Jane's Navy International. Between reefs and shoals: plotting a course for the US warship building sector

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1 Jane's Navy International Between reefs and shoals: plotting a course for the US warship building sector [Content preview Subscribe to Jane s Navy International for full article] Budget cuts and programme uncertainty are blurring the planning horizons for surface warship constructors in the United States.Grace Jean and Richard Scott survey the sector landscape From Bath in Maine across to San Diego, California, and from the Gulf of Mexico up to Lake Michigan, shipbuilders across the United States remain busy building new surface combatants, amphibious ships, and auxiliary vessels to meet the requirements of the US naval service. A snapshot of activity in early 2014 demonstrates the scale of this activity. On the northeast coast, General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works (BIW) is outfitting Zumwalt, the first DDG 1000 destroyer, and continuing construction of the two follow-on units (with DDG 1001 currently about three-quarters complete). Meanwhile, the yard has re-started its DDG 51 Flight IIA production line, with DDG 115 now about 40% complete and DDG 116 about 16% finished. DDG 51 Flight IIA production has also resumed at Huntington Ingalls Industries' (HII's) Ingalls Shipbuilding Division yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. DDG 113 is now over a quarter complete, with DDG 114 in early manufacture. Turning to large amphibious ships, the assault ship USS America (LHA 6) completed acceptance sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico in late January ahead of handover to the US Navy (USN). Ingalls is now working on LHA 7, the future USS Tripoli, with delivery planned for Ingalls is also building the LPD 17-class ships John P Murtha (LPD 26) and Portland (LPD 27) at Pascagoula; USS Somerset (LPD 25), the last ship to be built at HII's Avondale Shipyard near New Orleans, Louisiana, was delivered last year and was commissioned on 1 March HII took the decision in 2010 to cease shipbuilding operations at Avondale, and is now looking to bring energy infrastructure and offshore engineering work into the facility. In addition, Pascagoula is turning out the US Coast Guard's new Legend-class National Security Cutter (NSC) vessels. Three out of a planned eight of these frigate-size ships have been delivered to date, with NSC production running at the rate of one per year. Budget checkmate Page 1 of 7

2 The driving force behind the USN's shipbuilding programme is the aspiration to achieve a 306-ship navy by As of early 2014, the fleet stands at about 283 deployable vessels, a figure that will drop away with the planned retirement of the remaining FFG 7 Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates along with a number of CG 47 Ticonderoga-class cruisers. Given the US declared strategic re-balance towards the Asia-Pacific region, the USN has become the focal point in the Pentagon's efforts to support the resultant military re-alignment. In recognition of the shift, lawmakers have approved the navy's procurement plans with little opposition, though they do continue to scrutinise every programme. The navy's forward programme is certainly ambitious. In the 10-year period from fiscal year 2015 (FY 2015) through to FY 2025, the navy intends to procure several new classes of ship and submarine, including the SSBN(X) Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine replacement, the LX(R) amphibious transport ship (to replace the current LSD 41/49 class), the new T-AO(X) replenishment oiler, and, as recently announced, a frigate-like surface combatant to succeed the truncated LCS programme. USN officials also plan to continue acquisition of the DDG 51 Flight III guided-missile destroyer, to maintain two-per-year buys of the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN), and to fund acquisition of two more nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVN 79 and CVN 80). Even in healthy financial times, the plan would be deemed a challenge, given the estimated USD93 billion price tag of the SSBN(X) programme alone. Today, with the US economy still caught up in the downturn stemming from the financial crisis, and with a continuing budget deficit of more than USD1 trillion, the navy's plans present a procurement bow wave which continues to grow in size. US financial pressures will continue to squeeze the shipbuilding budget, which remains perennially plagued by shortfalls of about USD5 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). To make matters worse, sequestration's mandatory defence spending cuts - if not mitigated or stopped by Congress - are expected to continue through 2021 as part of the wider effort to help the US government find USD1.2 trillion in savings across all its accounts. Turnaround Irwin F Edenzon, who at the end of March 2014 steps down as corporate vice-president of HII and president of Ingalls Shipbuilding, steered the turnaround of HII's operations on the Gulf Coast over the last six years. "Back in 2008 we prioritised safety, quality, cost, and schedule in that order," he said, "our feeling being that if we didn't get the first two right, the second two don't matter. "The ships we are delivering now are passing through the INSURV [the Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey] wicket with high marks. We are pretty comfortable that we have a very safe shipyard, and are confident that we are building a high-quality product. "In the meantime, we are continuing to improve our schedule performance and of late we have been improving our cost performance exactly to our plan. That was evidenced by our win on the DDG 51 multi-year contract." Page 2 of 7

3 Driving down costs across the business remains a key focus. "We have spent a significant length of time looking at spans and lengths of control so we understand what the management structure needs to be," said Edenzon. "We understand that we need to build ships that are affordable for our customer and we are taking very aggressive actions in our overhead structure, in investments, and in process. "[W]e are [also] spending capital. For example, we are doing a lot more automated welding, and we are investing in the front end of the business so that the panel line is more efficient. That means the factory is doing shaping work more efficiently." The Ingalls business currently has about 12,000 employees along the Gulf Coast. Skilling and sustaining that labour resource is a constant challenge. In terms of 'white collar' jobs, Ingalls has about 1,000 engineers and designers on its books. "In terms of ship design, we are in a bit of a lull on the engineering side," said Edenzon, "so our objective is to preserve core competencies in our engineering ranks as we look at what the navy is going to do in the timeframe with new programmes". DDG 51 Flight IIA production has resumed at HII's Ingalls Shipbuilding Division yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Here, first steel is cut on DDG 113. (Huntington Ingalls Industries) Page 3 of 7

4 The vast majority of the 2,500 people that the shipyard will hire during 2014 will be 'blue collar' crafters. To support the induction of new personnel, the company has recently opened a new maritime training centre alongside its Pascagoula site. The task of ensuring that the right blend of skills and experience is applied to each programme is not assisted by discontinuities or uncertainty in the forward shipbuilding programme. That has been demonstrated by the re-start of DDG 51 production at Pascagoula, said Edenzon. "There has been quite a long stretch between the completion of DDG 110 and restarting the line for DDG 113. So that has meant reconstituting the team, getting back the learning, and putting process improvements in place. We are working on all of those on DDG 113 and DDG 114 to get the right performance on the multi-year contract." Re-assembling that team brings its own challenges. "The first thing you do is try and find the people with the skills, but what you find is that those people have been assigned to other programmes and are working on other things," pointed out Edenzon. "In the planning process we try to identify those folks so that we know where they are, and what phase of construction they are in on those ships, and then we have to look at the risk if we take them off that ship to solve [a problem]... Are we going to do collateral damage on the other programmes? "On DDG 113 and DDG 114, we have been reconstituting the team to resolve that loss of learning since DDG 110 was delivered in February All the lessons that were learnt coming out of DDG 110 have been rolled into DDG 113, and all the lessons learned from the team working [DDG 113 and DDG 114] are going to get rolled into DDG 117. Powerhouse Tucked away in the far northeast, BIW sits just upstream from where English colonists in 1607 built the pinnace Virginia, which lays claim as one of the first ships built in colonial America. Originally founded as Bath Iron Foundry in 1826, BIW has evolved into a shipbuilding powerhouse that has turned out much of the modern navy's surface combatant force. Today, it is busy delivering the DDG 1000 programme. Lead ship Zumwalt presents an imposing silhouette on the Kennebec River, which flows past BIW's main shipyard and into the Atlantic. Page 4 of 7

5 Zumwalt, the USN's lead DDG 1000 destroyer, pictured fitting out at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, in January (US Navy) To facilitate construction of the navy's latest surface ships, the yard has undergone a substantial transformation since From razing the original inclined shipways that launched ships of previous generations to building capacious module and ship erection halls, and to revamping the riverside space to accommodate a land-level transfer facility and three shipways, the shipyard has been redesigned to construct new ships like never before. "We've already seen how improvements we made to the shipyard in the late 1990s and early 2000s have benefited both the DDG 51 and DDG 1000 classes of ships we are building," said BIW spokesman Jim DeMartini. "Every improvement we've made supports current and future programmes." For the DDG 1000 ships, the BIW team has engineered a modular ship construction method that delivers a total of nine so-called 'ultra units' - the largest of which weighs 4,500 tonnes. The 'ultra units' are built up indoors out of smaller modules; each 'ultra unit' is then moved outside to the shipway where units are connected and welded into place. The USN's DDG 1000 programme manager, Captain Jim Downey, pointed out that the yard was able to assemble the nine 'ultra units' of Zumwalt 's hull in about 14 months. "The first unit rolled out in Page 5 of 7

6 October 2011, and in December months later - the last hull unit was going into place; pretty spectacular for a 15,000-16,000 tonne ship," he told IHS Jane's during a visit to BIW in January Lessons to improve the process are being applied to second-in-class DDG 1000 Michael Monsoor. Several of Monsoor 's 'ultra units' have been consolidated on the shipway adjacent to where Zumwalt is being outfitted, and the vessel's composite deckhouse and hangar are expected to arrive from HII in the second quarter of The 14th and final T-AKE, USNS Cesar Chavez, seen in build at General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego. The projected T-AO(X) oiler will be the next large afloat support ship programme. (General Dynamics NASSCO) Page 6 of 7

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