By Geoff Fein
The nation’s shipyards have the capacity to build more Navy ships and upgrades the sites have made will make the yards much more efficient, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) said last week.
“I really do believe that the capacity is there, and it’s a function of a balanced shipbuilding program with the budget we have and then being able to justify the requirements,” Adm. Gary Roughead told Defense Daily Friday.
“I do believe when I look at the yards we have around our country the capacity is there,” he said after touring Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana.
Roughead began his eight-day tour of the nation’s private and public shipyards earlier this month. The trip includes visits to Portsmouth Shipyard, Portsmouth, N.H.; General Dynamics‘ [GD] Bath Iron Works, Brunswick, Maine; Northrop Grumman [NOC] Ship Systems Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., Avondale in New Orleans, the Gulfport Composites Facility, Gulfport, Miss.; Austal USA, Mobile, Ala.; Marinette Marine [MTW], Marinette, Wisc.; and General Dynamics’ National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego, according to the Navy.
Roughead said he wanted to get out and tour the yards that are building ships for the Navy, see how the processes have changed, how technology has effected shipbuilding, and to talk to the workers building Navy ships.
“I’m not a stranger to shipyards, having gone through several availabilities but also having put two ships in commission,” he said. “There’s no question that on my watch shipbuilding is going to be a major dimension of what I will be dealing with and many of the decisions that I will have to make.”
Roughead said he was struck not only by the enthusiasm of workers at the yards he has visited, but by the investments the yards are making to automate shipbuilding and make it more efficient.
“I have known there has always been a press to get the ship as complete as possible before it goes in the water, and the passion to do that and the methods and processes are really interesting,” he said.
The only issue that has surfaced on the early leg of his trip is that the Navy is not building enough ships, Roughead said.
Roughead is not doing a program review on the visits, nor did he ever intend for his trip to be that, he noted.
However, he said it is likely the issue with faulty welds on some Virginia-class submarines will be discussed when he visits Northrop Grumman’s Newport News shipyard in Virginia later this month.
“I am sure it will come up and I am interested in that, but I am also getting information back through our chain,” Roughead said. “It will come up and it will be something we talk about.
“This has been a very valuable trip. [It’s] meeting exactly the intent I wanted it [to],” he said. “At the end of the day, when it is all said and done, [there is] no question I will be better informed as I deal with this important dimension of the Navy, which is shipbuilding. Because at the end of the day navies are ships and that’s what it is about.”