Navy, senators argue over who is to blame for a too-small fleet

[rangerrebew]

Navy, senators argue over who is to blame for a too-small fleet
Story by Megan Eckstein • 10h •


The size of the U.S. Navy's fleet and the debate over how to increase it took center stage at a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

In particular, senators expressed concern after a recent study found multiple important shipbuilding programs are running years behind schedule.
 
The delays come "despite unprecedented support by Congress. Headlines and delays like this should constitute a full-blown emergency for the Navy and the shipbuilding industry," Subcommittee chairman Jon Tester, D-Montana, told Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, referring to the delays as "a major problem that puts our national security at risk."

"I know there's no quick fixes, but I've yet to see what either party is prepared to do about it, and to be specific, who is being held accountable."

Del Toro largely put the blame on industry.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/navy-senators-argue-over-who-is-to-blame-for-a-too-small-fleet/ar-BB1lKeAF?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=66007963eb2d4404932062a464b0a75e&ei=67

[rangerrebew]

STOP ARGUING ABOUT BLAME AND FIX THE PROBLEM!!

[ScottinVA]

Your tagline is absolutely spot on. 

[Timber Rattler]

Del Toro largely put the blame on industry.

I've said it before but that's a really stupid and dishonest argument.  Industry only responds to the procurement requirements and oft-changing specifications handed down by DoD, which is supposed to be the big decider on these things.  Industry can't do anything without DoD's guidance and say-so.

And once again, the current troubles began with THIS:

'The last supper': How a 1993 Pentagon dinner reshaped the defense industry

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-a-1993-pentagon-dinner-reshaped-the-defense-industry

In 1993, then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin invited the CEOs of America's largest defense contractors to a secret dinner.

Norm Augustine, then the head of Martin Marietta, remembers getting the call.

"We showed up for dinner at the Pentagon one night dutifully, none of us knowing why we were there," Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, says.

"I happened to be seated next Les Aspin, and I remember I said, ‘Les, this is awfully nice of you to invite us all to dinner, we’re all pleased to have a free meal, but why are we here?’ And he said, ‘Well, in about 15 minutes, you’re going to find out. You probably aren’t going to like it.’”

(snip)

... Secretary Perry made a presentation using a graph that was projected on the screen. And it was a stunning graph, so much so that the following day I went over to the Pentagon and asked for a copy of it, which I still have. And what was startling about it was that the Defense Department was saying there are way too many companies in the defense industrial base. That we can't afford them. And that we couldn't have a bunch of companies with half full factories and not enough money to invest in research and development, huge overhead, high costs. And we need to consolidate the industry.

And just to give you an example, the chart had a column on it that showed how many companies in various categories of military equipment, like fighter airplanes, tanks or what have you, how many companies the Defense Department was going to be able to afford to keep in business. And as an example, there were 16 categories of equipment and there were three. The government said it could keep three companies in business in one of the categories. In another of the categories it could afford to keep, let's see, it was six categories, it could afford to keep two companies in business. And there were seven categories where it considered it could only keep one company in business.

CHAKRABARTI: Mr. Augustine, you were just describing how at this last supper, Bill Perry had this chart. And it showed various categories of military equipment and spending. Bombers, submarines, tanks, things like that. And then there was one column that showed how many companies were currently providing that equipment. Like, say, I believe in the early 90s, there were like three main companies that were providing equipment for bombers, let's say. And then Perry had a second column that showed how many the Pentagon felt like they could keep in business or that they would need in the coming years, post-Cold War. And in some of those columns, there was just the number one. Do I have that right?

AUGUSTINE: That's accurate. Needless to say, I was stunned, for really two reasons. One, it pointed to how fragile our defense industrial base was going to become. But there was another factor that to me was also important, that in those areas there would not be competition. I happen to be a strong believer in competition. The free enterprise system, I think has served our country well. And apparently we were in such a financial position where we weren't going to be able to afford that and in some areas.

CHAKRABARTI: So then what did Aspen and Perry tell this gathering of CEOs from the defense industry? Like this is what's happening. The defense budget is going to decline. This is how many companies that we can continue to work with. Did they have any recommendations of what you should do as you filed out of the room?

AUGUSTINE: They did. They had made very clear what they could afford and they were going to pay for companies that had one third of all factories and inefficiencies to go with that. And they said that the government was not in the business of redesigning companies or consolidating industries or putting people in or out of business. That was up to us, the CEOs of the companies that were in the industry at the time.

And that was quite an awakening, they heard from the Defense Department on how small an industry would be afforded. And I should add to that that in serious war time, the defense industrial base is really the national industrial base. And it too had manufacturing was severely declining at the same time. And in 1980, 18% of the workforce in the nation was in the manufacturing world. Shortly after the Last Supper it was 7%. So the commercial industrial base was declining and the defense industrial was going to decline. Big worry for any future need for large scale military equipment.

(snip)

AUGUSTINE: The policy of driving companies out of business, I wouldn't even say that was a policy. The policy was to streamline the defense industry so it didn't have a lot of overhead. And I also saw many of these companies had capabilities that the government wanted to maintain. But in the next three years, we saw our industry lose 40% of its employees to the aerospace industry, and nearly 70% of the companies were basically absorbed and other companies were combined together to be more efficient. And it saved the government a great deal of money. The problem was it reduced the size of the industrial base, should we need one in the future.