In a new memo certain to make significant waves for the future of US Navy shipbuilding, President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the US to outsource the building of at least a few Navy ships to foreign shipyards. The new National Security Presidential Memorandum urges the expansion of the so-called “Finland model” currently employed to build the Coast Guard’s Arctic Security Cutters where initial vessels are built in Finland by foreign yards and subsequent vessels are constructed domestically. The memo says that as long as foreign shipbuilders agree to some stringent conditions on-shoring future work to the US, they would be allowed to build up to two ships in three different ship classes at their parent docks, which would then be transferred to the US. These ship classes include surface combatants with “sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties,” as well as those that meet “the requirements for Consolidated Cargo Replenishment at Sea (CONSOL) Tankers and — separately — Roll-On, Roll-Off Vessels,” according to the memo. Prior to Thursday’s directive, the Trump administration had already been pushing Congress to sign off on the Navy hiring foreign shipyards to build four vessels in the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, and also had been requesting reconciliation funds go toward studying — and potentially procuring — an initial vessel from overseas. Congress has pushed back though, and each chamber has imposed their own restrictions in their respective versions of the NDAA.

But should the White House overcome barriers on Capitol Hill seeking to curb employing foreign yards, the path towards integrating foreign-built ships into the US is hardly cut and dry. Designing, integrating and maintaining foreign ships as part of the US Navy’s fleet would be effectively unprecedented — meaning the hurdles associated may be numerous, according to analysts who talked to Breaking Defense. “The main difficulties would be first off, we just never really have done that with … a combat-type ship,” said Bradley Martin, a senior policy researcher at RAND and retired Navy captain. “Another is that the standards would be different, and the US would have to make a decision that some things just aren’t as important.” Those hurdles, analysts said, can be put into two pots: technical and political. And it’s not clear which would be easier to overcome. At stake may well be the force makeup of America’s future navy.

Technical Challenges: Learning To Speak The Same Language

The challenges on the technical side are myriad, in part because annual defense appropriations measures have historically barred constructing US Navy ships abroad. According to Martin, getting the design right for a foreign-built warship early on would prove paramount. Specifically, he said that the ship must be engineered from the get-go to accommodate the weapons systems if the US wants to avoid problems on the backend, in the event the ship were built overseas and then outfitted with weapons systems in the US. “The US Navy has some survivability requirements and some requirements for redundancy and so forth that most foreign ships don’t satisfy, so they have to be modified from the beginning,” Martin said. “Another is that the types of combat systems and so forth that go into the ship — the ships are not engineered with those necessarily in mind. So putting two things together would be very difficult.” “The best outcome would be: Buy a ship and build it from the keel up, with the ability to integrate these systems,” Martin added. “If we don’t do that, we try to do it with a back-fit — that’s not going to work out real well, all kinds of delays.”

Comms gear with allied navies has previously presented challenges — although there are options to mitigate such barriers and compatibility issues in combat systems would be more difficult to address, according to Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute think tank’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology. While the US Navy already operates routinely with foreign ships in carrier strike group formations with NATO and Asian allies, these integrations typically aren’t “seamless” because the foreign ships aren’t outfitted with many of the communication networks on US ships, Clark said. Communication networks absent on NATO ships include Cooperative Engagement Capability that the US Navy utilizes to share missile defense targeting data. However, the US could outfit a foreign-built ship with “compatible” networks and datalinks, Clark said. “The more significant challenges will be commonality in combat systems,” Clark said. “Although Spanish, Korean, and Japanese ships use Aegis, it is a different version and configuration than on US ships. And other combat systems, such as for undersea warfare, are completely different. The US would also need to integrate the parts and logistics needed for the foreign ship’s hull, mechanical, and electrical systems into the US supply system.”

US Navy ships are also required to undergo extensive post-delivery testing and certification to gauge things like how the ship would weather in a combat environment — and a new playbook would have to be sorted out for any new, foreign vessel entering the fleet. For example, Clark said the bulk of the certification process for US ships stems from US technical standards for design and construction. “Since they would be built to different technical standards, the Navy will need to determine which standards to keep and which to revise,” he said. Clark noted that this process hampered the Constellation-class frigate program, which was based on a design from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri. Wisconsin-based Fincantieri Marinette Marine secured an initial contract for the frigate in 2020. However, the Navy announced in December 2025 it would cut the program and only accept the two frigates already being built amid a series of cost overruns, delays and design changes. Eric Labs, a senior analyst for naval forces and weapons at the Congressional Budget Office, said that although he expects foreign ships to meet the same standards as US ships, including trials designed to test a ship’s shock hardness, ultimately the Navy, the administration and Congress would determine the degree of testing needed. “We could certainly choose not to do that and accept whatever risks would be associated with the specifics of the case,” Labs said. Additionally, Labs said that maintaining foreign ships would prove expensive if the US only chose to purchase two or three of them, and ended up with essentially an “orphan class,” like the three Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers.

But, Labs said, if the Navy purchased between 10 to 20 foreign ships, maintenance and training pipelines would function similarly to any other new class of ship introduced to the fleet. (Labs spoke to Breaking Defense prior to the release of the memo, which directs all ships after the first two to be built in the US.) “It will need training equipment that is unique to the class and it will have a maintenance and spare parts program that will be unique to the class,” he said. “It would likely be a bit harder because there is less potential for overlap with existing US ship programs if the ship is sourced entirely to foreign suppliers but it is possible US suppliers could be brought, to some degree, into the process.” Even so, Labs said the Navy should invest “heavily in an upfront supply of spare parts that would be critical or merely important to maintain the class.” Separately, Labs said that a foreign vessel could be designed intentionally in a way that’s easier to maintain. “The Navy does not always invest as heavily in designing for maintainability as perhaps it should,” Labs said. “Some foreign ship designs and shipyards are better at that, so it would depend on who and what ship.” However, Clark said foreign ships would likely encounter difficulties on the maintenance front once operating at the rate US Navy ships do. “The challenge will likely be wear and tear given the US Navy’s operating tempo,” Clark said. “Foreign ships are often built to commercial vessel technical standards because they only operate a small percentage of the time.” In contrast, the Navy currently employs a 36-month Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) to accommodate maintenance, training and typically a seven-month-long deployment. Under this three-year cycle, ships could be at sea half the time, Clark said.