US Navy eyes South Korean yards for warships and tankers
Two requests for information could end an 80-year ban on foreign-built combat ships
The US Navy has taken a first concrete step toward building warships abroad, issuing two requests for information to leading South Korean shipbuilders to gauge their capacity to construct American destroyers and replenishment tankers. One request covers medium-tonnage fuel tankers used to resupply the fleet at sea, while the other concerns destroyer-sized surface combatants.
Three yards have responded. Hanwha Ocean and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries both put forward proposals for the tanker and the destroyer work, while Samsung Heavy Industries limited its interest to the replenishment tankers. Hanwha Ocean and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries have prior experience building the roughly 8,500-tonne Sejong the Great-class of Aegis destroyers, a design broadly comparable to the Arleigh Burke-class in American service, and have also delivered frigates and destroyers for domestic and export customers.
Should the requests translate into an order, they would mark the first foreign-designed or foreign-built combat ships to enter US Navy service since 1922, when the last British-built cruisers of an earlier era left the fleet. Since then, nearly every American warship and most auxiliaries have been designed and built at home.
The opening follows heavy investment by Korean shipbuilders in the American industrial base, including a large joint financing commitment to the US commercial shipbuilding sector and Hanwha's purchase of a US yard. Recent defence legislation, the Navy's multi-year shipbuilding plan and the latest budget all reference allowing foreign-built ships, though turning that into actual orders still requires Congress to authorise a national security waiver and to appropriate the funds, and some opposition is expected.
