The navy’s ability to build cheaper warships that can shoot down Houthi rebel missiles in the Red Sea depends in part on a 25-year-old worker who previously made parts for garbage trucks.
Lucas Andreini, a welder at Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wisconsin, is one of thousands of young workers who have received employer-sponsored training as shipyards struggle to hire and retain staff.
The labor shortage is one of many challenges that have led to backlogs in ship production and maintenance as the Navy grapples with increasing global threats. Combined with shifting defense priorities, last-minute design changes and cost overruns, it has put the U.S. behind China in the number of ships it has at its disposal — and the gap is widening.
The Navy’s shipbuilding industry is currently in “terrible shape” — the worst it’s been in a quarter century, said Eric Labs, a senior naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. “I’m alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a quick, easy way out of this. It’s been a long time coming.”
Marinette Marine has a contract to build six guided-missile frigates — the Navy’s newest surface warships — with options to build four more. But it only has enough workers to produce one frigate per year, Labs said.
One of the biggest problems in the industry is the struggle to find and retain workers for the challenging work of building new ships, as older workers retire, losing decades of experience.
Shipyards across the country have established training academies and partnered with technical colleges to provide workers with the skills they need to build high-tech warships. Submarine manufacturers and the Navy have formed an alliance to promote manufacturing careers, and shipyards offer perks to retain workers after they’re hired.
Andreini trained for his job at Marinette through a program at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. Before that, he worked for several years as a production line welder, making parts for garbage trucks. He said some of his friends are held back by the stigma that shipbuilding is “a bad work environment, and it’s unsafe.”
But that’s not the reality, he said. His health benefits are better than at his previous job, he’s getting a pension for the first time, and there’s a chance to gain skills even more advanced than what he learned in his initial training.
Moreover, Andreini says, he feels like he is serving his country.
“It makes me happy that I can do my part and possibly help sailors and some of my friends in the military come home safe,” said Andreini, whose father served in the Navy in Vietnam.
Alonie Lake, another welder, a technical school graduate and single mother, is happy to have a job with long-term stability. Marinette’s backlog of Navy contracts almost certainly guarantees that.
Lake, 32, said she thinks many young people are interested in jobs in the construction industry “and the satisfaction of working with their hands to create tangible results.”
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro recently emphasized the importance of training programs during graduation ceremonies at a community college in Maine. The college has partnered with the nearby Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to teach workers the skills needed to repair nuclear submarines.
“It is incumbent on all of us to consider how we can best 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 ourselves against the threats and challenges of today,” he said.
The Navy is trying to help shipyards ensure that new employees, once trained and hired, remain employed in a tight labor market.
In Wisconsin, some of the $100 million in Navy funding provided to Marinette Marine will be used for retention bonuses at the shipyard, whose previous employee retention record Del Toro described as “atrocious.”
The shipyard, which employs more than 2,000 workers, is offering bonuses of up to $10,000 to retain workers, spokesman Eric Dent said. “The labor shortage is absolutely a problem and it’s a problem for all shipyards,” he said.
Preservation is a concern even for shipyards that have achieved their goals, such as Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds destroyers and amphibious warfare ships in Mississippi and aircraft carriers and submarines in Virginia.
The company is creating training partnerships with colleges and public schools at all levels. Improvements in Mississippi include more than 1 million square feet (92,900 square meters) of indoor workspace, cool-down and hydration stations, and a second dining area with a Chick-fil-A. Huntington Ingalls also partnered with the Navy and the city of Newport News, Virginia, to build a new parking garage for employees and sailors.
Much of the current problems in American shipbuilding are caused by the Navy, which frequently changes requirements, requests upgrades, and changes designs after shipbuilders have already begun construction.
That can be seen in the cost overruns, technological challenges and delays of the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Ford; the upgrading of a gun system for a stealth destroyer program after rocket-propelled missiles became too expensive; and the early retirement of several of the Navy’s lightly armored littoral combat ships that were prone to malfunctions.
The Navy promised to learn from those lessons with the new frigates they are building at Marinette Marine. The frigates are popular because they are less expensive to produce than larger destroyers, but have similar weapons systems.
The Navy chose a ship design already in use by navies in France and Italy rather than starting from scratch. The idea was that 15% of the ship would be updated to meet U.S. Navy specifications, while 85% would remain unchanged, which would reduce costs and speed construction.
Instead, the opposite happened: The Navy redesigned 85% of the ship, resulting in cost increases and construction delays, said Bryan Clark, an analyst at the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute. Construction of the first Constellation warship, which began in August 2022, is now three years behind schedule, with delivery pushed back to 2029.
The final design is still not complete.
Further complicating matters, the Navy has no control over the changing nature of global threats.
Throughout its history, the Navy has had to adapt to a variety of threats, whether it was the Cold War of recent decades or current threats including the war in the Middle East, increasing competition from the Chinese and Russian navies, piracy off the coast of Somalia, and ongoing attacks on merchant shipping by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
And that’s not all. Shipyard consolidation and financing uncertainties have disrupted the rhythm of shipbuilding and hampered long-term investment and planning, says Matthew Paxton of the Shipbuilders Council of America, a national trade association.
“We’ve had years of inconsistent shipbuilding plans,” Paxton said. “When we finally start scaling up, the Navy is shocked that we’ve lost members of our workforce.”
The Navy emphasizes that it takes the problems in shipbuilding seriously.
“The Navy’s role in defending our nation and promoting peace has never been greater or more important,” said Lt. Kyle Hanton, a spokesman for Del Toro’s office. “We continue to work with our industry partners to find creative solutions to our shared challenges.”
