This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Eric Chewning, the executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. As HII is America’s largest and one of its oldest military shipbuilders, we asked him to share his thoughts on maritime startups, reindustrialization policy, and more.
Shipbuilding has been slow to adopt AI and other automated tools in comparison to other manufacturing industries. What cultural shifts inside a century-old yard are the hardest to drive when adopting new design/manufacturing tools?
While HII has been using advanced automation to accelerate production in our shipyards for years, shipbuilding use cases have been constrained. In the past, automation focused on applications where one task would be done numerous times. Think of one robot doing the same tasks ten thousand times. But in shipbuilding, you need ten thousand tasks done once. This is why physical AI is a game-changer. We are finally at the point where we think the economics of shipbuilding will be unlocked by AI and other automated tools.
That said, the key to successful AI adoption in a set of shipyards more than a century old isn’t just about the technology, it’s about earning trust through demonstrated value. When you approach master shipbuilders with 40-plus years of experience in welding and tell them we have a new AI tool that will help make their lives easier, they’re going to be skeptical. It’s a huge shift going from a mostly analog way of production to introducing these new digital tools. This means we have to be hyper-focused on the change management aspects of tool introduction — finding the champions that will pilot an approach and letting them be the champions for their own craftsmen.
This is why our approach focuses on pilots, champions, and organic adoption rather than a series of top-down mandates. We’ve seen this firsthand in our collaboration with C3 AI. Their team has been a great partner in helping us introduce tools across our shipbuilding operations, and one lighthouse example has been in machine shop planning. We set up a pilot with a group of shipbuilders who were able to use C3AI’s work schedule optimizer for their planning. We didn’t approach the group with a mandate that they use the tool, we simply introduced it as an idea and told the team we’d like them to give it a shot and see what they thought. A few weeks in, we were already starting to see schedule improvements in the group using the tool and had other teams coming to our pilot group and asking to be let in for the next wave. It was a clear example of our team seeing real value from AI and automation and championing that for the broader organization.
It all comes down to demonstrating value and getting pull from within the organization. As these early wins compound, we’re building a culture where shipbuilders see AI as a tool that amplifies their expertise rather than replaces it.
We’ve just embarked on a similar journey with Path Robotics for physical AI and advanced welding and are excited to see that take shape over the coming months.
HII operates some of the Defense Department’s most advanced AI-enabled environments through its large mission technologies division. What prevents those capabilities from translating cleanly into your shipyards?
Our Corporate Advanced Technology Group, known as Dark Sea Labs, in coordination with our Mission Technologies chief technology officer, provides AI subject matter expertise to augment the talent in our shipyards to address these challenges.
Across industries, AI development thrives where there is a wide body of curated data that it can use to test, train, and iterate. There are two fundamental challenges when we consider the shipyards: the nature of our production data and the fragmentation of our information technology systems.
On the first point, the places you see AI have a huge impact in manufacturing areas with high-volume and or standardized production. One can consider automotive manufacturing with hundreds of thousands of identical units being produced. In aerospace, the production lots are much smaller, but are much more standardized.
However, in naval shipbuilding, we might produce 10 units of a class, each with significant design evolutions. A Virginia-class submarine built in 2024 may differ substantially from one constructed a few years later, making it harder for AI to leverage learnings across builds. When you consider areas like computer-assisted vision, scale starts to become a factor as well. Monitoring a car assembly line to collect data may require dozens of cameras, while comprehensively imaging an aircraft carrier in production could require thousands. We’re bridging these gaps by identifying places in our value stream where we can get that usable, replicable data, like in individual steel plate production. As AI gets more advanced, we’re excited to see what we can do here.
For discontinuities between systems, consider this example: our machine shops alone contain parts data, quality records, and supply chain systems that were each built-for-purpose, but effectively speak different “languages”. An AI trying to optimize production scheduling needs to understand how a parts delay in the machine shop cascades through operations to impact a critical path, but these systems weren’t designed to talk with each other in this way.
We’re working with AI partners like C3 AI to build the digital thread that connects these systems, effectively creating a common language for AI to work across our value stream. The lessons learned here will be applicable across our manufacturing environments, whether it be the unmanned underwater vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles, surface ships, or submarines that we produce for the U.S. Navy.
During your time as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy, you oversaw the development of a fairly sobering report on supply chain and industrial policy risks. What risks that you identified have you seen properly addressed? What risks have continued to be mismanaged or neglected?
The Executive Order 13806 report, Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States, identified a range of maritime industrial base challenges. One of the most rewarding parts of my job today is the ability to address them directly through industry. Last year, throughput in HII’s shipyards increased 14 percent, and we are targeting a 15 percent increase in 2026. This is the result of a five-part strategy.
First, we are growing our capacity with strategic investments like the recently acquired manufacturing campus in Charleston, South Carolina. Upon transaction close, the unused capacity at W International was immediately repurposed to support submarine and nuclear-powered aircraft carrier production as part of our Newport News Charleston operations.
Second, we are investing in new industry 4.0 technologies like digital engineering, additive manufacturing, AI, automation, and robotics. Our partnership with C3 AI is demonstrating the value of AI to the deck plate by improving how we run our machine shops. Our High-Yield Production Robotic (HYPR) initiative leverages a network of emerging industrial technology companies like Path Robotics to rapidly accelerate our use of advanced automation solutions in the fabrication process.
Third, we are expanding the maritime industrial base by growing our supply chain and implementing a distributed shipbuilding strategy that will outsource over two million hours of work in 2026, a 30 percent increase from 2025. We have partnered with 23 smaller shipyards and manufacturing centers to make ship modules for integration within our shipyards. Not only does this approach increase our throughput, but it also creates jobs in communities across the country. As we make our own operational improvements, we also look to structure the industrial base that supports our shipyards.
Fourth, we are hiring, retaining, and training a 21st-century workforce through wage increases, a network of vocational schools, in-yard education, and world-renowned HII apprentice schools. In 2025, HII hired 6,600 shipbuilders and will hire at least that many in 2026.
Fifth, we are building new shipbuilding infrastructure with over $600 million in capital investments planned for 2026 alone.
I am proud to say that HII prioritizes investments in internal research and development and capital expenditures and has, in fact, invested more than we paid out in share buybacks and dividends over the past few years.
There are many new entrants and startups in shipbuilding, particularly in the unmanned surface vehicles space, although also in digital shipyard tooling and unmanned underwater vehicles. What are some areas of collaboration between legacy shipbuilders and those smaller firms? What advice do you have for those startups that are entering the shipbuilding markets?
We’ve intentionally taken a proactive approach to partner with new entrants into the defense ecosystem, both as partners in our shipbuilding operations as well as in mission technologies. For example, our ROMULUS unmanned surface vehicle team includes Shield AI, Applied Intuition, and C3 AI. We are working on a range of collaborative projects with Shield AI, integrating their Hivemind autonomy stack with our Odyssey autonomy solution to accelerate cross-domain uncrewed system operations.
A good example of start up partnership within the shipyard is our relationship with Path Robotics. We are working to integrate Path Robotics physical AI for welding into manned and unmanned shipbuilding operations. Together, we are identifying and pursuing future opportunities in shipbuilding capability development, training a workforce to use physical AI, and pursuing joint research and development in manufacturing technologies.
From permitting policy to vocational programs and property tax policies, state and local governments can play a major role in shipbuilding’s reindustrialization. What are some critical steps that state and local governments can take to make it easier to set up new shipyards or revitalize old ones?
Shipbuilding is local in its footprint and national in its importance. We’ve seen strong examples of public-private partnerships with state and local governments at our core shipyards in Newport News, Virginia, and Pascagoula, Mississippi, as well as our flexible manufacturing facility in Charleston, South Carolina. Our shipyards create thousands of jobs for their communities, and Newport News Shipbuilding remains the largest industrial employer in Virginia. Our experience has shown us that states that want to attract or expand shipbuilding capacity should consider three levers:
First, workforce pipelines. Shipyards succeed when K-12 systems, community colleges, trade schools, and employers are aligned around the skilled trades like welding, pipefitting, machining, and electrical work. Apprenticeships tied to employers can create durable middle-class career paths for entire cities.
Second, infrastructure and permitting velocity. Shipyards are capital-intensive and waterfront dependent. Predictable, streamlined permitting can compress timelines by years. Investments in port access, reliable power, heavy-lift transportation, and dredging are also major enablers.
Third, tax and land-use stability. Brownfield redevelopment tools, property tax certainty, and long-term site control all reduce investment risk. Shipyards require long-term capital commitments, as referenced in the latest White House initiative on Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance, and policy stability is often more important than short-term incentives.
You spent many years in the military, government, and consulting. What is something you have learned working at a large manufacturer that you wish you had known in your previous roles?
As a country, we’ve significantly underinvested in trade skills. Before, I had an intellectual appreciation for the workforce development challenge facing U.S. manufacturers. I now have a visceral understanding of the problem.
Through a combination of on-the-job training, relationships with local community colleges, and our own company-run apprentice schools, we are making steady progress. But HII is also unique. Both of our shipyards have a long history of apprenticeship programs. For example, the Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding was founded in 1919 and is the preeminent apprenticeship program in the nation. The school offers four and five-year apprenticeships in nineteen shipbuilding disciplines. It’s a great opportunity.
Eric Chewning is executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII, where he leads the company’s growth across defense and emerging technologies. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy and as chief of staff to the secretary of defense.
