SECNAV: Shipbuilders Need to Hire 250,000 Workers Over the Next Decade for ‘Golden Fleet’
ARLINGTON, Va. — To build the Navy’s planned Golden Fleet, U.S. naval shipbuilders must hire a quarter million shipbuilders over the next decade, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said Tuesday.
Developing that workforce is key to the service’s plan to expand shipbuilding in parallel with new manufacturing techniques, Phelan said at the Surface Navy Association’s national symposium, as he emphasized the need for more vocational education and fair wages.
“Systems don’t build ships. People do,” Phelan said. “A quarter of the shipyard workforce is retirement eligible within five years. Over the next decade, shipbuilders and suppliers will need to hire roughly 250,000 skilled workers to meet demand. That means apprenticeships, vocational training, accelerated pipelines and partnerships with local communities. It also means paying fair wages … consistent build schedules so shipyard workers can have lifetime careers. AI and automation do not replace the workforce.”
In his speech, Phelan said the overall Golden Fleet effort is about getting new hulls to the fleet, improving the industrial base and “changing how the Department of the Navy does business.”
“It’s about our culture,” he added.
Officials have said accelerating shipbuilding is at the top of the Navy’s priority list. Last month, the Trump administration announced two new surface combatant programs — the FF(X) patrol frigate and the Trump-class BBG(X) battleship program.
The battleship evolved from the requirements for the DDG(X) program, Rear Adm. Derek Trinque said Tuesday at the conference. The DDG(X) program was set to follow the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, and the Navy planned to start construction on the new program in the 2030s.
Trinque, who serves as the director of the surface warfare division on the chief of naval operations’ staff (OPNAV N96), said he wants the new surface combatants to have hypersonic weapons.
“We found ourselves in a weird situation where in order to keep an adequate number of MK 41 [Vertical Launch System] cells, we were going to have to make a choice between a gun weapon system and Conventional Prompt Strike,” Trinque said. “I hate that choice.”
In the interim, the Navy considered building two different variants, one that would have the hypersonic weapons and one with the gun system. But Trinque said that would put the fleet in a difficult position because some carrier strike groups would have a large surface combatant with hypersonic strike weapons while others would have guns.
“As the resource sponsor, as the requirements sponsor, I don’t want to put those kinds of limits on the fleet,” he said. “And so, when national leaders announced that they were interested in building a battleship, this was a great opportunity for us.”
President Donald Trump announced plans for the battleship last month at Mar-a-Lago, USNI News previously reported. The Trump-class ships will field the 128 MK-41 vertical launch system cells, AN/SPY-6 air search radar, 12 Conventional Prompt Strike long-range hypersonic missiles, an electromagnetic railgun and multiple five-inch guns.
Trinque said the battleship could provide command and control capability to a surface action group and that the ship would have a larger crew than the Navy’s current destroyers.
In addition to the new programs, the Navy is set to upend the service’s system commands in line with a wider Pentagon effort to streamline the acquisition and requirements process. Late last year, the service stood up the first portfolio acquisition executive for robotics and autonomous systems that consolidated most of the Navy’s unmanned surface and subsurface systems under a single office led by former Project Overmatch chief Rebecca Gassler. The service is working on developing PAE Maritime and PAE Aviation, among others, USNI News understands.
