Due to manpower and management issues, the U.S. Navy and its industrial base are facing delays in several of its main shipbuilding programs, ranging from one to three years.

Following reports in January that a first-of-class guided-missile frigate was running behind schedule, partly because of a labor shortfall at Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin, Navy authorities undertook a 45-day review of its shipbuilding portfolio.

Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti tours a facility in Quonset Point, R.I., responsible helping to make Virginia- and-Columbia class submarines.

Coupled with existing delays to the Virginia-class attack submarine construction line and worries those delays might spill over to the top-priority Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro that month ordered an “assessment of national and local causes of shipbuilding challenges, as well as recommended actions for achieving a healthier U.S. shipbuilding industrial base that provides combat capabilities that our warfighters need, on a schedule that is relevant.”

A snapshot of delays

The heads of the evaluation, Vice Adm. James Downey of Naval Sea Systems Command and Navy Acquisition Chief Nickolas Guertin, told reporters on April 2 that the report included an overview of the difficulties and delays associated with shipbuilding.

The first Columbia-class SSBN is expected to be delivered 12 to 16 months after its contractual delivery date of October 2027, according to Navy projections based on current performance. HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat are the companies that construct the submarine.

This is especially concerning because the ship is scheduled to deploy soon after completing its post-delivery training and certification. Ten SSBNs must be on standby in the Navy, ready to slip under the waves with nuclear missiles. In order for the service to go on its inaugural patrol in 2031, it is relying on the lead Columbia boat to arrive in 2027. The Navy will fall short of the requirement if there are any delays.

According to Guertin, the Navy significantly reduced program risk and expedited the timetable before the epidemic.

Supply issues

“COVID happened. Supply chain changed. Workforce greening happened,” he said, but previous risk-reduction steps kept the pandemic impacts “as minimal as possible.” The Columbia program, the Navy’s top acquisition priority, is the least delayed of the new programs assessed in the shipbuilding review, Guertin said.

The analysis reveals that the Navy is 36 months behind schedule in the acquisition of its Block IV Virginia submarines, which were purchased between fiscal 2014 and 2018. The attack submarines have suffered the most from delays to keep the Columbia program on schedule, even though they both depend on the same shipbuilders and suppliers.

Though the Block V boats purchased between FY19 and FY23 are expected to be around 24 months behind schedule, there are encouraging signals.

According to Downey, the Navy added more effort to the Block V design, and Block V would be built faster thanks to a performance improvement plan made for the Block IV boats.

During a scheduled visit to the USS New Orleans (LPD 18), Captain Patrick German, the commanding officer of the forward-deployed amphibious transport dock ship, escorts Rear Admiral James Downey, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development, and Acquisition), to the wardroom.

The next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for the Navy is likewise running behind schedule. It is being built at Newport News Shipbuilding and depends on many of the same overworked suppliers as the submarine programs. The anticipated delivery delay for the upcoming Enterprise, CVN-80, is 18 to 26 months.

Defense News reported in October the ship was running about a year behind schedule. That has worsened, with Downey saying some key suppliers are behind in their deliveries to Newport News. As a result, the Navy is delaying buying subsequent ships CVNs 82 and 83, pushing their procurement from FY28 to FY30.

Downey noted that the next carrier in line, the Doris Miller, CVN-81, has been shielded from delays thanks to a two-carrier contract that’s allowed Newport News Shipbuilding to place material orders much earlier.

The first Constellation frigate, built in Wisconsin by Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine shipyard, will deliver 36 months later than its contractual delivery date.

Downey said this is due to a couple factors: Marinette Marine has gone from managing just one program at the small yard to now juggling three: finishing up the littoral combat ship program, building the multi-mission surface combatant for the Saudi navy, and now designing the Constellation-class frigate. The yard has a higher workload, has to manage programs at different stages, and has had to ramp up hiring even as it’s seen greater attrition than some other yards.

Downey said the Navy has taken some steps to better manage this program, including asking government, Fincantieri and subcontractor designers to all move to a single office at the Wisconsin shipyard so they can get through the remaining design work together as efficiently as possible.

As for the more mature surface ship production lines — the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock and America-class amphibious assault ships at Ingalls Shipbuilding, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at Ingalls and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works and the John Lewis-class oiler at General Dynamics’ NASSCO — the Navy notes these ships are predicted to deliver later than what’s outlined in their contracts, but in line with revised program manager estimates.These ship programs were “rebaselined” as the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent labor and supply disruptions wreaked havoc on schedules, but Downey said they’ve kept to these new post-COVID schedules.

Workforce challenges

Guertin said there were two buckets of challenges the team found during this review: lead ship issues, including design maturity, first-in-class construction challenges, and the size and skillset of the design workforce; and ship class issues, including acquisition and contracting strategies, supply chain weaknesses, shortage of skilled tradesmen, and gaps in the government workforce.