Will the US Navy build ships overseas?

 

Given the current parlous state of US shipyards and shipbuilding, is it time to seriously consider building our warships overseas?  The Telegraph thinks so.

When [the US Navy has] imported a design, such as the much loved Knox class and now the Constellation class (based on the French and Italian Fregate Europeenne Multi-Mission – FREMM – design), they have always built it in the US. 

As an aside, the Constellation class is a live case study in what happens if you select a foreign design and then meddle with it. It is now estimated that 85 per cent of the Constellation design is different to the FREMM, undoing any savings in cost and time and throwing away most of the guarantees of capability and reliability. President-elect Trump commented on it this week, saying, “people playing around and tinkering and changing the design… they’re not smart and they take something and they make it worse for a lot more money”. Given how the Franken-FREMM is taking shape, this is actually quite polite. 

Much of Trump’s interview was in response to the Congressional Budget Office’s “analysis of the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan” which outlined the following key points:

First, the 2025 plan increases shipbuilding costs by 46 per cent annually in real terms compared to recent averages. The CBO estimates $40 billion yearly over 30 years, 17 per cent above Navy projections, with the total budget rising from $255 billion to $340 billion by 2054.

Second, the fleet would decrease to 283 ships by 2027 before growing to 390 by 2054 from the current 295. The Navy will buy 364 new ships, focusing on current generation and smaller vessels. Firepower will dip initially but increase as the fleet expands.

Third, a significant increase in the size of the industrial base, especially for nuclear submarines, is required.

So: can’t afford the plan, will reduce in size and lethality in the short term, major industrial expansion is required to reverse this decline. This makes for difficult reading for two reasons. First, it is clear the US cannot scale up its shipyards as it needs to on any reasonable time scale: it cannot even fully staff its existing yards, let alone open new ones. Second, you could change dollars and pounds and reduce the numbers (a lot) and a report on the Royal Navy would say almost the same.

Trump carries on in the same interview saying, “We’re going to be announcing some things that are going to be very good having to do with the Navy. We need ships. We have to get ships… We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready”.

Looking for signs as to what he meant by ‘others’ and ‘bid them out’, many have looked to South Korea based on something he said last November shortly after being elected. “The US shipbuilding industry needs South Korea’s help and cooperation. We are aware of Korea’s construction capabilities and should cooperate with Korea in repair and maintenance. I want to talk more specifically in this area.”

As if to show the Trump effect, just the hint was enough to see Korean ship builders Hanwha Ocean and HJ Shipbuilding & Construction stock prices showing strong gains on the day (10 and 15 percent) while the shares of Hyundai’s shipbuilding subsidiaries and Samsung Heavy Industries increased a little (three percent).

It’s also not clear if he was referring to warships or support vessels but either way, South Korea has pedigree. He could certainly use them to build ships for the Military Sealift Command ... Fleet auxiliaries aren’t as complicated to build as warships, though more so than most kinds of commercial shipping. But Korean yards have also produced some very complex warships, including ones carrying the powerful US-made Aegis combat system – the gold standard of warship technology.

. . .

Consider this: Hyundai Heavy Industries’ shipbuilding division in South Korea is the biggest shipbuilder in the world. It produces most classes of warship, including submarines, as well as huge tonnages of commercial vessels. It has around 14,000 employees. This is actually fewer people than work in the shipbuilding divisions of BAE Systems plc, which are only capable of producing sharply limited numbers of warships and auxiliaries, very slowly and expensively.

There's more at the link (article may be paywalled).

I know "America First!" purists will scream blue murder at the thought of offshoring the Navy's new ships, but our own shipyards are simply too backlogged on current maintenance and construction to even consider working faster or harder.  In many cases, they're hampered by a severe shortage of skilled labor, which can virtually name its own price to work in other industries as well.

We could start by contracting for support ships - unarmed vessels.  These are basically merchant ships built to military specifications, perhaps with tougher hulls and plating to withstand prolonged sea time, plus specialized equipment for refueling and replenishment at sea.  There's no reason why actual warships could not be built as well.  South Korea already produces its own designs, armed with American weapons and electronics and technology.  To add a production line for Constellation-class frigates or Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers wouldn't appear to offer any significant problem on the face of it.  It's certainly no more of a security risk than already exists, because almost all our current weapons systems have already been sold to South Korea and installed by its builders in their own warships.  If anyone planned to steal information about them, they've already had the opportunity.

I think this idea has tremendous possibilities.  Why not try it and see?

Peter