The Navy’s shipbuilding program is a mess. That was the consensus of several highly qualified speakers at a recent Washington seminar sponsored by the Hudson Institute. And, it was agreed, the current Navy and congressional efforts will not rectify the situation.
The fiscal year 2010 program recently presented to Congress calls for $14.9 billion in shipbuilding funds for eight ships:
1 SSN attack submarine
1 DDG Arleigh Burke–class destroyer (a restart of that program)
3 LCS littoral combat ships
2 T-AKE replenishment ships
1 HSV high-speed vessel
With a planned average ship service life of 30 years, this building rate would sustain a fleet of 240 ships. This is less than the Navy’s current 283 ships and far short of the long-standing Navy “requirement” for 313 ships.
The distinguished speakers at the Hudson conference on 22 May made it clear that without a massive increase in shipbuilding funds a larger fleet was not achievable. Dr. Eric Labs, senior naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office said that about $25 billion per year for new ships is needed to reach the Navy’s goal.
Now is the time for “hard choices,” Labs said. We “cannot fix problems with simple measures.” He observed that the ship procurement dollars being discussed do not include a new class of ballistic missile defense cruisers, and “it is not unreasonable” for those ships — now designated CG(X) or, if nuclear propelled, CG(X)N, to cost $6 to $7 billion per ship.
Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, under whose direction the U.S. fleet had reached almost 600 ships in the 1980s, outlined a “new look” for the Navy (which will be discussed in a future commentary). With respect to shipbuilding problems, Lehman blamed the constant bureaucratic growth of the Defense Department, including the Naval Sea Systems Command, and the lack of “line decision makers” — people who have the authority and responsibility to make key decisions. Only then can the continual flow of changes be made in ship requirements and construction be halted.
Lehman called for “freezing” designs and making only “block” changes in new construction programs.
Congressman Joe Sestak, a retired vice admiral, believes that the Navy could carry out its missions with a 240– to 260-ship fleet if “we bought cyberspace.” Calling for the development of methods for tracking every surface ship — both military and commercial, an expansion of the Automated Identification System (AIS) now used for large merchant ships — and for the continuous location of submarines, he said that such information could reduce the U.S. Navy’s ship requirements.
Still, “owning” cyberspace would be expensive. And, the only way to undertake such an achievement would be to remove “cyber war” operations from the service budgets and consolidate the effort under a Department of Defense executive, according to Sestak.
A consensus of the presentations and the questions and comments from the audience included the following points:
The Navy’s flip-flops on the Zumwalt (DDG 1000) and Burke (DDG 51) programs have hurt the Navy’s image and credibility of its shipbuilding program.
The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, required by Congress, is unrealistic and of little value.
Poor management of the Navy’s shipbuilding efforts have resulted in ship delays and cost overruns
The Navy has failed to effectively “sell” itself as a key factor in America’s political-military effectiveness, in part because of the above factors
Ship numbers do count and the controversial littoral combat ship (LCS) is the Navy’s only hope for increasing fleet size.
The Navy’s leadership can fix the procurement mess, but must take bold and innovative action, including demanding firm fixed-price contracts and the use of second-tier shipyards and contractors to spark competition.
LCS is a major boondoggle. It’ll be the next F-22 soon enough. In WW2 the government had a greater hand in how things were run: appointing the waste and corruption committee. Perhaps now would be a great time to do the same? We are in a recession, still in GWOT, engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, have troops in still more countries, and may have to deploy to other countries should the situation get worse.
We can’t build ships.
We can’t build tanks.
We can’t build planes.
We can’t build cars.
We can’t build computers.
We can’t build homes.
We can’t build schools.
We CAN build Starbuckses. What a relief! I was worried there for a sec. All is good with the USA, nothing to worry about.
We can’t build ships.
We can’t build tanks.
We can’t build planes.
We can’t build cars.
We can’t build computers.
We can’t build homes.
We can’t build schools.
We can build Starbuckes. What a relief! I was worried there for a sec. All’s good, nothing to worry about.
Why isnt there fixed prices that makes no sence?
I wouldn’t pay if I ordered somehting and it was 25% more. isnt there a law stating est must fall within 10% of the final price?
Why isn’t the goverment using that?
Good Morning Folks,
A timely article but as usual misses the elephant in the punch bowel, the Gulf ship yards and Katrina. All on has to do is look at what these yards turned out with the U.S.S. San Antonio and the U.S.S. New Orleans to understand the current state of U.S. ship building.
It must be noted that none of the Zumwalts will be built by Grumman in the Gulf but in Bath Maine. The usual reasons of politics are given but the truth simply is the gulf yards are in such a state of decay tat the no longer are capable of building acceptable Naval vessels.
Before all you Johnny Rebs jump on this by noting that they got a DD 51 hull they also had the LHD program suspended. The DD 51 is a matured hull and can be finished in other yards if the quality can’t be maintained in the Grumman yards.
The problem starts with labor. After Kartina the yards laid off most of their work force indefinitely in order to make facility repairs. Those workers spread put across the country to find post Kartina work and because of their high skill level most found jobs in either Bath, Norfolk, San Diego or other yards that paid considerably more in wages then in the Gulf. The difference is more then trivial, I talked to a ship yard worker at NSACO here in San Diego who said in straight wage he doubled his hourly and gets overtime over 40 and double time for 12 hour days. He was born in the South and misses it a lot but he is not going back.
Going up the ladder supervision and project management is suffering as well.
In short the yards in the Gulf don’t meet the standards to build U.S. Navy ships. Until this is corrected, contractor and private enterprise is unwilling to put the capital both human and in money into these yards the bottom line won’t support any more investment, I don’t see any other way then the Navy taking over the management and operations of these yards the U.S. will be slipping behind in this area of vital national security interest.
The United States has to shake the free market concept that private capital can build defense systems that are of the quality that our military needs and at a price that the tax payers can afford. The Reagan era is over, their is a war on now, and if we don’t win these wars, hell, Grumman and all the other defense contractors who are picking the tax payers pocket can pack it in, al Qaeda is not going to pay their prices.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Does the navy really require 313 ships or does it just want lots of slots for its officers?
The number “313” seems to be strangely detached from changes in the world and it seems to be in no logical connection to any relevant factors for national security whatsoever.
Yet Charlies the F-22A program was pretty well managed for the world’s first 5th generation stealth fighter! In fact if we had bought a number closer to what was originally planned the price per aircraft would be much lower.
Navy shipbuilding needs help fast. Yet Obama don’t care about national defense.
What constitutes caring about national defense…buying whatever hardware the services want? We have yet to raise taxes to pay for this stuff, and the on going wars?
Sven, would it make you happier if it was an even number or rounded to a five? Where/how did you get the impression their numbers aren’t connected to anything? Keep in mind, that number includes carriers, destroyers, subs, support ships, and the Marine Corps’ amphibious fleet.
Raise taxes Drake? Hell, why not just print out more money like we have done for every part of the economy not related to the defense industry? We are fine spending over a trillion for corporate welfare in these stimulus packages but we can’t afford to spend to maintain a 300 ship Navy and modernize our equipment…
Plus North Korea continues to act like even greater assholes, Iran is still an issue, and China and Russia are not going to stop working on their militaries.
at least the DoD is talking about the problem. better late than never.
Honestly, I’m not surprised. It seems like nowadays, the only branch you never hear about anything going wrong is the Coast Guard. Last thing I heard about them was that they set up firing ranges in Lake Ontario, and to stay away on certain days if you didn’t want to get shot.
From the time the wars started, we should raised taxes.
I also didn’t support any of the the bailouts. You don’t get something for nothing…that goes for military as well as social spending, but I digress.
The idea of a 600 ship Navy was a myth and a joke. I was part of that Navy, sitting on a 50 year old ship that wasn’t fit to go out to sea.
Shipbuilding in general (no matter where you are) is in a sad shape. This is due to the limited shipbuilding that actually occurs in the US today, with the exception of military shipbuilding. Therefore, as the experienced shipbuilding force retires, the shipyards do not replace this labor.
On the NAVSEA side, we have gotten rid of all of the beuracrats that once oversaw these shipbuilding programs. This was done because of previously held beliefs that the government doesn’t know what it is doing and certainly can’t do things as well as the business sector. That is why we got rid of fixed price contracts and moved more towards industry being responsible for designing, managing, and building our ships.
Now Secretary Gates wants to get back to actually having engineers and project managers within the government overseeing these projects. As long as we get qualified personnel, eventually we will get back to building quality equipment, managed by the purchasing customer (the government).
DC2
Freezing designs and making only block changes, sounds like a reasonable policy. However, ‘buying cyberspace’ leaves me a bit skeptical. Technology may be a force multiplier, it’s not a force replacement.
I recall some discussion for adapting the LPD-17 hull or a stretched DDG-51 for the CG-(X) program. Did either of those concepts grow legs or get sunk as well?
A significant contributor to our Navy’s inability to meet budget & schedule is NAVSEA’s inability to adjust fluidly with industrial ship construction. Every bit as serious as requirements creep on the design end is a rigid inability to cope with nonconformances during construction, which are inevitable with the large structure and tight tolerances of shipbuilding. NAVSEA is understaffed, which is forgiveable, but as a result of low manpower and lack of experience does not understand their own product. This, coupled with a complete separation off management and technical organizations, leads to a rigid “never deviate from the plan” philosophy, even when the deviations don’t impact performance. The result: piles of rework for marginal gain to The Fleet. The end product looks just like the drawing, sure enough, but the costs, as we see, are prohibitive.
Thought I would pass this along.
“Northrop Grumman Inspector’s Lies Raise Alarms“
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4113502&c=AME&s=SEA
Good Morning Folks,
I think DC2 Jennings nailed it, there is not a whole lot more to say. The U.S. Government right now is stuck in an acquisition cycle for the Navy of ordering a nuclear carrier at least every four or five years and ordering subs at a rate one every year for two years the third year ordering two new boats. The reason of course is to keep enough business in the shipyards so that they are profitable.
The Navy certainly doesn’t want it shipbuilding programs to become another “fogbank”.
A paper about a tear ago out of the Naval War College was rather frank about this issue in stating that during the 80’s and 90’s the Navy made some really bad decisions. The privatizing of shipyards and the closing of several under BRAC, especially Long Beach, Vellajo, Philadelphia and Brooklyn cost the Navy any surge ability it had to rebuild a fleet in case of a national emergency. It also went on the cover the issues that DC2 Jennings addressed and was critical of the revolving door of Naval Officers involved in acquisition/project managing/systems desing and specifications retiring early and going to work for the contractors who they were doing projects for.
Interesting, one of there recommendations and that was to keep all Admirals/Generals or officers involved in weapon systems on active duty or at half pay till age 65. Maybe thats not a bad idea?
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
I’m trying to decide in my head if the government starts nationalizing programs, will quality improve? The Russians have state design bureaus, for instance…and one wonders if that correlates to their meh products, or is it their techbase?
Charles,
This isn’t about nationalizing programs. This is about the government actually having personnel on staff that know what they are talking about, instead of a bean counter making sure all the dollars and cents do not cause a Nunn McCurdy breech.
Imagine if you wanted to build a house. Would you rather have competent personnel (enough to actually do their job) working for you to make sure the general contractor building the house does their job. Or would you rather have the contractor be responsible for designing and building your house? What is the primary job of a business? Make money. That will generally come at your expense. Whether it be by cost increases, pushing for design changes to make more money, or cutting parts off the building even though you might want them there (oh you wanted a structured cabling system in your house sorry but that wasn’t included in our proposal).
Even local governments are putting request for proposals out on equipment and systems they know nothing about. They expect the contractors to give them what they want, even though they can’t effectively put what they want in writing.
BTW this isn’t something that affects just the Navy. If it isn’t the LCS, it is the JSF, ARH, AAV, FCS, etc. How sad was the USCG Deep Water project considering they gave the program to the Navy to manage?
“Mission creep” is another word for “cha-ching” to military contractors. I wouldn’t doubt that contractors “buy” jobs knowing they can make the money up by pushing “mission creep” ideas into the heads of those making the procurement decisions.
DC2
Not enough cooperation at the program management level, on both sides of the street. How many ships had outdated equipment installed because it was cheaper to install useless equipment than to modify the contract and install current, supported equipment? PM’s are more concerned about protecting their own behinds than supporting the goal of the fleet, building better ships. A mess is the polite word.