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[Text/Observer Network Wang Shichun] Fox News Network's special report on August 11 focused on the troubled US military shipbuilding industry. The report said that due to the expanding global maritime threats, frequent warship design changes, cost overruns, and the inability to recruit and retain shipbuilding workers, the output of the US Navy shipbuilding industry has fallen to the lowest level in 25 years.

The report also exaggerated the "China threat theory", saying that the delay has caused the United States to lag far behind its rival China in terms of ship production speed. Previously, the US Navy intelligence agency said that China's shipbuilding capacity is more than 200 times that of the United States.

At present, the production speed of the US Navy's surface ships is slow. Fox News cited the famous Marinette Marine as an example. According to the US Navy's contract, this Italian shipyard's US subsidiary in Wisconsin should manufacture up to 10 Constellation-class guided missile frigates in the next few years, but due to various factors including lack of labor, the company can only produce one frigate per year.

Problems like the one Marinette is facing are common across the country, and U.S. shipyards are beginning to look for solutions, such as offering training academies or partnering with technical colleges to get more workers the skills they need to build the Navy's new ships.

U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro has touted the programs, even speaking at a graduation ceremony for graduating students at a community college that works with the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to repair nuclear submarines. “It is incumbent on all of us to consider how best to use our talents, and in the case of our graduates, their newly developed skills, to build our great nation for all Americans and to defend against today’s threats and challenges,” he said at the ceremony.

In addition to the lack of labor, the frequent changes in design by the U.S. Navy also led to construction delays. Although the U.S. Navy vowed to learn from these mistakes, to this day the U.S. Navy still changes the design requirements of ships after the shipbuilding industry begins to build warships. For example, the design of the Constellation class once had a design commonality of 85% with the European FREMM frigate, but after the U.S. Navy modified it, the commonality of the relevant design dropped to less than 15%. This led to delays in the construction of this type of frigate.

The U.S. Navy did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

The shipbuilding review report released by the US Navy in April this year showed that the construction plans of various warships, including the new generation of missile frigates "Constellation" class, the new generation of ballistic missile nuclear submarines "Columbia" class, the "Ford" class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier "Enterprise" and the new batch of "Virginia" attack nuclear submarines, have been delayed by about 1-3 years. This will pose a huge challenge to the US Navy's upgrade plan. Among them, the first Columbia-class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, the District of Columbia (SSBN-826), will also face a 12-16 month delay. The third ship of the Ford-class "Enterprise" super aircraft carrier will face a 16-18 month delay. The first ship of the "Constellation" class has been delayed by at least one year.

Faced with the delay, the US Navy once considered letting "allies" such as Japan and South Korea contract certain shipbuilding tasks. During his trip to the Western Pacific at the end of March, US Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro visited major shipbuilding companies in South Korea, including HD Hyundai and Hanwha Marine, Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Japan Marine United (JMU). In a statement to local allies and partners, he encouraged shipbuilding companies in both countries to invest in the construction of US commercial and military ships.

According to USNI News on March 7, local time, Del Toro said at the McAleese National Defense Planning Conference on Thursday that American shipyards "can learn from Pacific shipyards how to retain employees." It is reported that the United States is considering letting Japan and South Korea contract certain ship repair and even manufacturing tasks.

However, this idea was rejected by the "millionaires". Matthew Paxton, president of the American Shipbuilding Association, recently published a harsh commentary on the Breaking Defense website titled "Outsourcing the U.S. Shipbuilding Industrial Base Will Outsource U.S. Sovereignty". In the article, Paxton said that outsourcing shipbuilding to foreign countries instead of increasing domestic investment is simply digging one's own grave.

Eric Rabos, a senior naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, put it this way: “I don’t see any quick, easy way to fix this problem. We are so far behind in this area.”

Of course, the report did not forget to exaggerate the "terrifying scale of China's shipbuilding" in the article. A PPT leaked by the US Navy intelligence agency previously stated that China's shipbuilding capacity is more than 200 times that of the United States.

Brent Sadler, senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the Heritage Foundation's National Defense Center, told Fox News at the time: "China sees this decade as a strategic opportunity... I don't see any trend change anytime soon where we're actually not starting to close the gap with China."

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