Op/Ed: Who Will Design America's Next Fleet?

The United States is having a maritime moment. Maritime is back on the national agenda. The Maritime Action Plan, the SHIPS for America Act,
and now the Administration’s August 13 memorandum on rebuilding the Navy and America’s shipbuilding industrial base have renewed the conversation about rebuilding America's maritime capability. The focus on shipyards, workforce development, the merchant marine, and domestic vessel construction is both encouraging and long overdue.

After more than two decades designing commercial vessels, I’m encouraged by the attention. Engineers don't usually get excited about policy discussions, but this one feels different. As I follow these discussions, though, I keep coming back to one question: Who will design
America's next fleet?

Ships do not begin in shipyards

Ships begin with naval architects, marine engineers, production engineers, and thousands of design decisions made long before the first piece of steel is ordered. Before construction begins, owners, operators, designers, engineers, shipbuilders, equipment manufacturers, classification societies, and regulators must determine what a vessel is expected to accomplish, which technologies suit its mission, how those systems will work together, and how it can be built safely, efficiently, and economically.

One thing I've learned over my career is that successful projects rarely begin with someone saying, "Let's build a ship." They begin with a transportation challenge, an operational problem, or a mission to accomplish. The design process connects those real-world needs to a vessel
that can actually be built, operated, and maintained successfully for decades. By the time a vessel reaches the shipyard, many of the decisions affecting safety, operability, maintainability, production efficiency, lifecycle cost, and long-term performance have already been made.

That's why the national conversation should be broader. If America wants to build more ships, it must also preserve and strengthen the capability to design and engineer them.

The Jones Act requires vessels operating in domestic commerce to be built in the United States, but it says nothing about who designs them. The same gap often exists in publicly funded shipbuilding programs. American taxpayers may fund an American-built vessel while much of the design and engineering work is performed overseas. If the purpose of these investments is to strengthen America’s maritime capability, why would we protect the construction work while allowing the resulting design knowledge, intellectual property, and future capability to remain concentrated overseas?

That question becomes especially important as policymakers consider greater use of mature foreign designs, sometimes described as the “Finland Model.” There are cases where that makes sense. The United States can learn from allied countries that design and build some types of ships more efficiently than we do, and we can take advantage of that expertise.

But learning from our allies and becoming dependent on them are two very different things. A  mature foreign design is not automatically a production-ready American design. Are we going to source all the same foreign equipment? Use 50 Hz motors? Keep the same piping and material
standards, regulatory requirements, construction methods, and supply chain? Of course not.

The FREMM-based Constellation-class frigate illustrates how extensively a mature foreign parent design may need to be reengineered to satisfy American requirements. Managing those interfaces is naval architecture and marine engineering.

There are good reasons to use foreign parent designs when they are the right answer. But American naval architects and marine engineers should be meaningfully involved so the knowledge, intellectual property, and capability grow here too.

That does not mean every vessel must begin with a clean-sheet American design. It means federally supported shipbuilding programs should include meaningful American designparticipation, technology transfer, and workforce development. If public investment is intended to rebuild American maritime capability, American engineers should emerge from each program with greater knowledge and experience than they had when it began.

That matters even more as vessels become increasingly sophisticated. Designing a modern ferry, research vessel, or tugboat isn't simply a matter of selecting an engine and drawing a hull.

A single project may combine hybrid propulsion, battery systems, advanced electrical distribution, automation, cybersecurity requirements, emissions regulations, digital controls, and increasingly complex production methods. Each system influences the others. The engineering challenge isn't simply making each one work. It's making all of them work together in a vessel that can be built, operated, maintained, modernized, and relied on for decades.

The maritime industry has never suffered from a shortage of good ideas. The harder part has always been deciding which ones are still good ideas after 20 years of service. Good engineering isn’t about adopting every new technology simply because it's new, or chasing whatever technology happens to be receiving the most enthusiasm on LinkedIn. It's about understanding tradeoffs and selecting technologies that genuinely improve the vessel for a particular owner and mission. Sometimes the newest solution is the right one. Sometimes it isn't. Experience helps distinguish between the two.

That kind of engineering judgment isn't something you can manufacture overnight. It develops through mentorship, practical experience, and solving real problems alongside owners, operators, shipbuilders, equipment manufacturers, classification societies, and regulators. The United States has long recognized that shipyards, mariners, and domestic manufacturing contribute to national maritime capability. Design and engineering deserve to be viewed through the same lens. That expertise takes decades to build, cannot be created on demand, and strengthens America's ability to respond to future challenges with confidence and independence.

This isn’t a choice between investing in shipyards and investing in engineering. Experienced designers make shipyards stronger, and experienced builders make designers better. Neither can thrive without the other.

The United States is asking important questions about how to rebuild its maritime capability.  How do we expand our shipyards? How do we grow the workforce? How do we build more ships?

Those are exactly the right questions. But rebuilding American shipbuilding also means preserving the expertise needed to translate missions into practical vessel requirements, integrate complex systems, and turn operational needs into vessels that can be relied on for decades.

As America expands its shipbuilding capacity, we should not ask only where its ships will be built. We should also ensure that American naval architects and marine engineers continue to play a central role in designing them, strengthening the expertise that already exists here and passing it to the next generation.

Morgan Fanberg is CEO & President of Glosten, a U.S. naval architecture and marine engineering firm. A licensed professional engineer based in Seattle, he has spent more than two decades designing commercial vessels and advising owners on complex maritime projects.