America’s naval shipyards are struggling to keep up with a combination of practical and political demands, and taxpayers are paying the price. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that over the past decade, taxpayers paid roughly $4.17 billion for the Navy’s submarines to sit idle or wait through maintenance delays. These submarines had no active missions and played no operational role in protecting our country. Instead, they waited in lengthy queues for maintenance or decommissioning at our country’s public shipyards.
In total, these submarines accumulated 18,687 days of idle time or maintenance delays over the past ten years. That comes out to about $223,000 of taxpayer funds wasted every single day. Unless changes are made, GAO predicted that these costs will accelerate, wasting an additional $3.1 billion for 14,000+ idle days over just the next five years.
One particularly illustrative case of this waste is the USS Pasadena, a submarine that officially entered inactive idle status starting in January 2025. Its dive certification expired, meaning it cannot conduct normal operations, but it is not scheduled to enter the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for decommissioning until November 2028. In the meantime, it remains fully crewed, waiting for a dry dock slot where its nuclear reactor can be defueled. That wait alone is expected to cost taxpayers over $300 million.
The most obvious explanation for this idle time is a lack of operational capacity at the nation’s four public naval shipyards: Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, Portsmouth, and Puget Sound. These shipyards’ aging infrastructure simply cannot meet the Navy’s maintenance and decommissioning demands in a timely manner. GAO found that the four public shipyards complete submarine maintenance on schedule only 11% of the time. That delay is costing taxpayers a fortune.
The administration seems to recognize the capacity issue, as in August it directed the Navy to create a plan to construct a fifth public shipyard. But the limited public shipyard capacity does not tell the full story. GAO found that the Navy has not fully evaluated alternative decommissioning strategies, such as defueling outside drydocks and reduced crewing. Either of these strategies could significantly reduce the billions of dollars in expected waste over the next few years.
In the midst of this idling crisis, the administration is also pursuing projects that could strain capacity in the nation’s private shipyards. At Newport News, the largest private shipyard in the United States, those projects include a potential mid-production redesign of aircraft carriers and building the proposed Trump-class battleship.
In August, the administration directed the Navy to develop a plan to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and advanced weapons elevators on the latest Ford-class aircraft carrier with steam and hydraulic systems. Steam and hydraulic systems have not been in production since the last Nimitz-class carrier was commissioned in 2009. In their place, aircraft carriers have been using electromagnetic systems, which are more effective, reliable, and most importantly for taxpayers, cost-effective. A naval test this year reaffirmed the Navy’s preference for them. Replacing EMALS with steam would require a major rework of the Ford-class carriers, as their design does not currently incorporate the massive equipment required for a steam system. Replacing affordable state-of-the-art technology with a less effective, more expensive system doesn’t make much sense, particularly in light of the Navy’s other shipbuilding issues.
Advancing this redesign for ships already under construction would compound the cost to taxpayers and naval readiness. The White House directive calls for a plan to make steam great again on the USS Doris Miller, a carrier already mid-way through its construction process. Regardless of the merits of steam (or lack thereof), such a significant change after construction is already underway would add a large additional cost and further delay the commissioning of a ship that is already two years behind schedule. General Atomics, the company tasked with building electromagnetic catapult systems, stated that “changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks.” Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for this steam dream.
The proposed Trump-class battleship threatens to exacerbate this shipbuilding crisis—adding unnecessary costs and putting additional strain on an already overtaxed system. Firstly, the Trump-class is antithetical to everything the Navy says it wants, which is namely a more agile and distributed naval force. But beyond the strategic concerns, the costs and potential delays are hard to ignore. Moreover, final assembly of the battleships would take place at Newport News’ Dock 12, the exact same dock at the exact same shipyard currently used to construct the Ford-class aircraft carriers like the USS Doris Miller.
Newport News is already behind schedule on the construction of three aircraft carriers and numerous submarines. Adding the construction of the Trump-class battleship to its workload could further delay those projects. That’s partly because the administration is rushing to begin production before the ship’s designs are complete. According to GAO, that practice across shipbuilding programs means the Navy’s shipbuilding programs and their shipyards are “made to operate in a perpetual state of triage.” Given current delays in virtually every shipbuilding program, adding a massive new project with major strategic shortcomings is ill-advised, to say the least.
The costs are equally worrisome. A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the project estimated that a fleet of 15 Trump-class battleships would cost about $275 billion, including $23 billion for the first ship.
Before taxpayers are asked to spend billions to expand shipyard capacity, the Navy should make better use of the capacity it already has. That means evaluating new strategies to overcome the submarine backlog. It means avoiding costly redesigns after construction begins. And it means rejecting another massive, unnecessary shipbuilding program that would put further stress on an already strained system.
