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.
 
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.
 
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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