“These steps come at a price,” Greenert said. “Much like putting off an oil change because you can’t afford the $20 service; we save in the short-term, but shorten the car’s life and add to the backlog of work for later.”

 

Preserving a Capability

“Over the long term, the discretionary budget caps under sequestration will fundamentally change our Navy,”

Speaking to the Shipbuilders Council of America (SCA), Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus acknowledged the importance of shipyards to local economies. The 43 members of SCA own and operate more than 85 shipyards on all three coasts of the continental United States, the Great Lakes, the inland waterways system, Alaska and Hawaii. There are an additional 86 partner members – subcontractors who provide goods and services to the industry. “Your members hail from 29 states, and in a lot of cases, you represent the single largest employer in that state,” said Mabus, who was governor of Mississippi, a state where shipbuilding was the single largest employer. “I know what it means to have an industry that big, an industry with unique skills and industry where you cannot replace the skills if you lose them either quickly, easily or maybe at all.”

Mabus said the Navy built three ships in 2008, “not enough to keep up with decommissionings, not enough to keep the fleet from continuing to decline, and certainly not enough to keep our shipbuilding and our repair industry strong.”

Regarding maintenance and repair – particularly on our surface combatants –­ Mabus said the Navy has instituted “type engineering requirements,” to treat ships of the same type the same way. “We knew when they were going in, so that we knew what the requirements were when they went into the yard or what the maintenance availability would be, so that we would get the lifespan out of those ships that we thought we were going to get when we put them in the water. Because that’s the only way we’re going to get and stay at the number of ships that we need.”

Every time this has happened, Mabus said, it was accomplished as a partnership. “We got more and better ships; taxpayers got better value; and industry … received more stable and dependable work.”

“I think we owe industry three main things in terms of building ships,” Mabus said, “and it goes pretty much for repair too:

• Mature and stable designs: Don’t build a ship while you’re designing the ship. We’re not changing things on the fly;

•  Mature technology:  If you’ve got a new gee whiz piece of equipment, put it on the next block of ships. Retrofit the ones when the first available come in, but don’t change halfway through;

• Transparency and reliability in our plans:  You know what ships we’re going to build, when we’re going to build them, what ships we’re going to repair, when the availabilities are going to be and what we’re going to be expecting over the next – at least – over the next five years.”

“You need a fair return for your efforts,” Mabus said, “and we have a right to expect certain things from industry:

• That there’s a learning curve. That if we’re building the same hulls, repairing the same hulls each one ought to be basically cheaper than the one before;

• That industry makes the investments. If we’re transparent and we say, “this is what we’re going to do over the next five years,” that you will make the investments in training and investments in infrastructure.”

“And I’ve got to say, you all have done that,” Mabus said. “You have made those investments over time. And that’s how we start turning shipbuilding around.”