Shipyards will use them on a vast scale. And when the ships need more raw materials, they’ll link up with “biomining” ships that harvest raw materials from the sea.

That’s the concept, at least, from Navy lieutenants Scott Cheney-Peters and Matthew Hipple. Writing in Proceedings, the influential journal of the U.S. Naval Institute, the pair write that the growth of 3-D printing machines could change almost everything about how the Navy builds stuff “through the design and construction of ships, submarines, aircraft, and everything carried on board.”

On a smaller scale, they write that 3-D printers could change the way the Navy handles logistics and the way it produces tools, components and supplies for its ships.