The U.S. Navy wants Congress to fund 34 new warships in fiscal year 2027 at a cost of $65.8 billion, placing its biggest bets on attack submarines and logistics vessels built to fight and resupply across the Pacific Ocean. The request, formally submitted as part of the FY2027 presidential budget, reflects a Pentagon that views undersea warfare and sealift capacity as the two capabilities most likely to determine whether the United States could sustain a prolonged conflict thousands of miles from its home ports.
At the center of the plan are two submarine programs that together consume the largest share of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget: the Virginia-class fast attack submarine and the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. Virginia-class boats, built jointly by General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, are the fleet’s primary undersea strike and intelligence platforms. The Columbia class, under construction at Electric Boat, is designed to replace the aging Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines that have carried the sea-based nuclear deterrent since the 1980s. The lead Columbia boat is expected to begin sea trials before the end of the decade, and the Navy has repeatedly called the program its top acquisition priority.
The sealift portion of the request targets a vulnerability that military planners have flagged for years. A 2019 internal Navy assessment found that the service needed roughly 73 surge sealift vessels to move troops, armor, ammunition, and fuel in a major conflict, but the actual fleet of roll-on/roll-off transports and prepositioning ships fell well short of that number. Many of the existing sealift vessels date to the 1970s and 1980s and face recurring mechanical failures. Without enough transport capacity, even a well-armed combat fleet risks running low on supplies within weeks of a fight starting in the Western Pacific.
Why submarines and sealift dominate the budget
The strategic logic is rooted in geography and in China’s naval buildup. The People’s Liberation Army Navy now operates more than 370 battle force ships, according to the Department of Defense’s most recent China Military Power Report, compared with roughly 295 in the U.S. battle force inventory. China’s shipyards are producing destroyers, frigates, and amphibious assault ships at a pace no other country matches, and Beijing has expanded its own submarine fleet with newer, quieter boats.
Pentagon war-gaming over the past several years has consistently shown that in a Taiwan contingency or a broader Western Pacific conflict, U.S. attack submarines would be among the most survivable and lethal assets available. Surface ships operating within range of China’s extensive anti-ship missile arsenal face serious risks, but submarines can maneuver beneath those threat envelopes to strike enemy warships, interdict supply lines, and gather intelligence. Ballistic missile submarines, meanwhile, ensure that the nuclear deterrent remains credible even if land-based systems are threatened.
Sealift fills the other half of the equation. The Pacific is vast. Guam sits roughly 1,800 miles from Taiwan; Japan’s main islands are closer but still require sustained resupply by sea. Ammunition expenditure rates projected for a high-intensity naval conflict far exceed anything the U.S. military has experienced since World War II. If transport ships cannot keep pace, forward-deployed forces burn through their stocks and lose combat effectiveness. The FY2027 request treats sealift not as a secondary concern but as a warfighting requirement on par with the combat ships themselves.
Industrial base pressures and delivery risks
Requesting 34 ships is one thing. Building them on schedule is another. The submarine industrial base, in particular, has struggled with workforce shortages and supply chain disruptions that have pushed Virginia-class deliveries behind schedule. Electric Boat and Newport News have been hiring aggressively, but training skilled welders, pipefitters, and nuclear-qualified workers takes years, not months. The Navy acknowledged in recent budget cycles that it was receiving fewer than two Virginia-class boats per year despite a stated goal of two annually, and the simultaneous ramp-up of Columbia-class construction at Electric Boat has intensified the competition for skilled labor and dry dock space.
The AUKUS agreement adds another layer of complexity. Under the trilateral security pact with Australia and the United Kingdom, the United States has committed to selling three to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia starting in the early 2030s. Those boats will come from the same production lines already straining to meet U.S. Navy demand. Congress has conditioned the sales on the Navy maintaining its own minimum submarine force levels, but the math remains tight. Every schedule slip on the production line ripples through both the American and Australian submarine timelines.
Surface combatant and sealift construction faces its own bottlenecks. HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Bath Iron Works in Maine handle much of the Navy’s destroyer and amphibious ship work, and both yards have dealt with labor and material cost inflation. New sealift vessels, depending on their design, may be built at commercial or government-owned shipyards that have not produced military-specification ships in years, raising questions about whether the industrial base can absorb the full scope of the request.
What Congress will debate
The $65.8 billion shipbuilding request now enters a congressional appropriations process that will stretch through the rest of 2026 and possibly into early 2027. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees will hold hearings where Navy leaders will defend the ship count, the mix of platforms, and the cost estimates. Appropriators on the defense subcommittees will weigh the request against competing demands: Army modernization, Air Force bomber and fighter programs, missile defense, and the nuclear weapons enterprise all draw from the same defense topline.
History suggests the final number could shift in either direction. In some recent fiscal years, Congress cut ships the Navy requested; in others, lawmakers added vessels the service did not ask for, often reflecting the interests of shipyard-district representatives or differing strategic judgments. Deficit politics will also play a role. Federal deficits remain elevated, and any push to constrain overall spending could squeeze the shipbuilding account even if lawmakers broadly agree on the need for a larger fleet.
For communities tied to naval shipbuilding, the stakes are immediate. Shipyards in Connecticut, Virginia, Mississippi, and Maine collectively employ tens of thousands of workers, and their supplier networks extend into dozens of other states. A sustained multi-year shipbuilding plan provides workforce stability and justifies capital investment in facilities and training programs. Conversely, year-to-year funding uncertainty makes it harder for yards to retain skilled workers and plan production efficiently, a cycle that has contributed to the very delays the Navy is now trying to overcome.
Where the plan goes from here
As of June 2026, the FY2027 budget request represents the administration’s opening position, not a final commitment. The detailed Navy budget justification books, which break out costs by ship class and program, will provide the granular data that analysts and lawmakers need to evaluate whether the plan is affordable and executable. Congressional hearings scheduled through the summer and fall will produce on-the-record testimony from admirals and Pentagon comptrollers defending or adjusting specific line items.
The underlying strategic question, though, is unlikely to change regardless of what Congress ultimately appropriates. The United States is in a shipbuilding competition with China that will play out over decades, not budget cycles. Whether 34 ships per year is enough to close the numerical gap, or whether superior technology, training, and alliances can compensate for fewer hulls, remains one of the most consequential defense debates of this era. The FY2027 request is the latest answer the Pentagon has offered. Congress will now decide whether it agrees.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
