-warfare.

25. Shield AI, “V-Bat,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://shield.ai/v-bat.

26. Anduril Industries, “Altius,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/altius.

27. Anduril Industries, “Barracuda,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/barracuda.

28. No author. “AV Switchblade 600 Loitering Munition System Achieves Pivotal Milestone with First-Ever Air Launch from MQ-9A.” AeroVironment, Inc., September 10, 2025. https://www.avinc.com/resources/press-releases/view/av-switchblade-600-loitering-munition-system-achieves-pivotal-milestone-with-first-ever-air-launch-from-mq-9a.

29. No author. “MQ-9 Reaper.” Air Force, January 2025. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104470/mq-9-reaper/.

Featured Photo: A U.S. LUCAS drone on a tarmac in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. Wikimedia Commons.

Arctic

Can an Interagency Task Force Work in the Arctic?

March 4, 2026 Guest Author Leave a comment

By Jeffrey Kucik and Veronica De Allende

An increasingly accessible Arctic raises questions about U.S. responsibilities in the region. There are two core challenges. First, Russia’s (re)militarization of its Arctic coastline, coupled with growing Chinese activity—often enabled by Moscow—signals rising geopolitical competition in the region. Second, the United States has an interest in preserving a rules-based order in the Arctic, including freedom of navigation, credible deterrence, and the peaceful resolution of territorial and resource claims.

These challenges spur debate. Not everyone agrees that Arctic threats merit significant attention. Others believe the region represents a new frontier of U.S. national security. What is clear, however, is that no single service—including the U.S. Coast Guard, which bears primary operational responsibility in the region—can manage the Arctic’s growing demands alone. Securing the Arctic requires more than additional icebreakers. It requires an integrated, whole-of-government approach that combines the Coast Guard’s operational experience with law enforcement, intelligence, domain awareness, logistics. It also requires allied coordination across vast distances and unforgiving conditions.

The solution may be a joint interagency task force—a Coast Guard-led structure that establishes command and control procedures for the pressing needs in the Arctic like greater maritime domain awareness, emergency response, and credible deterrence.

Fortunately, the Coast Guard doesn’t have to start from scratch. There are important lessons to be learned from farther south, where the Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-S), a Coast Guard-led effort to disrupt drugs smuggling, has become a textbook example of effective coordination across U.S. agencies and foreign partners.

The need for coordination in the Arctic

Receding sea ice is opening new shipping routes and exposing reserves of oil, gas, and minerals, driving geopolitical competition among Arctic and non-Arctic nations alike. This competition has increased militarization in the region, evidenced by recent Russian investments in nascent Arctic facilities and by more frequent naval exercises to assert control over strategic waterways and resources. At the same time, lack of clear governance frameworks—and mixed compliance with those frameworks—further complicates efforts to manage disputes, raising the risk of conflict over territorial claims and access rights.

The U.S. may not have the same equities in the region as Canada, Norway, or Russia. It also doesn’t have the same raw capabilities as some Arctic nations, with Russia’s icebreaker numbers towering over other countries. But taking a backseat to safeguarding the region would be a strategic mistake given U.S. interests. Outside of principled concerns over great power competition, there are several practical considerations. First, maintaining sea lines of communication (SLOCs), particularly around Alaska, is vital to ensuring freedom of navigation for commercial shipping and military logistics. Second, as a NATO member, the U.S. shares responsibility for protecting critical undersea infrastructure, including energy pipelines and communications cables, which have been the target of increased attacks in recent years. Third, a busier Arctic increases on the burden placed on the Coast Guard in terms of search and rescue operations, law enforcement efforts, and a wide variety of emergency response duties.

The Coast Guard cannot go it alone. Even with recent funding commitments, and investments in new ships, the service cannot meet the scale or complexity to confront tomorrow’s Arctic challenges. Coordination among U.S. agencies such as the Department of Defense (DoD) and the intelligence community is required to effectively address emerging military and civil threats. Looming challenges also require robust international cooperation to prevent escalation and ensure the Arctic remains safe and secure.

The Coast Guard has already taken important steps by establishing an internal Task Force-Arctic in late 2023 to assist with command and control across its two major regional commands and their nine districts. But Task Force-Arctic’s roles and responsibilities remain subject to debate, and there have been calls to transition to an “up-and-out” model aimed at coordination among U.S. government entities as well as partner nations.

Questions remain as to what, exactly, a task force’s mission ought to be and, related, which entities must be involved. What is clear, however, is that coordination and collaboration are needed. Outside of search and rescue operations, where there are formal protocols for emergency response, many of the threats emerging in the Arctic stress operational capabilities and experience. This created command and control headaches within the USCG—and it means coordination across the U.S. government and foreign partners is often ad hoc. A more formal, institutionalized set of contingency plans, communication lines, and coordination protocols can speed up crisis response and assist with allocating scarce resources across the region.

The U.S. has similar efforts in other domains, including the recently stood up JIATF-401 for counter-drone operations and JIATF-CC and JIATF-S for counter-narcotics operations. JIATF-S in particular has been a much-lauded example of how this kind of coordination can work.

JIATF-S as a blueprint for interagency fusion

Established in 1994 to fight transnational drug trafficking, JIATF-S integrates a wide range of US government stakeholders, including the Department of State, U.S. Navy, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and partner nations. The task force functions as a centralized intelligence fusion and coordination center, synthesizing information and personnel from disparate agencies into a cohesive operational structure. It also integrates foreign countries, drawing on the capabilities of foreign liaison officers from 20 partner countries spanning Latin America and Europe.

JIATF-S plays a central role in coordinating maritime patrols, aerial surveillance, and logistical support to enable effective counternarcotics operations across the Caribbean, Eastern Pacific, and Latin America. Its effectiveness derives in part from its capacity to rapidly disseminate time-sensitive intelligence and assign the most appropriate operational asset to specific operations.

Commentators point to several reasons for this success. First, the JIATF-S has a clearly defined mission—combat the drug trade—which keeps daily tasking focused on core objectives while also promoting buy-in across U.S. agencies and foreign partners. Second, the task force’s structure, procedures, and operating methods have evolved over several decades in response to first-hand experiences. JIATF-S has become more efficient over time due to built-in knowledge sharing and the accumulation of trust among operating partners, even as drug traffickers have adapted to maintain effective networks. Third, the task force has reportedly become a desirable career stop for personnel. Staff performance is assessed primarily on contributions to the task force’s core mission, rather than on their home agency. This has been said to boost morale while fostering a cooperative, team-oriented culture. Fourth, participation by foreign partners increases the resources and the geographic reach of the task force. Moreover, these partners have a long history of shared strategic interests and demonstrated interoperability, further strengthening collaborative operations.

While not an exhaustive list, these factors highlight why JIATF-S is widely regarded as a model of interagency coordination, multinational cooperation, and centralized operational effectiveness. Duplicating that success elsewhere, however, is not straightforward and may not be possible in the Arctic due to a number of structural reasons.

JIATF-S is a “coalition of the willing,” relying heavily on voluntary contributions from participating agencies and foreign partners and lacking the standard military authorities of a command. This structure demands relative alignment of interests among partners, both to provide resources and to collaborate in operations. Effective interagency and multinational coordination requires overcoming barriers to burden sharing, communication, and the integration of diverse operational cultures. These issues would likely be relevant for any interagency task force. However, unique challenges in the Arctic make a simple “copy and paste” of the JIAFT-S framework impossible. The most critical is the lack of a clear organizing mission of common concern around which an Arctic task force could organize.

Is the JIATF-S model transferable to the Arctic?

There are several factors to consider in a region so vast and complex. Each of these presents strategic, operational, and tactical challenges to US entities and their partners.

Mission Diversity. JIATF-S seeks to accomplish a narrowly defined (albeit difficult) mission: countering narcotics trafficking through detection, monitoring, and interdiction efforts. The operational tempo, while inherently demanding, is directed toward that singular priority. In contrast, evolving threats in the Arctic are more diverse. These threats include illegal fishing, freedom of navigation interruptions, and increased militarization. Addressing this wide range of issues would require more combined resources and authorities, making interagency coordination significantly more complex than in the JIATF-S environment. For example, a JIATF-Arctic may be compelled to reconcile national security imperatives with civil support requirements. That means the task force’s mandate would have to be broader than that currently held by JIATF-S.

The potential breadth of the mandate has operational implications. The diffusion of missions—e.g., covering both emergency response and threat detection—would likely complicate the initial buy-in from both interagency and international stakeholders, perhaps critically.

Geography and Climate. The Arctic region’s remoteness, ice-covered waters, and extreme weather conditions demand specialized capabilities. The USCG has the most relevant experience within the U.S. government operating in these extreme weather conditions, including navigating ice. As a result, the USCG would likely bear the heaviest burden in coordinating C2 and in executing operational threat response. And yet many other agencies have roles to play in the region. Intelligence community assets contribute to maritime domain awareness, including monitoring vessel traffic. Likewise, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have law enforcement and investigatory responsibilities.

Yet those entities have fewer resources and less operational experience in the region. In fact, even including USCG assets, the Arctic is generally characterized by minimal infrastructure, high costs, and a pervasive absence of fixed Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems. As a result, unlike JIATF-S’s relatively narrower geographic focus, the Arctic’s size and harsh conditions strain resources and capabilities. On the one hand, the challenging conditions are precisely why interagency and international coordination are important. One the other hand, those conditions place limited on who has the experience and capability to participate in joint efforts.

Geopolitical Dynamics. JIATF-S activities have at least nominal buy-in from governments across the area of responsibility. In the Arctic, however, there are more pressing geopolitical tensions, implying that Arctic nations are less aligned in their interests and willingness to cooperate with one another. Russia’s military buildup and China’s self-declared status as a “near-Arctic state” complicate consensus. Militarization concerns, particularly related to air and missile defense assets, engender significant disagreements. Even among U.S. allies and Arctic Council members, interests are not always aligned. As a result, building and sustaining a coalition of foreign partners in an Arctic task force setting will be more fraught politically, with less overlap in shared goals, interests, and missions.

Experience. JIATF-S is the product of decades of trial, error, and adjustment. It started as a heavily siloed set of independent task force efforts that was combined and refined since the late 1980s into the well-oiled machine operating today. Similar efforts in the Arctic may be able to borrow some of that experience. However, the unique challenges, including geographic, geopolitical, and mission complexities imply that achieving similar effectiveness would likely require significant time, sustained investment, and persistent trust-building among partners. The deficiency of established, routine combined operations in the High North signifies that the foundational trust required for interagency personnel to execute rapid, mission-critical decisions is currently absent.

Moving Forward

These challenges do not necessarily preclude the establishment of a JIATF-S-like organization in the Arctic. Rather, they highlight some of the inherent difficulties replicating this model from one region to another with fundamentally different mission sets, geography, infrastructure, and operating conditions. Overcoming these challenges would require two foundational features.

First, an Arctic task force must be given a clear mandate from Washington that defines its mission set, assigns dedicated resources, and clarifies the boundaries of the command’s authority across U.S. agencies and allied partners. We’ve stressed here that, at a minimum, a JIATF-Arctic must facilitate coordination and cooperation across—and outside—U.S. entities with roles and responsibilities in the region. This means ensuring that intelligence-sharing and communications channels are formalized rather than ad hoc. It also means developing defined protocols for tomorrow’s contingencies.

However, the mission set remains an open question. One thing the U.S. must consider is which foreign partners to include. If the U.S. goal is balancing adversary influence in the region, then the mission set—and membership—of the task force may focus on allied interests. But there’s also a different approach, one that includes Russia (and potentially China) to institutionalize cooperation around shared vulnerabilities in the region. That model would better approximate the Arctic Council’s structure, but could go beyond the Council’s core initiatives, which focus largely on environmental concerns.

Second, it should adopt decision-making and organizational structures that promote learning, flexibility, and adaptation, much as JIATF-S did through decades of trial and error. This would require fostering an organizational culture that incentivizes cross-agency collaboration and implements the use of embedded rotational staff to cultivate long-term personal and institutional trust. Together, these two features, when fully actualized, would provide the foundational elements for an effective joint interagency C2 model in the Arctic—enabling coordination among U.S. agencies and multinational partners, even amid the region’s extreme conditions and complex security dynamics.

Looking forward, such a task force could complement existing Arctic security structures like the Arctic Council, NORAD, and NATO, by providing a persistent, integrated U.S.-led framework for managing emerging threats, sharing intelligence, and synchronizing interagency and multinational C2 across air, land, and maritime domains. Ultimately, the question is not whether an Arctic task force could work, but whether the United States can afford to approach the region without one.

Jeffrey Kucik, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses and a Global Fellow at the Wahba Initiative for Strategic Competition at New York University.

Veronica De Allende, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of CNA, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, or the U.S. government.

Featured Image: The Coast Guard Cutter Stratton from Alameda, Calif., steams near an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean during Operation Arctic Shield 2014 Sept. 14, 2014. (Coast Guard photo courtesy of Cutter Statton)

Commentary

Enduring the Storm: Reflections on the U.S. Navy’s “Fat Leonard” Scandal

March 2, 2026 Guest Author 5 Comments

By Rear Admiral Bruce Loveless, U.S. Navy (Ret.)

Heavy Seas

Heavy seas do calm with time. Yet long after headlines fade and public attention moves on, those who endure them continue to feel their weight—professionally, personally, and often in silence.

The Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) case—widely known as the “Fat Leonard” scandal and the largest corruption case in U.S. Navy history—led to criminal charges against more than 30 uniformed and civilian officials, with lengthy investigations that disrupted hundreds of careers.¹ During that period, I was serving in key operational intelligence roles across the Indo-Pacific and later in senior positions at the Pentagon, making my own experience inseparable from the broader institutional reckoning that followed.

Now largely remembered as a case study in public corruption and accountability, the ordeal was deeply personal for me—a painful and prolonged period of uncertainty that demanded perseverance and tested character in ways I never expected. With recent decisions by a federal appeals court effectively closing the final chapters of the GDMA case, the legal story has reached its conclusion. The human story has not.²

What follows is not an effort to relitigate the case or revisit legal arguments. Rather, it is a personal reflection on what it means to serve, to be accused, and to endure when trust—personal, professional, and public trust—is strained over time.

The Storm

The storm hit long before my very public arrest.

While serving at the Pentagon in the fall of 2013, I was called into a meeting with Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys and NCIS agents. They asked about Navy port visits from several years earlier, going back to 2005, when I sailed the Western Pacific with the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Within hours, I was suspended from my duties, stripped of security access, and thrust onto the front pages of the national news. The press seemed to have the story beforehand.³

No charges. No explanation. Just suspicion—and years of painful uncertainty followed.

For three years, I lived in that limbo—still a naval officer, still a Flag Officer, still serving my country, but largely sidelined. In the fall of 2016, believing the ordeal had passed, I retired quietly (and honorably) after more than 30 years in the Navy, living and sailing around the world in warships, along with multiple assignments in what may be the most challenging battlefield of all—Washington, DC.

Then in the spring of 2017, without any warning or follow-up from that initial DOJ meeting, I was arrested. Federal agents with handcuffs knocked on my door very early in the morning—armed, but respectful. In NCIS offices at nearby Naval Base San Diego, I sat in a holding room, waiting—the federal jail downtown wasn’t even open that early.

The agents were professional, offering coffee and water. Strangely, they didn’t ask any questions about the case, as if not interested in me for that purpose. One said quietly, almost apologetically, “This will make more sense when you see the news.” The story had already been written.

Later that day in a federal courtroom, I stood shackled, wearing a prison jumpsuit. Another naval officer—also charged—stood nearby in a business suit and tie, clearly given time to prepare, flying in from Hawaii with his attorney. The contrast seemed deliberate. Perception mattered more than fairness in that moment.

That evening the story played on national TV. No trial. No evidence. No defense. Just narrative.

The Endurance

Back home that night, I sent a short email to Tom O’Brien, my brother’s Naval Academy classmate and former U.S. Attorney: “I think I need your help.” He responded immediately. Acknowledging the legal costs ahead would be overwhelming, he said, “These are accounts you’ve already paid into with your service.”

In the days (and years) that followed, the Navy was silent. No official calls. No offers of assistance. I was retired, after all. But many individuals stepped forward: shipmates, Naval Academy classmates, neighbors, and new friends in San Diego. Unexpected allies reached out with quiet strength.

For five years awaiting trial, I chose purpose over despair, completing a PhD by studying senior leaders across business, nonprofit, and public sectors—many shaped by adversity. Study partners kept me focused. Faculty reassured that perseverance would carry me through. Friends nudged me forward, on nearby hiking trails and running paths. Neighbors kept my spirits alive. And my brother, always a role model, was steady and present when I needed him most.

Through research, interviews, and hard miles on mountain trails, my understanding of leadership was rebuilt. For most of my Navy career, leadership largely meant operational excellence and taking care of sailors. But enduring this storm demanded far more. It would take dignity when humiliation felt certain. Perseverance when anger was easier. Grace, even when bitterness seemed justified.

Nearly every morning during the forthcoming trial, a Naval Academy classmate and running partner sent me a short text message—words of encouragement, reminders to keep going. Framed in familiar language—handing me water when needed, helping me find another mile when my legs and heart were tired. His quiet consistency and the loyalty of others like him made the marathon possible.

The Trial

The trial itself didn’t come quickly. Following my arrest, we waited—year after year—as proceedings were delayed. Some co-defendants eventually pleaded guilty. Then COVID caused further delays.

When we finally went to trial in 2022—nearly nine years after that initial DOJ meeting—the federal courtroom in San Diego looked like a different world. We were five defendants on trial together, all naval officers who served in the Seventh Fleet around the same time, and more attorneys than one could count, on both sides of the aisle. Masks covered our faces. Plexiglass divided us. Jurors couldn’t see our facial expressions, nor our humanity.

Why the trial was in a federal court—rather than a military courtroom—was a frequent question. To my understanding, DOJ took jurisdiction because the broader case involved a civilian contractor and alleged violations of federal bribery laws. However, with full respect for civil authority, explaining years of operational context—overseas, over decades, involving port visit interactions with a foreign husbanding agent hired by our Navy—to a civilian jury, understandably unfamiliar with forward-deployed naval operations, proved challenging for all defendants. Even federal prosecutors struggled to present that complexity clearly.

In the middle of what would become a grueling four-month trial, the Judge suspended proceedings to hold a separate evidentiary hearing away from the jury. In a surprising turn, prosecutors took the witness stand and were questioned by defense counsel. The courtroom was packed—with attorneys, observers, even other judges—watching a rare public reckoning unfold. During that hearing, serious flaws in the prosecution’s case—withholding evidence, misrepresenting facts, deceiving the public, and even attempting to bribe witnesses—came to light. Behavior by government prosecutors and investigators that the Judge characterized as “outrageous” and “flagrant misconduct.”⁴

While that moment felt like a turning point in the case, the Judge denied several motions for a mistrial. So, after months of testimony and weeks of deliberation, the jury ultimately returned mixed verdicts. For me, the jury could not reach a decision—a hung jury—while the other four defendants were convicted on all charges (felony convictions later reduced to misdemeanors). Soon after the trial, the DOJ prosecutors themselves requested that all charges against me be dismissed (with prejudice), and the Judge agreed, bringing my legal ordeal to an end, nearly a decade after the investigation began.⁵

But that didn’t end the scrutiny, for the scars—personal, professional, and reputational—remain. And the cloud of distrust lingers.

Hard Truths

The Fat Leonard scandal was built on a story—partly true, often exaggerated—driven by a con man and too readily accepted by government prosecutors and a press eager for headlines. In my view, major media outlets, especially The Washington Post, relied too heavily on the prosecution-provided narrative, repeating sensationalized claims without nuance.⁶ Some even suggested I had traded military secrets—yet no charge ever alleged such a thing. Complexity rarely fits into headlines.

The Navy, bound by lawful authority, largely remained silent. In many ways, I understood that—for I was one of them, and they were me. With a major federal investigation and heavy public scrutiny, there was little space for Navy leadership to act differently. In the face of prosecutorial overreach and intense media coverage, the narrative became one-sided, and sometimes deeply misleading.

Even now, I struggle to believe that most of those in uniform who were charged truly understood that Francis was defrauding the government. In hindsight, it seems unlikely he would have wanted them to know—exposure would have jeopardized his scheme. Indeed, trial evidence showed he deliberately concealed his fraudulent actions, especially from senior officers. As the Judge pointedly told the lead prosecutor during the trial (though away from the jury): “I’m not buying it…to be part of a conspiracy, you have to know what’s going on.” Yes, there were serious lapses in judgment and troubling ethical failings, for sure. But whether those amounted to felony-level crimes is, in many cases, a far more complex legal question.

In the end, all of my charges (bribery, conspiracy, and fraud) were dismissed at DOJ’s request after years of investigation, months of trial, and a hung jury—where I was the only defendant the jury refused to convict. My charges were not dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct, nor did it end on a technicality, as some still mistakenly believe. It ended because the prosecution failed to prove its claims against me before a jury at trial. Unlike all others charged, I was not accused of direct criminal wrongdoing, but of failing to report the alleged misconduct of others. In essence, I was accused of looking the other way. That allegation collapsed under scrutiny because the evidence was insufficient to convince the jury—and it simply wasn’t true.

Still, deeper reflection includes what I could have done differently. I wish I had kept greater distance from Francis—of course I do in hindsight—and I know many others feel the same. As the U.S. Navy’s primary husbanding agent in the Western Pacific for decades, his company (GDMA) was not viewed with enough suspicion by us, at least not back then. Naively, we placed a great deal of trust in the people and systems around us, assuming the processes responsible for vetting and hiring Navy contractors would shield us from bad actors, especially those we relied on so directly to meet critical operational needs.

Likewise, through this unfamiliar legal journey, I mistakenly believed that government prosecutors and agents would uphold the highest standards of justice and professional conduct—at least I did before this horrific experience. Those assumptions, as it turned out, were dangerously misplaced.

Even without criminal guilt, some regret remains, for not recognizing the criminality of the situation—with Francis or anyone else for that matter. And a sense of responsibility lingers, believing that if I had known, I would have spoken up, somehow, someway. Silence, even unknowing, contributes to failure.

Hard truths are never easy, but they teach.

Enduring Trust

The Navy remains an institution I love. Its ideals—honor, courage, commitment—still mean as much to me today as they did when I first took the Oath during Plebe Summer in 1982. Enduring the Fat Leonard scandal tested those ideals beyond anything I ever imagined. It also made them more real.

Character isn’t forged in calm seas; it’s revealed in crisis—we know that. Even more so when everything falls apart, when your professional life ends abruptly, when your personal life is shattered, when you’re afraid. Enduring this storm was made possible because others stood beside me—shipmates, friends, family—who refused to walk away.

I am better because I endured—because I came to understand the deeper strength that comes when character is tested. Under great strain, I chose dignity over anger, perseverance over bitterness, grace over grievance. And in the end, I chose resilience over defeat. Growth is a choice.

The foundation of character—and leadership—is trust. Trust is fragile and must be earned—every day, in every challenge, through every trial—seen and unseen. My greatest hope remains, not only to be trusted, but to continue to live and lead in a trustworthy way.

Bruce Loveless is a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who served more than 30 years as a naval intelligence officer. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a PhD in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego.

References

S. Department of Justice, press releases and case summaries concerning the Glenn Defense Marine Asia corruption investigation, 2013–2024. See, for example: https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/glenn-defense-marine-asia
Greg Moran, “After more than a decade, the Fat Leonard scandal may finally be over — but not for everyone,” inewsource, December 29, 2025, https://inewsource.org/2025/12/29/fat-leonard-navy-case-san-diego-questions/.
National media reporting on the “Fat Leonard” scandal, 2013–2024. Representative coverage in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/us/bribery-case-implicates-2-admirals.html
Federal court proceedings and related public reporting addressing prosecutorial misconduct and evidentiary issues in GDMA-related cases, 2020–2023. See, for example: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/09/06/felony-convictions-vacated-for-4-former-navy-officers-in-sprawling-fat-leonard-bribery-scandal/
United States v. Loveless, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, case filings and dismissal order. Public docket available via PACER: https://pacer.uscourts.gov and also at: https://news.usni.org/2022/09/15/charges-dropped-against-retired-rear-adm-bruce-loveless-in-fat-leonard-case
National media reporting on the “Fat Leonard” scandal, 2013–2024. Representative coverage in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/leaks-feasts-and-sex-parties-how-fat-leonard-infiltrated-the-navys-floating-headquarters-in-asia/2018/01/23/4d31555c-efdd-11e7-97bf-bba379b809ab_story.html

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