The US Navy’s Shipbuilding Disaster

Key Points and Summary – America’s naval shipbuilding capacity is in a state of crisis, a “terrible” situation that poses a significant national security risk as China rapidly expands its fleet.

-The core of the problem is a severe and persistent shortage of skilled labor, from welders to technicians. U.S. shipyards are struggling to hire and, more importantly, retain workers, with high turnover rates crippling their ability to build new warships like guided-missile frigates on schedule.

-This industrial base weakness, which has been decades in the making, has left the U.S. Navy falling dangerously behind its primary global competitor.

A US Navy Nightmare: The ‘Terrible State’ of America’s Shipbuilding Disaster

Over the years, and having engaged in hundreds of discussions with United States-based Navy shipbuilding contractors, personnel who are or have served at sea, naval intelligence officers, and maritime strategists, the overriding conclusion is always the same: the decline of America’s naval power is a strategic weakness that will someday end in disaster.

The next part of the conversation also usually takes the same tack. Simply put, a long time ago, the US stopped building enough naval vessels.

What is worse is that even if all the necessary prerequisites were in place—money, political will, public enthusiasm, Congressional support, and all the other prerequisites—the Navy would still be in the same dire predicament it finds itself in today.

The matter is that the nation has been limping by for decades with an inadequate number of shipyards and not enough ships. There is even discussion about how to put together an “emergency fleet” in the event of war, using ships that should have been retired.

Compounding the problem is the reality that there are not enough skilled shipbuilding workers in this second decade of the 21st century.

Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state”—the worst in a quarter century, said Eric Labs, a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.”

From Garbage Truck Assembler to Shipyard Worker

Last August, CBS News released an in-depth story on the trials and tribulations of the shipbuilding industry. The report revealed that a long chain of events led to the Navy’s shortage of ships and submarines, with many problems traceable to a simple issue: not enough workers.

“The Navy’s ability to build lower-cost warships that can shoot down Houthi rebel missiles in the Red Sea depends in part on a 25-year-old laborer who previously made parts for garbage trucks,” reads the beginning of the report.

This shipyard worker, Lucas Andreini, was employed as a welder at Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wisconsin. He was one of thousands of young workers who enrolled in employer-sponsored training programs. These training programs are a nationwide effort to stem the downslide of the shipbuilding industry, “as shipyards struggle to hire and retain employees.”

As an example of the depth of the crisis, Marinette Marine is under contract to build six guided-missile frigates—the Navy’s newest surface warships—with options to build four more, concluded the CBO report.But it only has enough workers to produce one frigate a year, according to the CBO’s Labs.

This labor shortage is one of several challenges that are producing the growing backlogs in ship production and maintenance. These shortfalls could not have come at a worse time.

At present, the Navy faces an expanding number of global threats. The priorities of the nation’s defense planning are changing rapidly. Ships and the weapons systems aboard them are subjected to endless design changes. Cost overruns have become the rule rather than the exception.

All of these trends have the US continuing to fall behind China in the number of ships at its disposal. What is worse is that the gap between “them” and “us” is constantly enlarging.

It’s Hard to Keep Good Help

At the top of the list of the industry’s woes would be the never-ending battle to locate, hire and then retain laborers in sufficient numbers and to persuade them to take on the “challenging work of building new ships as graying veterans retire, taking decades of experience with them,” as the CBS reporters point out.

In an effort to retain the personnel they have acquired, shipyards across the country are establishing and operating training academies for this vocation. They have partnered with technical colleges to train the workers in these shipyards with the skills they need to build increasingly complicated warships that are stuffed full of high-tech systems.

In the submarine building part of the business, these specialized shipyards and the Navy have worked together to promote manufacturing careers. These shipyards are even offering bonuses and benefits in order to keep these workers on the rolls once they have been hired and trained.

Back at the shipyard in Wisconsin, $100 million in Navy funding has been allocated to pay retention bonuses. In the past, the turnover at the company was above 50 per cent. Now the company is paying bonuses of up to $10,000 to keep workers, said a spokesperson for the shipyard, Eric Dent.

“The workforce shortage is definitely a problem and it’s a problem across the board for all shipyards,” he said. One of the factors that causes some workers to leave is the up-and-down, feast or famine nature of the shipbuilding business.

“We’ve been dealing with inconsistent shipbuilding plans for years,” said Matthew Paxton of the Shipbuilders Council of America, a national trade association. “When we finally start ramping up, the Navy is shocked that we lost members of our workforce.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. If there is a way out of what seems like a dire situation, it appears that only significant investment in people, as well as more shipyards, is the answer.

And it will take a long time to achieve the necessary level of shipbuilding to catch up with the Chinese.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson

Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.

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