On 1 October 1995, the U.S. Navy made the fateful decision to designate the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) as the operational reserve carrier. This allowed the Navy to fund the carrier at 50 percent of her maintenance requirements to save money. The decision set in motion a series of events that led both to a law requiring the Navy to maintain 11 operational aircraft carriers and to the Navy having only 10 operational carriers for more than four years.
Despite the reduction in the John F. Kennedy’s maintenance funding, the Navy continued to operate her as if she were a regular in-service carrier, with two more deployments between 1995 and 2001. During this period the number of operational carriers in the fleet varied between 12 and 13. In 2001, just prior to a scheduled deployment, the John F. Kennedy was found to have two catapults and three aircraft elevators out of service. Feigning shock over the material condition of a ship it had funded at 50 percent for six years, Navy leaders fired the commanding officer and two department heads.
After a significant unplanned investment to improve her material condition, the carrier conducted her 17th and final deployment in 2004. After her return, the Navy decided the carrier’s upcoming complex overhaul in 2005 was too expensive and, instead of doing it, tied the ship up in Mayport, Florida, until decommissioning her in August 2007. This essentially dropped the number of operational carriers to 11. At the time of her decommissioning, the John F. Kennedy was only 38 years old, with a planned service life of 48 years. Thus, the Navy surrendered 10 years of an aircraft carrier’s service life. Concerned with the size of the carrier fleet, Congress passed a law in 2007 mandating the Navy maintain a minimum of 11 operational carriers.
It was at this time the Navy realized it had another problem. A change in the acquisition strategy for the first Gerald R. Ford–class carrier made it apparent the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was not going to deliver in 2013 as a one-for-one replacement for the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). Knowing it would be down to 10 operational carriers, the Navy approached Congress in 2009 looking for a waiver to the 11-carrier requirement. Congress refused and asked the Navy for options.
Over several years, the Navy presented to Congress the costs and timelines to restore the John F. Kennedy or the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) to service and found in each case the industrial base did not have the skills or capacity to return them to service on the timeline needed. Keeping the Enterprise in commission longer presented even greater challenges. Frustrated with the lack of options, Congress asked the Navy how much money it would take to accelerate delivery of the Gerald R. Ford (then estimated at 2016) to stay at 11 operational carriers. The Navy responded that it was not a matter of money, because at that point in the build sequence the schedule could be changed only at the margins (months not years). Finally, in 2012, Congress reluctantly agreed to grant the Navy a temporary waiver to go to 10 operational carriers between the inactivation of the Enterprise and the commissioning of the Gerald R. Ford. That waiver was in place until the Gerald R. Ford was finally commissioned in 2017.
The Problem Then Is the Problem Now
If any of this sounds familiar, it should. As with its aircraft carriers between 2005 and 2017, the Navy’s force structure is inadequate because the service has been unable to effectively manage the new construction and ship retirements that determine the size of the force. Managing new construction requires long-term, steady inputs, and construction timelines cannot be changed rapidly (less than five years), even if national needs require a change and no matter how much money is available. If planned properly, ship decommissionings can be adjusted like a rheostat up or down to shape the size of the force based on national needs. That near-term flexibility, however, means absorbing end-of-life sustainment costs. Much like those of a person’s car or health care, these costs grow substantially for each additional year. The Navy boxed itself into a corner on carrier force structure when it found it could not accelerate the delivery of a new carrier and decided the costs to keep the existing platforms in service to meet force structure requirements were too high.
The carrier case shows why the Navy’s force structure has hovered around 285–300 ships for the past 20 years or so, despite multiple force-structure assessments across several administrations—all of which called for a fleet size ranging from 313 to 381 ships—and almost universal recognition that the United States needs a bigger fleet. Several factors have led the Navy to where it is today. There has been a lot of recent discussion about industry’s lack of investments. Industry should, of course, invest in its facilities and become more productive, but this is not the root cause of the problem. The real problem is a structural one created by the Navy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, several presidential administrations, and Congress over the past 30 or more years. There are some immutable laws when it comes to shipbuilding that explain how the Navy fell behind:
• A lack of demand over a relatively short period (1–3 years) will result in a rapid downsizing of shipbuilding and supplier base capacity.
• A long period of lower demand will reduce shipyard hiring and, when senior workers start to retire, skew the experience and productivity levels of the workforce downward.
• The response time for a step increase in demand to re-create a skilled and productive workforce is much longer (5–7 years) than the time it takes to downsize.
• Once construction starts, significantly accelerating a ship delivery is almost impossible—no matter how much money is available.
It also is important to stress that the expected service life of a ship is not set in stone and can be managed with proper planning. The Navy keeps CVNs in service for 50 years, well beyond their originally planned 30-year service life, through active application of a detailed class maintenance plan and could likewise extend the service lives of guided-missile destroyers and large-deck amphibious ships. Submarines present some unique challenges, but the Navy has demonstrated that on a case-by-case basis those can be extended as well.
Table 1 shows Navy shipbuilding procurement between 1982 and 2028. The Navy built on average 5.5 ships per year from 1993 to 2010. In addition, from 1993 to 2027 (the lifespan of a typical Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer [DDG]), the Navy will have ordered only 269 ships. Given those numbers, is it any wonder the Navy cannot get to 313, let alone 381, ships? The fits and starts and the overall number of ships ordered over the past 30 years are the root causes of the relatively small size of the current force. That shipbuilding plan also is to blame for a predictable reduction in the nation’s shipbuilding capacity and the supplier base needed to support it. That, in turn, slows the response time from industry to build more ships, with submarine construction being the poster child of the Navy’s problems. Some reasons for these fits and starts—whether in the Navy’s control or not—include budget constraints; an insatiable appetite for requirements that inflates unit costs for ships; force-structure assessments that routinely vary the number and types of ships needed; a 30-year shipbuilding plan that, despite the Navy’s best intentions, does not deliver predictability; poorly chosen ship designs; and a lack of realism about how much these ships will cost. Each issue deserves closer study.
The Shipyard Worker Problem
Some contend the solution to meeting the new demand signal is to build more shipyards. Setting aside the massive capital investment and time needed to build a new yard, the current industrial base does not lack the physical capacity to build the required number of ships annually to reach 381 ships by approximately 2040. What it lacks is a skilled workforce in the numbers needed to meet that increase in demand. When given a stable and predictable demand, U.S. shipyards have demonstrated they can and will build the skilled workforce necessary to deliver the required number of ships. As examples:
• In 1981, Newport News Shipbuilding laid the keel for CVN-71, and by 1998 had delivered CVN-71 through -75, thus delivering five Nimitz-class CVNs in 17 years, or one every 3.4 years. The next four CVNs (76 through 79) will have taken 28 years to build.
• Between 1981 and 1997, Electric Boat delivered 18 Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), on average more than one per year. The next SSBN (the USS District of Columbia) is scheduled for delivery in 2030, a span of 33 years between deliveries.
• Between 1981 and 1995, Newport News Shipbuilding and Electric Boat delivered 59 Los Angeles–class fast-attack submarines (SSNs), an average of 4.2 per year. Today, the build rate for Virginia-class SSNs is about 1.2 per year.
• Between 1988 and 2012, Ingalls and Bath Iron Works delivered 61 Arleigh Burke–class DDGs, an average of more than 2.5 per year. Between 2013 and 2023, only 11 were delivered.
Those early successes occurred with physical shipbuilding plants that were not nearly as modern as those of today. The size and experience level of the workforce made the difference. And despite recent Navy and industry efforts to grow the workforce, it will take several more years to generate the numbers and experience necessary to return to the productivity levels seen in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Navy could better meet its force-structure challenges by constructing ships on consistent build schedules. It could manage fluctuations in the required force size by adjusting ship service lengths as necessary. Table 2 depicts the ship class requirements contained in the Navy’s most recent force-structure assessment that calls for 381 ships. How often a specific platform is built is determined by dividing the expected service life by the required number of hulls of each platform.
The Congressional Research Service’s Ronald O’Rourke coined the term “continuous production” to describe the build-center mechanism. And retired Navy captains Jerry Hendrix and Brent Sadler recently called for taking steps to keep the existing fleet in service longer while the Navy increases new-construction deliveries.1 The Navy has taken the opposite approach in managing its force structure over the past 30 years.
A New Approach
To get the force structure it needs, the Navy must build on average 12 ships per year based on the build centers in Table 2. Growing the size of the industrial workforce to support that base load is a slow-moving process that will realistically take five or more years. Once the build centers are established, orders for ships should be done on intervals of 10–15 years through multiyear contracts, giving industry time to build the workforce capacity and productivity that comes with serial shipbuilding. This also would give the Navy time to plan for the next flight or follow-on platform, with sufficient time to engage industry early enough to ensure a smooth transition between platforms and avoid the workload valleys seen in previous transitions.
In the near term, the Navy also should work to extend the service life of existing ships. The Secretary of the Navy recently announced the service-life extension of 12 Arleigh Burke–class destroyers and three Ticonderoga-class cruisers. This is a good move that demonstrates the value of adjusting service lives when new-construction deliveries lag or world events dictate. Once the required force structure is established, the Navy should use annual ship retirement reviews as the rheostat to fine-tune numbers up or down based on evolving national security needs.
This is a simple plan, but realizing it will be challenging for all the reasons previously stated. Undoubtedly, the largest challenge is the cost. Not only will building more ships cost more, but the larger numbers will also increase maintenance and manpower costs. Much as the shipbuilding industry is struggling to find the manufacturing workforce necessary to build ships (a national issue that is affecting all manufacturing sectors), the Navy will face similar challenges finding the men and women required to man and maintain these ships. An annual shipbuilding budget of $40 billion is likely required based on the estimated unit costs of each platform today plus additional operations, maintenance, and manpower costs.
Some will argue the nation cannot afford $40 billion or more per year for shipbuilding and the attendant costs to operate, maintain, and man the ships. But of course the nation can afford it. It has a multitrillion dollar annual budget and spends far more than $40 billion per year on many things it deems important. The real question is, should the United States do this? Given today’s security challenges, the facts that the current fleet is already stretched to the breaking point and that 90 percent of the world’s commerce flows by sea, the answer should be a resounding yes. The Navy the nation has today is the Navy it will fight with—and it is not big enough. There are parallels to World War II, but unlike in that war, this time the United States will not have the luxury of waiting for industry to catch up in a conflict with China or other adversaries as it did then when labor and large-scale manufacturing facilities were plentiful. The time to start is now.
1. Jerry Hendrix and Brent Sadler, “Restoring Our Maritime Strength,” The National Review, 24 October 2024.