How to fix USN shipbuilding

[Colonial-Marine]

Sort of a general topic here, and I hope this is the best spot for it. My question is how one would fix the miserable state that shipbuilding for the USN is in. I've got to assume commercial shipbuilding has suffered greatly as well due to many of the same conditions. It sounds like there aren't enough welders and other skilled workers, aren't enough shipyards, and most of the major programs for surface combatants in recent years have been disasters. FFG(X), now the FFG-62 Constellation class was supposed to be a relatively easy development based off an existing design. Now you hear about nothing but delays and price increases for it and it seems like the extent of the changes the Navy wants are very significant. What benefit was there with starting with something "off-the-shelf" by this point? The base FREMM class frigates seem like pretty capable ships on their own.

Then there was DDG-1000 which was supposed to incorporating all sorts of impressive new systems. But it went from an originally planned 32 hulls in the DD-21 days, down to 3, with the Advanced Gun System that was one of their purposes getting cancelled. I guess they'll be useful testbeds and platforms for those hypersonic missiles, but far from what was originally envisioned. So now we're back to building Burkes. Flight III improvements aside there are a few areas in which the design is a bit dated. And then there were the many issues with the whole LCS program. Or all of the problems with the CVN-78 class even though in a general sense it is an evolution of the CVN-68 (Nimitz) class.

DDG(X) is still something around 8 years out from the first one which seems like an absurdly long timeline. Programs for a larger surface combatant perhaps deserving of the cruiser term are consistently cancelled.

Seems like an absolute mess to me. Where does someone even begin addressing it all?

 

[Desertfox]

Simple, pay workers more.

 

[Dilandu]

First of all, do NOT order ships before project is completed.

Second, do NOT allow Navy to change already approved project after it was ordered - at least without Congressional specific approval & good justification.

Third, order a single prototype first. Test it, and only order a series AFTER you are satisfied with prototype performance.

 

[yeetmahboi]

Sipbuilding in the US is simply unprofitable for large yards. At least for small and mid size builders they have a commercial sector to fall upon. So does the Koreans. The Chinese yards is building so much because their navy is expanding, so no boom-bust cycle in sight.

It's a bad mess, really.

 

[Lc89]

The Jones act.

 

[Dilandu]

The Chinese yards is building so much because their navy is expanding, so no boom-bust cycle in sight.

They also have the largest commercial shipbuilding sector in the world, and also they started to export their warships quite efficiently. Pakistan ordered four Type 054A frigates from China in 2017, and all four were delivered by mid-2023.

 

[yeetmahboi]

They also have the largest commercial shipbuilding sector in the world, and also they started to export their warships quite efficiently. Pakistan ordered four Type 054A frigates from China in 2017, and all four were delivered by mid-2023.

Exactly. Their large yards can rely on commercial orders to keep the money flow. Essentially the same situation as the Korean yards.

 

[Yellow Palace]

The Jones act.

Hasn't worked for the last century, won't make a difference now.

Simple, pay workers more.

Not just pay, but also job security. A dwindling order book means that the workforce loses confidence in actually having a job after the next ship. Once those workers get into a job that pays them more and which has a future, good luck getting them back.

That's also a standard cause of technical problems: when you lose the skilled designers and engineers, you can't design new ships. That caused the Royal Navy huge problems from the 1920s onwards.

The resulting long design and build cycles then mean that technology moves on, the customer demands changes, and it's all delayed even more.

 

[Lc89]

Hasn't worked for the last century, won't make a difference now.

Not just pay, but also job security. A dwindling order book means that the workforce loses confidence in actually having a job after the next ship. Once those workers get into a job that pays them more and which has a future, good luck getting them back.

That's also a standard cause of technical problems: when you lose the skilled designers and engineers, you can't design new ships. That caused the Royal Navy huge problems from the 1920s onwards.

The resulting long design and build cycles then mean that technology moves on, the customer demands changes, and it's all delayed even more.

In the sense that this law ended up destroying US shipyards instead of preserving them. If there were no US Navy and Coast Guard, these shipyards would have closed long ago. China is also fearsome because it has a huge merchant marine, with civilian ships built in the same shipyards where they build PLAN ships. South Korea has built ships for the Philippine Navy. Since ships built in US shipyards are more expensive than those built in Asia (and here cheap labor only matters for China, not Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), the United States could not want to build so many ships for an allied country. If American shipyards were like those in Korea or Europe, they would be able to build diesel electric submarines not for their own navy, but to export to allies.

 

[Hood]

If American shipyards were like those in Korea or Europe, they would be able to build diesel electric submarines not for their own navy, but to export to allies.

Agreed, in theory the US should have picked up a large slice of the world export market in warships. Instead its sold lots of systems like Mk.41, missiles and SPY radars for overseas shipuilders to fit, but none of that has fed back into the domestic shipbuilding industry.
On the other side of the coin, a lot of nations want to preserve their national warship building capability so this may have been unavoidable anyway to some extent, but certainly there is a tier of well-off nations without domestic shipbuilding capabilities that could have been attracted to buy US ships from US builders.