The Navy official who manages the program office with the Constellation-class frigate said the Navy is looking to distribute production like in recent submarine construction moves to work around workforce limitations.
During a Thursday conference, Rear Adm. Kevin Smith, Program Executive Officer for Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC), said while frigate shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine builds “good quality ships,” this is the first time they are working as a prime shipbuilding contractor in the U.S. and they are working through similar industrial base issues as others: design problems, blue collar workforce, and delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Smith spoke during a panel at the Naval Science and Technology Symposium, hosted by the American Society of Naval Engineers and the Office of Naval Research.
Fincantieri Marinette Marine won the original frigate contract in April 2020 for up to 10 ships, which Smith noted was just when the COVID-19 pandemic started affecting various shipbuilding programs and the overall defense industrial base (Defense Daily, April 30, 2020).
Smith underscored the importance of how “design is one thing that has atrophied in this country. The other is workforce. We don’t have enough, Gulf Coast [has a] 6,000 blue collar shortage.”
He said the Navy is working “hand-in-hand, side-by-side” with the shipbuilders to get through the design effort and move on to start building the first frigate.
Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro’s 45-day shipbuilding review earlier this year confirmed the frigate is running about three years behind schedule due to slow design completion as well as workforce issues (Defense Daily, April 3).
A Government Accountability Office report published in May said the design changes from the FREMM parent design and inadequate functional design review practices and metrics led to construction starting prematurely (Defense Daily, May 29).
Given the state of the major naval shipbuilders and their workforce issues on the coasts, Smith argued frigates will need to follow the submarine programs lead in moving to distributed and federated shipbuilding, where other companies build modules that are assembled and integrated at the prime contractor’s shipyard. He also used the example of how the Australian Defense Ministry built its Hobart-class destroyers in a distributed manner, including with parts built in Spain, ultimately all integrated in Adelaide, Australia.
HII Newport News Shipbuilding [HII] and General Dynamics Electric Boat [GD] are both working with subcontractors to build submarine modules that are then assembled at the main shipyards. Austal USA in particular has made several recent moves to bolster its steel submarine module production as a subcontractor to Electric Boat (Defense Daily, Sept. 20).
Smith said the Technical Data package (TDP) required in the Fincantieri contract will not only allow them to add a second shipyard, but help the Navy work on that federated shipbuilding production style.
He noted the Navy’s Request For Information (RFI) issued last month seeking more sources to support frigate construction shows they are in the early market research phase on a second shipyard (Defense Daily, Nov. 19).
“Because for my 30-year ship building plan, we need to have more capacity to build frigates, so we’re doing that market research now, the program had an industry day yesterday, and had a good group of industry partners come in and get some questions and some guiding points to programs looking forward. So right now, it’s really more in research,” Smith said.
While several shipbuilders are interested in adding the frigate to their portfolio, he said the workforce and workload issues in industry means the Navy needs to examine their ability to integrate and assemble ships while also working the distributed angle.
Smith namechecked interest from Austal, Bollinger Shipyards, GD Bath Iron Works, and HII but said they are also all full, or have tapped out of smooth workforce increases .
“They’re very interested in doing that work. But maybe we need to take a tact, okay, maybe one of those yards could integrate and assemble…bring it all together. Like, like the [Australian] Hobart-class in Adelaide – and subs the same way. So we have to look at how we’re going to do that.”
In 2023 HII leadership confirmed they were still interested in becoming the second shipbuilder for the Constellation-class (Defense Daily, June 28, 2023).
Smith was unwilling to go into specific timelines on starting a recompete for a second yard, but said “as we move into 2025, we’ll see where this goes. Right now, you know, looking at the market research that’s being done will inform how we want to move forward.”
He said the focus right now is completing design work, conducting lead ship construction, and getting a sound Technical Data package from Fincantieri.
Smith also reiterated the Navy is looking to copy the production style with destroyers of a lead and follow yard, like with General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Maine and HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss.
“So we’re not going to change the design. We’re not going to have two variants like LCS, and we’re going to have class standard equipment, so propulsion would be identical. And so that’s the thought is one design moving forward and then looking at the industrial base, where are we at.”