Parallels between the decline of the USN and the RN

[uk 75]

Watching the decline in size and construction problems encountered by the USN since 1991 I am reminded of the fate of the Royal Navy after WW2.
At first sight the US has done rather better. It still has the world's largest force of nuclear strike carriers and its nuclear submarines remain the quietest and most deadly.
But it has seen a similar collapse in its shipbuilding industry and the skills base of its workforce.
New ship designs since 1991, notably the Zumwalts and LCS have been plaguec by poor design and build qualities.
Whereas the RN was at least being overtaken by an allied Navy and economy, the US is challenged by an ideological opponent in China which offers no up sides.
Unlike the UK the US retains considerable geographical and industrial advantages and could still rearm effectively. As in Britain this will depend on both politicians and the electorate. For all our sakes I hope the US is luckier than we Brits have been.

 

[sdmuleman]

Bit of a stretch IMHO.

New ship designs since 1991, notably the Zumwalts and LCS have been plaguec by poor design and build qualities.

This is just plain wrong. Both are examples of designs with more than their fair share of issues, but remember both are also significant departures from past practice, and most significantly are impacted by wholesale changes in operational requirements. LCS in particular was optimized for a specific operational environment that they would probably be quite successful in had we not shifted to a rather different focus. Yes, the ships had bugs and lots of programmatic problems - I don't claim they were perfect, but rather the stigma is exaggerated and the current marginal usefulness isn't a function of a programmatic failure rather a change in requirement.

Conversely, flight III DDG-51, SSN-774, and various auxiliaries were quite successfully designed and procured in said timeframe along with numerous other programs.

Remember that pretty much every new ship/system has issues initially, and there are numerous examples of negativity related to platform we today consider successful. FFG-7, DDG-51, DD-963, CG-47 all had significant problems. SSN-571 for instance had some major design defects that nearly caused failure of the ballast tanks.

The difference today is that any minor problem is immediately widely publicized and exaggerated, and negativity becomes a self fulfilling cycle. CVN-78 for instance is reportedly generally successful today and has the potential to save significant maintenance cost over her life (I say potentially as I do not know of any hard data available to validate; it was certainly a design constraint and elimination of steam piping is undoubtedly a significant cost savings... but I lack reference to state definitively); yet all people remember is the bad press in 2015-20.

Systems today are also far more complex than they were in the cold war. It is natural that this results in cost, schedule and complexity, and that getting things to work correctly is hard. High end systems around the world exhibit this trend - it's not just a failing of the US.

At the end of the day it's certainly true that US industrial capacity has shrunk from it's heyday. Also certainly true that the post war peace dividend has snowballing impacts that are being painfully felt today. However, collapse is a bit of an exaggeration. There remains quite considerable capacity, and many efforts are in the works to rebuild.

Where I do think there's a considerable similarity is in the political/economic side, and this will really be the deciding factor of US military capacity in the next half century. The post WW2 UK decline seems clearly tied to economic challenges and a political decision to withdraw from worldwide capacity. Thus far the US hasn't done so. It seems inevitable that serious economic challenges related to the US national debt will occur sooner or later however, and it's easy to see political elements that could drive towards a more isolationist perspective.