The U.S. Navy has been struggling for years to maintain the production and maintenance throughput of its four government shipyards and approximately eight major private sector yards. The chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, has established the clear, quantifiable shortfall.
Until the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), two Arleigh Burke destroyers and two Virginia submarines were being purchased a year, yet only 1.8 and 1.2 were being delivered a year. This means the destroyers and submarines were 10 percent and 40 percent behind schedule, respectively. With the 2023 NDAA, which increases the purchase of each to three a year (and doesn’t count the new Columbia ballistic missile submarine, which will be built in the same shipyards), the straight-line throughput at current delays will be only 2.7 destroyers and 1.8 submarines delivered for three of each purchased. Complications from increased orders will possibly drive up the existing delivery delays.
The Navy’s “analysis paralysis” on this topic has been festering for years, yet the throughput and trendlines have been worsening. Congress is spinning into action with a flurry of trips to assess the situation. The issues are a lack of yard capacity, challenges in building a workforce, higher prices for materials, and companies leaving the industrial base and supply chain because of the erratic nature of the federal budget process.
Currently, all production and maintenance of ships is centralized in four U.S. Naval Shipyards (NSYs)—Portsmouth (Maine), Norfolk (Virginia), Puget Sound (Washington), and Pearl Harbor (Hawaii)—and eight major private shipyards—Bath Iron Works, ElectricBoat, Newport News, Ingalls, Austal, Fincantieri, Philly, and NASSCO. If this industrial base is failing to meet throughput, then perhaps the time is now to consider re-opening a closed NSY and a new private shipyard (or two).
Re-Open a Closed US Government Shipyard?
The four existing U.S. NSYs are survivors of a once much larger industrial base. They don’t build ships anymore but are used to fix and repair ships and submarines (called “maintenance availabilities”). These proud facilities are woefully in need of re-capitalization, and the Navy is doing this through the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, but the program isn’t expanding much-needed yard square footage. Modernized Navy yards will still be crowded and cramped. There are now hints of discussion about re-opening a dormant Navy yard; the question is, which one?
Building a “greenfield” NSY would be a mammoth undertaking in the modern era. The options in geographic choices are limited, but since the orientation of the main concern is the Pacific, the three that come to mind for re-opening are Mare Island NSY, San Francisco NSY, and Long Beach NSY, all on the West Coast.
Mare Island NSY in Vallejo, California, has been fallow since its closure, other than being used as a stage for “Mythbusters.” Moving a ship larger than a destroyer up to this historical facility would require extensive civil engineering and dredging. San Francisco NSY is larger and has more space.
There’s only one aircraft carrier dry dock in the entire Pacific, Dry Dock 6 at Puget Sound NSY (pdf), but it may or may not be out of commission following announcements by the Navy. Unbelievably, there’s no dry dock in the Pacific that can take a Ford-class aircraft carrier. An additional dry dock that can take both the Nimitz class and now the new Ford class is desperately needed in the Pacific.
The old San Francisco NSY is best able to fit a new dry dock of this immense size. Its large crane structure is iconic on the San Francisco skyline; it was designed to rapidly swap out turrets on battleships and then was used to launch test Polaris missiles on tethers in the late 1950s/early 1960s.
Long Beach NSY is no more—its drydocks have been filled in and its cranes and workshops have been removed, and it’s now encumbered by the Port of Long Beach, one of the largest container terminals in the world.
Taking these stated factors into consideration, the intuitive conclusion is that the San Francisco NSY is the logical facility to re-open. There are long-range plans to commercially develop the site, which would have to be addressed. There may be a need to argue that urgent national security imperatives require the facility be put back into federal use. The Long Beach NSY facility would be challenging to re-open, but if trade friction continues and inbound containers continue to decline, then perhaps this facility may be an opportunity also.
The Navy staff has endlessly agonized over the ship repair capacity and throughput issue—the faster the policy issue is decided and plans and programs can be put in place, the faster the Navy can achieve at least a 25 percent increase in capacity.
In addition, an expeditionary rapid repair and regeneration capability is needed in Guam to promptly turn around battle-damaged ships. The Titan Floating Drydock is one of a very small number of large floating dry docks in existence in America. It would be wise to move this now to Guam and build two or three more of these with alacrity. Floating dry docks, an obscure topic that gathers little attention, were one of the key reasons for the U.S. Navy’s decisive victory in the Pacific in World War II.
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