The Secretary of the Navy toured a historic California shipyard facility on Oct. 2 after calling for a new maritime statecraft that includes finding ways to improve the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
The Mare Island Dry Dock in Solano County, Calif., provides dry docking and pier-side vessel repair, maintenance and alterations services on part of a former naval repair shipyard, the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro toured the facilities with Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), whose district includes the location. During the tours they met with current yard leadership and discussed options to increase Pacific Ocean shipyard capacity, the Navy said.
The former shipyard was the first Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean in the 1850s. By World War II it grew into one of the largest naval facilities in the world, according to a Naval History and Heritage Command webpage. During World War II it grew to 20 ship berths, four dry docks and two shipbuilding ways and the facility built and repaired hundreds of ships.
The four current public shipyards are the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Va.; Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Maine; Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, Wash.; and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, Hawaii.
The Navy noted that in its last 25 years in operation the Mare Island Naval Shipyard was the “leading submarine port for the West Coast.”
However, the facility was later recommended for closure in 1993 by the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission because its functions were duplicated by the Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound shipyards, which also had larger dry docks and deeper channel access. The shipyard closed in 1996.
The current Mare Island Dry Dock company uses Dry Docks 2 and 3 of the former shipyard’s four dry docks with over 18 acres of the land to perform government and private shipyard repair and maintenance services. It took over those facilities from Mare Island Shipyard LLC in 2013, after that company initially reopened the facilities in 2011.
“We’re making a concerted effort to improve our naval shipbuilding and repair industry – both public and commercial – with historically high investments in the industrial base. That’s how we grow our nation’s strategic advantage at sea,” Del Toro said in a statement.
The Navy said the secretary was impressed with the present facilities and capacity and infrastructure remaining on the former naval shipyard site.
In September, Del Toro called for a “new maritime statecraft” in a speech at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. He said that covers naval diplomacy, as well as a “whole-of-government effort to build comprehensive U.S. and allied maritime power, both commercial and naval.”
“The maritime industry is a strategic sector critical to our economic and national security. It is vital to achieving resilient global supply chains and is ripe with opportunity to partner with a greater number of shipbuilders here in the U.S. and with our closest allies overseas, including Japan and South Korea. It also requires urgent U.S. public investment and international statecraft to attract the necessary private capital,” Del Toro said at the time.
The Navy underscored this visit was only the latest in a chain of the Navy Secretary’s engaging shipyards around the country.
In July he visited the Pearl Harbor shipyard and in August toured the Bayonne Drydock & Repair Corp., in Bayonne, N.J.
The secretary’s office said members of his staff also conducted a site inspection of the Richmond Shipyard to assess its capability and capacity. Four Richmond Shipyards were built and operated by Kaiser Shipyards, which was a major naval contractor during World War II. At its height, the shipyards built up to three ships a day during the war. It is now part of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front Historical Park.
The Navy said the Richmond Shipyard still has six graving docks, a large railhead and an “expansive modular assembly area.”
The Secretary’s office said the administration is trying to set up conditions to “attract the most advanced shipbuilders in the world to open U.S.-owned subsidiaries and invest in commercial shipyards here in the U.S., modernizing and expanding our shipbuilding industrial capacity.”
Last year, Rear Adm. Jonathan Rucker, Program Executive Officer for attack submarines, said during the Naval Submarine League symposium that the Navy is studying how to get more efficient with its public shipyards and if, ultimately, they need a fifth public shipyard ((Defense Daily, Nov. 4, 2022).
“We’re studying that, figuring out how to get more efficient. And then the question is always, well, when you’re done with that, do you think you need [a fifth public shipyard]? The answer is we don’t know. So the answer is, maybe but right now, I wouldn’t go out and tell anybody that we absolutely need one,” he said.
Rucker said it would take up to two years to finish the “scoping study” that would determine if a fifth shipyard is even necessary after the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program improves and modernizes the four shipyards. The study is also looking at how private capabilities and outsourcing work can create better efficiency.
“Where does that put us in capability and capacity? And at that point, then you could decide, do we need to go look at something [like a fifth shipyard],” Rucker said.
However, he noted if the Navy decides to ultimately add a fifth shipyard, that “is a pretty big path to go down.”