One Big Beautiful Bill Contains $5 Billion for U.S. Shipbuilding

A carrier in drydock at HII Newport News Shipyard (USN file image)

On Thursday, just ahead of the White House's July 4 deadline request, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a massive budget reconciliation package carefully tailored to bypass a Senate filibuster. The bill's provisions have been pored over at length by analysts and partisans, and will continue to be scrutinized for years to come - but overlooked in the popular debate, the bill also contains $5 billion for naval shipbuilding initiatives.

The funding is tightly focused on pressing U.S. Navy needs. The service's shipbuilding programs are all behind schedule, and its repair activities are also challenged. Workforce and supply chain issues are the leading causes.

Among the larger line-items, the bill includes:

$250 million more for accelerated training for the defense manufacturing workforce;
$750 million for supplier development in the naval shipbuilding supply chain, plus another $250 million for naval supply chain advanced manufacturing processes
half a billion dollars for additive manufacturing, not generally used by private sector shipbuilders;
$400 million for a collaborative campus for naval shipbuilding;
and half a billion dollars to apply AI to naval shipbuilding, a new area of focus.

Some of the provisions might have secondary benefits for commercial shipbuilders, including:

half a billion dollars for advanced manufacturing in the shipbuilding industrial base;
half a billion for advanced shipbuilding techniques;
and half a billion for maritime industrial workforce training.

The funding is especially remarkable because of its tradeoffs: some traditional acquisitions did not get funded at all, notably the next Constellation-class frigate hull, which was zeroed-out in the Navy's FY2026 budget request and absent from the One Big Beautiful Bill. Instead of the frigate, Congress paid for new initiatives that were (until recently) somewhat controversial: $1.8 billion for the Marine Corps' long-awaited Landing Ship Medium and $2.1 billion to develop and buy the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV).