US Navy Struggles with Shipbuilding Gap as well as Maintenance and Repair Delays
A Resilient and Robust Pacific Coalition is the Best Strategy
When you don’t have a vision of the future, it’s easier to look back with a sense satisfaction of past glories.
The US Navy performed without parallel in World War II and more than met the challenges of the first Cold War, but both are a long time ago and we now face a formidable maritime and industrial power rival in China.
The major technological and geopolitical challenges we now face in our age of US-China rivalry demand that the United States act much more urgently and faster.
On the shipbuilding side, America has really dropped the ball while China builds a massive lead in terms of both naval and commercial shipbuilding.
In 2023, China received over 1,500 new orders for new commercial ships. The United States received five.
China is estimated to be building ships at least three times faster and three times cheaper than America.
Even as America desperately need more ships, maintenance delays result in, as one retired admiral put it, “the equivalent of losing half an aircraft carrier and three submarines each year.”
The USS Connecticut, a premier submarine, commissioned for service in 1998, struck an underwater mountain in the South China Sea in 2021, but won’t be back in service until 2026, according to the US Navy.
This is about three times as long as the 16 months it took to build the Pentagon building in the first place during World War II.
By coincidence, the estimated cost of repair for the USS Connecticut is $80 million and this is equal to the cost of building the Pentagon from September 1941 to January 1943 ($1.1 billion in today’s dollars).
This is saying something since the Pentagon is an incredibly big place to manage and turnaround with 25,000 workers and parking spots for 9,700 cars.
Defense officials and the US Navy consider the US submarine force a strategic priority and a crucial advantage over a numerically larger Chinese navy.
But the GAO study about US capabilities against China that the Navy lost 10,363 operational days from 2008 through 2018 - the equivalent of more than 28 years - “as a result of delays in getting into and out of the shipyards.”
Currently, an alarming 18 of the Navy’s 49 fast-attack subs are out of service, awaiting repair and servicing. Fast-attack subs fire torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, essential to win a potential fight against China over Taiwan or South China Sea lanes.
Maurer of the GAO explains that the Navy may be giving top priority “for scarce shipyard space” to aircraft carriers and ballistic-missile submarines, “which means attack subs are more likely to rack up idle time waiting to get into an available dry dock.”
This is totally unacceptable. The Connecticut is one on the US’s three nuclear-powered Seawolf-class vessels, the service’s largest attack subs. The Navy describes the class as “exceptionally quiet, fast, well-armed, and equipped with advanced sensors.” It has eight torpedo tubes and can hold as many as 50 weapons in its torpedo room.
Ronald O’Rourke, a naval analyst with the Congressional Research Service, said the delay reflects in part “a product of the complexity of modern warships - and thus the complexity of the work needed to repair damage to them.”
As highlighted in Power Rivals: America and China’s Superpower Struggle, the Navy and Congress needs to address this issue without delay and the Pentagon needs to be much more agile and nimble. Speed, flexibility, and resilience is just as important as the numbers of ships and subs. Advanced technology and complexity is great but not if it leads to key assets sitting in dry dock.
Speed, even if it comes with higher risk and costs, is preferable to delay.
Calls for bureaucratic reform are nothing new and experts have long warned of the dangers of a culture that cripple organizations, as officials check boxes rather than get results.
The time for renewal, reform, and rebuilding is past due. It is time to quickly scrape the barnacles off of a bureaucratic Washington that is too much talk and little action.
Luckily, while America reforms, it can work with allies such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia to help build and maintain the highest quality and affordable naval assets in the world.
Partnering on shipbuilding from these countries, or repairing and overhauling US built or designed vessels in their shipyards, could be a common sense and cost-effective way of closing the gap with China.
All three countries have mutual defense treaties with the US, so why doesn’t the US team up with them to collectively better compete with China?
The problem is largely political since US law currently prevents the U.S. Navy from buying foreign-built ships, even from allies, or from building its own ships in foreign countries due to both security issues and to protect America’s shipbuilding industry.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon estimates China’s navy to have around 340 warships, while the US has fewer than 300. It estimates the Chinese fleet will grow to 400 in the next two years, while the US fleet will take until 2045 to hit 350.
Last year, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) arrived in Danang, Vietnam, representing the third time an American aircraft carrier has ever called on the port. This meaningful and symbolic move has to be backed up by a credible plan for a US naval buildup together with our allies and partners in the region.
There are some signs of greater Pacific allied cooperation. South Korea’s Hanwha group was recently awarded a Maintenance-Repair-Overhaul (MRO) facility and the company invested $100 million to acquire the Philly Shipyard which will give it a chance to ramp up productivity and scale.
The “Ships for America Act” currently making its way through Congress could close our shipbuilding and readiness gap if it couples investment in U.S. shipbuilding with measures to encourage more Pacific allied support, especially in the area of maintenance, repair, and overhaul.
Incoming Navy Secretary John Phelan, has a real opportunity to assess the situation with new perspectives and a sense of urgency.
Full speed ahead.
Carl Timothy Delfeld is the co-founder of the Independent Republican and the Economic Security Council, managing director of Blackthread LLC, former US Treasury advisor, U.S. Director of the Asian Development Bank, and author of Power Rivals: America and China’s Superpower Struggle.