I guess we just suck at shipbuilding these days

 

"Every ship we are still building is over budget and behind schedule. Fact of life. Whatever recipe we had during the Cold War on how to build good ships at a reasonable price was lost in the wind. My advice to Secretary Hegseth is to offshore this task to some of our allies who are good at shipbuilding."

Back in the day, the United States could build frigates fast and furious. I spend a few days on a frigate (USS McCandles) doing some training back in the 1980's. It was an old and "no frills" type of ship. By 2020, all the frigates had aged out and been retired, so the smart thinkers at the Pentagon decided to make a new and better class of frigates. Thus, was born the Constellation class of frigates. How did that go? Not well. With two under construction (USS Constellation and the USS Congress), and the program over budget and behind schedule, the axe came down. Program terminated. Seems naming a ship after Congress was the kiss of death. 

Not the first time the Navy has fumbled the ball. The Zumwalt Class of destroyers was going to be the best of class. The world was going to sit up and take notice of these Star Wars looking ships. Thirty-two of these bad boys were going to be built. However, with the program way, way over budget and behind schedule, the building was stopped at three. The destroyer, which was to replace the Arleigh Burke destroyers, never got a chance. Now we have aging Burke destroyers, with not much in the wings to replace them.

Subs are not much better. The company I worked for in the 1980s got the contract to build this top-secret propeller for the new Seawolf submarine. This sub (again) was going to be best of class, and replace the aging Los Angeles class of attack subs. After three very expensive and problematic subs, the plug was pulled. Now we have a bunch of old Los Angeles class subs and shipyards building the new Virginia class sub as fast as they can go. But at the end of the day, this was another mess.

Finally, the Littoral Class Ship (LSC) was another futurist looking craft to fill an unmet need. Fifty-two were planned with two variants. Then the fifty-two became forty. In 2020, the plug was finally pulled with four very expensive and problematic ships floating around. Some folks wanted to decommission the four, others wanted one more swing for the fences. In any event, the entire ship class was a typical Navy SNAFU. 

Every ship we are still building is over budget and behind schedule. Fact of life. Whatever recipe we had during the Cold War on how to build good ships at a reasonable price was lost in the wind. My advice to Secretary Hegseth is to offshore this task to some of our allies who are good at shipbuilding. There are many things this country does very well, and we should stick to our knitting. Shipbuilding is no longer one of those things.

Meanwhile, China is turning out new ships left and right. Time to send out the SOS signal - we are taking on water and starting to list.