Foreign Ships Are Magnificent

Without a doubt, the US has shipbuilding problems with every recent naval ship program coming in badly over budget, over schedule, riddled with quality problems and non-functional equipment, delivered in only partially complete condition, unfit for combat, and sometimes actually damaged and yet the Navy has accepted and commissioned every ship. In contrast, it is almost an article of faith among naval observers and commentators that foreign ships are magnificent wonders of naval accomplishment, being cheap, quick to build, and testaments to naval technology and quality.  In fact, one of the most commonly proffered solutions to US naval shipbuilding problems is to have our ships be built by foreign companies, either in foreign countries or by having foreign builders come to the US and establish facilities.
 
Are foreign ships and shipbuilders really miracles of modern naval construction, as so many believe?  Let’s dig a bit deeper and see.
 
The first problem in trying to assess foreign ship construction programs is that there is almost no information available.  The US publishes data on naval vessels in a variety of government reports, public forums, blog postings, and general news sources.  In contrast, there is almost no publicly available information on foreign ship acquisition programs.  That leaves us to reason out the situation from the snippets of information we can find.
 
Let’s look at some examples of foreign ships and shipbuilding problems and see if we can discern a pattern.
  
 
HMS Prince of Wales – The Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier Prince of Wales, commissioned in Dec 2019, suffered a propulsion system breakdown in Aug 2022 resulting in damage to the shaft, propeller, and rudder.  Repairs sidelined the ship until Jul 2023.
 
HMS Queen Elizabeth -  The Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, commissioned in Dec 2017, suffered a propulsion system breakdown in Jul 2019 and had to abandon a scheduled NATO exercise.
 
Helge Ingstad – The Norwegian frigate suffered a collision and subsequently sank due to faulty design and construction flaws that allowed flooding to pass from compartment to compartment through shaft seals.
 
HMS Triumph – In 1988 the Royal Navy Trafalgar class submarine, then under construction, had a large section mistakenly welded into position upside down.
 
Baden-Württemberg F125 Frigate – In 2017, the German frigate failed its trials and was rejected by the German Navy.  Problems included a permanent list, faulty radar, improper fireproof fuel tank coatings, excessive weight, subsystem interface defects, and hardware/software integration
 
New Zealand/Canada ANZAC Frigate Upgrade – The $375M original cost has jumped to $639M.  Project planning began in 2006 with contracts being awarded in 2014 and completion occurring in 2022/23.  That’s a 17 year upgrade project!  The work was performed in Canada.
 
Type 45 Destroyer - The Type 45’s advanced propulsion system was found in 2010 to be unreliable, especially when operating in the heat of the Persian Gulf.  HMS Dauntless was laid up in 2016 to undergo a major refit that would solve the propulsion problems.  The project took twice as long as estimated and was not completed until June 2022.
 
Digital modelling was used to de-risk some of the issues but in practice, the work proved more complex than expected.[2]
 
Soviet/Russian Ship Quality – Construction quality problems have been well documented by interior photos, tour observations, post-Cold War reports, etc.
 
For But Not With – Foreign ship builds widely use the ‘for but not with’ method of construction which delivers ships without necessary weapons and sensors but allows the builder/country to claim reduced costs.  Some foreign ships also are known to reuse weapons from a retired ship – not necessarily a bad thing but, again, it results in artificially low cost claims when compared to purely new construction.
 
Austal – The Australian shipbuilder, Austal, built a facility in the US to manufacture the Independence variant LCS and that turned out to be a disaster with cost overruns, schedule slippages, specifications not met, and a host of design and quality issues.
 
FREMM/Constellation – The US Constellation class frigate, based on the parent FREMM design, had to be extensively redesigned to meet US survivability standards.  This is especially eye-opening given how lax and minimal US standards have become!  This suggests that a significant portion of the supposed lower foreign costs may come from significantly reduced standards.
 
French Frigate Misfire – In 2018, a French frigate’s attempted cruise missile strike on suspected Syrian chemical weapon sites failed when the missile salvo failed to launch.  A second frigate had to take the tasking.
 
As noted, there is almost no information, good or bad, about SKorean and Japanese naval ship quality.  Unfortunately, SKorea and Japan are two of the commonly suggested foreign shipbuilders that we should use/emulate.
 
 
Discussion/Conclusion
 
Any one of the above cited incidents could be explained away as a one-of-a-kind occurrence but the overall pattern clearly demonstrates that foreign shipbuilders suffer the same kinds of quality and design problems that American ships and shipbuilders do.  There is nothing magic about foreign ships or builders.
 
Claims of cost savings inevitably fail to account for extensive subsidies, reuse of equipment, ‘for but not with’ practices, lower standards, etc.  Thus, foreign cost savings claims are highly suspect, bordering on false.
 
The most interesting data point is the Austal manufacturing effort.  A foreign shipbuilder came to the US, supposedly bringing the many miracles of foreign shipbuilding, built a facility and, contrary to what so many expected, suffered the exact same problems that US builders do.  The main thing that changed when they came to the US was the degree of public scrutiny.  All their failures and shortcomings were publicized.  Thus, the idea of bringing a foreign shipbuilder to the US to construct a facility is almost guaranteed to produce no improvements.  A foreign builder in the US would be subject to the same laws, regulations, work force issues, and so forth that US builders are and those issues would have the same negative impacts. 
 
The pattern of incidents also suggest that foreign builders build to lower design standards than US builders which leads to impressions of lower cost.  Given the steady lowering of US standards, this is shocking that foreign navies/builders would have even lower standards.
 
In short, I would have no great objections to using a foreign shipyard for US naval construction but I would expect no improvement in quality, cost, or schedule issues.  There is nothing magic about foreign shipyards other than their greatly reduced public visibility.
 
There is also the issue of security.  One would have to assume that any technology or design specifications that were sent to a foreign builder would wind up in China’s hands and that’s a concern.  Of course, it’s not as if our home-grown security has prevented the Chinese from acquiring all the information they could want so maybe security isn’t that big of an issue!
 
A separate aspect of the consideration of foreign shipbuilders is that of competition.  The number of US naval shipbuilders has steadily dwindled to a precious few which, without a doubt, has led to non-competition and all its associated ills.  The use of foreign shipbuilders would, if nothing else, provide a degree of competition that has been lacking.  It’s not even debatable that competition is a positive that helps drive improvements and reduced costs.  I find this to be the most persuasive argument for foreign shipyards, by far.
 
As with so many things in life, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence but, upon closer examination, it isn’t really.
 
 
 
 
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[1]IEEE Spectrum website, “New German Warship Fails Sea Trials Due to Tech Woes”, Robert Charette, 7-Feb-2018,
https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-german-frigate-fails-tests
 
[2]https://www.navylookout.com/in-focus-the-power-improvement-project-for-the-royal-navys-type-45-destroyers/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20many%20causes%20of%20problems%20was,inherent%20redundancy%20that%20MEs%20were%20accustomed%20to%20having.