news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

[Global Times Special Correspondent Chen Yang] The continued decline in shipbuilding capacity has made the US Navy very worried in recent years. The US Defense News said on the 12th that the US Navy's shipbuilding capacity is currently at its worst in 25 years. Although the Pentagon is trying to use various means to try to adjust it, "there is no way that can be effective in the short term."

The report said, "The U.S. Navy lags behind China in the number of ships at its disposal, and the gap is widening." According to a Pentagon report, the number of Chinese naval ships has surpassed that of the U.S. Navy since 2020, and is now the largest in the world. The total number of U.S. Navy ships has continued to decline, with less than 300 ships currently in service, as a large number of ships built during the Cold War have entered the peak period of retirement.

"At a time when the U.S. Navy faces growing global threats," its ship production and maintenance backlog is getting worse. The report said that the primary reason for this predicament is the continued shrinkage of the U.S. Navy's shipbuilding industry. The report took Marinette Maritime, which is building the Constellation-class frigates for the U.S. Navy, as an example, saying that the U.S. subsidiary of the Italian shipyard in Wisconsin should build up to 10 Constellation-class guided missile frigates in the next few years under the U.S. Navy's contract, but due to various factors including a lack of labor, the company can only produce one frigate per year. "One of the main problems facing the industry is that it is very challenging to recruit and retain new labor to build ships as workers with decades of experience retire one after another." The report interviewed Andreni, a 25-year-old welder who was previously responsible for manufacturing garbage truck parts. He said that "many partners are unwilling to work in the shipbuilding industry because of the poor working environment and unsafe reputation of the shipbuilding industry." U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro described Marinette Maritime's past employee retention as "extremely poor." The situation is similar for most other shipyards, including Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds destroyers and amphibious warships for the U.S. Navy in Mississippi and aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines in Virginia, but has difficulty recruiting enough qualified shipbuilding workers.