US shipbuilding challenges a matter of national defense

In World War II, there were more than a million people working in American shipyards

We've been mired in bureaucratic inertia, budgetary gridlock in Congress, and chronic shortfalls in shipbuilding investment

Now there are fewer than 200,000 of these jobs nationwide. Our adversaries have been building and getting better

It's not just a problem for the U.S. economy, but for its national defense

right now the u.s navy has less than 300 warships in its fleet the service is trying to get to 381

in the next 30 years china constructed more ships last year alone than we have since world war ii

china is not interested in being number two they're attempting to dominate the seas and

beyond that the global order our competitors are not waiting for us to get our act together

They see weakness and they will try to exploit it. Of course, it's not just the Navy's new secretary, John Phelan

highlighting the increasingly important task of keeping pace with China at sea

It's been a theme in Navy circles for a while, but... The conversation is louder than it's been

and it's happening in Congress and in the White House and in industry

So this awareness seems to be higher, at least by my recollection, than I recall in the past

but it's going to take a national effort to get after it. Phelan's focus on shipbuilding is welcome news for Navy leadership

who've often been at odds with Congress about the best way to meet the demands put on the maritime forces

Hitting the Navy's goal of 381 warships in the next three decades will require not just new construction

but additional work to keep the ships currently sailing operational for as long as possible

I use cruisers as an example. To me, I'm a cruiser sailor

I love cruisers We had them for a long time My ability to keep them at sea to do that mission is challenging increasingly challenged because of HM hull cracking and tank cracking

So to me, if I can't keep that ship at sea, it's of no use to the combatant commander or the president or the secretary of defense

The increased attention on shipbuilding, of course, isn't happening in a vacuum

Many of the players in the industry saw this coming and were proactive in trying to meet the need

Included in that supply chain are companies like Fairbanks Force Defense. The Wisconsin-based manufacturer makes all sorts of parts and fittings that go on U.S. warships

Some upkeep can't keep a ship out of service for months. You open things up, you do an inspection, you write a report

That report then has to go up and through several people and get approved

And then it comes back down and they say go. And then you might need parts, you might need machine capability, you might need additional resources that you don't have set up

So it's that whole process of from the time that they start to the time that they get done with lots of delay opportunities and lots of opportunities for long-term problems like parts availability

So the company created its pit stock program where repair crews pretty much bring the entire shop to the ship

So when you show up with, you know, maybe you don't need all the parts that you bring, but you have it just in case

Is that kind of the idea? That's also true. So we bring all the mandatory replacement parts that we have for the activities we plan

We're also bringing contingency parts along for the things that you know might bite you when you get into the process

And how we do that then is instead of sending a report up and waiting for a response

every day we meet with the right folks and we talk about those and we can approve it that fast and we can move that fast

So everything's adjudicated in real time and it allows us to keep moving

Of course, programs like Pit Stop are not possible without deep pools of talent and resources

Pools that could span the nation. That why FDM CEO George Whittier says the Navy should look to companies like his more often I have about 1 employees We are not labor constrained And there is a tremendous opportunity to take work out of the shipyards and bring that into the Midwest and start to get more work done

We're not really, I don't think we're utilizing the Mississippi River at all. And so we could look at how do we put, how do we make, you know, equipment

How do we make modules? How do we do things? put it on barges, send it down to the Gulf, send it wherever it needs to go so that the shipyards themselves can become more of an assembly plant rather than a fabrication plant

Turning shipyards into fabrication plants isn't impossible, but first, it would require bringing those shipyards fully into the digital age

And at HII's Newport News Shipbuilding, that job falls to Colleen Graham, the chief of AI and digital innovation

So I would put forward that AI, digital, data management, all of these modern technical capabilities are the 21st century equivalent of the Henry Ford's factory lines and whatnot of the 1930s

As the largest manufacturer of U.S. warships, Graham says it's absolutely critical HII adapts to the latest tech

Otherwise, it risks insolvency. insolvency. Of the companies on the Fortune 500 list in 2003, more than half don't exist anymore

and a lot of that is because of the digital disruption. But Graham says to succeed

you can't chase shiny objects. You have to solve real-world problems, like making sure all of the

equipment and the manufacturing process gets a digital upgrade so the work can be monitored

The tech geek term for that is industrial internet of things. So very little IIoT capability in the shipyard

So kind of toward, you know, solve real problems. Don't just chase shiny things

I'm a data scientist. All the data scientists for NNS work for me

And they want to do data science. But you're not going to be doing any machine learning or any AI when you don't have the data

So it was very critical to actually launch a program which we call Digital Plant to start to connect equipment up so that we could get the data flowing Graham says through a Digital Plant pilot program at HII her team was expecting to see a 30 increase in output after the upgrades

but it actually saw a 50% increase instead, which sets the project up as a sort of lighthouse, in Graham's words

which the industry can use to chart new paths of innovation. Still, the hard truth is, even with all the innovations AI may bring to shipyards

and even if the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base diversifies enough to include more suppliers from around the country

it might not be enough to hit 381 naval ships in the next 30 years

And none of what we're talking about right now accounts for what happens if the U.S. goes to war

where we might lose ships altogether in conflicts. which is why foreign companies like HD Hyundai Heavy Industries

may be called upon to play a role in building America's future fleet

The South Korean shipbuilder is already the world's largest, building Aegis-enabled warships for South Korea

that are very similar to U.S. guided missile destroyers. HHI says it can build up to five of the vessels every year for the United States Navy

While the U.S. doesn't typically like to have its warships built by other nations

it's not necessarily opposed to the idea either. Hanwha, another South Korean shipbuilder, did just perform maintenance on a U.S. naval support vessel

Pulling from his business background, Secretary Phelan says at this point in the planning process

there are no bad ideas when it comes to revitalizing U.S. shipbuilding

This is a big, big priority for the president. and he is extremely focused on it, and I certainly don't want to disappoint him

If I do, you'll probably have another sec-nav here in a year or two

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