US must adopt the Finland model for producing warships

Last month, President Trump issued a memorandum on “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base.” It called for the Navy to adopt what it terms the “Finland Model” for warship construction.

The memo states that “this Finland Model” is to be used to produce surface ships for anti-submarine warfare, “consolidated cargo replenishment” tankers, and “roll-on, roll-off vessels.”

The arrangement, whose official designation is the Icebreaker Collaboration Agreement or ICEPact , is a three way agreement among the U.S., Canada and Finland to modernize the American and Canadian icebreaker fleets. The deal will enable the Coast Guard to acquire four icebreakers from Finland, with seven more to be built in American shipyards. As a result, the Coast Guard will be able to replace its aging icebreaker fleet quickly.

Construction on the first of the Coast Guard Arctic Security Cutters began in June at the Sata Shipbuilding yard in Finland. Delivery of the icebreaker is on schedule and according to local observers in Helsinki, the program also is on budget.

Two months earlier, the Bollinger shipyard in Houma, La. welded together the first steel sheets of an Arctic Security Cutter design for an icebreaker being built in parallel with a second Finnish shipbuilder, Rauma Marine Constructions.

Trump’s memorandum incorporates several aspects of the Finland model. It requires that foreign shipbuilders building U.S. military craft establish a robust presence within the U.S., building shipyards and hiring U.S. workers even as they build ships abroad. They must also license their “proprietary shipbuilding techniques and technologies” to U.S. shipyards and create U.S. supply chains “for construction and maintenance of all ships” they build in the U.S.

The Finland model offers a blueprint that would enable the US Navy to begin to address its urgent need to increase its force levels and create lasting naval shipbuilding capacity. It holds out the prospects for additional serial warship production, incorporating advanced propulsion and a resilient supplier base.

The Finland model will also yield a capable workforce. Like shipbuilding more generally, Arctic shipbuilding depends on welders, pipefitters, electricians, naval architects, marine engineers, propulsion specialists, and shipyard supervisors. The workforce that emerges from the ICEPact Program would be a welcome addition to the current workforce supporting naval construction.

In order to implement Trump’s plan, foreign shipyards would have to receive some sort of waiver from the State Department’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations which constrain the export of technical data that would be needed to construct the ships to the Navy’s specifications. In addition, ships built in foreign yards would have to allow for both stringent Navy redundancy and survivability standards and for the insertion of the Navy’s combat systems once they are towed to American yards.

It is not impossible to find ways to accommodate whatever technical and other restrictions that might be imposed on foreign shipbuilders. On the other hand, it is far more difficult to win Congressional approval for employing the Finland model for construction of surface combatants.

The administration’s plan has already run into heavy congressional opposition. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), home to the Bath Iron Works shipyard, has successfully inserted an amendment to the pending fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that specifies that no fiscal 2027 funds can be obligated for procurement of a battle force ship to be built outside the U.S. His express purpose is to “block [the] Pentagon from sending U.S. shipbuilding jobs overseas.” Not surprisingly, Golden has the support of representatives from other shipbuilding states.

Were the shipyards suffering from bare order books, Golden and those who support his amendment would have a case for restricting overseas shipbuilding for the Navy. But that is not true at all. As the Government Accountability Office’s director of contracting and national security acquisitions testified before two Congressional subcommittees in April, the shipyards are not even meeting construction schedules for ships already under contract. A shortage of backlogs is not the problem.

With China projected to have a battle force of 435 ships by 2030, as compared to the U.S. Navy’s goal of reaching 381 ships more than a decade later, it is imperative that members of Congress, even those who hail from states with shipyards, reconsider their opposition to applying the Finland model to Navy warships.

That model would not only provide the Navy with more ships more quickly, but it would actually accomplish what those members are seeking: more jobs at home for an expanded and well-trained American workforce.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.