Well, look who just shook hands in the shipyard. Austal USA and Master Boat Builders out of Bayou La Batre are teaming up to do what the Pentagon hasn’t figured out in decades—build ships faster, better, and without the bureaucratic fog.
The two companies signed what they’re calling a “memorandum of understanding,” which is a fancy way of saying, Let’s work together and not screw this up. The idea? Use more yards, more workers, and more common sense to get critical ships built before the next war’s already halfway over.
Michelle Kruger, the head honcho at Austal, says the partnership is about boosting Gulf Coast shipbuilding. Translation: the Navy needs more hulls in the water, and the big guys can’t do it alone. So they’re tapping smaller yards like Master Boat to help carry the load.
Garrett Rice at Master Boat put it plainly: “Shipyards like ours can be a force multiplier.” That’s Pentagon-speak for we’re smaller, scrappier, and we know how to build damn boats.
The plan is to spread the work out—less bottleneck, less red tape, and hopefully fewer cost overruns. They’ll start with a few pilot projects, keep the blueprints tight, and make sure everything meets Uncle Sam’s checklist: quality checks, cyber hygiene, and those good ol’ Buy American rules.
This isn’t just about one partnership, either. It’s part of a wave of alliances since Trump’s April executive order on “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance”—a name only a speechwriter could love. Other players like Bollinger and Edison Chouest have formed their own shipbuilding gang, and even some South Korean yards are poking around, trying to help revive U.S. shipbuilding.
But here’s the rub: This only works if the suits in D.C. get out of the way and let the welders, riggers, and pipefitters do their job. We don’t need more white papers. We need ships.
So hats off to Austal and Master Boat for trying to cut through the mess. Now let’s see if they can actually deliver steel to the sea—on time, on budget, and without drowning in Pentagon paperwork.