In a cavalcade of calamities from a skilled workforce to a broken acquisition process to a strategic deficit disorder that does not acknowledge the Revolutions in Military Affairs that are dominating and radically changing how naval warfare is evolving.
The US Navy has the most advanced twentieth century naval surface combatant force on Earth in 2025. In the emerging salvo competition with quantity having a quality all of its own, the US surface navy is continuing to reinforce technology that is increasingly inadequate and anachronistic in the evolving war continuum. Warship force projection requires the ability to safely transit to the area of operations, fight the ships and bring them home. Yemen has proven that even non-naval powers can soundly defeat the US Navy. Has Yemen sunk a US vessel yet? No. Has the Red Sea drama spent billions in munitions in a critically shallow magazine inventory? Yes. Has Yemen forced the Navy to be on the verge of “battle stations” at all time.
As the article below illustrates, the ship-building crisis will take years if not decades to turn the ship around on creating and building (and maintaining) both surface and subsurface manned ships. I suspect by the time the USN fixes the acquisition problem, the entire notion of manned surface naval vessels may be a moot point.
Absent a mass firing of flag officers and senior government managers, none of this will be repaired and made right.
Over the next three years, the Navy plans on retiring 13 more ships than it will commission, shrinking the fleet to 283 ships by 2027. According to the Navy’s current plan, the fleet will grow to 515 crewed and uncrewed vessels by 2054. To reach that goal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Navy will spend more than $1 trillion, nearly $36 billion each year for the next three decades on shipbuilding alone.
It remains unclear if the Navy can realize its plan, even if Congress provides the funds. Ramping up naval construction is not simply a matter of resources. The Navy spent $2.3 billion between 2018 and 2023 to increase the capacity of the submarine shipyards. Despite this investment, the production rate for Virginia-class attack submarines decreased from around two boats per year to 1.2.
In just 10 years after the end of the Cold War, the number of skilled shipyard workers shrank from 62,000 to 21,000. The number of workers has increased since 2001, but shortages remain. During a 2024 symposium, the director of the Navy’s Submarine Industrial Base Program said the United States needs to hire 140,000 workers just to meet the needs of the current submarine building program.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-navy/
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