There's no silver bullet to the US Navy's shipbuilding woes: report

The US Navy's fleet size has shrunk considerably due to problems with new ship classes. A new report found there's no single solution that will fix these issues. The Navy has fleet size and readiness goals as it continues to prepare for a potential war with China. The US Navy faces a number of challenges in its goal of growing the fleet. None are easily or quickly solvable. A new report from naval and defense policy experts assesses that a number of actions are urgently needed across shipbuilders and the government to fix the Navy's delays and cost overruns, especially as China's fleet surpasses the US ' in size and adopts new technologies to become a dominant naval power. Many of the Navy's problems, including retiring more ships than it is building, a slowed and expensive shipbuilding process with only a handful of commercial shipyards, and program mismanagement, trace back to the end of the Cold War. They've gotten worse in the decades since and are reaching a boiling point as the US military attempts to focus on countering China's military rise . "Despite the Navy's plans for growing the fleet and bipartisan efforts and funding from Congress, the US shipbuilding enterprise - including the Navy, Department of Defense, Congress, and industry - has failed to consistently produce ships at the scale, speed, and cost demanded," authors of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, or CSIS, report wrote. Among the failed projects: Two types of littoral combat ships, an advanced stealth destroyer the service will only have three of, and the newly canceled Constellation-class frigate. No one entity, incident, or program is solely to blame. Washington's demand signal for building new vessels has been inconsistent, leaving shipbuilders unable to plan long-term projects. And the Navy's requirement process and ship designs have sometimes resulted in vessels not meeting expectations, being delayed by years, and coming in far over budget. Right now, Navy Secretary John Phelan , officials in DoD, and shipyards are focused on fixing these problems and avoiding the same mistakes in the future. Shipbuilding is a top priority, and it's gotten a lot of attention throughout the first year of the second Trump administration. But, per the report, there is no single solution to arrest the decline in American shipbuilding, "and resolving any one of the underlying issues does not guarantee a drastic improvement of the situation." Instead, the Navy, Congress, and shipyards will have to find the right way forward through years of work. The Navy's battle force, including surface ships, submarines, and aircraft carriers, peaked during the build-up in the second Reagan administration at 568. After the Cold War, the number dwindled, as the US focused on land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the fleet hit its low point of 271 in 2015. A year later, the Navy released plans of a 355-ship goal, which increased in 2023 under the Biden administration to 381 and 134 large uncrewed surface and underwater vehicles. These goals...

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