by Navy Capt. (Ret) Peter O’Brien
To say the Navy has a problem with maintenance (or ship construction) is a bit of an understatement.
One has to look hard to find a ship in the last 30 years that has made it in and out of the yard on time or in budget. Never mind both.
Some ships have suffered through truly incredible delays. USS Boise, a Los Angeles class submarine, perhaps the most extreme example, sat pier side for more than 7 years and had no work done on her. There are maintenance and repair backlogs in virtually every shipyard the US Navy uses.
Meanwhile, the Navy is buying less than a dozen ships per year and yet can’t keep up on maintenance. Our major competitor and de facto enemy, China, has 13 shipyards, one of which – Jiangnan – produces as many ships per years as the 7 major US ship yards combined.
Nor is new construction going well. Without discussing the ongoing nightmare that is the Ford class carrier, consider what is said to be the best ship procurement program the US Navy has had in a generation: the Virginia class submarine. No one will dispute that it’s a very capable submarine. The first submarine was delivered in 2004 and the Navy was scheduled to take delivery of 2 submarines per year. But that has been rolled back to 3 subs every two years, and overall the program is now estimated to be $17 billion over budget, and overall the program is 2 years behind schedule – at least.
In response to all this, the Navy just rolled out a new, 5-part plan which will:
- Accelerate force generation to deliver ships and combat systems.
- Generate readiness to maintain, modernize and sustain platforms.
- Generate, capture and use data to drive innovation.
- Strengthen the Navy team by attracting, retaining and growing the NAVSEA workforce.
- Strengthen the foundation, enhancing NAVSEA critical infrastructure.
The Navy’s plan – put together by, and to be executed by, the same people who got the navy into this mess – really distills down to: we’re gonna be faster and better.
Consider the remark attributed to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different answers.
And this “solution” doesn’t even begin to address the whole problem. The problem with maintenance of Navy ships isn’t a problem in isolation. Rather, as mentioned above, it’s interwoven with ship construction delays, the declining shipyard work force, the overall shipyard capacity, the growing crew scarcity problem, etc., etc., etc. And in fact, you can’t really solve – long term – the ship construction and shipping maintenance shortfalls without addressing the US merchant marine or US port capacity and port throughput and a host of other factors.
This is truly a multi-faceted problem and has to be addressed as such. NAVSEA will not attempt to address a large slice of this – they will focus on what they know and what they do, and the Navy – even if successful in the short term, will head off in one direction; whether that direction dovetails with the solutions to the other facets of the problem will be purely coincidental.
We need to remember that US shipbuilding and the maritime industry as a whole has problems that reach as far back as the US Civil War. The recovery during WWI and again during WWII are aberrations paid for by huge government spending in both cases and in both cases were followed by fairly steady “glide-slopes” down. So, “fixing” shipbuilding will not be the same as simply having the Navy order a bunch of ships. That is a necessary but not sufficient step. Fixing shipbuilding and shipyard capacity and hence maintenance involves the banks and insurance companies and shipping companies and unions and port authorities, etc., etc., etc.
Our national security requires an integrated solution that addresses the entire problem, short and long term. In the solution mentioned above, the folks at NavSea, for example, know their slice of the problem. You might say they are like the tire expert called in to testify in “My Cousin Vinny.” He sees the world from that narrow perspective. The people at NavSea will see the problem from their narrow perspective. But what is needed is, if you will, general maritime knowledge, someone who knows a little bit about each part of the problem, and at the same time has the authority to call in a whole host of experts from across the spectrum, to work out the right mix of solutions.
What we need to do is rid ourselves of the idea that we can fix any one piece of it without affecting everything else: the number of shipyards, total capacity of shipyard, the number of skilled shipwrights, the number of skilled welders for HY-80 and Hy-100 steel, overall US shipyard capacity (naval and merchant shipping), merchant marine crewing, merchant marine insurance, union influence, Congressional interests, defense contractor acquiescence, union issues, port infrastructure, etc.
The SecNav should designate someone – and give him the necessary authorities to assemble key individuals from each sector and task them to come up with a plan that would address at least the items below (Note: the “We” here is all of us: the USA, we are a maritime nation and this is a national problem):
1) The short term fix to ship maintenance and repair – how do we catch up on already due maintenance and repair and clear out the backlog?
2) How do we address the need for workers and technicians? We need “trade schools” centered on the yards but there is no reason we couldn’t work some deal with state universities to establish purpose focused community colleges that, like going to a service academy, are paid for by the US, but incur a pay-back period at a ship yard, while also giving graduates credit at 4-year universities.
3A) US Shipping – short term – can we offer green cards to Philippine and Panamanian crewmen to come and work on US ships? Can unions and Congress work to adjust the the law so that folks can spend more of the year at sea if they wish? Unions need to be brought aboard. Also, can we develop a Merchant Marine Reserve, and increase the number of crewmen who are “current?”
3B) US Shipping – how do we provide incentives for more automation and reduced manning, while maintaining safety and performance? How do we get the unions on board with this? How can we attract foreign shippers to use US ships? What exactly would be necessary to drive the costs down to competitive levels? Banks and Unions and Insurance companies key here.
4A) Ship Construction short term – Can we allow some US ships to be built overseas – Korea, Japan, Norway. If there are certain security issues, can we have hulls built overseas and the ships fitted out in the US?
4B) Ship construction long term – Can we develop a funding (banks and corporations) for an increased and sustained production effort? Work with insurance companies to clean up the ocean of old ships. (This is worse than it looks – unless specially built (aircraft carriers and battleships), ships are designed – structurally – to serve 30-35 years. Older than 30-35 years and they are too weak. Perhaps it is time to have a mandatory retirement process – pass more rigorous structures tests every year starting at age 30 – or some such and force older ships out of trade. This would require some sort of international agreement and might be very expensive in execution.
5) Modernization and expansion of US ports on both coasts, with a long term sustained growth plan – states and unions as well as corporate America involved here – how do we fund this?
The New SecNav needs to pull all the players together – shipyards, defense contractors, the various unions, insurance companies, the House and Senate, the Navy Staff – and lock them all in a room and have them generate these plans. And to orchestrate this, the SecNav, the Navy, the Nation needs its own Mona Lisa Vito, someone with general maritime knowledge – some Navy Knowledge, the naval warfare knowledge, some engineering knowledge, some general knowledge of building ships, some merchant marine knowledge – just enough to know when to call in the experts, enough to know that he doesn’t have the answers. But with the authority to get the players together and get the nation the answers it needs.
