How Asian shipyards in Japan, Korea and Philippines keep US warships battle ready

After being stranded in the South China Sea following a power failure in July, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Benfold was towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines for emergency repairs.

The facility is among the repair and maintenance hubs the US Navy has been developing in the region, strategically pushing for allies to perform major maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) work on US naval vessels given the decline of its shipbuilding base at home.

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The repair work on the Benfold in the Philippine port took about 10 days before it resumed operations.

While US law mandates that major warships be built domestically, outsourcing MRO to foreign yards offers more flexibility, especially for forward-deployed vessels.

Naval vessels homeported outside the United States are not strictly prohibited from receiving foreign MRO services and deployed US-homeported ships may also be serviced by foreign workers under specific conditions.

The capacity of regional allies in the western Pacific, including Japan and South Korea, is particularly vital, given their distance from the continental US as well as Washington’s intensifying strategic competition with Beijing.

“By establishing the ability to repair and sustain larger numbers of ships closer to potential conflict areas in the Indo-Pacific, the United States could potentially support extended deployments – including during wartime – by reducing the need to recall ships to the US mainland for repairs,” the Washington-based think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies said in a recent report.