Maritime: –
The American shipbuilding industry boasts unmatched technology but has shrunk to a fraction of its former size. American shipyards now depend on defense contracts and protective legislation to survive amid booms, busts, and subsidized foreign competition. For US-based shipbuilders to produce the ships needed to acquire a 355-ship Navy expeditiously and affordably, the US Government must adopt a disciplined approach of long-term planning, building from mature designs, introducing new technologies incrementally, and executing multi-year contracts for blocks of ships. These and other reforms will speed production, reduce cost, stabilize the industry, and help shipyards invest in facilities, technology, and workforce.
This paper reviews the current state and future prospects of America’s shipbuilding industry and offers recommendations to US national security leaders on how best to preserve, strengthen, and employ that industry in support of the national interests of the United States. More specifically, we investigate how the industry can best contribute to fulfilling the US Navy’s goal of creating a 355-ship fleet, and how that effort can in turn stabilize and advance this key industry.
The number of active ships in the US Navy today stands near its lowest point in more than seven decades since the end of World War II. Although today’s ships are individually far more capable than those of generations past, they remain bound by the reality that no ship can be in two places at once and every ship and its crew require considerable time in port in order to maintain the ability to operate at peak performance in the most critical circumstances.
At the same time, the United States faces global security challenges of growing scope and sophistication. China and Russia present peer or near-peer capabilities in many areas, and China in particular is developing anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) weapons systems that threaten the US Navy’s ability to operate in the South and East China Seas, regions critical to the national security of the United States and its allies. Meanwhile, threats from terrorism, civil war, organized crime, and natural disasters manifest themselves on the sea or in littoral areas where sea power is an essential element of any solution. Even in more stable and peaceful regions, the regular presence of the US Armed Forces, most often in the form of the Navy, serves to reassure allies, deter potential adversaries, uphold freedom of navigation, promote the ability to cooperate effectively in crises, and improve the situational awareness of the entire US Government. Meeting these threats and harnessing these opportunities will require the United States to deploy a Navy that is powerful, reliable, flexible, tightly networked, technologically advanced, highly trained, politically and culturally astute, and able to deploy a large number of vessels. The technologically advanced features of ships and the training, skills, and dedication of their crews, ultimately cannot substitute for the breadth and depth of capability provided by a fleet of sufficient size.
In this paper, we do not attempt to predict whether the US Congress will in fact provide the level of increased funding that would be required, even in a best-case scenario, to build America’s fleet back up to 355 ships, nor do we seek to prescribe a detailed mix of various ship types or specific models. We also do not offer a dollar estimate of the cost of acquiring, much less operating, this fleet, as that would depend on a variety of factors including the types of ships built, the production timeline, and the many decisions made in the course of the acquisition process. Rather, we offer recommendations as to how the effort to recapitalize the US Fleet can make the best use of America’s shipbuilding industry while strengthening the industry’s ability to contribute to US national security.
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