Over the past 30 years, the once-dominant U.S. Navy has steadily fallen behind the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in size and production capacity. In response, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) is helping lead efforts to revitalize U.S. shipbuilding through additive manufacturing.
The IALR’s campus in Danville, Virginia, recently hosted the fourth annual ATDM & AM CoE Summit, a defense manufacturing conference co-hosted by the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) program and the U.S. Navy Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE).
I sat down with Jason Wells, Executive Vice President of Manufacturing Advancement at the IALR, to discuss the key takeaways and insights from this year’s event. Wells outlined how 3D printing is supporting the Department of Defense’s (DOD) efforts to outpace its adversaries.
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He shared real-world use cases that demonstrate the additive manufacturing advantage for defense. In one example, 3D printing reduced lead times by 95%, delivering a mission-ready component in weeks rather than months.
I also spoke with Dr. Scott Kasen, Director of Advanced Technologies at Austal USA. He revealed how the U.S. ship manufacturer, which sponsored and co-organized the summit, uses 3D printing to accelerate production.
Shifting tides: the decline of U.S. naval dominance
The U.S. was the world’s largest naval force from the end of World War II through the Cold War. However, budget cuts and rising isolationism reduced the U.S. Navy’s fleet size from 592 ships at the fall of the Berlin Wall to just 297 in 2024. Amid this decline, PLAN has become the world’s primary seafaring force, currently boasting approximately 370 surface ships and submarines.
Perhaps most concerning for the Pentagon, China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than that of the United States, according to a leaked U.S. Navy briefing slide. The unclassified data, revealed in 2023, showed that Chinese shipyards have a manufacturing capacity of roughly 23.25 million tons, compared to just 100,000 tons for American shipbuilders.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Beijing can repair and replace damaged vessels far faster than its Western rival. As a result, America’s maritime combat readiness could be severely compromised if tensions escalate into an all-out conflict.
In response to these concerns, the U.S. Navy submitted its 30-year 2025 Shipbuilding Plan to Congress last year. The document urges lawmakers to expand America’s fleet to over 300 ships by fiscal year 2032 and to surpass 381 vessels by 2042. Achieving these targets will require a substantial boost in domestic shipbuilding capacity, necessitating a larger, more skilled workforce.
Key Takeaways from the ATDM and AM CoE Summit
This year’s ATDM & AM CoE Summit centered around the theme ‘All Hands on Deck.’It featured a stacked agenda of presentations and panels addressing manpower and manufacturing shortages in U.S. Navy shipbuilding and repair. Over 450 attendees convened to discuss the pressing challenges limiting AM adoption in defense and how greater collaboration, research, and workforce development can reinvigorate America’s shipyards.
For Wells, the standout message from the two-day summit was clear. Additive manufacturing is now a critical asset to the Navy’s shipbuilding strategy. “This isn’t just about getting together to talk,” Wells told me. “It’s about seeing these technologies take hold and have an impact.”
Kasen agreed, noting that the event was dominated by the need to integrate AM into Navy supply chains to accelerate construction schedules and improve fleet readiness. He emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships between the Navy and industry in enhancing workforce development for additive manufacturing.
This sentiment was reinforced by Acting Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Kilby. In his keynote address, Kilby stated that by leveraging additive manufacturing, “we are reducing maintenance delays, and we are moving faster.” He emphasized that “Every time we 3D print a part that would otherwise take 40 weeks to procure, we are putting more capability back into the Meld. That is real, measurable readiness.”
Addressing mission urgency at the IALR, ATDM, and AM CoE
Wells believes China’s growing naval power is driving an “urgency to embrace technology.” Faced with mounting pressure from programs like the Columbia- and Virginia-class submarines, the AUKUS alliance, and fleet sustainment backlogs, the U.S. defense industrial base is racing to modernize.
The challenge of outpacing America’s rivals is not just in quantity, but also in quality, Wells argued. Success, he added, will require cross-sector collaboration, workforce acceleration, and aggressive adoption of additive manufacturing.
The IALR, a regional hub for technology research and economic transformation in Southern Virginia, is actively engaged in these efforts. At its campus, the nonprofit hosts the federally funded ATDM and AM CoE programs.
The ATDM program focuses on addressing the skills gap within America’s maritime industrial base (MIB). Meanwhile, the AM CoE prioritizes the modernization and mobilization of additive manufacturing technology.
The latter possesses several industrial 3D printers, including an AML3D ARCEMY ‘X-Edition 6700’ WAAM 3D printer that was delivered last year. “The IALR’s role is to be a facilitator and steward to help them achieve their objectives of addressing the skills and technology gap at scale and velocity,” Wells explained.
On the workforce development side, a new 100,000-square-foot ATDM Maritime Training Center recently opened at the IALR campus. This expanded the capacity of the program’s 16-week accelerated program, which provides training for additive manufacturing, CNC manufacturing, quality assurance, non-destructive testing, welding fabrication, and digital automation.
Wells likened the program to a “manufacturing bootcamp,” with students training eight hours a day, five days a week, across three shifts, reflecting the demands of real-world manufacturing employment. “We want them to get into those habits before getting into the workforce,” he explained.
The ATDM course includes 600 hours of instruction, with student progress measured through regular testing, verification, and certification. Last year, the program trained nearly 600 participants, and it expects to train 800 more by the end of 2025.
Early results indicate strong performance. Wells reported that graduation and placement rates exceed 80%. “We’re very excited about that,” he said. “So far, the program has performed extremely well.” Once the program reaches full capacity, it aims to educate 1,000 people annually.
Hosting the AM CoE at the IALR campus ensures ATDM participants have direct access to relevant emerging technologies used in the maritime sector. Wells called this the “connective tissue” for students, ensuring they are equipped with the necessary knowledge when they enter the workforce.
Accelerating U.S. Navy shipbuilding and maintenance
The AM CoE plays a central role in growing AM adoption across the U.S. Navy supply chain. It creates digital data packages for 3D printable parts. These include the full engineering and validation record, from printing to non-destructive testing, which can be shared with approved Navy suppliers.
This framework is accelerating repair cycles and enabling distributed manufacturing. By standardizing 3D printing workflows, the AM CoE helps avoid redundant trials across the supply chain and eases the bottleneck caused by proprietary silos.
On the production front, the AM CoE has delivered more than 300 3D printed components, mostly aimed at sustaining the Navy’s aging fleet. Engineers have used additive manufacturing to reverse-engineer parts for 40-year-old Ohio-class submarines, often in cases where original manufacturers have long since disappeared. This capability has become vital to maintaining the seaworthiness of legacy vessels.
Take the USS Michigan, a 42-year-old Ohio-class submarine that faced persistent issues replacing its corroded trim and drain valves, which regularly corroded due to harsh operational environments. The Navy turned to the AM CoE, which used laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) and wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) to fabricate the tail piece and generate digital design files. With these files in hand, the Navy can now 3D print the valves on demand during repair cycles, cutting lead times and improving the submarine’s operational readiness.
Wells cited another example involving the USS HALSEY (DDG-97). The Arleigh Burke-class (Flight IIA) Aegis guided missile destroyer required a replacement bracket for its helicopter hangar door. Traditional manufacturing methods quoted a 40-week lead time for the part, even though the HALSEY was set to deploy in just 30 days. The AM CoE eliminated that delay by 3D printing and installing the part in just over two weeks.
“That part was part of a larger assembly, and instead of waiting years or buying the full unit, we isolated and replaced it directly,” Wells explained. “That meant the ship could go back to sea instead of sitting idle or cannibalizing another vessel.” The bracket’s design file has since been inventoried as a procurable item, allowing suppliers to 3D print it on demand.
Additive manufacturing at Austal USA
A subsidiary of the Australian defense prime Austal, Austal USA is one of four primary companies that directly build and maintain U.S. Navy vessels, alongside Huntington Ingalls, Lockheed Martin, and Fincantieri.
The Mobile, Alabama-based defense contractor adopted additive manufacturing about six years ago and introduced its first 3D-printed part shortly after. Kasen explained that the company now uses LPBF, WAAM, and wire laser additive manufacturing (WLAM) across its operations. Austal USA is also actively exploring cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM). Last year, it purchased a WarpSPEE3D cold spray system from SPEE3D, which is now located at the AM CoE.
Austal USA applies additive manufacturing across multiple technologies and alloy types. According to Kasen, the U.S defense prime is 3D printing a wide range of parts, including fittings, brackets, valve bodies, and pump components.
However, he told me, “We are just getting started.” The shipbuilder “will expand to other components as we continue to mature maritime AM with the U.S. Navy teams and industrial base.”
For Kasen, the key advantage of additive manufacturing is its ability to overcome supply chain delays. 3D printing enables rapid fabrication of hard-to-find or obsolete parts near the point of need, eliminating the long lead times typically associated with castings and fittings.
“AM is being used to solve supply chain issues to improve construction cadence, increase fleet readiness, and support the warfighter to sustain technological advantage,” Kasen added. “The value for high mix / low volume manufacturing–the type often needed for emergent needs–is unsurpassed with AM.”
AI and 3D printing
Artificial intelligence (AI) generated much discussion during the summit. On day two, Meredith Gregory, the IALR’s Assistant Director, Technology and Programs, gave a presentation on the barriers to AI adoption in manufacturing.
This session aimed to clarify what AI is and how it can add value in manufacturing. “AI’s been around for quite some time,” Wells noted. “Our goal was to help people understand how it can accelerate decision-making.”
He sees one of AI’s most promising applications as live in situ monitoring. By capturing data during 3D printing, AI can detect failures and automatically adjust settings to improve quality and efficiency. Beyond streamlining production, this also strengthens traceability and long-term reliability, crucial in the tightly regulated defense manufacturing sector.
However, the path to digital transformation remains fraught with uncertainty. Despite understanding AI’s potential, many traditional manufacturers shared that they still find the digital ecosystem opaque and intimidating. “It’s still a little bit of the unknown,” said Wells. “They’re trying to figure out where the on-ramp is.”
A key takeaway from industry partners at the summit, he said, was the need for tailored guidance. Many firms have previously been burned by expensive digital solutions that failed to fit their operational DNA.
“We’re seeing a lot of manufacturers getting gun-shy,” explained Wells. “Somebody would show up on their doorstep with a boxed solution, and unfortunately, they didn’t always fit in that box.” That mismatch, Wells said, prompted the IALR to build a digital team focused on aligning solutions with the specific challenges and cultures of defense manufacturers.
Kasen emphasized that integrating digital systems across Navy logistics, inventory, and quality management remains a major challenge for Austal USA. To tackle this, the company is developing the Digital–Secure Exchange for Additive (Digital–SEA). This custom-built system will link the Navy and component OEMs directly with additive manufacturing (AM) suppliers and digital production data.
Digital security in defense manufacturing
The growing reliance on digital threads raised questions around cybersecurity during the summit. Wells pointed to ongoing efforts around Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) compliance. This DOD framework is designed to ensure that contractors handling sensitive information follow robust cybersecurity protocols.
Partners are also adopting measures such as isolated servers and step-by-step encryption to safeguard design files as they move through the defense ecosystem. “There’s a lot of follow-up happening now post-summit,” he said. “There’s definitely urgency to get it right.”
Kasen explained that Austal USA has implemented several measures to protect its digital footprint from malicious threats. The company follows the CMMC framework to safeguard Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) throughout the entire additive manufacturing lifecycle.
Austal USA also utilizes FedRAMP-authorized cloud services in conjunction with its Digital-SEA (Secure Exchange for Additive) platform. “This combination ensures secure access control, auditability, and secure collaboration across distributed teams,” Kasen explained. All data exchanges are protected by layers of authentication and encrypted communications, aligned with NIST 800-171 requirements.
Additionally, the American shipbuilder is integrating zero-trust architecture principles and role-based access controls into its digital processes. Kasen noted that this approach minimizes risk and enforces least-privilege access across all environments. Austal USA’s systems also support secure data versioning and chain-of-custody documentation, vital for meeting cybersecurity and quality assurance certifications specific to naval applications.
Charting a course beyond the ATDM Summit
Looking to the future of the maritime industrial base, Wells suggested that the main challenge is not in launching new initiatives but in sustaining them. “It’s very easy to get distracted by the fire of the day, and that can cause you to move side to side, rather than forward,” he noted.
Wells believes summit attendees walked away with highly tailored action points, whether related to talent pipelines, supply chain entry, or engineering support. However, the imperative now is to maintain the focus and ensure “we keep stoking that fire that was just lit.”
For Wells, the summit’s most valuable outcome was its role in catalysing deeper coordination across the U.S. defense ecosystem. “It was very encouraging to see, feel, and experience the strength of collaboration, communication, and cooperation all coming together in a mission-driven vision,” he said.
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Featured image shows Austal USA’s shipbuilding facility. Photo via Austal USA.
