Arguably, the Navy’s biggest shortcoming is adequate repair and maintenance facilities and capacity. A major part of that is the system of aging and inadequate dry docks. A few years ago, the Navy committed to a 20 year, $21B overhaul of its public shipyards and dry docks and, in a somewhat surprising development, has been following through on that commitment by issuing contracts for repair of facilities and dry docks … at least, for now.
I desperately like to give credit where credit is due – an all too rare occurrence regarding the Navy – and one such example is the repair work for the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay dry dock in Georgia.
From the Department of Defense contract award announcements website,
Alberici-Mortenson JV, St. Louis, Missouri, is awarded a $12,969,452 firm-fixed-price modification to previously awarded contract N69450-20-C-0016. This modification provides for the recapitalization of the dry dock at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia. Work will be performed in St. Marys, Georgia, and is expected to be completed by April 2023. This modification brings the total cumulative value of the contract to $625,470,806.[2]
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| Dry Dock - Kings Bay, GA |
Here's some detail about the work.
Under an IDIQ contract, the joint venture team of Burns & McDonnell and Moffatt & Nichol have been awarded a series of task orders with Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southeast (NAVFAC-SE) for a $474 million repair project at the Trident Refit Facility, Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia.
Alternately titled “Dry Dock Recapitalization,” “TRF Dry Dock Repair,” and simply “Dry Dock Repairs,” the massive effort at the East Coast home of Trident nuclear-powered submarines began with a study, moved into design, and is now in Phase A of construction. NAVFAC-SE’s scope of work encompasses repairs to the massive structure—the largest covered dry dock in the Northern hemisphere—inclusive of building structure and envelope, power, lighting, fire protection, HVAC, plumbing, and support equipment and infrastructure. All existing training and maintenance facilities will be retrofitted, and some new facilities will be constructed to support the next generation of submarines.[1]
Dry dock maintenance and repair is desperately needed and far too long overdue. From a Heritage Foundation report,
“The Navy’s attack submarines have also evolved, but the dry docks that service them have not: 17 dry docks can service older Los Angeles-class submarines, but only 12 can accommodate their replacement, the Virginia-class submarine, and only seven can service the newest Block V Virginia-class submarine, which is 83 feet longer than earlier variants and displaces an additional 2,400 tons,” the report reads.[3]
The Navy should be ashamed of the state of its maintenance and dry dock facilities and many CNO’s should be recalled to active duty and subjected to courts martial over the decades long neglect but at least the Navy is belatedly beginning to address the problem. If they’ll diligently and aggressively continue to pursue the repair program then credit is due. Well done, Navy. Keep it up.
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[1]https://axiasinc.com/naval-sub-base-kings-bay-dry-dock
[2]https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/3151585/
How many dry docks does kings bay have currently? Is this just a upgrade of one of them or a new one?
ReplyDeleteGreat news !! Although I'm a little surprised we're starting with this one. Isn't Kings Bay one of our newer dry docks?
ReplyDeleteAlthough of course the boomers ARE the top priority. So there's that.
Two of those are not dry docks....
ReplyDeleteDid someone say they were? You can find base facility layout diagrams on the Internet, if you're interested.
DeleteI think the original caption said "dry docks" as in plural. You might want to point out that the dry dock is the one furthest away in the distance.
DeleteWhoever shepherded this program through might be a good candidate for further responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteLutefisk
Ah, I don't know. It's like rewarding the caretaker of the house for replacing a broken window after he allowed the house to fall into complete ruins.
DeleteYeah, I see your point.
DeleteI was thinking that if it was, in fact, an individual who made sure it happened they might be a person to tackle some other needs.
Lutefisk
Root problem is that the nation has lost civilian ship building industry. Therefore, there is no way to handle surge of demands. Building new shipyard takes not only time but also money. Money means in low season, its shipyard would be idle --- $$$$$.
ReplyDeleteThat was a problem leading up to the Second World War as well.
DeleteThe industrialized countries had built huge fleets before and during WW1 and, by mutual agreement, were not building many naval vessels in the 1920's and 1930's.
The world-wide depression of the 1930's also wrecked the market for new merchant vessels.
During the naval rearmament efforts that FDR pushed in 1938-40, the navy struggled to find enough shipbuilding capacity to meet its needs.
Lutefisk
"the navy struggled to find enough shipbuilding capacity to meet its needs."
DeleteCan you draw a solution from that experience that would be applicable today?
I'll do my best.
DeleteIt's a complicated issue with lots of big and unwieldy moving parts.
Comparing the pre-WW2 era to today there are some similarities; there was a dearth of merchant and naval shipbuilding orders which resulted in the shuttering of shipyards, unused facilities in disrepair, and a limited number of immediately available skilled workers.
The biggest difference was that in the previous era there was a substantial quantity of potential blue-collar workers that were hungry for jobs and were willing to do dirty and hot
work for a steady paycheck.
So in economic terms, both eras had a lack of demand for shipbuilding, but the previous era had a greater potential to quickly expand supply.
In the current era, the lack of demand has gone on for such a long period that our near-term ability to ramp up supply is substantially atrophied. So in our modern era we need to stimulate both demand and supply.
DeleteHow do we stimulate demand?
In the pre-WW2 era, the navy was responding to an impending crisis. They knew the international situation was deteriorating and they were expanding the navy accordingly.
There was wide-spread public support for this, even with the prevailing isolationist sentiments of the day, as a strong navy was seen as a way to protect the country from foreign wars.
They weren't concerned with the long-term sustainability of the shipbuilding industry, they were dealing with a crisis and had a near-to-mid-term outlook.
But we've been using this same approach for a long time and we can see the downside of not having a robust merchant ship building industry. The infrastructure evaporates, both physical and human, and just doesn't exist and it reduces the navy's ability to build their own ships.
DeleteDemand from the navy would be pretty straight-forward.
I'd like the navy to have a large number of smaller, single-purpose surface combatants, say:
50 Perry-esque ASW frigates
100 Gearing-based destroyers with 50 ASW models, 30 ASuW models and a dozen EW ships.
If you assume you'll sail them around for 25 years and then retire them you will have a steady flow of naval building along with the other needs the navy will have.
Merchant shipping is a little bit more challenging. The current economic realities don't support merchant shipbuilding in the US, for a variety of reasons.
To stimulate demand I would heavily tariff goods brought into the country that had been delivered in ships that were constructed outside of the US. I would also tariff goods that were delivered in ships that were not US flagged.
I understand that this is not good economics and that the American consumer will pay more for their products.
DeleteBut this really isn't about economics, it's about national security. We need to have functioning shipyards to support our own defense.
Assuming that we have lessened the demand shortages, we need to address the lack of shipbuilding capacity, the supply.
The physical part of this can be solved with investments of capital into both public and private shipyards, not necessarily easy but at least somewhat uncomplicated.
The workforce is another matter altogether.
I would start by curtailing the practice of paying the able-bodied and capable to not work. We see the consequences of these policies in lowered labor participation rates and reduced GDP, and I would do what I could to slash these programs.
We also currently have large numbers of students, mostly male, who are not well-suited for academic work but are good with their hands and capable of being valuable skilled workers if the opportunities are available.
DeleteShipyard work is the kind of opportunities I'd like them to have. It is skilled, value-added labor...just the kind of thing that Americans are good at.
If all of this can be accomplished, you then have the problem of maintaining your work force during the inevitable booms and busts of the shipbuilding industry.
One of the most successful small shipyards during WW2 had figured out how to do this.
Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin built Gato-class submarines during the WW2.
During WW1, they had been busy with building ships to support the war effort. The owner anticipated the coming slowdown, so he obtained a contract to repair railroad rolling stock after the war ended to keep his workforce employed.
DeleteDuring the Depression, when few ships were being ordered, they did every job they could, from building agricultural equipment, to pressure boilers and large cranes.
By doing these things the shipyard retained its skilled workers and even expanded their work experience.
All of these things prepared them to take on the building of technologically complex and difficult task of building submarines.
That kind of innovative problem solving would be helpful in our current era if we are going to revitalize our shipbuilding industry.
Lutefisk
"The biggest difference was that in the previous era there was a substantial quantity of potential blue-collar workers that were hungry for jobs and were willing to do dirty and hot
Deletework for a steady paycheck." That is not the case today. The average age of employees at one of the shipyards I worked at was 57...and that was 7 years ago. People today are not willing to do hot dirty jobs. Was a time when people were lined up at the gate waiting.....no longer.
"The workforce is another matter altogether.
I would start by curtailing the practice of paying the able-bodied and capable to not work. We see the consequences of these policies in lowered labor participation rates and reduced GDP, and I would do what I could to slash these programs." HUGE problem with this plan....even those types vote. And politicians are more worried about keeping their gravy train jobs than actually fixing the problems.
Shipyard work is the kind of opportunities I'd like them to have. It is skilled, value-added labor...just the kind of thing that Americans are good at.
"If all of this can be accomplished, you then have the problem of maintaining your work force during the inevitable booms and busts of the shipbuilding industry." And the Navy should shoulder the complete blame for the ebbs and flows of the work. A lot of the folks I know that left the industry did so because they were tired of being laid off every time a lull came around...and every 2-3 years...lull. Gets really old real fast.
Yes, this is the crux of the problem. In a naval clash with the PLAN over Taiwan in which both sides took heavy losses, it would take the USN a decade or more to rebuild the fleet, while the Chinese could replace their ships within a year.
ReplyDelete