There is the longer-term solution of restoring U.S. shipbuilding in general, but first we must address the immediate need for more naval shipyard capacity.
Commentary
One could argue that it was the United States’ ability to rapidly repair badly damaged warships and
get them back into action, coupled with the unmatched ability of its shipyards to churn out thousands of new warships and commercial ships, that provided the foundation for victory over the Axis powers.
Sadly, the United States no longer has this capability, and the Navy estimates that there is a 20-year backlog of maintenance and repair work that has left
much of our fleet undeployable.
The lack of shipyard capacity and related facilities has resulted in
the decommissioning of powerful warships such as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser because of our Navy’s inability to maintain, overhaul, modernize, or complete service life extensions on these older—but still powerful—warships. It is also arguable that if the Navy had the shipyard capacity it truly needs, the recently upgraded 40,000-ton USS Bon Homme Richard that suffered an
embarrassing amount of damage from a fire that should never have happened could have been repaired or repurposed, rather than scrapped.
Further, the
2022 Government Accountability Office report “Naval Shipyards—Ongoing Challenges Could Jeopardize Navy’s Ability to Improve Shipyards” found that maintenance and repair delays on aircraft carriers and submarines from 2015 through 2019 resulted in the effective loss of half a carrier and three submarines per year over that period. The same report further concludes that “delays in shipyard maintenance directly affect the Navy’s readiness by hindering its ability to conduct training and operations with its ships.”
And a
2023 Navy report revealed that we are more than 400 months (33 years) behind in building the Virginia-class attack subs that will be replacing our near-end-of-life Los Angeles-class attack subs that have been so critical to maintaining our national security.
Punctuating how bad things have gotten,
a leaked slide from the Navy revealed that China’s shipbuilding capacity is now 232 times greater than that of the United States. Adding insult to injury, a
Breaking Defense story documents that some U.S. shipyards are using Chinese-made drydocks to repair and maintain U.S. Navy warships.
All of this unmet need occurs absent the need for repairs to ships because of damage inflicted by an enemy. Indeed, not since World War II has our country had to deal with its warships suffering significant damage due to enemy action. So what happens if we go up against China in a naval battle? Could we repair our ships in a timely fashion? Could we quickly replace ships lost in battle? Sadly, the answer to both questions appears to be a resounding no!
Clearly, this status quo is unacceptable. But what can be done? Well, there is the longer-term solution of restoring U.S. shipbuilding in general, but first, we must address the immediate need for more naval shipyard capacity.
To this end, the Navy is in the process of formulating a program that will help address the lack of capacity, the
Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP). This program is focused on what it will take to modernize and improve existing drydocks, facilities, and equipment. However, the SIOP plan will not be completed until 2025. And we must ask ourselves, just how much more real capacity will a plan built around optimization yield? Ten percent? Twenty percent? Thirty percent? Far too often, plans being contemplated by our military having to do with tweaking existing facilities or systems suffer from analysis paralysis.
But even if it yields good, cost-effective results, it will not give the Navy the very large shipbuilding and ship-repairing boost in capacity it really needs. Further, in reading many, many documents and reports on this topic, I don’t believe the
Navy’s plans for addressing our shipyard capacity shortage convey an appropriate sense of urgency.
Hence, what is truly needed is new shipyards, and a prime candidate for a new shipyard or two are California’s San Francisco Bay major river systems.
A September 2023
Forbes story reads, “The riverine route to the deep-water ports of Stockton and West Sacramento offers some of the few remaining places on the West Coast where heavy industry has low-cost access to the sea.”
Another location for new shipyard facilities was already proposed in March 2022 by Bartlett Maritime. The
Bartlett Maritime proposal is to build a shipyard in Lorain, Ohio, on Lake Erie, to do overhaul and component work for our vitally critical attack submarines and to build ship components in Lordstown, Ohio. The location is good, and the surrounding communities would welcome the quality, high-paying jobs that building new shipyards and supporting facilities will bring. And there are many other locations across the United States that would be good candidates for new shipyards or the restoration of shipyards that went out of business.
But where to get the money? Surely this will cost billions? If there is the will, money can be made available by shifting money from less urgent or less important programs or endeavors to something that addresses a clear and present danger to U.S. national security.
Finally, to ensure that new shipbuilding capacity is added quickly, it should be done with bills that explicitly exempt the building of facilities needed to address an immediate national security threat from having to go through years of different environmental impact studies. Not moving forward on this basis ensures that our Navy will continue to diminish in power and sends a message of weakness to hostile regimes such as China’s.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
