Niccolo Soldo from his weekend wrap-up of various news articles that caught his eye:

Artist’s rendering of the US Navy’s FFG(X) Constellation-class guided missile frigate. Initial contract awarded 30 April, 2020, but delivery of the first ship is not expected until 2029 due to design changes and other issues.
US Navy image via Wikimedia Commons.

One data point that works in favour of American Declinism is the US Navy’s inability to not just keep up with the Chinese in terms of the production of ships, but to also maintain its own production output. Many lightly-armed littoral combat ships have been retired, for example, with nothing to replace them.

These production setbacks have been pointed out to me, with one mutual on Twitter/X reiterating the point so that I get it (I do!). This is an actual problem that requires solving, and fast. It is partially to blame for the Americans effectively ceding the Red Sea to the Houthis (for now).

AP has done a partial deep-dive (horrible language here, I apologize) on this issue:

The labor shortage is one of myriad challenges that have led to backlogs in ship production and maintenance at a time when the Navy faces expanding global threats. Combined with shifting defense priorities, last-minute design changes and cost overruns, it has put the U.S. behind China in the number of ships at its disposal — and the gap is widening.

Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, says Eric Labs, a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. “I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.”

Marinette Marine is under contract to build six guided-missile frigates — the Navy’s newest surface warships — with options to build four more. But it only has enough workers to produce one frigate a year, according to Labs.

A lot of the guys who know how to do this work are retiring or have already retired. Sound familiar?

One of the industry’s chief problems is the struggle to hire and retain laborers for the challenging work of building new ships as graying veterans retire, taking decades of experience with them.

Shipyards across the country have created training academies and partnered with technical colleges to provide workers with the skills they need to construct high-tech warships. Submarine builders and the Navy formed an alliance to promote manufacturing careers, and shipyards are offering perks to retain workers once they’re hired.

Andreini trained for his job at Marinette through a program at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. Prior to that, he spent several years as a production line welder, making components for garbage trucks. He said some of his buddies are held back by the stigma that shipbuilding is a “crappy work environment, and it’s unsafe.”

The problem:

Much of the blame for U.S. shipbuilding’s current woes lies with the Navy, which frequently changes requirements, requests upgrades and tweaks designs after shipbuilders have begun construction.

That’s seen in cost overruns, technological challenges and delays in the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Ford; the spiking of a gun system for a stealth destroyer program after its rocket-assisted projectiles became too costly; and the early retirement of some of the Navy’s lightly armored littoral combat ships, which were prone to breaking down.

The Navy vowed to learn from those past lessons with the new frigates they are building at Marinette Marine. The frigates are prized because they’re less costly to produce than larger destroyers but have similar weapon systems.

Now check this out:

The Navy chose a ship design already in use by navies in France and Italy instead of starting from scratch. The idea was that 15% of the vessel would be updated to meet U.S. Navy specifications, while 85% would remain unchanged, reducing costs and speeding construction.

Instead, the opposite happened: The Navy redesigned 85% of the ship, resulting in cost increases and construction delays, said Bryan Clark, an analyst at the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute. Construction of the first-in-class Constellation warship, which began in August 2022, is now three years behind schedule, with delivery pushed back to 2029.

The final design still isn’t completed.

Shifting threats:

Throughout its history, the Navy has had to adapt to varying perils, whether it be the Cold War of past decades or current threats including war in the Middle East, growing competition from Chinese and Russian navies, piracy off the coast of Somalia and persistent attacks on commercial ships by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

And that’s not all. The consolidation of shipyards and funding uncertainties have disrupted the cadence of ship construction and stymied long-term investments and planning, says Matthew Paxton of the Shipbuilders Council of America, a national trade association.

“We’ve been dealing with inconsistent shipbuilding plans for years,” Paxton said. “When we finally start ramping up, the Navy is shocked that we lost members of our workforce.”

How is the US Navy supposed to protect Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion?