Wonderful article. As a navy veteran I think you hit the nail on the head with the proposed types of ships needed. Of course this is a multi-facet problem and this isn't the comprehensive answer to maintaining our naval hegemony, but its a great start and turns the industry in the right direction. Thank you!
At the end of the day, it is worth noting the following: It is a 12 air craft carrier that use catapults world, and the US has 11 of them. While we still have our hegemony, we need to look forward to keep that.
OK. This is going to take some time to muster a proper response to, so look for one on Naval Gazing on Sunday. The proposal for smaller single-purpose ships is based on a misunderstanding of the problems faced, as I discuss at https://www.navalgazing.net/Abstractions-in-Defense-Analysis. I actually agree on needing more in-house expertise, and think that while building too soon is an obvious problem, it is in fact so obvious that solving it is going to take a lot of work.
Very nice work. The original offers a great application of megaproject guidance to the shipbuilding project but like you point out the 1st point seems to be rife with questionable military understanding.
In the 1960s, both as a naval officer and as an industry civilian, I was involved as an engineer on several warship design programs. In the 1970s and 1980s, as a top-level civil servant in the Pentagon, I had broad responsibility for technical oversight of Navy ship development and construction programs. From the mid-1980s for the next 20 years I held a variety of posts in which I was in close contact with naval ship development and construction and worked very closely with the navy's top leadership on their issues. During the course of this I was able to play a central role in killing several especially ill-conceived programs, and in many cases I quite accurately predicted the technical and operational problems and extent of resulting cost and schedule growth in most of the troubled ship programs. Moreover, early in my career I knew and worked with men who had served in the Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R), BuEng, BuShips, BuOrd, and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations on the ship programs of the 1930s through the 1950s and sought to learn from them how things once had been done. All of which is to say that I do really know something about the subject you have taken on.
Over the course of these six decades I have seen many other earnestly well-intentioned and sweeping outsider proposals for righting the wrongs of shipbuilding, including some by people with considerably deeper knowledge than you display, and/or much more political weight. None, not even one, has had any significant effect. It is necessary to have been involved in the process from the inside to understand why and how it works and fails. Also needed is a much deeper understanding of naval operations, strategy and missions than you exhibit.
Above all, these issues need to be addressed with sound, disciplined, and quantitative analytical apparatuses capable of yielding meaningful information regarding the cost, schedule, and effectiveness implications of proposed alternatives. The engineering knowledge to accomplish this exists; I have made effective use of it in simplified models to produce predictions significantly more accurate than those the navy was using.
Knowledge is power in such matters, and you clearly have not nearly enough. It is certainly right that the design process is critical, but you do not know how it has worked in the past and do not have a clear vision of how it might be made to work in the future. In particular, the integration of AI into the analysis and design processes offers opportunities for major and potentially very valuable changes.
P.S. While most of what I have written on this subject was necessarily not for public consumption, one article may be interest. It is Cost Growth in Major Defense Acquisition : Is There A Problem? Is There A Solution? In Defense Acquisition Research Journal 2011, 18 (3), pp. 277–293. It may be accessed via https://www.dmi-ida.org/knowledge-base-detail/cost-growth-in-major-defense-acquisition
Missing from this discussion is the issue of where we build the proposed ships. Resuscitating shipyards in this country is the first problem. Then we can decide to build specialized and slightly cheaper ships or just build enough Burkes to support the fleet.
Feels like a bit of a futile argument. The real reason shipbuilding is a disaster is the same reason military procurement in general is a disaster: broken incentives and the people in charge. And those aren't going to change.
Even if the (reasonable) suggestions in this article (and thread) get implemented, they'll be done poorly. I don't think 1200 _incompetent_ engineers will do anything to improve the navy.
Informative article BUT, drones made the Army's main battle tank obsolete. The Aircraft Carrier eclipsed the battleship. The Navy has lost the last 12 war games enacted against a theoretical CCP foe because of hypersonic missiles. if you can't develop a realistic counter to hypersonic missiles, then the the Navy of the future should be composed of 2000 fast cheap expendable mini-frigates armed with multiple hypersonic missiles. STOP designing platforms for the last war.
I agree with your premise, but how are you going to get 2000 mini frigates where they are needed? Sail them all the way across the Atlantic or the Pacific? Seems like these would mostly be for coastal defense, not global power projection.
And it won't be much harder to sink a mini frigate than an aircraft carrier, especially since they will have no defensive capabilities. I don't think I would feel much safer serving on a tiny ship than on a big one.
This proposal might save money in one area, but then increase spending in other areas.
How would having many different types of specialized ships work for the crew? Would the US Navy need more sailers? If so, would this not increase costs for pay, training, etc?
Or would many of those specialized ships sit in port until they were needed? Would the crew rotate between ships of different types with each mission? Would this undermine crew effectiveness?
First off I just wanted to say this article is pretty good and I think the work you all are doing at IFP is valuable.
But...as someone who has been an engineer and contractor to NAVSEA for 20 years I have a few quibbles. I think your argument about simpler design is dead correct. Same goes for schedule and design maturity. I think your arguments about staffing are a bit off the mark.
The problem isn't that the NAVSEA is insufficiently staffed with marine engineers and naval architects. Each program office has engineering services contracts with private firms, most of those firms that are well-staffed with engineers and architects. And even in situations where the prime contractor is unable to staff there is flexibility in awarding subcontractors the work to fill gaps(this happened very recently for me). If you want to argue that NAVSEA engineering would be more efficient in completely design then I might raise my eyebrows but I wouldn't object.
The problem is that NAVSEA awards contracts to shipyards where the design is not complete and, as you noted above, those yards cannot maintain proper engineering departments. We've found this out the hard way on a T-ship with a gulf coast yard. It is not 100% clear why NAVSEA does this, but my biggest guess is the technical risk is put on the government and they're afraid of change orders blowing up the final procurement costs. I don't know how acquisition reform can solve this, that's above my pay grade.
You also wrote regarding the LCS ship that, "This propulsion system was difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to develop, and ultimately didn’t meet the specified speed and range requirements. These speed requirements were eventually determined to be unnecessarily high: modifying the requirements early on as the tradeoffs of speed, cost, and complexity became apparent could have avoided this problem."
I did not work on the LCS program but I can say with 100% certainty that NAVSEA has almost no control over speed and range requirements. Those all come down from officers in naval operations with stars on their shoulders. And often times it doesn't matter to them if you show them the design constraints with the requirements they've given to NAVSEA, they almost don't care.
Another aspect of shipbuilding that you guys should consider looking into is how much these ships cost and how NAVSEA is performing cost estimates. I have no hard evidence that they are doing it wrong but I know for a fact that for one of the T-ships discussed in your article came in with bids from two yards that were 33% over what NAVSEA estimated. So those yards were told to go "de-scope" and lower their price estimates. I think there is concern that if the Navy goes to Congress and ask for nearly $1B for T-ship that Congress will decline to fund them. Worth looking into.
Hard to criticize things in detail here but I have a couple of overriding points:
(1) Having a lot of narrowly specialized ships as this article proposes (instead of multi-role ships) will require many more people to enlist in the Navy and to remain in the Navy. My understanding is that the current Navy is unable to meet its recruiting targets, and I assume this trend will worsen over time. Seems like the only thing that makes sense for the foreseeable future is to plan for a Navy that requires a lot fewer people to sustain.
(2) I have a hard time seeing why having a Navy even makes much sense anymore. Anyone who watched the battle of the Houthis against the pride of the US Navy, only to see the latter chased off with its tail between its legs in short order, will have difficulty arguing with this. The current era of cheap, agile hypersonic anti-ship missiles and other technologies means that any ship of any size provides a juicy target for incoming flights of drones, standoff bombs, missiles, unmanned boats, and torpedoes. My understanding is that in even the US military's own war games the carriers are sunk in the first few minutes of the war. Most of the capabilities of current warships seem like they're defensive, which makes sense given the realities. I would not want my son or daughter to be serving on a warship when any war, large or small, began.
Since the US is surrounded by big oceans, it's hard to see how we can prosecute a war when the opponent is going to be thousands of miles away across water and naval ships are increasingly a thing of the past. To me, this means we must avoid getting into wars at all costs.
I don’t see much evidence that the current naval procurement and production process is designed primarily for producing and sustaining an effective complement of naval assets. By the fruits of the tree shall ye know it …
Is there a reason why the shipbuilders can't use modular design? It could save on build time if every component was the same and the only thing that changed were the new technologies.
Modular ship design was an exciting new idea when it was proposed a century ago (although I'm not entirely sure how new it really was even in the 1920s), and the navy has been pursuing it ever since. If you walk around a lot of DDG 51 class ships, which have been in production for forty years, you will find much that is common between the early and recent examples. But the combat systems have changed a great deal.
Wonderful article. As a navy veteran I think you hit the nail on the head with the proposed types of ships needed. Of course this is a multi-facet problem and this isn't the comprehensive answer to maintaining our naval hegemony, but its a great start and turns the industry in the right direction. Thank you!
At the end of the day, it is worth noting the following: It is a 12 air craft carrier that use catapults world, and the US has 11 of them. While we still have our hegemony, we need to look forward to keep that.
OK. This is going to take some time to muster a proper response to, so look for one on Naval Gazing on Sunday. The proposal for smaller single-purpose ships is based on a misunderstanding of the problems faced, as I discuss at https://www.navalgazing.net/Abstractions-in-Defense-Analysis. I actually agree on needing more in-house expertise, and think that while building too soon is an obvious problem, it is in fact so obvious that solving it is going to take a lot of work.
OK. My response is up at https://www.navalgazing.net/Building-Simplified-Ships
Very nice work. The original offers a great application of megaproject guidance to the shipbuilding project but like you point out the 1st point seems to be rife with questionable military understanding.
In the 1960s, both as a naval officer and as an industry civilian, I was involved as an engineer on several warship design programs. In the 1970s and 1980s, as a top-level civil servant in the Pentagon, I had broad responsibility for technical oversight of Navy ship development and construction programs. From the mid-1980s for the next 20 years I held a variety of posts in which I was in close contact with naval ship development and construction and worked very closely with the navy's top leadership on their issues. During the course of this I was able to play a central role in killing several especially ill-conceived programs, and in many cases I quite accurately predicted the technical and operational problems and extent of resulting cost and schedule growth in most of the troubled ship programs. Moreover, early in my career I knew and worked with men who had served in the Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R), BuEng, BuShips, BuOrd, and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations on the ship programs of the 1930s through the 1950s and sought to learn from them how things once had been done. All of which is to say that I do really know something about the subject you have taken on.
Over the course of these six decades I have seen many other earnestly well-intentioned and sweeping outsider proposals for righting the wrongs of shipbuilding, including some by people with considerably deeper knowledge than you display, and/or much more political weight. None, not even one, has had any significant effect. It is necessary to have been involved in the process from the inside to understand why and how it works and fails. Also needed is a much deeper understanding of naval operations, strategy and missions than you exhibit.
Above all, these issues need to be addressed with sound, disciplined, and quantitative analytical apparatuses capable of yielding meaningful information regarding the cost, schedule, and effectiveness implications of proposed alternatives. The engineering knowledge to accomplish this exists; I have made effective use of it in simplified models to produce predictions significantly more accurate than those the navy was using.
Knowledge is power in such matters, and you clearly have not nearly enough. It is certainly right that the design process is critical, but you do not know how it has worked in the past and do not have a clear vision of how it might be made to work in the future. In particular, the integration of AI into the analysis and design processes offers opportunities for major and potentially very valuable changes.
P.S. While most of what I have written on this subject was necessarily not for public consumption, one article may be interest. It is Cost Growth in Major Defense Acquisition : Is There A Problem? Is There A Solution? In Defense Acquisition Research Journal 2011, 18 (3), pp. 277–293. It may be accessed via https://www.dmi-ida.org/knowledge-base-detail/cost-growth-in-major-defense-acquisition
Missing from this discussion is the issue of where we build the proposed ships. Resuscitating shipyards in this country is the first problem. Then we can decide to build specialized and slightly cheaper ships or just build enough Burkes to support the fleet.
Or export the manufacturing to SK.
We have reached such a nadir in shipbuilding that the only strategy to expand capacity is 'all of the above'.
Feels like a bit of a futile argument. The real reason shipbuilding is a disaster is the same reason military procurement in general is a disaster: broken incentives and the people in charge. And those aren't going to change.
Even if the (reasonable) suggestions in this article (and thread) get implemented, they'll be done poorly. I don't think 1200 _incompetent_ engineers will do anything to improve the navy.
Informative article BUT, drones made the Army's main battle tank obsolete. The Aircraft Carrier eclipsed the battleship. The Navy has lost the last 12 war games enacted against a theoretical CCP foe because of hypersonic missiles. if you can't develop a realistic counter to hypersonic missiles, then the the Navy of the future should be composed of 2000 fast cheap expendable mini-frigates armed with multiple hypersonic missiles. STOP designing platforms for the last war.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
I agree with your premise, but how are you going to get 2000 mini frigates where they are needed? Sail them all the way across the Atlantic or the Pacific? Seems like these would mostly be for coastal defense, not global power projection.
And it won't be much harder to sink a mini frigate than an aircraft carrier, especially since they will have no defensive capabilities. I don't think I would feel much safer serving on a tiny ship than on a big one.
This proposal might save money in one area, but then increase spending in other areas.
How would having many different types of specialized ships work for the crew? Would the US Navy need more sailers? If so, would this not increase costs for pay, training, etc?
Or would many of those specialized ships sit in port until they were needed? Would the crew rotate between ships of different types with each mission? Would this undermine crew effectiveness?
First off I just wanted to say this article is pretty good and I think the work you all are doing at IFP is valuable.
But...as someone who has been an engineer and contractor to NAVSEA for 20 years I have a few quibbles. I think your argument about simpler design is dead correct. Same goes for schedule and design maturity. I think your arguments about staffing are a bit off the mark.
The problem isn't that the NAVSEA is insufficiently staffed with marine engineers and naval architects. Each program office has engineering services contracts with private firms, most of those firms that are well-staffed with engineers and architects. And even in situations where the prime contractor is unable to staff there is flexibility in awarding subcontractors the work to fill gaps(this happened very recently for me). If you want to argue that NAVSEA engineering would be more efficient in completely design then I might raise my eyebrows but I wouldn't object.
The problem is that NAVSEA awards contracts to shipyards where the design is not complete and, as you noted above, those yards cannot maintain proper engineering departments. We've found this out the hard way on a T-ship with a gulf coast yard. It is not 100% clear why NAVSEA does this, but my biggest guess is the technical risk is put on the government and they're afraid of change orders blowing up the final procurement costs. I don't know how acquisition reform can solve this, that's above my pay grade.
You also wrote regarding the LCS ship that, "This propulsion system was difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to develop, and ultimately didn’t meet the specified speed and range requirements. These speed requirements were eventually determined to be unnecessarily high: modifying the requirements early on as the tradeoffs of speed, cost, and complexity became apparent could have avoided this problem."
I did not work on the LCS program but I can say with 100% certainty that NAVSEA has almost no control over speed and range requirements. Those all come down from officers in naval operations with stars on their shoulders. And often times it doesn't matter to them if you show them the design constraints with the requirements they've given to NAVSEA, they almost don't care.
Another aspect of shipbuilding that you guys should consider looking into is how much these ships cost and how NAVSEA is performing cost estimates. I have no hard evidence that they are doing it wrong but I know for a fact that for one of the T-ships discussed in your article came in with bids from two yards that were 33% over what NAVSEA estimated. So those yards were told to go "de-scope" and lower their price estimates. I think there is concern that if the Navy goes to Congress and ask for nearly $1B for T-ship that Congress will decline to fund them. Worth looking into.
Keep up the great work!
Hard to criticize things in detail here but I have a couple of overriding points:
(1) Having a lot of narrowly specialized ships as this article proposes (instead of multi-role ships) will require many more people to enlist in the Navy and to remain in the Navy. My understanding is that the current Navy is unable to meet its recruiting targets, and I assume this trend will worsen over time. Seems like the only thing that makes sense for the foreseeable future is to plan for a Navy that requires a lot fewer people to sustain.
(2) I have a hard time seeing why having a Navy even makes much sense anymore. Anyone who watched the battle of the Houthis against the pride of the US Navy, only to see the latter chased off with its tail between its legs in short order, will have difficulty arguing with this. The current era of cheap, agile hypersonic anti-ship missiles and other technologies means that any ship of any size provides a juicy target for incoming flights of drones, standoff bombs, missiles, unmanned boats, and torpedoes. My understanding is that in even the US military's own war games the carriers are sunk in the first few minutes of the war. Most of the capabilities of current warships seem like they're defensive, which makes sense given the realities. I would not want my son or daughter to be serving on a warship when any war, large or small, began.
Since the US is surrounded by big oceans, it's hard to see how we can prosecute a war when the opponent is going to be thousands of miles away across water and naval ships are increasingly a thing of the past. To me, this means we must avoid getting into wars at all costs.
I don’t see much evidence that the current naval procurement and production process is designed primarily for producing and sustaining an effective complement of naval assets. By the fruits of the tree shall ye know it …
Is there a reason why the shipbuilders can't use modular design? It could save on build time if every component was the same and the only thing that changed were the new technologies.
Must every ship be a different design?
Modular ship design was an exciting new idea when it was proposed a century ago (although I'm not entirely sure how new it really was even in the 1920s), and the navy has been pursuing it ever since. If you walk around a lot of DDG 51 class ships, which have been in production for forty years, you will find much that is common between the early and recent examples. But the combat systems have changed a great deal.
I just figured that's how the Chinese were building their new massive navy—using a modular Design.
This has been around for 40 years or so. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEKO and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StanFlex for a couple approaches. It can help, but doesn't solve everything.