A report has found the US shipbuilding industrial base has been unable to meet targets for warship manufacture and repair set out by the US Navy, amid inadequate planning by the service and a lack of coordination between stakeholders.
In a late-February report into private shipbuilding and repair by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), it was detailed the US Navy needed a “strategic approach” for its investments into the sector.
The GAO report stated that private companies the US Navy contracts to build vessels and repair surface ships were “key components” of the service’s ship industrial base, augmenting the work conducted at the public naval shipyards.
Regarding the private shipbuilding industrial base, the GAO said it had not met the US Navy’s goals in recent history. However, the US Navy’s planning “continues to base its goals on an assumption that the industrial base will perform better on cost and schedule” than it had historically.
Similar problems were identified in the ship repair sector, with companies potentially unable to take on unplanned work due to infrastructure or workforce limitations, despite some improvement and investment since 2019.
“For example, a dry dock of the right size may not be empty when needed,” the GAO reported.
Further, the private sector industrial base was “critical” to the US Navy’s plans to increase its fleet size and mission readiness. However, ships were often ready “much later” than expected and at a much higher cost.
A 2024 GAO report found the US Navy was also contributing to shipbuilding delays due to poor design practices.
Inadequate workload projections among failings
According to GAO figures, the DoD spent more than $5.8bn on the shipbuilding industrial base from fiscal years 2014 through 2023, with plans to spend an additional $12.6bn through fiscal year 2028.
However, the US Navy and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) were judged to be failing to fully coordinate shipbuilding investments to prevent duplication or overlap in spending.
For example, the US Navy and OSD do not coordinate across all investment efforts – such as between submarines and surface ships – though they both make related investments in workforce and infrastructure for these ship categories, the GAO reported.
Further, the US Navy has yet to fully establish performance metrics and that without “better visibility” of data, both the service and the OSD could not be certain that their investments were an effective use of US federal funding.
Another issue identified was that the US Navy had “struggled” to provide industry with a stable workload projection, with its plans for building and repairing ships varying year to year, hindering efforts to encourage the industry to invest in needed infrastructure.
