Stories From the Homefront: Building Our Defense Workforce Starts at Home


Economic Development, Community Interest, Workforce, Defense

In ADC’s Homefront series, we visited Southeastern Connecticut, where family ties and hands-on training are building the next generation of shipbuilders, just when the country needs them most.

This story is an adaptation from the recently released 2026 America’s Defense Communities Magazine, written by Tim Ford.

National security increasingly depends on how fast America can build things — and how many people are ready to build them. As the Pentagon pushes to modernize the submarine fleet and rebuild a shipbuilding base that fell behind for decades, there are plenty of bottlenecks to solve, such as capacity, supply chains and funding. But a key one is people.  

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