US Submarine Industry in Crisis ?

Blame BRAC and Bill Clinton, closed Mare Island Naval Shipyard. That both removed a potential submarine producer, as well as a submarine maintenance base on the west coast.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Blame BRAC and Bill Clinton, closed Mare Island Naval Shipyard. That both removed a potential submarine producer, as well as a submarine maintenance base on the west coast.
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Mare Island stopped being a potential submarine producer long before BRAC and Clinton: the last major vessel -- a submarine -- was delivered in 1972. From what I've read, Rickover hated the naval shipyards and lobbied strenuously to end their use as construction yards. Indeed, the last new-build ship from a US naval shipyard was ordered in the Nixon administration.
 
1635yankee said:
Mare Island stopped being a potential submarine producer long before BRAC and Clinton: the last major vessel -- a submarine -- was delivered in 1972. From what I've read, Rickover hated the naval shipyards and lobbied strenuously to end their use as construction yards. Indeed, the last new-build ship from a US naval shipyard was ordered in the Nixon administration.
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After the fuckup that was the Mare Island Mud Puppy (USS Guitarro, SSN-665), it's not surprising. A brand new submarine flooded out due to idiots bypassing safeties and not talking to each other about what maintenance was being conducted, took 32 months to clean all the mud out and commission her.

The more important use for Mare Island was as a repair yard.
 
Scott Kenny said:
After the fuckup that was the Mare Island Mud Puppy (USS Guitarro, SSN-665), it's not surprising. A brand new submarine flooded out due to idiots bypassing safeties and not talking to each other about what maintenance was being conducted, took 32 months to clean all the mud out and commission her.

The more important use for Mare Island was as a repair yard.
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More specifically, 32 months of delay.

After her sinking on 15 May 1969, the work required (refloating her {completed 18 May 1969}, then emptying the hull of all removable equipment, then cleaning her, then re-installing everything) resulted in her commissioning on 9 September 1972, 32 months after her originally planned date of January 1970 - and 40 months after sinking.
 
We've spent decades deindustrializing. That includes nolonger prioritizing vocational education for the youngsters.

There is rare political consensus now that we need to produce more submarines more rapidly but we no longer have the skilled workforce, facilities and capacity to do it.

It will take time to rebuild that capacity. The problem won't be solved with a one or two year budgetary surge but will require long term planning and commitment.
 
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Jimmo952 said:
We've spent decades deindustrializing. That includes nolonger prioritizing vocational education for the youngsters.

There is rare political consensus now that we need to produce more submarines more rapidly but we nolonger have the skilled workforce, facilities and capacity to do it.

It will take time to rebuild that capacity. The problem won't be solved with a one or two year budgetary surge but will require longterm planning and commitment.
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A related issue is the general corporate culture, of treating workers as disposable items. US de-industrialization does have some bases in government policies -- companies long got tax breaks for capital and R&D spending overseas that they did not get for the same spending here, and US trade policy wasn't about products produced in the US, but products produced anywhere by companies registered in the US (I remember something about a supercomputer being put out to bid during the 1980s. Fujitsu, which was manufacturing in the US was disqualified in favor of, iirc, HP, which was manufacturing in Malaysia) -- but many companies have a culture of chasing the cheapest possible labor, even at the cost of product quality. One can see this when dealing with tech support. This is an ungoing problem with software, where many companies moved programming to India, frequently without adequate planning and investigation (those cost money!) and ending up have serious problems with software quality.
 
1635yankee said:
A related issue is the general corporate culture, of treating workers as disposable items. US de-industrialization does have some bases in government policies -- companies long got tax breaks for capital and R&D spending overseas that they did not get for the same spending here, and US trade policy wasn't about products produced in the US, but products produced anywhere by companies registered in the US (I remember something about a supercomputer being put out to bid during the 1980s. Fujitsu, which was manufacturing in the US was disqualified in favor of, iirc, HP, which was manufacturing in Malaysia) -- but many companies have a culture of chasing the cheapest possible labor, even at the cost of product quality. One can see this when dealing with tech support. This is an ungoing problem with software, where many companies moved programming to India, frequently without adequate planning and investigation (those cost money!) and ending up have serious problems with software quality.
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I could not agree with you more.
 
publiusr said:
It is one of the reasons I support Sea Dragon…keep the guys busy.
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That is an inane reason. Still takes money. If there is money to build Sea Dragon, there is money to build more ships and subs.
 
Effectively, the US government and taxpayer has to subsidize the industrial base in totum. That's wildly inefficient and why, until the last 30 years, every military power in human history made the civilian economy subsidize the military industrial base.

We're trying to recover from a world-historic mistake here - it'll take a ton of money and a ton of time.
 
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/De...s-Japan-s-fixed-submarine-production-schedulehttps://www.theepochtimes.com/us/congress-looks-to-japan-for-tips-on-submarine-building-5824332
U.S. Congress studies Japan's fixed submarine production schedule

Tokyo manages its submarine fleet size "through 'end-of-life' decisions, not through upfront procurement-rate tinkering," said Ron O'Rourke, a 41-year veteran of CRS.

The approach is designed to "provide stability for its submarine construction industrial base and maximize efficiency in the production of its submarines,” he told a House hearing Tuesday.
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https://armedservices.house.gov/upl...f_state_of_shipbuilding_orourke_statement.pdf
 

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uk 75 said:
Part of the problem has been the gap in pay and working conditions between white collar (nice and clean) and blue collar (messy and hard) jobs.
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Very much so.

A secondary problem is the disconnect between the Engineers that came up through the shipyard and have physically built boats and the Managing Engineers that went to college and got a degree. (An old friend of mine worked at EB for a while as a programmer. She was offered manager job after manager job because she was a woman in STEM, but she was a good coder. It finally stopped when the rest of the programmer team told manglement that she was far too good a coder to be taken away from the team)
 
aonestudio said:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/De...s-Japan-s-fixed-submarine-production-schedule
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Honestly, every Western nation should study the Japanese model for how to build ships. Constant production, more or less no MLUs because the class currently coming off the lines is that much better.

The big thing that the US hasn't done in terms of the Japanese model is doing new flights of existing classes or outright designing new classes every 10 hulls or so.
Example: There were 21x Flight 1 Burkes, 7x Flight 2s, 33x Flight 2As, 3x Flight 2A Restarts, 9x Flight 2A Tech Insertion, and 24x Flight 3s. The Burkes should really be up around Flight 5 or 6 (end of Flight 2A production), and then we'd have ~3 flights of Zumwalts instead of 36x more Burkes... Plus either a flight of "Burkes" with AAW Flag space or an actual CG design.​

Further example: The Perry class would have had a direct successor, in addition to the LCS. So the US would not have had to modify the hell out of a foreign design to get the Constellation class.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Honestly, every Western nation should study the Japanese model for how to build ships. Constant production, more or less no MLUs because the class currently coming off the lines is that much better.
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Its pretty much the one Chinese use also. They continue to order & build a proven series of warships, while testing a prototype of a new one. Only when they are fully satisfied with a prototype, they order a new class into production. And in case prototype failed, or its testing got delayed, they have an older type still in production as fallback option.
 
Scott Kenny said:
The big thing that the US hasn't done in terms of the Japanese model is doing new flights of existing classes or outright designing new classes every 10 hulls or so.
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Basically the Western priority became "the contractor must get paid", while the Eastern priority is "the navy must get ships"
 
US Defense spending is largely established to flow defense dollars into the right congressional districts

the quality of the defense items is a secondary objective left up to the bureaucracy to manage
 
uk 75 said:
Part of the problem has been the gap in pay and working conditions between white collar (nice and clean) and blue collar (messy and hard) jobs.
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I once came across a very provocative debate on Xitter where a self tagged Social Sciense/Economic student came to use very messy words to describe rural United States citizen about their contribution to the GDP.

I asked them if they can eat polymer.

Aside from passion or circumstances who would want to work a labour job? Anyone knows of that one farmer family that refused a land deal from an AI company? A trait few possesses. Sustenance comes first then morality.
 
uk 75 said:
Part of the problem has been the gap in pay and working conditions between white collar (nice and clean) and blue collar (messy and hard) jobs.
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The blue collar workers get paid more since they get overtime.
 
Byeman said:
The blue collar workers get paid more since they get overtime.
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Depends. Sometimes the difference in base pay is high enough that the white collars make more. Plus, there's that Obama-era rules change about when a job role becomes exempt from overtime, which shifted a lot of people to salary+overtime.
 
Salary should mean $50,000+ and you still get paid when sick. “Salary” now means “we work you into the grave for base pay.”

I don’t call that “salary.”

As to who wants to work labor—Mike Rowe wrote all about that. Unlike some who win the lottery—I would do MORE if I stumbled into money. Go to all those C-SPAN covered book fairs….give to folks like Scott Lowther so he could retire as a man of letters, etc.
 
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