Maybe 15, 20 years ago the US was the strongest military power in the world. In fact, there was no adversary in the entire world that could face – in the field of classical warfare at least – the power of American weapons. This truth was especially true of the seas.
Naval power was about fleets, i.e. products and creations of an industrial society and a correspondingly advanced technological base. In the US there were both. The result was the absolute dominance of their navy in oceans. What was left of the mighty Soviet navy was rusting in moorings, lost in accidents, losing crews, skills and capabilities. The other naval forces were light years away.
However, sovereignty is an expensive affair. When there is no rival, the cost of maintaining dominance becomes absurdly painful. The rationalization of the system led, even before the reduction in the number of ships, to the shrinking of the shipbuilding industry that created these ships. Fifteen, twenty years ago ships were surplus, there was no need, no pressure to build and so on. In this way the US shipyards were reduced and the existing ones saw orders for new ships kept to a minimum. After all, many believed then that the story was over. So there was no need for fleets: the Coast Guard and Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) were plentiful and plentiful.
Naval power comes at a cost
Within a few years the US shipyards serving military orders were reduced to four. And the workers in them from 62,000 were reduced to 21,000. Old industrial facilities were abandoned and handed over to municipalities or charitable institutions. Some became parks, others hospitals, others schools. Meanwhile, the delivery time for a new aircraft carrier exceeded a decade. That wasn’t a problem. As long as there was no threat everything could flow at a leisurely pace. But when the rhythms had to change, then many problems came to the fore.
The first identified was the need for a new government shipyard. It is not something that can be created from scratch. Converting a shipyard for large merchant ships into a military equivalent would be a good solution if of course there were such units in the US. But it has been a while since commercial ships – including those of the US – have been built in China, Korea and Japan. So this solution does not exist.
Building a new shipyard from the ground up is a very expensive affair. In addition, it requires a methodical preliminary research in terms of geographical location, climatic conditions – outside the hurricane zone – the adequacy of energy and transport infrastructure and, above all, the nearby existence of a workforce. The latter must even have the correct “stratification”. Significant numbers of skilled artisans as well as unskilled workers are needed. Building a warship is an extremely complex business. In the event that the domestic staff is not enough, it is necessary to attract craftsmen and workers from abroad.
The decline of the naval industry
And behind the shipbuilding unit, industries are needed, industrial complexes that will provide the necessary for the construction of the ships. And of course the raw materials to feed these industries. We do not mean here high-tech industries – semiconductors for example. These are coming last. Ships are built with steel, not semiconductors. In all of 2023, the US produced 80 million tons of steel. As much as China produced only in July 2024 – a month that was considered “bad” in this field! Can you build ocean-dominant fleets by importing steel from your potential rival?
The personnel problem is the most acute among the rest. The contraction of the shipbuilding industry in the US we have seen has reduced the number of workers in this sector to a minimum. And the replacement of American officers and sailors in the remaining commercial fleet of the US greatly complicates the staffing of the ships even if a solution to the problem of shipyards is found. As the number of available ships in the navy remains constant or decreases while obligations multiply on a global scale, crews are forced to remain many weeks or even months at sea.
In the case of aircraft carriers, this period can reach three to five months. Obviously the pressures on staff have an impact on recruiting. The professional US armed forces are no longer an option for the most gifted young men and women. Every major college graduate finds better jobs in the private sector. This means that ships and personnel are missing and its quality is being degraded. In today’s extreme technology boats, neither one nor the other contributes to the necessary performance.
“Shock and Awe”
They discovered with horror in the USA that the imposing show of force and the spectacular, perhaps even devastating first blows (the “Shock and Awe” of the Iraq war) are not enough to win the war. The duration of the conflicts in Ukraine or Gaza has brought back to the fore protracted wars of attrition, where victory or defeat is determined by the endurance of those involved. Endurance mental but also material, “consumable” – how many material means, shells, missiles, drones, tanks, armored can be spent by one and the other side. But in order to spend, you have to produce.
Countries that are unable to produce what is needed will either be disaffected, led and brought down by allies who have the productive capacity, or will have to choose other forms of war of attrition: Hamas in Gaza does not produce, it simply has people and physical infrastructure to be destroyed. Israel is obliged to invest a large number of destructive weapons to destroy the “capital” of Hamas. Nor does it produce the necessary weapons for this purpose and therefore depends on the goodwill of the USA.
There are no magic solutions to these kinds of problems. A section of American “think tanks” prefer not to think about them. The hope for the “from within” collapse of China comes and returns almost like an announcement of the Second Coming! Beyond expectation, in essence, little can be done. Mobilizing allies and consolidating and standardizing their production capabilities is one of the proposed solutions. This is where the obsession with spreading the F-35 as widely as possible comes from. The search for “magic weapons” has preoccupied us in the past. The shift towards cheaper weapon systems is now visible in the – not so cool – choices of American decision-makers.
Faith in large “TaskForces”, hinged around a large aircraft carrier, has been limited. It is no longer possible to build large aircraft carriers in the necessary numbers. The idea of acquiring small aircraft carriers – based on the qualities of the F-35C – is gaining ground. Amphibious warfare ships with the appropriate deck thus become combat platforms with aeronautical properties. Allied ships with similar features are becoming sought after and the US Navy is rushing to train with them.
