US Navy faces urgent shipbuilding challenges amid global competition

Hey folks, and welcome to another edition of Weapons and Warfare for Straight Arrow News

I'm your host, Ryan Robertson. Just ahead on this week's episode, Beretta is aiming to equip the British Army with their

next close combat rifle by combining advanced technology with traditional craftsmanship. In our Weapon of the Week, we discover some of the innovative features and thoughts behind

the effort. And we check in with a recent Weapon of the Week in our Comps Check segment

as Black Sea Technologies' GARC is put through the paces in the Baltic Sea

But we're going to start with our debrief and a growing sense of urgency surrounding shipbuilding

It's a topic we've covered frequently here on Weapons in Warfare, and it's something that sits high on a long list of priorities for Secretary of the Navy John Phelan

And even though he's only been on the job for a few months, He made a point of it during his recent testimony in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee

What I've learned is this. We are still the dominant naval power, but our adversaries are closing the gap at a concerning accelerating rate

We need to make important cultural and strategic changes in order to maintain our competitive advantage

In plain terms, America is facing unprecedented demand for new warships. So how do we get there

To start answering that question, I visited with Benjamin Plum, an associate partner at

McKinsey and Company a global management consulting firm that working to help the U find a path forward Meeting this surge in demand is truly a daunting challenge

It is going to require us focusing on an aging infrastructure and rehabilitating that infrastructure

It's going to focus largely on attracting talent and retaining that talent

getting people excited about becoming shipbuilders. and it's going to require bringing new technology to bear on the business of shipbuilding in a way

that frankly has never been done. According to a report by Marine Insight, in the U.S., there are

154 private shipyards scattered across 29 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Of those 154, only 10

are big enough to accommodate the size and scale of America's military shipbuilding ambitions

The good news, according to Plum, is the U.S. has the facilities needed

Unfortunately, many of them haven't been updated since the end of World War II

That means bringing new equipment. It means revitalizing the facilities. In some cases, it means just bringing workers undercover so that they're capable of working out of the elements and doing so efficiently

So yard modernization is core to our challenge. Of course, that takes money, something Senator Roger Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed

Services Committee, recently pointed to when talking about the Trump administration's proposed

trillion-dollar budget for the Department of Defense. I must say I am deeply disappointed with the administration fiscal year 2026 budget request for the Navy In particular I disturbed about the shipbuilding account which plummeted to billion from last year billion

That difference is not a small matter. According to a report in Foreign Affairs

China's shipbuilding outpaces the rest of the world by a large margin

each year launching more tonnage than all other countries combined. In fact, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence says China's shipbuilding capacity

is more than 200 times that of the United States. One of the primary issues that we have in the United States right now is that our maritime

infrastructure was built, in some cases, very seriously for the surge in production that

accompanied World War II. Much of that infrastructure has survived. Much of it is still serviceable

but it has not seen the same level of investment that Asian yards have seen in recent decades

And as a result, it is urgently necessary for us to invest in those yards

Another area of concern Plum points to is the workforce. While the industry may be hiring, qualified people aren't lining up for the jobs

According to some estimates, the shipping industry has anywhere from 140,000 to 179,000 unfilled jobs

We have to attract and retain new talent in shipbuilding. Our firm has written quite a bit about the aging out of the workforce

This means that we have failed to attract new talent to the profession of shipbuilding

There are many reasons that that happened but I would broadly say that a lack of focus on and a lack of veneration of shipbuilders over the last 30 or 40 years has contributed to that

problem. Ask anyone involved in the shipbuilding industry and they'll tell you there is no easy way

forward. But there is a path, one that could help the U.S. get back to where proponents say it should

be. What I think is encouraging is we are seeing shipbuilders begin to adopt cutting-edge technology

and we're seeing their core customers really push them to do that. So that means we're looking at

automated welding in a way that's never been deployed in shipbuilding. It means relying on

technologies like digital twins to better understand the production environment and to

better understand the product itself, digital scheduling, right? Shipyards in the past used to

rely on incredibly manual processes to schedule. Now we're looking at generative AI applications

that can really reschedule production in real time in a way that increases throughput and

transparency into production performance. That would be a major piece of the puzzle

because for all of the possible solutions, the DoD's biggest obstacle might just be time

Secretary Phelan recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Navy's top program is six months behind schedule and exceeding the budget by 50%

Despite that, Belen also said he now has a good grasp of the Navy's challenges

and is working on a plan to fix what's broken, recently visiting three foreign shipyards and seven domestic ones

to see how things could be done more efficiently