Troubled waters: The Navy is struggling to build warships

While the United States Navy is still considered the most powerful on Earth, there is concern among military officials that the Navy's longstanding prowess in building warships is sinking. Some experts now believe that the Navy's shipbuilding is in its worst state in 25 years, allowing the Chinese Navy to leapfrog some of the naval fleet capabilities of the U.S.

Leaked intelligence seen by Business Insider reportedly shows that China's shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than the United States, a far cry from America's oceanic dominance of years past. And some are concerned that the Navy's shipbuilding problems could be here for the long run.

Why is the US Navy having trouble building ships?

One of the biggest hindrances is an ongoing "struggle to hire and retain laborers for the challenging work of building new ships as graying veterans retire," said The Associated Press. This labor shortage is "one of myriad challenges that have led to backlogs in ship production and maintenance," in addition to "shifting defense priorities, last-minute design changes and cost overruns" that have caused Navy shipbuilding to lag.

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Part of the problem lies with the Navy itself, which "frequently changes requirements, requests upgrades and tweaks designs after shipbuilders have begun construction," said the AP. This has notably occurred with the Navy's new Ford-class aircraft carriers. The third ship in that line, the USS Enterprise, was expected to be completed "in the spring of 2028, but supply chain issues and shortages in necessary materials have caused an 18-month delay, pushing the delivery date to September 2029," according to The National Interest. The line's namesake, the USS Gerald R. Ford, also saw several delays before it was completed in 2017.

This causes funding issues that have "disrupted the cadence of ship construction and stymied long-term investments and planning," Matthew Paxton of the trade group Shipbuilders Council of America said to the AP. The council has been "dealing with inconsistent shipbuilding plans for years," and "when we finally start ramping up, the Navy is shocked that we lost members of our workforce."

What does this mean for the world's military order?

For now, the United States Navy is "still widely considered to be the world's most powerful," said Business Insider, and "then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in 2020 that even if the U.S. were to stop building ships, it would take years for China to match the U.S. Navy's power." But the delays in shipbuilding have led to China starting to catch up. The country has the world's largest navy with 355 warships in 2021, according to the U.S. Naval Institute, while the Center for Strategic and International Studies has reported that the U.S. Navy only had 296 ships that year. And China's fleet is estimated to grow to 400 ships by 2025, per the Pentagon's estimates.

All of this means that the "U.S. Navy is sailing straight into a storm it can't avoid," said Foreign Policy. The "decades of deindustrialization and policymakers' failure to prioritize among services and threats have left the Navy ill-equipped to endure a sustained high-intensity conflict in the Pacific." As a result of naval downgrading — and in particular shrinking fleets — the "full scope of what military analysts have long warned would be the 'Terrible '20s' is now evident: The expensive upgrading of the U.S. nuclear triad, simultaneous modernization efforts across the services and the constraint of rising government debt are compelling the Pentagon to make tough choices about what it can and cannot pay for." The Navy needs more ships, but "finding enough qualified workers for the yards remains the biggest barrier to expanding production" as an exodus from shipbuilding continues.

The Navy maintains that it is continuing to work on these problems. The "Navy's role in defending our nation and promoting peace has never been more expansive or mattered more," Lt. Kyle Hanton, a spokesperson for the secretary of the Navy, said to the AP. The Navy will "continue to work with our industry partners to identify creative solutions to solving our common challenges."