Washington’s fleet of aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines faces long-standing maintenance problems. Not only that: the country is no longer able to build new warships at the pace needed to keep up with Beijing. It is enough to simply combine the listed points to arrive at the “Achilles heel” of the USA: the destruction of its large shipbuilding industry
Delays, cost overruns, aging ships and serious structural deficiencies. These are just some of the problems the United States Navy is forced to face, having long faced a serious shipbuilding crisis that could act as a deterrent in the event of a potential conflict with China. .
Washington’s fleet of aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines faces long-standing maintenance problems. Not only that: the country is no longer able to build new warships at the pace needed to keep up with Beijing. It is enough simply to combine the listed points to arrive at the “Achilles’ heel” of the USA: the destruction of its large shipbuilding industry. The same industry the Navy depends on.
RIVALRY WITH CHINA
The spotlight is on the Indo-Pacific, where a US Navy could find itself facing a significant Chinese force and a growing arsenal of anti-ship missiles. China boasts the world’s largest navy, and its shipyards rapidly produce both warships and merchant ships, potentially allowing it to absorb losses more easily than the US Navy.
“Given shipbuilding challenges, budget constraints, and recruitment and retention challenges, the U.S. Navy finds itself at a crossroads as it faces rapidly evolving threats from adversaries such as China,” he said. “Business Insider” Shelby Oakley, director of the Office of Accountability, which oversees the office’s investigations into Navy shipbuilding.
MAIN PROBLEMS
What happened to the US shipbuilding industry, which is now a shadow of what it was in the last years of the Cold War? The US Navy today depends on only a handful of major shipbuilders that design and build various classes of ships: Huntington Ingalls Industries (aircraft carriers, submarines, amphibious ships, destroyers), General Dynamics (submarines, destroyers, support ships) and Fincantieri Marinette Marine Corporation (frigates).
Higher production rates would require infrastructure costs and a larger workforce. Repair and maintenance are also limited by the few public yards available. The industry-wide problems are due to a number of challenges, including lack of coordination between stakeholders, volatile defense budgets, changing Navy requirements, inflation, shrinking workforce and supply chain issues. Other factors include poor program management.
WAR IN THE INDO-PACIFIC
The U.S. Navy has not been involved in a naval war since World War II, when its builders rapidly expanded the fleet to 6,768 ships, eight times more than it had at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, until end of the war, surpassing high-level combat losses. Many naval experts say the United States can do nothing of the sort today. “When unavoidable combat damage occurs, we may not be able to return ships to battle,” Bryan McGrath, a retired Navy officer and CEO of The FerryBridge Group LLC, told BI.
The US Air Force is also facing serious structural problems. While Washington faces setbacks and setbacks of various kinds, Beijing is rapidly producing advanced fighter jets and controls a rapidly expanding fleet. In all of this, the voices of experts and analysts are multiplying according to which the United States does not have adequate aircraft, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to win a hypothetical air war with the Dragon in the Indo-Pacific.
