Square Peg, Round Hole Problem for Shipbuilding - Updated

Tim Colton has some very interesting thoughts today.

ROUGHEAD DOESN'T GET IT

Bloomberg News reports that the CNO bled all over the TV cameras this morning over the "fragile" state of the shipbuilding industrial base. Read the story here. He's talking about the so-called "Big Six", of course: the rest of the industry is doing just fine. But this problem is not difficult for most of us to understand. The Reagan Administration drove the number of large shipyards down to six, when the goal was a 600-ship Navy. The goal now is a 300-ship Navy, plus or minus, with an increasing proportion of mid-sized ships that don't have to be built in big shipyards. So why would we need six big shipyards? We don't, of course: we only need three, but I'll settle for four, at least for the time being. We need Newport News, but we don't need Electric Boat. We really don't need both Bath and Ingalls, but we should probably keep them both, if only to give us some flexibility. And we certainly don't need Avondale, because NASSCO is several orders of magnitude better. Admiral Roughead, the Navy is not exempt from the pain. Bite the bullet! Show some leadership, for crying out loud, or head for the golf course. April 21, 2011.

Electric Boat is a strategic asset, so there is an argument there, but as far as capacity goes Tim Colton makes an interesting point.

Update: I have received several email this morning related to Tim Colton's comment. Good. It's an important issue and I think ADM Roughead did a good thing raising the issue.

Tim Colton's point isn't really about performance though, if the criteria for determining necessity is money (a poor measurement for such important decisions, obviously), then it is true that Newport News is more important than Electric Boat - because Newport News is the only shipyard capable of building nuclear aircraft carriers.

The bottom line is we pay more for ships/subs because we buy fewer - and our shipyards have a far greater collective capacity than what is on the books for the future fleet. We keep shipyards open for strategic purposes instead of business efficiency, and that's OK.

It has been that way since the founding of the Navy when we built 6 frigates in 6 shipyards. The problem only exists if suddenly it is no longer OK. The best way to fix the problem is for the Navy needs to make the case for more ships, and if it was me, I'd start by advocating for more amphibious ships.