Navy looks at smaller GC shipyards

WASHINGTON, DC - The US would be hard-pressed to repair ships quickly enough during war, said Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage, commander of the Navy’s Regional Maintenance Center, and Surface Ship Maintenance and Modernization office. “We don’t have enough capacity for peacetime” repairs, let alone a wartime surge, he continued. “We’re not as effective or efficient” in getting ships delivered on time “with the predictability we need today. A spring internal Marines document acknowledged that “replacing ships lost in combat will be problematic,” since the American “industrial base has shrunk while peer adversaries have expanded their shipbuilding capacity. In a major conflict, the (US) will be on the losing end of a production race,” the document read. Concern over capacity, at a handful of public and private shipyards, and the time it takes to do scheduled maintenance work, has been atop Navy leadership’s mind while planning to add dozens of ships in the coming years, and keep them operational. A team led by Navy Acquisition Chief James Geurts has been working to craft plans for how the nation’s shipyards/shipbuilders should react if American ships were damaged by adversary fleets. SECDEF Mark Esper insists the Navy should have at least 355 ships. It’ll be a hard sell to budgeteers at a time when the Navy is having a difficult time maintaining 300. One answer: Bring in smaller commercial shipyards that haven’t traditionally worked with the Navy, while bringing a number of large shipbuilding companies into the fold to begin performing MRO work. John Rhatigan, chairman of the Marine Machinery Association, mentioned Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., and Bath (Maine) Iron Works, as prime candidates. Rear Adm. Tom Anderson, program executive officer-ships, went to the Gulf Coast, and visited a number of small, commercial shipyards that he thinks could build the kinds of smaller manned/unmanned vessels to revamp its 30-year shipbuilding plan, and force structure assessment. “There’s a lot of capability along that Gulf Coast,” Anderson said, adding that he thinks “they’d be very interested in building ships and craft for the US Navy. Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist is expected to deliver those plans this fall. (Source: Breaking Defense 08/25/20) There are dozens of smaller commercial shipyards that may fill that bill across coastal Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, such as – to name but a few – Bollinger, Halter Marine, and Metal Shark. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/navy-plans-for-wartime-ship-surge-looks-to-small-commercial-yards/