America is in a shipbuilding crisis. The Navy has all these grand ambitions for building new platforms, whether the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers or the Virginia-class attack submarines. Yet, the shipbuilding crisis is most pronounced in the area of submarine construction. 

Subseas, given China’s rising threat, are likely going to be the most important naval platforms that the United States will have to use against China’s military in a possible great power war with them. 

The U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class submarines are a cornerstone of American undersea dominance. Meant to replace the legendary and aging Los Angeles-class subs, the Virginia-class submarine program has been plagued with delays. These setbacks not only complicate the program’s success but also endanger U.S. national security under the contested waves of the world’s increasingly unstable international system.

The Virginia-class submarine’s complicated story of delays and budget overruns is the tale of America’s ongoing and worsening shipyard crisis.

Workforce Woes 

One of the main reasons behind the delays in the production of the Virginia-class submarine is the shortage of skilled labor. The shipbuilding industry, notably for complex vessels like the Virginia-class submarine, requires an abundance of highly skilled workers. However, the American shipbuilding workforce is aging and is struggling to attract new talent. 

This has led to a real bottleneck in production capabilities. 

What’s more, the military’s shipyards are having to compete with civilian high-tech industries for finite sources of skilled labor. Then there is the training that is required for high-skilled military shipyard staff. It takes longer to train these elements when they’re hired, adding to the massive delays in the production of complex Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines.

Shattered Supply Chain

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the world’s economy was shuttered to “flatten the curve” of the disease spread, international supply chains have taken years to recover. 

Indeed, the slightest disruption in those supply chains had cascading impacts on the rest of the international economy. American naval shipyards were among the hardest hit by the breaking of these already brittle supply chains. Despite the pandemic having been over for three years and counting, the supply chains have yet to be restored. 

They likely never will be returned to the way they were before the pandemic, especially considering that these supply chains were already at their breaking point for many years before the pandemic hit).

The supply chains supporting the construction of the Virginia-class submarines are highly complex. Not only did they struggle through the pandemic, but also the usual trade disputes, along with specific component shortages, have severely impacted production schedules. 

These delays are not just in raw materials but also in high-tech components vital for nuclear-powered submarine systems. 

Some systems that have suffered through delays have been the advanced sonar arrays the Virginia-class submarines use, as well as equipment related to the vital nuclear propulsion system. In other words, putting humpty-dumpty back together again is a near-impossible task under current conditions, meaning the delays are going to be the “new normal.”

Too Much Tech Doesn’t Equal Better Capabilities

The Virginia-class submarines are among the most technically complex in the world. These platforms incorporate new design features aimed at reducing costs and enhancing capabilities. However, integrating these complex technologies into the submarine, such as the Large Aperture Bow (LAB) sonar array and the impressive Virginia Payload Module (VPM), created an entirely new problem set for the declining shipyard workforce to address. 

The Pentagon has yet to learn the lessons of the last forty years of procurement mishaps. It sounds great to say that the military should incorporate the most advanced, modern technologies in its submarines. In practice, however, this increases the complexity and, therefore, the time it takes to build such platforms and the cost of both building and maintaining these increasingly complex systems. 

Plus, if these subs were ever lost in combat, the cost of replacing them would be onerous. 

Can’t Afford These Things Anymore

With the United States amassing an insane national debt, at $32 trillion and counting every day, the government’s budgets are increasingly constrained. The technical services of the U.S. military, such as the Air Force, Navy, and Space Force, will feel the financial pinch more and more. 

What’s more, the fixed-price incentive contracts set for the Virginia-class subs have often underestimated actual costs due to optimistic projections of efficiency gains and material costs. When actual costs exceed these projections, which they almost always do, it prompts reevaluations of the overall program, further delaying the program.

Lack of Focus

And then there’s the bigger issue afflicting the overall U.S. military. There’s no real grand strategy for the United States, and there hasn’t been one since the Americans waged the Cold War. We no longer build weapons to comport with our national grand strategy. We now build costly and complex systems that will define whatever strategy we think of. It’s a silly paradigm and leads to much waste in terms of time, limited manpower, and finite resources. 

At the same time, the ailing shipyards are trying to keep up with demand for the Virginia-class submarines; they are also attempting to build the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, which have also been deemed essential to U.S. national security. So, the same limited number of skilled workers and available slips at faltering American shipyards are now being competed over by two different submarine platforms, both of which have been deemed as being the highest priority for the Navy. 

A Sad State of Affairs

The U.S. Navy is about to find itself in a world of hurt, as near-peer competitors with far more dynamic shipbuilding capacity continuously challenge the Navy’s once-dominant position on the High Seas, notably in the Indo-Pacific, the most important geostrategic region for the U.S. outside of the Western hemisphere. 

If trends persist, the Navy will not only be unable to reliably field its Virginia-class subs but also will be unable to keep pace with the staggering production quotas of China’s less advanced but far more numerous naval forces.

I will keep saying what I’ve been saying on these pages for a year now. Quantity has a quality of its own. The Pentagon can’t seem to figure that one out. 

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

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