Not just yards, but people. A few years ago, a neighbor would pass me whilst walking our Black Lab each morning…always around 0500 or so…one morning he stopped to ask me a question…he was the EB director at HII, responsible for the kluging of SSNs between Newport News and Connecticut…he asked me If I knew anyone reliable looking for a JOB! Said HII and EB were extremely frustrated trying to find and keep folks who:
Were not drug or alcohol abusers
Could obtain a security clearance
And would show up for work…..
So, not just shipyards…but good people with an honest work ethic….
As VADM Rowden said years ago "no one wants to be a volunteer fireman building ships or repairing ships". Meaning sit around at the house for 3 years, not getting paid, and waiting on the next Navy contract to give you 3-4 years of steady pay.
With the rate inflation is going, buying now will be cheaper. I think expanding the yard capacity into the Lakes, is an excellent idea. The problem with building and repairing submarines on the Lakes is getting them to and from the ocean. Seaway limits are just over 26 feet of draft. Under normal conditions, our fast boats have a similar surfaced draft based on released photographs, and boomers are far over that. If it's going to be actual production, not just component work, we're going to need to get boats there. Either trust the canal and locks, or prepare camels to reduce draft.
And today is the 83rd Anniversary of the Two-Ocean Navy act. I doubt we could get another, without staunch Navalists in both the White House and Congress. The last Navalist President was laid to rest 19 years ago.
I believe It’s an active yard, but needs to bring the dry docks back to MIL STD to do any repair work.that’s what congressman Garamendi announced while standing at the dry docks a couple of months ago.
"We should put them in some kind of bureaucratic quarantine until the right Congress and Chief Executive can put them in hospice." Back in the day they would have gotten the "Old Yeller" treatment or at least that final trip to the vet. They have endangered the Nation and our way of life. How far we have fallen in such a relatively short time.
• Current combat force ships: 272 (This is the lowest number since the end of WWI). Minimum requirement per Department of the Navy in 2015 was 308. CNO announced several months ago that the Navy was doing a Force Structure review which will be out soon which he said he expected would document the need for a lot more ships in light of multiplying threats around the world. Minimum requirement per Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Index of Military Readiness is 346 ships. The breakdown below is based on DON requirements:
o 11 CVN (Nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier)
o 88 Large Combatants (Ticonderoga cruisers, Burke Destroyers and Zumwalt Destroyers)
o 52 SSC (Small Surface Combatant such as Littoral Combat Ship)
o 48 SSN (Nuclear Attack Submarine)
o 14 SSBN (Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine)
o 34 LHA/LPD (Amphibious Carrier/Landing Platform Dock)
o 29 Combat logistics ships of various types
o 32 other ships (submarine tenders, combat command ships, Mine Countermeasures ships, Fast Patrol, and Forward Basing)
• Shortage versus Navy minimum requirements in 2015: the Navy is short at least 36 ships and against the consensus requirement is short 74 ships. OBM/DOD guidance limits what the Navy is allowed to submit as its basic requirements so the real minimum requirement as validated by the 1993 Bottom-Up Review, 2014 National Defense Panel, and Heritage Foundation 2016 Index of Military Readiness is 346 or a 21% shortfall. The 1993 BUR is considered the Gold Standard of Force Structure Reviews as it was and is the most comprehensive review of military force structure since the fall of the Soviet Union and every serious study done since then has documented requirements at least as great as was the case when the threat level was the lowest it has been since the end of WWII. The recent COCOM requirement for ships was 450.
• Requirements: $21B per year of SCN is required across the FYDP and beyond to begin catching up to requirements. $21B would represent a modest 15% increase in the shipbuilding account.
• Must separately fund Ohio SSBN replacement by use of National Sea Based Deterrence Fund. National Sea Based Deterrence Fund established by Congress in the FY2015 NDAA to recognize the unique nature of the strategic nuclear deterrence provided by the SSBN that establishes it as a national priority separate and distinct from the Navy’s traditional shipbuilding budget.
1
• There are only 4 companies and a total of 8 shipyards in the entire country capable of building modern U.S. Navy combat ships. (Huntington-Ingalls, General Dynamics, Austal, & Marinette.) The unique and classified nature of Navy combatants requires that the nation retain a robust state of the art shipbuilding industry that is capable of building the world’s most advanced, most capable warships. Because of continuous cutbacks in shipbuilding since the fall of the Soviet Union, the national shipbuilding industry has shrunk. The industry as it stands now has unparalleled capability but limited capacity, i.e. it can only build a few ships at a time. Were external threats to manifest themselves more overtly, the industry will be very challenged to surge into higher production rates which is another reason why now while we have the chance, the Navy’s shipbuilding budget should be increased to the $21B+ range and kept there for the foreseeable future while the nation attempts to build up the Navy to known requirements. Current shipbuilders and their products are listed below:
o Bath Iron Works builds DDG 51 class and DDG 1000 ships
o Electric Boat builds Virginia class SSNs
o NASSCO builds RO-RO, TAK(E), Auxiliary and ESB (Expeditionary Mobile Base).
o Newport News Shipbuilding builds CVNs and Virginia class SSNs
o Ingalls builds DDG 51 class, LHA 6 class and LPD 17 class for the Navy and NSC (National Security Cutter) for the USCG and is leading the design for the BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense ship) and LX(R) (replacement for aging LSD fleet).
o Austal builds the LCS and EFP (Expeditionary Fast Transport built for Military Sealift Command)
o Marinette builds the LCS
o Avondale builds the LPD 17 class amphibious ship
Sources:
Congressional Research Service Report: Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress, 27 May 2106
2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength, the Heritage Foundation, October 2015
Naval History and Heritage Command
Shipbuilder Council of America
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Deploying Beyond Their Means, America’s Navy and Marine Corps at a Tipping Point, 18 November 2105
However, it prompted me to dust off and revisit a couple of related histories that I highly recommend vis a vis shipyard capacity. These are Carew's "Becoming the Arsenal" and Heinrich's "Warship Builders."
Heinrich's work focuses on major warship construction for WWII, primarily in the Naval Shipyards. Carew's work is broader, setting the stage for industrial mobilization in the history of WWI experience and the politics of the Depression years. His focus is on industrial mobilization in support of WWII, and from a Naval perspective is focused largely on sealift and minor combattants. Taken together, they offer a rather comprehensive view of the topic for the sea services.
These are some of the thought provoking and, for me, unexpected insights gleaned from these two works:
US economic mobilization planning for WWII was seriously underway by 1938, much earlier than I realized and almost a third of a decade before the US entered the war. In CDR Sal speak, almost a World War before the World War. The decision to fully mobilize significantly predated Pearl Harbor.... May/June 1940.
We generally think of mass industrial production as the "big club" for logistics, but for warship production it was Navy Yards that turned out the overwhelming majority of warships. Most civilian yards could not handle the technical demands of building warships. In the case of submarines, built in both civilian and government yards, the lead government yard (Portsmouth, NH) was far more productive than the lead civilian yard (EB). EB averaged 405 days per ship, Portsmouth 214 days!
Critical bottlenecks (especially sole or limited source components) controlled the pace of combattant shipbuilding, along with the dramatic expansion of drydocks and ways in only a couple of years.
Mass production capacity was paced by labor and transportation shortages, and facilitated (for shipbuilding) by a high/low mix concept of low tech DE's and Liberty Ships built in commercial yards to commercial standards.
There's lots more to be digested from the two books, but this rereading, coupled with the CSIS study, and after action analysis from the Brits' Falklands campaign puts an exclamation mark on this column.
It also invites further thought about implications of the Ukrainian war for current logistics planning. It is noteworthy to consider:
How fast we have burned through munitions stockpiles (to the point of stripping US prepositioned stocks of howitzer shells in Israel and S. Korea);
How difficult it will be to ramp up production of high mix armaments and munitions;
What that implies about the nature of the Ukrainian war as it becomes a long war, fought with older low tech material; and
What it means to strategic vulnerability vis a vis the PRC if the West and Russia burn through high mix capabilities while the PRC stands on the sidelines conserving theirs.
....RE: Bartlett Maritime: I grew up in Lorain, OH. We had a yard there once - American Shipbuilding and Dry Dock. My Dad did just shy of 20 years there and turned off the lights in the Engineering Office. If you look it up on Google Maps, just a little south of the big drawbridge on the Black River, you can see what's left of it after deranged union demands killed it nearly forty years ago. It's all condos and marina docks now, sitting next to what used to be a thousand foot drydock.
I'm not sure where exactly Bartlett wants to build this - a mile or so south of the Lofton Henderson Bridge seems to be where everybody thinks it would go. There's room there for a couple of drydocks big enough to take any sub in the fleet, but that's where the good news ends. First, you've got to find a workforce. Lorain once built Fords, created steel, and built ships - and it's ALL gone now, along with the people who did those things and the local infrastructure that supported it. The drydocks will have to be enclosed, because working outside during a Lake Erie winter is nightmarish. Dredging shouldn't be a problem, but ice is going to be an issue. Ohio EPA will be hovering over every single operation, and the environmentalists will be crawling out of the woodwork. The terrain will need a lot of work, and going back to the weather, for a good chunk of the year you won't be able to do anything.
I'd love nothing more for this to work, I truly do - but the Lorain plan may well realistically be a non-starter. Cleveland or Toledo might be much better locations.
Totally concur - build, build, build. Key misses by the Japanese on the attack on Pearl Harbor was their failed to take out the shipyard and fuel facilities. I went through overhaul in Pearl almost 50 years ago. I hope it is still in good shape. Our fuel facilities at Red Hill are also endangered.
Heck, all the Blue Bastions that gave up their yards for BoHo housing might be amenable to getting those jobs back. If it weren't for the 3 hour commutes to get to affordable housing. Though mebbe Frisco could condo those empty office towers.
Seems like with a pro-union administration this might be a golden pork opportunity to create union jobs with a new yard in Ohio along with all the porky support programs like training at the local community colleges to hire more teachers.
Even if it's 5:1 pork to product we still get something out to the fleet.
Restart Mare Island? They built plenty of submarines.
https://garamendi.house.gov/media/press-releases/garamendi-mare-island-dry-dock-announce-historic-investment-shipyard
And PS: I love the Ohio option!!!
Not just yards, but people. A few years ago, a neighbor would pass me whilst walking our Black Lab each morning…always around 0500 or so…one morning he stopped to ask me a question…he was the EB director at HII, responsible for the kluging of SSNs between Newport News and Connecticut…he asked me If I knew anyone reliable looking for a JOB! Said HII and EB were extremely frustrated trying to find and keep folks who:
Were not drug or alcohol abusers
Could obtain a security clearance
And would show up for work…..
So, not just shipyards…but good people with an honest work ethic….
Damn, we’re screwed!
As VADM Rowden said years ago "no one wants to be a volunteer fireman building ships or repairing ships". Meaning sit around at the house for 3 years, not getting paid, and waiting on the next Navy contract to give you 3-4 years of steady pay.
Lessons Not Learned.
With the rate inflation is going, buying now will be cheaper. I think expanding the yard capacity into the Lakes, is an excellent idea. The problem with building and repairing submarines on the Lakes is getting them to and from the ocean. Seaway limits are just over 26 feet of draft. Under normal conditions, our fast boats have a similar surfaced draft based on released photographs, and boomers are far over that. If it's going to be actual production, not just component work, we're going to need to get boats there. Either trust the canal and locks, or prepare camels to reduce draft.
And today is the 83rd Anniversary of the Two-Ocean Navy act. I doubt we could get another, without staunch Navalists in both the White House and Congress. The last Navalist President was laid to rest 19 years ago.
Trained shipyard workers are another blockage
The navy is lucky to have 4 yards as they tried for a decade, unsuccessfully, to decom PNSY.
I believe It’s an active yard, but needs to bring the dry docks back to MIL STD to do any repair work.that’s what congressman Garamendi announced while standing at the dry docks a couple of months ago.
"We should put them in some kind of bureaucratic quarantine until the right Congress and Chief Executive can put them in hospice." Back in the day they would have gotten the "Old Yeller" treatment or at least that final trip to the vet. They have endangered the Nation and our way of life. How far we have fallen in such a relatively short time.
I wrote this paper for Congressman Mark Meadows in 2016.
Brent Ramsey
Updated 14 August 2016
shrblr@bellsouth.net
Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Background
• Current combat force ships: 272 (This is the lowest number since the end of WWI). Minimum requirement per Department of the Navy in 2015 was 308. CNO announced several months ago that the Navy was doing a Force Structure review which will be out soon which he said he expected would document the need for a lot more ships in light of multiplying threats around the world. Minimum requirement per Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Index of Military Readiness is 346 ships. The breakdown below is based on DON requirements:
o 11 CVN (Nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier)
o 88 Large Combatants (Ticonderoga cruisers, Burke Destroyers and Zumwalt Destroyers)
o 52 SSC (Small Surface Combatant such as Littoral Combat Ship)
o 48 SSN (Nuclear Attack Submarine)
o 14 SSBN (Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine)
o 34 LHA/LPD (Amphibious Carrier/Landing Platform Dock)
o 29 Combat logistics ships of various types
o 32 other ships (submarine tenders, combat command ships, Mine Countermeasures ships, Fast Patrol, and Forward Basing)
• Shortage versus Navy minimum requirements in 2015: the Navy is short at least 36 ships and against the consensus requirement is short 74 ships. OBM/DOD guidance limits what the Navy is allowed to submit as its basic requirements so the real minimum requirement as validated by the 1993 Bottom-Up Review, 2014 National Defense Panel, and Heritage Foundation 2016 Index of Military Readiness is 346 or a 21% shortfall. The 1993 BUR is considered the Gold Standard of Force Structure Reviews as it was and is the most comprehensive review of military force structure since the fall of the Soviet Union and every serious study done since then has documented requirements at least as great as was the case when the threat level was the lowest it has been since the end of WWII. The recent COCOM requirement for ships was 450.
• Requirements: $21B per year of SCN is required across the FYDP and beyond to begin catching up to requirements. $21B would represent a modest 15% increase in the shipbuilding account.
• Must separately fund Ohio SSBN replacement by use of National Sea Based Deterrence Fund. National Sea Based Deterrence Fund established by Congress in the FY2015 NDAA to recognize the unique nature of the strategic nuclear deterrence provided by the SSBN that establishes it as a national priority separate and distinct from the Navy’s traditional shipbuilding budget.
1
• There are only 4 companies and a total of 8 shipyards in the entire country capable of building modern U.S. Navy combat ships. (Huntington-Ingalls, General Dynamics, Austal, & Marinette.) The unique and classified nature of Navy combatants requires that the nation retain a robust state of the art shipbuilding industry that is capable of building the world’s most advanced, most capable warships. Because of continuous cutbacks in shipbuilding since the fall of the Soviet Union, the national shipbuilding industry has shrunk. The industry as it stands now has unparalleled capability but limited capacity, i.e. it can only build a few ships at a time. Were external threats to manifest themselves more overtly, the industry will be very challenged to surge into higher production rates which is another reason why now while we have the chance, the Navy’s shipbuilding budget should be increased to the $21B+ range and kept there for the foreseeable future while the nation attempts to build up the Navy to known requirements. Current shipbuilders and their products are listed below:
o Bath Iron Works builds DDG 51 class and DDG 1000 ships
o Electric Boat builds Virginia class SSNs
o NASSCO builds RO-RO, TAK(E), Auxiliary and ESB (Expeditionary Mobile Base).
o Newport News Shipbuilding builds CVNs and Virginia class SSNs
o Ingalls builds DDG 51 class, LHA 6 class and LPD 17 class for the Navy and NSC (National Security Cutter) for the USCG and is leading the design for the BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense ship) and LX(R) (replacement for aging LSD fleet).
o Austal builds the LCS and EFP (Expeditionary Fast Transport built for Military Sealift Command)
o Marinette builds the LCS
o Avondale builds the LPD 17 class amphibious ship
Sources:
Congressional Research Service Report: Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress, 27 May 2106
2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength, the Heritage Foundation, October 2015
Naval History and Heritage Command
Shipbuilder Council of America
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Deploying Beyond Their Means, America’s Navy and Marine Corps at a Tipping Point, 18 November 2105
1993 Bottom-Up Review
2
The recent study, "Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment (link below) is a sobering read, focused largely on logistics/sustainment.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/empty-bins-wartime-environment-challenge-us-defense-industrial-base
However, it prompted me to dust off and revisit a couple of related histories that I highly recommend vis a vis shipyard capacity. These are Carew's "Becoming the Arsenal" and Heinrich's "Warship Builders."
Heinrich's work focuses on major warship construction for WWII, primarily in the Naval Shipyards. Carew's work is broader, setting the stage for industrial mobilization in the history of WWI experience and the politics of the Depression years. His focus is on industrial mobilization in support of WWII, and from a Naval perspective is focused largely on sealift and minor combattants. Taken together, they offer a rather comprehensive view of the topic for the sea services.
These are some of the thought provoking and, for me, unexpected insights gleaned from these two works:
US economic mobilization planning for WWII was seriously underway by 1938, much earlier than I realized and almost a third of a decade before the US entered the war. In CDR Sal speak, almost a World War before the World War. The decision to fully mobilize significantly predated Pearl Harbor.... May/June 1940.
We generally think of mass industrial production as the "big club" for logistics, but for warship production it was Navy Yards that turned out the overwhelming majority of warships. Most civilian yards could not handle the technical demands of building warships. In the case of submarines, built in both civilian and government yards, the lead government yard (Portsmouth, NH) was far more productive than the lead civilian yard (EB). EB averaged 405 days per ship, Portsmouth 214 days!
Critical bottlenecks (especially sole or limited source components) controlled the pace of combattant shipbuilding, along with the dramatic expansion of drydocks and ways in only a couple of years.
Mass production capacity was paced by labor and transportation shortages, and facilitated (for shipbuilding) by a high/low mix concept of low tech DE's and Liberty Ships built in commercial yards to commercial standards.
There's lots more to be digested from the two books, but this rereading, coupled with the CSIS study, and after action analysis from the Brits' Falklands campaign puts an exclamation mark on this column.
It also invites further thought about implications of the Ukrainian war for current logistics planning. It is noteworthy to consider:
How fast we have burned through munitions stockpiles (to the point of stripping US prepositioned stocks of howitzer shells in Israel and S. Korea);
How difficult it will be to ramp up production of high mix armaments and munitions;
What that implies about the nature of the Ukrainian war as it becomes a long war, fought with older low tech material; and
What it means to strategic vulnerability vis a vis the PRC if the West and Russia burn through high mix capabilities while the PRC stands on the sidelines conserving theirs.
Food for further thought.
....RE: Bartlett Maritime: I grew up in Lorain, OH. We had a yard there once - American Shipbuilding and Dry Dock. My Dad did just shy of 20 years there and turned off the lights in the Engineering Office. If you look it up on Google Maps, just a little south of the big drawbridge on the Black River, you can see what's left of it after deranged union demands killed it nearly forty years ago. It's all condos and marina docks now, sitting next to what used to be a thousand foot drydock.
I'm not sure where exactly Bartlett wants to build this - a mile or so south of the Lofton Henderson Bridge seems to be where everybody thinks it would go. There's room there for a couple of drydocks big enough to take any sub in the fleet, but that's where the good news ends. First, you've got to find a workforce. Lorain once built Fords, created steel, and built ships - and it's ALL gone now, along with the people who did those things and the local infrastructure that supported it. The drydocks will have to be enclosed, because working outside during a Lake Erie winter is nightmarish. Dredging shouldn't be a problem, but ice is going to be an issue. Ohio EPA will be hovering over every single operation, and the environmentalists will be crawling out of the woodwork. The terrain will need a lot of work, and going back to the weather, for a good chunk of the year you won't be able to do anything.
I'd love nothing more for this to work, I truly do - but the Lorain plan may well realistically be a non-starter. Cleveland or Toledo might be much better locations.
People may not like it but there is a option B till we get things fixed at home: Foreign shipyards, Japan and Korea come to mind.
Totally concur - build, build, build. Key misses by the Japanese on the attack on Pearl Harbor was their failed to take out the shipyard and fuel facilities. I went through overhaul in Pearl almost 50 years ago. I hope it is still in good shape. Our fuel facilities at Red Hill are also endangered.
Heck, all the Blue Bastions that gave up their yards for BoHo housing might be amenable to getting those jobs back. If it weren't for the 3 hour commutes to get to affordable housing. Though mebbe Frisco could condo those empty office towers.
Seems like with a pro-union administration this might be a golden pork opportunity to create union jobs with a new yard in Ohio along with all the porky support programs like training at the local community colleges to hire more teachers.
Even if it's 5:1 pork to product we still get something out to the fleet.