The US Navy (USN) ammunition and cargo vessel, USNS Wally Schirra, has set sail after a six-month maintenance period in Hanwha Ocean’s Geoje Shipyard, South Korea.
Hanwha conducted hull and engine repairs, major equipment inspections and replacements and system upgrades.
This is the first time that a Korean company won a contract to maintain a USN ship, and officials intimated that it is just the start of further naval industrial collaboration between the two countries:
“This serves as a reminder of the close partnership between our two countries and the opportunities we have to continue to strengthen that partnership,” stated Patrick J. Moore, command officer of Military Sealift Command Office, Korea.
The overhaul of Wally Schirra was the company’s first American project after securing a Master Ship Repair Agreement with the USN over a month before the project began.
Likewise, in November, Hanwha also won an additional contract for the scheduled maintenance of USNS Yukon, a replenishment oiler assigned to the USN 7th Fleet.
Trump aims to revive shipbuilding
All of this came to pass prior to the inauguration of incumbent US President Donald Trump at the end of January 2025. Curiously, contracts to foreign shipbuilders may continue to seep through the cracks of the new administration’s recent protectionist policies.
On March 5, addressing a joint session of Congress, Trump announced the creation of an Office of Shipbuilding to be based in the White House.
“We used to make so many ships. We don’t make them… very much,” he said. “But we’re going to make them very fast, very soon.”
Now, American suppliers are torn between extending the lives of legacy ships and keeping up with the newborn demand for advanced platforms, and all the while specialist skills are declining.
Unless Trump’s tax incentives prompt industry to deliver more ships quickly, the USN will continue to lean on industrially capable allies in Asia, including South Korea and Japan, where companies are leveraging innovative shipyard tools, instead of America’s breathless industrial base.
There may be no end to the USN’s reliance on outsourcing support. Tax cuts are unlikely to incite industry leaders to make any improvements in production beyond what has been done already.
In February 2024, the former Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, similarly observed that industry leaders were “deferring promised capital investments, and other accounting manoeuvres that—to some—seem to prioritise stock prices that drive executive compensation rather than making the needed, fundamental investments in the industrial base at a time when our nation needs us to be all ahead flank.”
China surpasses America
The US Department of Defense states that China’s navy “is the largest navy in the world with a battle force of over 370 platforms, including major surface combatants, submarines, ocean-going amphibious ships, mine warfare ships, aircraft carriers, and fleet auxiliaries.”
The USN force level dropped below 300 ships in August 2003 and has generally remained between 270 and 300 since then.
With its growing strength, China has accelerated its attempts to dominate the South China Sea, using its burgeoning maritime heft – its navy, coast guard, and civilian maritime militia – to shove other claimants and legitimate actors out of its way, according to a report form the London-based Council of Geostrategy.
This has resulted in simmering tensions, as countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam have sought to uphold their own rights, and others like the US, UK, Japan and Australia aim to underwrite freedom of navigation in the region’s waters.
China’s maritime supremacy also extends to the wider maritime manufacturing sector, wherein China is the dominant provider of chassis, containers and cranes all over the world, including approximately 80% of the ship-to-shore cranes in the US.
