Many big US Navy shipbuilding programs are delayed and over budget.
Navy officials and shipbuilders have attributed the US’ shipbuilding issues to both long-term and short-term problems.
A senior Huntington Ingalls Industries executive said the US Navy’s mounting shipbuilding problems aren’t because shipbuilders don’t know what they’re doing.
Instead, he pointed toward inconsistent demand and workforce issues that have drastically affected industry’s capacity. Navy officials and analysts have raised some of these concerns as well.
Earlier this week, Tom Moore, senior vice president of government relations for major shipbuilder HII, addressed the widespread challenges facing the US Navy’s top warship programs. HII builds Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, amphibious warships, and Ford-class aircraft carriers, among other vessels. Moore outlined how, historically, shipbuilders had delivered high numbers of vessels to the Navy and why that capability has decreased.
“Industry knows how to build ships at scale,” he said, but when the demand went down after the Cold War, “we turned the spigot off, and we stopped demanding ships.” The workforce shrank, and US industrial capacity dropped as the industry was hollowed out.
Experienced shipbuilders left for other work, backfilled by newer employees. Moore pointed to data showing that in the mid-1990s, the average electrical supervisor at Newport News and Ingalls Shipbuilding had been in the job for over 20 years. “Today, the average electronic supervisor has been there four-and-a-half years,” he said. That’s a lot of lost experience.
Two US Navy ships sit in water at a shipbuilding yard with a cloudy blue sky in the background.
Officials have long pointed towards the various economic problems facing US shipbuilding.US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Cat Campbell.
When looking into US shipbuilding challenges, industry insiders and analysts have also pointed to the Navy’s inconsistent demand signals, which can involve ordering ships and then changing the order or scrapping planned programs altogether.
This is seen as a major problem for contractors, leaving industry partners in uncertain positions.
Broader economic issues, such as inflation, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and competition for talent have exacerbated the problems affecting the industry.
The US Navy spends roughly $40 billion annually on shipbuilding projects, yet these projects are regularly behind schedule and battling rising costs.
Last year, a Department of the Navy review found that top programs, such as Block IV Virginia-class attack submarines, the Pentagon’s priority Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the Constellation-class guided-missile frigate, and the next Ford-class carrier, were all severely delayed and over budget due to COVID’s impact on the workforce and supply chain, “with industry reticent to invest.”
The US Government Accountability Office said previously it had observed consistent issues, too, with the Navy’s cost estimates, which “are often lacking and the assumptions unrealistic.”
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