Rebuilding America’s Maritime Industrial Base with Senators Mark Kelly and Todd Young

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China’s control of commercial shipping and shipbuilding gives it a potentially decisive military advantage over the United States. The Chinese navy can build and repair its fleet for a fraction of the cost the US would incur. If competition ever turns into conflict, China could use its maritime dominance to choke the American economy and scale up its fleets at an extraordinary pace.

Hudson will welcome Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Todd Young (R-IN) to discuss their proposal to restore America’s shipping and shipbuilding industries to help deter Chinese aggression.

Episode Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Mike Roberts:

Thank you for joining us today. I’m Mike Roberts. I’m a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. I want to thank all of you who have supported our work on maritime and defense issues. Work relevant to today’s discussion can be found under the American Maritime Security Initiative Policy Center at Hudson.org.

Before turning to our distinguished guests, I want to take just a minute for background. I spent decades in the maritime industry helping shape the policies that govern U.S. shipping today. And a few years ago, I came to a sobering realization, we got it wrong. We thought we had the right balance, maintain competition under American laws in our own markets while embracing wide open competition in global markets. We put the interests of American consumers above all else, and that meant giving them the cheapest ships and shipping services. We knew that companies with American costs couldn’t possibly match prices with companies that scour the globe for the cheapest labor and other costs and that get massive subsidies from their governments. We didn’t care. Security wasn’t an issue. The Soviet Union was defeated and China was still an impoverished country and had just 5% of the shipbuilding market.

Fast forward to today, China, our geopolitical rival, now has at least 75% of that market. It delivers three ships to the Chinese Navy for every one ship delivered to the U.S. Navy. More than any other country, China controls the maritime supply chains that feed our economy. All of this threatens our national security and our economic resilience. Thanks to the leadership of Senators Kelly, Young, and key House members, we now have a smart, comprehensive bill announced just this morning that can restore American strength in shipping and shipbuilding.

And with us today are two leaders who have been driving this effort, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, an astronaut, Navy fighter pilot, and graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and Senator Todd Young of Indiana, a Naval Academy graduate, Marine Corps veteran, and a key voice on commerce and finance issues.

It’s an honor to have you here today and thank you for your service.

Senator Mark Kelly:

Thank you.

Mike Roberts:

Moderating today’s conversation is my colleague, Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director at Hudson’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology. Over to you, Bryan.

Bryan Clark:

Thank you, Mike, and thank you, Senators, for being here. It’s funny that we’ve got two Navy Academy graduates, three Navy people, but no surface warfare officers here. So we’re going to talk about the surface fleet, but thank you very much for being here. So this morning we released the Ships for America Act back into the mix so that we could look at it as part of the legislative calendar for this year. So how does this fit in with the other activities we’ve seen on maritime industry over the last month? The executive order that came out from the White House, there’s a reconciliation bill that’s now been introduced on the House side.

How do these fit together and why is it important for us to pursue the Ships for America Act now?

Senator Mark Kelly:

Well, let me start, Bryan. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for the opportunity to come here today. It’s great for Todd and I to get out here, especially today, and talk about this legislation. It’s really important to our national security. I think when the trade representative identified that we’ve got this problem, and obviously, we’ve known about this problem for a long time. It’s a problem that has existed all the way back to when I was a freshman, plebe, at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and before that. Back then, we had four or 500 ocean-going merchant ships in U.S. trade. That number definitely went down to about 400 when I was in the first Gulf War. Today, it’s 80. China has 5,500, and there’s ship-building capacity just dwarfs, I mean, it’s just huge compared to what we have.

So our original House co-sponsor on this legislation was Mike Waltz, who just happened to become the National Security Advisor, which is rather helpful. So he highlighted this issue for the president, for the White House. And then the president did some executive actions which says, Hey, there’s a problem and we need to come up with some solutions to try to solve this problem. The executive action doesn’t have a lot of the solutions in it. Some of the stuff in the EO came from our bill, but the solution to the problem is actually to get this legislation passed.

Bryan Clark:

Senator Young.

Senator Todd Young:

Well, thank you so much to Hudson for this opportunity. And I have to say that Mark Kelly’s just done an exceptional job on this. He diagnosed a problem along with Mike Waltz. I came in when it was clear that Mike Waltz was going to be tapping out for other responsibilities. And the legislation has evolved a bit since that period of time. And I think we are broadening our constituency of support. And we have laborers, we have industry, we’ve got the national security community and bipartisan support, support from different branches of government. It’s rare that you have an issue in which there’s such a convergence of views. And it is in part because the difference between our preparedness for a major long-time-frame conflict and that of other adversary countries as you begin to think about conflicts that could last into the many months, even the years, it required pretty disciplined and focused action. And so that’s what we propose here.

It’s going to take some time to reconstitute our ability to train the mariners, to manufacture the ships and increase our capacities. But I think that the President’s objectives and our objectives harmonize very closely when it comes to this. I agree with what Mark said. We offer more specific solutions here. And so I would characterize our efforts as complementary in nature. And then there’s some things that will have to happen outside of the scope of this legislation. On the military front that’s happening at the same time, perhaps we get a bit into that. And then probably on an ongoing basis, we’re going to have to optimize our workforce development system so that we have the requisite supply of workers.

Bryan Clark:

And so we’ll dig into a few of those topics. So first of all, you had mentioned, Senator Kelly, just where we stand relative to China, China’s got this shipbuilding industry that dwarfs ours by 100s of times in terms of the numbers of ships they pump out per year. The U.S. is not probably going to be able to match what China does from an industrial standpoint. But why is it important for us to get a shipbuilding industry going at some scale beyond where it is today, and how would that help address some of the challenges we might face against China, either in competition or conflict?

Senator Mark Kelly:

I’d say one of the things our military is really good at is contested logistics. And we have the military sea-lift command. We’ve got a transportation command that is phenomenal. You saw this especially during the first Gulf War, 1991, getting all that combat power to the other side of the planet very quickly, staging it, ready. In that case against Iraq, we were not facing a near-peer adversary. If we were in a conflict with China, they are a significant threat, especially when you consider we have to go across a 5,000-mile ocean and they’re, if the conflict’s over Taiwan, 100 miles off their shore. And I think we would do well in the first days of any conflict with China. What I worry about is, what does the second and third month look like? What does a year two look like if it’s a protracted conflict. And they’ve got a significant submarine force, they’ve got the ability to project power out 100s and 100s of miles out into the Pacific.

And if history is any indicator, a naval conflict, naval-air conflict like that, you’d wind up with a lot of that capacity at the bottom of the ocean. And we don’t have a lot of reserves to turn to. We’ve got 80 ocean-going U.S. flag merchant ships. And if you consider what happened to our supply chains just from Covid in 2021, 2022 timeframe, that had a significant impact on our economy. Conflict with China would be much, much worse than that. So we’ve got to be able to get stuff, we’ve got to be able to move stuff around. And what I really worry about even beyond just conflict with China is them just deciding one day they’re not going to support our economy anymore, just to send a message, or maybe that becomes the opening of their move to repatriate Taiwan.

Bryan Clark:

Right. Right. And that kind of supply chain warfare, something we’re very vulnerable too, considering the size of the U.S. flag fleet compared to the ships under Chinese flag or the ships under Chinese control or the fleets that are using Chinese-built ships, all of which could be leveraged against us.

So Senator Young, one of the things that the bill does is create this strategic commercial fleet to try to put more ships under U.S. flag and maximize or increase by three times the number of ships that we’ve got operating under U.S. carriers. Do you think that’ll help to address that? And what are some of the other benefits of having this much larger U.S. flag fleet that you think the bill helps to promote?

Senator Todd Young:

Well, I do think that the strategic commercial fleet, its growth for the next decade or so, will help us fill that gap, and that’s how I would characterize it, fill a gap until we really have the capacity to build on an ongoing basis a lot more of our own ships. We’re going to have to work with other countries and their foreign-built vessels, sign them up, put them on retainers, so to speak, to put them on retainer, so to speak, to move our material, our personnel when necessary into harm’s way. And as compensation for that, the structure is of course, they’ll receive the first right of refusal to move cargo. And so there are benefits to membership as well. And so that’s how we propose to get over that hump. And as with so many, you mentioned economic coercion. This is at once, it’s a national security effort, the Ships for America Act, but it’s also designed as was our semiconductor initiative that Mark was helpful in as well. It’s designed to take risk out of our supply chain.

Keep working with friends and allies, that’s part of economic resiliency and economic security, but take enough risk out so that we can’t be on the receiving end of coercive activity, so we can continue to grow our economy, enjoy our way of life. There’s coercion that happens on a daily basis. This is part of China’s model now, and much of it goes unseen by the American people. There are many things we don’t do and we would otherwise do on account of the threat of being starved of critical inputs, whether it’s ships or critical minerals.

Bryan Clark:

That’s a really good point. That’s something that, like you mentioned, Senator Kelly, in peacetime. It could be even a prelude to conflict or an alternative if you’re China and looking to pressure the United States and staying out of a conflict or confrontation over Taiwan. So Senator Kelly, Senator Young mentioned the idea of the CHIPS Act and how the CHIPS Act was designed to promote supply chain resiliency and has a bunch of knock-on effects in terms of promoting other industries that support the chip-making industry. So for shipbuilding, a bunch of other ancillary industries are involved as well. And I think the bill gets at a lot of support to a lot of those other industries as well, so the people that do metal fabrication, the tradespeople that are involved there, the mariners that operate the ships, all of which are important to our military needs. So do you see that as being an essential dimension of the CHIPS Act? Is this lifting up of the support to the naval force.

Senator Mark Kelly:

It’s the entire ecosystem. You see this table here, it’s got three legs on it. I think of this legislation as a three-legged stool and it needs every one of those, or this thing will tip over. One of those legs is the shipbuilding, having the infrastructure. I was recently up at the Philly Navy shipyard, now owned by a South Korean company. They look at this as an opportunity for them to expand. They’ve already invested hundreds, I think about a hundred million dollars in that shipyard. They can invest a lot more, build more ships, double. Actually, I think they said, Joe, correct me if I’m wrong, but capacity up to maybe 10 ships in a year. It’s a possibility for that shipyard. They do two, I think, right now. To get that shipbuilding capacity, they’re going to need some tax credits. There’s going to be some infrastructure improvement required, research and development.

The other leg is the shipping itself, having U.S. flagged these ships are built that they’re U.S. flagged with U.S. crews. So you need incentives to get people to go into the maritime industry, to take on a career where you’re going to see, and then the retention of those individuals, but also the shipping companies are going to need incentives to flag the U.S. ships. Todd talked about that, how that cargo preference could work or will once we get the legislation passed.

And then the final leg of that stool is the entire workforce. You mentioned these suppliers. So I went to the Merchant Marine Academy with a woman named Jennifer Boykin. When she was there, she was Jen Roman. She was the president of Newport News Naval Shipbuilding. Her biggest issue in cranking out aircraft carriers and submarines is workforce. Having the people who can weld the hulls together and install valves and pumps and all that machinery is a real problem, finding the workforce. And then after that, it’s having all the supply chain available. How many companies in the United States build valves that are certified for Navy ships? You just can’t go to any old company and buy a valve that’s going to go into a Virginia class submarine. So by getting this legislation passed and building the commercial maritime industry, it has this ancillary benefit of supporting our naval shipbuilding, which as you mentioned, the Chinese, I would say our quality is still better, certainly in aircraft carriers and submarines, but the quantity has a qualitative effect all on its own.

Bryan Clark:

Right, right. Absolutely. So Senator Young, in the reconciliation bill, there’s a lot of money going toward naval shipbuilding, so investing in more ships, putting money into shipyards, putting money into workforce development on the naval side. Do you think there’ll be opportunities for some of that to maybe benefit the commercial side as well? Because I think there’s probably commonalities in the supply chain. There’s obviously commonalities in the workforce. Are there ways to take advantage of this dual track of investment, if you will, between the Ships Act and what’s going on with reconciliation?

Senator Todd Young:

It’s not coincidental that we’re introducing this legislation at the very time that Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Reed are intently focused on rebuilding the United States Navy because these are complementary investments. They’re not synonymous, but the way we’re thinking about our first step is first, rebuild the commercial shipbuilding capacity, as Chairman Wicker and Senator Reed build the Navy. And then our workforce training initiatives, our shipyard initiatives, and all the other facets of this multifaceted legislation can be optimized over time and integrated with DOD’s efforts. And so who’s going to do that work, that fine-tuning across government walls? Well, I mean, we also bake that into this structure by establishing a national maritime office in the White House because this initiative spans from Department of Labor to education to DOD, to commerce to transportation and on. So it’s essential that from the beginning, we have somebody coming up with strategic plans to review and optimize, but first we have to get started, right?

Bryan Clark:

Right. That makes sense. So Senator Kelly, we talked about workforce a couple of times here, and it seems like that’s going to be a big challenge. It’s already a challenge in the shipbuilding industry that we have now that’s focused mostly on naval shipbuilding. And it’s even a problem in the Mariner workforce where if you talk to Maritime Sealift Command, they’re short thousands of mariners and they’re having to lay up ships because they don’t have enough mariners to staff them. So how does the Ships Act start to promote more people going into the maritime industry as a career choice? Is it just by creating a demand signal or there’s other incentives?

Senator Mark Kelly:

Well, first we’ve got to make people aware that these are great paying careers and it could span an entire career, jobs that, in some cases, require a four-year education, whether at the US Merchant Marine Academy or one of the state schools. Mike Fossum here in the front row is the head of the Texas A&M Maritime School in Galveston. We flew in space together twice and not many people I’ve flown in space with two times. Mike’s one of the few. And we need these schools to be at full capacity. I’ve talked to Mike about this before. Attracting students that are willing to take on this career is a little bit of a challenge, but that’s because you just need to educate people and tell them that these opportunities are there and then the facilities have to be in good shape.

The US Merchant Marine Academy, where I went, Kings Point, New York, suffers some rather significant infrastructure problems. We’re trying to address that. That’s addressed in the bill. And the funding for the state schools is addressed in the bill, making sure they have the training ships they need. There are ships being built right now from previous defense bills, but we’ve got to have these facilities operating at their full capacity. And then also for the unlicensed crew members, there are seafarer schools. There’s one in Piney Point, Maryland. There’s others around the country that they need to have the resources to run really great programs. And then we have to have incentives for people to stay in the industry. And some of that is in the legislation as well.

Bryan Clark:

So one of the things you have mentioned, Senator Young, is the role of allies in this effort to try to improve your shipbuilding. So Hanwha recently invested in the Philly shipyard. Other foreign companies are looking to make investments in the U.S. Obviously some have already. Austal has invested or obviously owns Austal USA. Marinette Marine is a subsidiary of Fincantieri. So how do we see our allies being able to contribute to this effort to revitalize the U.S. shipbuilding industry?

Senator Todd Young:

A number of our allies, South Koreans in particular, I’ve had several direct conversations with them, some with the Japanese, they have capital. They have capital looking for opportunities right now. They see opportunities here because of their core competencies in shipbuilding. And we have a model from the CHIPS Act in which this sort of partnership has occurred. So we need to build on that success. We need to invite in, after the capital is deployed and these shared investments are made, we need to invite in expertise so we can relearn certain skill sets. And then... certain skillsets, right? And then this is going to be a value proposition, not just in terms of the ROI for our foreign allies and the security benefits of a closer partnership, but also the technological.

I mean, we have advances. We have things to bring to bear. We have our tech community, which can bring their expertise, their creativity to some of these processes and activities as well. And so the Koreans in particular are excited about that, about modernizing their own operations as they locate here. But first, we got to get started, right? And so before I sound too dreamy, we’ve got to get started. We’ve got to pass this legislation.

But the President buys into the vision. I just articulate it. As much sturm and drang as we have had recently as it relates to some of our trade partnerships, he is looking to build partnerships in some of these areas. This is one of those areas.

Senator Mark Kelly:

I think Australia is a good example, right? So you mentioned Austal-

Senator Todd Young:

Austal. Right.

Senator Mark Kelly:

... who built the Freedom-class LCS ships, built 10 of them. One has my wife’s name, USS Gabrielle Giffords on the back, LCS-

Senator Todd Young:

Aw, cool.

Senator Mark Kelly:

... 10. They did a great job with that ship. I mean, there’s a lot of controversy about that platform, especially from my predecessor, Senator John McCain. But the Freedom-class especially, or the Independence-class-

Senator Todd Young:

Independence-class. Yeah.

Senator Mark Kelly:

... is doing really well, but then there’s the AUKUS programme. Right now, we’ve got Australian naval officers on Virginia-class subs on patrol, learning how to operate a nuclear sub. They’ve gone through Nu Power School, and then Australia will be at some point here in the future, building Virginia-class attack subs, which is critical to the fight in the Western Pacific.

It’s one area where, I would say, more than anything else, we still maintain a significant overmatch over the Chinese, so we’ve got to take advantage of it. We’ve got to expand it. But that’s, I think, a good example of where this is going with one partner, but that can be true with other allies as well.

Senator Todd Young:

Right, right. One of the things, if I could circle back to some of our workforce challenges or opportunities, and I think there are a lot of opportunities here, it may be a bit incongruous for some folks at home thinking the United States senator from Arizona, a mostly landlocked state, last time I checked, right? Yeah.

Senator Mark Kelly:

With zero water.

Senator Todd Young:

That’s right. Yeah. And Indiana, riverine, we have a little dip of Lake Michigan, so that makes us full-fledged maritime in my view, right? But with that said, there are massive untapped opportunities to mobilize a workforce, a workforce that despite maybe some economic analysis, is not driven primarily by economic considerations.

Young people want to do important things. They want to be called on to serve a cause greater than themselves, to be part of solving generational and multigenerational challenges. And here we are. We’re creating opportunities to design, to manufacture components across the country.

And no, it doesn’t take a degree in naval architecture from a top-20 university. You can go to your local community college conceivably and enroll in a program to realize your dreams to be part of the American dream here.

So we’re trying to unlock that. We think about the back-home value proposition for this. It’s about economic security, it’s about national security, but it’s also about becoming a better and more resilient version of ourselves and giving regular people an opportunity to participate in this project.

Bryan Clark:

And I think that’s a really good point, is the idea that if you invest in the shipbuilding industry, that’s going to promote the whole supply chain that goes behind them back into multiple tiers that are elsewhere in the country away from the coast.

Senator Mark Kelly:

Yeah, I think But Todd also made a good point. You got to really trust us on this because our states don’t really have any dog in this fight here. And a reporter asked me, “So what’s the connection to Arizona?” And I said, “Nothing.” And he said, “No, really. Really. There’s got to be something, like some company or something?” It’s like, “No, there’s no connection.”

Senator Todd Young:

I mean, that wasn’t our motivating factor. I wasn’t motivated despite maybe some perspectives back home to do the CHIPS and Science Act so I could get a packaging fab in West Lafayette, Indiana. I mean, frankly, that wasn’t even on my radar at the time. It was economic security, it was national security, but there were benefits to be found.

And here again, we’ve been led into this effort in industrial policy by pure motives, and I do think there will be opportunities. You don’t know what they are yet. Perhaps it’s certain semiconductors that are mostly, I say with chagrin, made in his state, not mine, but that will go in there.

In my own state, I’ve already discovered some value propositions. We have Rolls-Royce. They make maritime engines. We have Cummins. We have all sorts of auto manufacturing supply chain, small businesses that are looking at perhaps machining certain parts. So if we’re smart, and I think this White House is, looking for spare capacity so that we can meet demand, then there’s going to be broadly distributed opportunity associated with this effort.

Bryan Clark:

And some of the technologies or approaches that our allies bring to bear use the modular shipbuilding. Italy, I think, integrates a lot of that.

Senator Todd Young:

The Liberty ship model from-

Bryan Clark:

Right. Just been-

Senator Todd Young:

... generations ago, right?

Bryan Clark:

... building them inland and bringing the parts down to the coast. And so I think Austal does some of that today.

Senator Todd Young:

Yeah, they do.

Bryan Clark:

And so that certainly could promote a much broader industrial base for the maritime industry. One of the things that the bill uses, which I thought was really interesting, are basically market-based approaches to try to promote US shipbuilding, promote carriers to go under US flag. And as opposed to just straight subsidies, it’s a competitive bid process, and you incentivize people to try to offer the lowest bid possible to get those subsidies.

Was that part of the motivation or part of the idea was that you’re trying to create a market-based demand signal? So this is a demand-based tool for promoting shipbuilding rather than just pumping a bunch of money into the industry?

Senator Mark Kelly:

Well, we’ve got a $37 trillion debt and running a $2 trillion deficit every year, and we’ve got to figure out that problem. So in my view, it’s much better to have something that’s fully paid for. Paid for by incentives within the industry in a tax structure that’ll work, so you don’t have to go back to the American taxpayer and say, “Fund this thing.” That it’s integral to the legislation.

Bryan Clark:

Yeah. I mean, that’s a good point, yeah, because the subsidies that are provided are funded by the trust fund, which is getting money from the fees and duties that are paid by shippers as they use the US-

Senator Mark Kelly:

And I think it helps get the thing passed too. Eventually, we’ll get a score from the GAO on this, but the idea was to have it paid for within the legislation.

Bryan Clark:

So Senator Young, one of the elements in the bill, which I think is really important also thinking about Indiana though, is intermodal transportation and peer infrastructure, and basically all the stuff that gets the material off the ship and into the heartland of the country. Does the bill start to try to address some of that transhipment or some of that intermodal transportation infrastructure that I think has been probably lacking investment for a long time?

Senator Todd Young:

Well, we do. One way in which we address this is, again, through the National Maritime Office in the White House, so that they can have an integrated view of different modes of transportation and how they can plug into one another and harmonize.

Another thing we have done, and I think it’s much needed and long delayed, is establishment of a maritime trust fund. We have this in the service transportation area, a highway trust fund. It hasn’t always been well-funded over the years, but in this case, we take existing revenue streams from use of our assets, our ports and other maritime assets, put those into a trust fund, and dedicate them towards the funding of various initiatives in this bill. So that too is supportive of the broader intermodal effort, and it’s fiscally responsible.

Bryan Clark:

Right, right. And so your vision for this is to get the bill across the finish line this year and start the provisioning or the incentivization of folks to start putting chips under US flag right away.

Some of the things that we’ve heard recently in terms of US shipping vulnerabilities are LNG tankers. I guess the one thing that that industry is challenged by is a lack of capacity that’s not Chinese-built or Chinese-controlled.

Senator Todd Young:

Yeah. We don’t build any here.

Bryan Clark:

Right. And so do you think that we’ll start to see some kind of immediate benefits in terms of the resiliency of our shipping fleet and our ability to overcome some of the supply chain disruptions China might want to impose?

Senator Mark Kelly:

Yeah. I mean, that’s the ultimate goal. 250 ships, ocean-going, US-flagged in 10 years just for a start. And I know that’s not 5500 like the Chinese have, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 80.

And that could include LNG ships. I know the Speaker of the House is rather interested coming from Louisiana and the opportunities that we have there with a LNG port that he’s interested in having built. It would be beneficial to our national security to be able to move liquefied gas around.

Bryan Clark:

So Senator Young-

Senator Todd Young:

Believe it or not, we’re making some vessels that they don’t move LNG. They’re smaller. At Corn Island... LNG. They’re smaller, at Corn Island Shipyard in Lamar, Indiana, on the Ohio River. And Don Fersh, if you’re watching... He’s probably not, but there may be an opportunity for him. Years ago, he mentioned this to me. He said, “I’ve thought maybe someday,” he said, “Maybe I’m dreaming. I’ve thought about maybe building LNG vessels right here on the Ohio.”

Bryan Clark:

Is he the CEO?

Senator Todd Young:

Huh?

Bryan Clark:

Is he the CEO of the company?

Senator Todd Young:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Don Fersh. His grandson is a Naval Academy grad, so sea power is in his blood. But I mean, that’s just an illustration. If you can create this market signal, the doers and dreamers, they start to get organized.

Bryan Clark:

Right, right. And I think what we would probably see... I guess one thing is that, getting the ability to be reliably able to move troops, and material also, overseas, in the event of a confrontation with China. I think that’s one thing that you had mentioned at the beginning, Senator Kelly?

Senator Mark Kelly:

Yeah. We’re not going to get control of a Chinese ship, even if that ship is coming to and from the United States. But U.S. flagships, United States government, has the right to take control in time of war, and use those commercial ships for whatever purpose we need, for our own national defense.

Bryan Clark:

Right, right.

Senator Todd Young:

I think many of us have been deluded over the years, because of some of the public commentary, and dreamy thinking about a revolution in military affairs, which in some ways has been real. But we’ve been lulled into thinking that most conflicts would be short and tidy, and I think many of our military planners have perpetuated that view.

And it’s great, if we can finish our conflicts like Gulf War I, but when we start to move into a several months, or several year, long effort, which is what modern history shows is quite common. Are we prepared? Clearly we’re not. I mean, look at Ukraine and our military industrial base. So, shame on us, if we don’t make the requisite changes now.

Senator Mark Kelly:

And I think historically, any conflict that lasts more than a year, tends to last many years. If they’re not short, they tend to be very long. I also think it’s important to recognize that the... And I know right now, we’re trying to retool, reposition, our forces for a conflict in the Western Pacific, and part of what this is about, it’s about our economy. It’s also about our national security. It’s a combination of those two things.

But as we constantly make changes to our Department of Defense, and what our national strategy is going to be on defense, I also think it’s important to recognize that, usually the war we plan for is not the one we wind up getting in.

Senator Mark Kelly:

So, we got to be aware of that too. We got to be kind of flexible here.

Bryan Clark:

Right. Well, I mean, it brings up the point. The Pentagon’s moving towards this idea of a lot of small, attritable, un-crewed systems we’re going to use, to be able to stop Chinese aggression, to attack targets downrange. And those things have to get over there somehow. If we’re going to... Once we use the initial supply that’s in theater, you have to come up with a way to ship the rest of them into theater, as the fight continues.

Senator Mark Kelly:

It’s totally a different topic, but this idea of drone warfare, that we see over land between Russia and Ukraine, it assumes that you have some control over the electronic warfare environment. Not necessarily going to be true here in the future.

This push to go to more unmanned systems, I think it’s a little bit premature. That’s why I’ve been a big proponent of NGAD. I think we need at least one more fighter, because when things go to shit, it’s the guy in the cockpit that can still get to the target, get the bombs on the target. It’s not really true necessarily, for unmanned systems right now.

Bryan Clark:

Right, right. We can talk later about F/A-XX. 

Senator Mark Kelly:

Yeah, that too.

Senator Todd Young:

I just want to make a point. I lost track of time here, but we’ve talked a lot about military power. There’s been some reference by both of us to economic coercion, and economic security. But just want to underscore the fact, that we are a trading nation. We’ve been a trading nation, and therefore, emphasize the importance of having a Navy, to defend our sea lines of trade, and communication for generations. Going back to the 1790s.

And it was pretty early in our history, from War of 1812, to the Barbary Pirates, and harassment, became clear. We needed a robust merchant marine, in the United States Navy, to defend our way of life, to grow our economy, et cetera. And we’re incredibly vulnerable right now, if we don’t bolster that capacity.

This is not just about, God forbid, military conflict, a major military, and long-standing military conflict. This is about day-to-day trading, and not having to ask “Mother may I,” in order to bring goods here, and send them there.

Bryan Clark:

Well, and just as we close this out, Senator Kelly, I think if you don’t have a strong maritime industry though in wartime, you don’t have something to fall back on, to build that next tranche of ships, that are going to replace the ones that you lose in the initial confrontation, like we saw in World War II.

So, it seems like there’s definitely a need to create this industry, or to revitalize an industry, that we’re going to depend on, and we’ve sort of gotten into kind of in the mode of, “Well, we only need the ships we’re building right now,” as opposed to the ones we might build in the future, once the fight starts.

Senator Todd Young:

Yeah. We went through this before, before World War II, with Liberty Ships, and we had a program to rapidly build ships for that conflict. I think our geography is kind of a double-edged sword. We have got oceans on both sides, which has been great for some, from one perspective. On the other perspective, it also makes us vulnerable to getting stuff here, if we are facing adversaries, that could interfere with shipping lanes and shipping capacity.

And then, on top of it, if we do strengthen this industry, the commercial maritime industry, with the workforce, and the shipbuilding, and the flagging of U.S. ships, it will help our naval shipbuilding, without a doubt. I don’t look at it. Some people have said, “Well, it’s going to compete.”

If we have a bigger maritime industry, it can lift up places like Newport News, and Electric Boat, and other folks that build naval ships. And that’s the ultimate goal here, is to make our economy more resilient to our major adversaries, and to have just the national security capacity we need.

Bryan Clark:

Right. Absolutely. Well, I think that’s a good place to end it.

Senator Todd Young:

Thank you.

Bryan Clark:

Thank you very much. Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona. Senator Todd Young from Indiana.

Senator Mark Kelly:

Thank you.

Senator Todd Young:

Appreciate it.