If an aircraft carrier is diplomacy forged in steel, that diplomacy is built in Virginia’s shipyards, through welds, schedules and skilled hands that bring it to life.
Earlier this month at Naval Station Norfolk, President Donald Trump stood between the USS Harry S. Truman and USS Kearsarge for the U.S. Navy’s 250th anniversary. It was a reminder that in Hampton Roads, sea power is measured in shift changes, steel, welds and delivery dates.
An aircraft carrier has been called “100,000 tons of diplomacy,” a phrase often attributed to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. That diplomacy is designed, built and refueled in Virginia, at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding, the nation’s sole builder and refueler of aircraft carriers and its largest industrial employer. The yard is not a relic of past ambition. It is the living engine of American sea power.
China now produces more than half of the world’s commercial shipping by tonnage. Our share? Less than 0.1%. Beijing treats shipbuilding as a national strategy, as a pillar of economic statecraft and maritime power. Washington has begun to respond, including trade actions targeting China’s maritime subsidies. But policy declarations don’t build ships. Throughput does.
Throughput is where Hampton Roads can lead again. This spring, HII and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries moved from handshakes to the deckplates, signing a partnership to accelerate shipbuilding collaboration. Weeks later, the companies held hands-on sessions in a virtual-reality welding lab to shorten learning curves and improve first-time quality at scale. This is not outsourcing. It is onshoring at speed, in American yards, by American workers, with shared expertise.
In August, South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, met with Trump to advance a trade pact that cut tariffs and directed $150 billion in new investment to U.S. shipyards. The pact aims to accelerate technology transfer and expand production capacity. Talks briefly stalled but have since resumed, signaling that allied industrial cooperation is becoming a cornerstone of America’s maritime resurgence.
That cooperation should now be focused where it can make a meaningful impact — in Virginia. South Korea’s leading shipbuilders, Hanwha Ocean, Samsung Heavy Industries and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, show how digital engineering, artificial intelligence, modular construction, and disciplined mass production shorten timelines and cut costs without sacrificing quality. Applying those methods in Hampton Roads would translate allied investment into throughput, accelerating learning curves and expanding production capacity. Their experience offers a proven playbook for industrial revitalization to help reestablish American shipyards as leaders in efficiency and output.
Nearly half of all U.S. shipbuilding and repair employment is concentrated in five metropolitan areas, and Hampton Roads tops that list. The region’s shipbuilding and repair workforce is the nation’s largest, larger than the next two metro areas combined. Its yards, suppliers and skilled trades form the nation’s most robust maritime industrial ecosystem. The case for focusing on Virginia is not regional pride but scale. Nowhere else in America combines the workforce, infrastructure and institutional know-how needed to rebuild throughput at the pace the mission demands.
Critics will ask, won’t this displace U.S. shipbuilding jobs? No. The aim is not to import labor; it is to import methods that reduce the time-to-competence for American workers. The jobs stay. The expertise accumulates. The ships deliver. Hampton Roads does not need a revival myth; it needs permission to sprint. Fund shipyard upgrades at mission scale. Remove procedural friction from skills transfer. Measure success in cycle time reduction, first-pass yield and on-time, on-budget delivery — the metrics that matter.
Navy 250 is a milestone, not a resting place. If a carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy, Hampton Roads is where that diplomacy begins, through steel, schedules and a workforce that has never stopped building for the republic.
The next 250 years will be decided not by what we commemorate, but by what we deliver.
Jeffrey M. Voth of Alexandria is an engineering and technology executive focused on strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base and allied cooperation.
