Innovate: Innovation starts at home—Guam’s workforce is the key to its future
Published at guampdn.com first and third Fridays
published guampdn.com June 6, 2025
No longer is the island of Guam, our home, just a remote outpost. It is the center of security in the Pacific and can be the center of trade and new technologies.
Yet, if we are to seize this moment, we must acknowledge one fundamental truth: Guam’s transformation into a 21st century tech and innovation hub will rise, or fall, on the strength of our workforce. Everything starts here at home.
Warning, wake-up call
The 1997 closure of Guam’s Naval Ship Repair Facility devastated our island’s industrial workforce capacity. Highly skilled welders, mechanics, inspectors, and engineers left en masse.
What was once a bustling hub of maritime capability was reduced to a fraction of its potential. Today, Guam can barely meet American Bureau of Shipping standards for basic afloat maintenance, much less NAVSEA-level ship repair required for U.S. Navy combatants.
But we now have a second chance.
The Department of Defense’s Regional Sustainment Framework recognizes the necessity of distributed, forward-positioned logistics and sustainment capacity. That means Guam is needed now more than ever to serve as a Western Pacific sustainment and logistics hub.
Recent crises—like Singapore’s pandemic shutdown—forced urgent rerouting of Littoral Combat Ship sustainment work to Guam. The message is clear: the capacity must be here, in Guam—not 3,000 miles away.
Laying the groundwork
Companies like Cabras Marine Corporation are already investing.
After losing its dry dock to a typhoon, the company is exploring a multi-million-dollar pier-side lift system and expanding training programs through bootcamps and apprenticeships. Its partnership with Guam Community College is creating real pathways into ship repair careers.
Smithbridge Guam is also showing how private industry can drive workforce development.
With more than 46 employees currently enrolled at the GCA Trades Academy, Smithbridge pays 100% of tuition while encouraging cross-training and upward mobility. They’ve built a company culture that values learning, and it’s paying off in safety, retention, and pride.
These aren’t isolated efforts—they are proof of what’s possible. The Guam Contractors Association, the GCA Trades Academy, GCC, and the American Job Center are building the pipelines. We just need to widen them and pour in more talent, tools, and training.
Roadmap for workforce-led transformation
If we are serious about future economic innovation, we should prioritize workforce development. The path forward looks like this:
1. Rebuild Guam’s ship and submarine repair capability
Establish NAVSEA-compliant maintenance facilities with advanced infrastructure like a dry dock.
Train welders, naval architects, heavy mechanics, and engineers to beyond ABS standards and NAVSEA standards.
Coordinate public-private investments using the expansion and modification of current statues and DoD regulations to create a Center of Industrial and Technical Excellence in Guam.
2. Leverage ship repair to advance high-tech capability
Introduce 3D printing, IoT-enabled maintenance tools, and smart diagnostics to MRO operations.
Use these capabilities as dual-use technologies for future commercial and civilian markets.
3. Expand sustainment capabilities beyond ships
Build capacity in aerospace, heavy equipment, and defense readiness material maintenance.
Make Guam a logistics hub not just for defense, but for Pacific commercial trade.
4. Build a 21st century workforce
Align GCC, UOG, GCA Trades Academy, and high school career and technical education, CTE, programs to future-focused skills: AI, data analytics, logistics automation, and cybersecurity.
Create fast-track credentialing programs tied to specific job roles in MRO, logistics, and tech.
Why wait?
In a previous column, I suggested the concept of Guam Aerospace & Defense Alliance, GADA, which offers a coordinating mechanism to unite private industry, government, education, and the federal government behind a singular goal: transform Guam into a Pacific innovation and technology hub.
But GADA, or any plan, is only as strong as its workforce.
This is not a moment for more studies or roundtables. This is a moment for action.
We must make workforce development our number one strategic priority, not just a policy line item, but the core organizing principle of Guam’s future. We need more boot camps, more apprenticeships, more employer-led training, and more high school-to-career pipelines.
We should broadcast a clear signal to everyone who has left the island: Come home. We’re building something here.
Let’s act now
Guam cannot wait for an opportunity to knock. Opportunity is already here.
We have a real and present need to rebuild our maritime, logistics, and technical labor force. Not because we might be needed in the future, but because we are needed now.
Our future depends on our ability to always be innovating.
Robert Jackson is the president of The M.O.S.T. Services. He is a retired Air Force colonel with 27 years service. Jackson is experienced in acquisition, logistics, business development, quality and process improvement in the federal government and the private sector. He hosts The Innovate Guam Podcast. You can contact him at rob.jackson@themostservices.com.