When a Wisconsin shipyard won the contract to build a new class of Navy frigate in 2020, the project was meant to address an embarrassing reality: The U.S. is now the global laggard in building warships.
Stocked with high-tech weaponry to protect against enemy submarines, missiles and drones, the USS Constellation was expected to be ready for the open water in 2026. That was because the U.S. chose a proven design from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri FCT -2.94%decrease; red down pointing triangle
in an effort to speed the process.
Then the Navy started tinkering.
The hull was lengthened by 24 feet to accommodate larger generators and reconfigured in part because the design was based on the relatively benign conditions in the Mediterranean, and the propeller changed for better acoustic performance, among other time-consuming adjustments.
The effect: Like almost all other U.S. naval vessels, the Constellation is already years behind schedule and millions over budget.
Physical construction began in mid-2022, and after more than 2½ years, the project is only 10% complete, according to a person familiar with the timeline.
At this pace, including the two years of design time before building began, the ship will be completed in a total of nine years—around twice as long as it took an Italian shipyard to build the vessels it is based on. The Constellation, the first in what is expected to be around 20 to be built, is projected to cost at least $600 million more than its original estimate of $1.3 billion.
The Constellation’s slow production and extra costs help explain why almost nobody wants to buy new American warships—even as allies clamor for U.S. fighter jets and other weapons.
A festering problem for the U.S. has turned into an acute one, as the world order shifts rapidly and the Pentagon gears up for a potential conflict in Asia that experts believe would be fought in large part on the seas.
The issue is top of mind for President Trump, who is racing to address the problem even as his tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum would likely increase the cost of the domestically produced metals shipbuilders use.
Trump said in his speech to Congress this month that his administration wants to create a new Office of Shipbuilding, with the goal of producing more of both commercial and military vessels. The administration is also preparing an executive order aimed at reviving U.S. shipbuilding and cutting Chinese dominance in the industry.
China years ago leapfrogged America in making naval craft faster and for less money. From 2014 to 2023, China’s navy launched 157 ships while the U.S. launched 67, according to independent defense analyst Tom Shugart. The Chinese fleet is now the world’s largest, although the U.S. Navy says the quality of its ships are still better.
Most countries are faster at building. Of 20 different frigates made recently or set for completion soon in 10 different countries, all but one were or will be built in less time than the U.S.’s Constellation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Frigates are the medium-size warships used for submarine warfare and escorting larger ships, among other tasks. U.S. construction of destroyers, the larger, heavily armed warships, is also slower than other countries.
The industry faces myriad challenges, including high steel costs that could rise further amid an ongoing trade war. The U.S. also lacks a commercial shipbuilding industry, which means military vessels can’t share supply chains for many of the same or similar components, or for raw materials or workers.
Shipyards also struggle with aging equipment—sometimes dating to before World War II—and labor shortages, especially in the skilled trades, aggravated by an almost complete ban on foreign workers for military shipbuilding that doesn’t exist in most other countries.
U.S. fighter jets and some missile systems—while also plagued with high costs and delays—don’t face the same type of international competition that U.S. shipbuilders face. As a result, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 has become the world’s most sought after fighter jet and the Patriot missile defense system, among other U.S. weaponry, has a multiyear foreign order book.
But newly built American ships very rarely beat European and South Korean rivals when selling abroad.
“American ships are fearsome weapons of war…but they are expensive to build and also expensive to run,” said Jeremy Kyd, a former vice admiral in Britain’s Royal Navy who had U.S. ships under his command in joint exercises.
Thank you for posting this.
"The industry faces myriad challenges, including high steel costs that could rise further amid an ongoing trade war. The U.S. also lacks a commercial shipbuilding industry, which means military vessels can’t share supply chains for many of the same or similar components, or for raw materials or workers.
Shipyards also struggle with aging equipment—sometimes dating to before World War II—and labor shortages, especially in the skilled trades, aggravated by an almost complete ban on foreign workers for military shipbuilding that doesn’t exist in most other countries."
Why Mr Trump doesn't emphasize American competitiveness is beyond me. The answer is always "more tariffs" lol to Chinese out-performance and STEM (science technology engineering and math) even on AI and quantum computing recently.
And US companies much less shipyards... can't find skilled trades-people. Young American men are too busy ******* off or playing video games or watching Joe Rogan rather than learning the valuable trades that the economy needs and that pay well.
It's always "someone else's fault" and that's exactly what Mr Trump says.