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Present day shipbuilding

Beyond the 2000s, the three East Asian manufacturing powerhouses, China, South Korea and Japan, have dominated world shipbuilding by completed gross tonnage. China State Shipbuilding Corporation, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Imabari Shipbuilding supply most of the global market for large container, bulk carrier, tanker and Ro-ro ships. During the early 2020s, Chinese shipbuilders saw an increase in orders as operators demand greener fleets. As of 2023, China’s shipbuilding output, newly received orders and orders-on-hand accounted for 50.2%, 66.6% and 55% of the global market share, respectively, with double-digital growth of all three indexes compared to the previous year.

When referring to the ship type, then China, South Korea and Japan are the producing countries of the carrier ships as mentioned above. While Italy, France, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom and other European countries are the makers of cruise ships (the most), icebreakers, crane vessel and so on.

The market share of European ship builders began to decline in the 1960s as they lost work to Japan in the same way Japan most recently lost their work to South Korea and China. Over the four years from 2007, the total number of employees in the European shipbuilding industry declined from 150,000 to 115,000. In 2022, some key shipbuilders in Europe are Fincantieri, Damen Group, Navantia, Naval Group and BAE Systems.

Shipbuilding output of the United States also underwent a similar change. The US is ranked the 10th largest shipbuilder worldwide. The top companies that build large naval vessels, such as aircraft carriers and cruisers, include Huntington Ingalls, Bollinger and General Dynamics. In the small to medium military vessels category, key shipbuilders include Vigor Industrial, and VT Halter Marine. As the US Navy is shifting to a new fleet architecture that is more widely distributed, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) development is rapidly propelled to higher priority. Key strategic Program of Record includes prototyping and construction of up to 9 MUSVs, for which a sole contract was awarded to L3Harris Technologies, who partnered with Swiftships to build the MUSVs.

In 2018, the US Defense Department initiated Overlord Program, and developed USV Prototypes 1 (NOMAD) and 2 (RANGER). Both of them took part in multiple fleet level exercises and demonstrations, traveled 28,982 nautical miles (53,675 km) in autonomous mode, and tested numerous payloads. Nomam, formerly known as Riley Claire, is a converted offshore patrol vessel, which was built by Swiftships. The objective of the Ghost Fleet Overlord program is to convert large, commercial vessels to autonomous systems.