July 11, 2025:
The U.S. Navy is no longer able to maintain or repair its ships. In an earlier economy move, all the navy ship repair and maintenance facilities were sold off. The worst aspect of this was the loss of skilled shipyard workers. The older ones were retiring and the navy did little to recruit and train replacements. Now, as the United States strives to expand its navy and repair and upgrade current ships, it finds that the resources are lacking. There are no easy solutions. Any fix will take time and a growing chunk of the annual navy budget. The navy also has to get rid of some bad habits. These include micromanaging ships construction and crippling that effort with endless changes, suggestions and general interference.
The current situation is that the U.S. Navy is unable to build enough new ships to replace the fleet it currently has, and it can’t maintain the ships it does have, let alone battle damage to those ships in war. The navy has nearly 500 ships in active service as well as the reserve fleet. The principal vessels are the combat ships, which include 11 aircraft carriers, nine Amphibious Assault Ships for transporting and landing marine battalions, ten LPD Amphibious Dock Landing Ships to supply amphibious operations, fifty SSNs/Nuclear attack submarines, fourteen SSBNs/Ballistic missile-carrying nuclear submarines, four SSGMs/SSBNs converted to carry over a hundred cruise missiles each, one frigate, 13 cruisers, 75 destroyers and about fifty support ships of various types.
Solutions are many. These include American Pacific allies like South Korea and Japan sharing their shipyard facilities and workforce to upgrade USN ship maintenance and upgrade efforts. These two nations have fleets of ships like the USN, and yard workers trained to do work on American ships. The US ships are needed by these countries to confront the growing Chinese naval threat. Our problem is their problem, but a long range solution is something the Americans own.
Similar reform efforts over the last few decades failed because navy officials interfered with construction using endless change requests and modifications of work orders. If this form of malpractice is not eliminated, reforms will fail. It is a navy problem that only navy leaders and managers can fix. Victory is not assured, and results will be visible over the next few years.