CAPITOL HILL: Presidents propose; Congress disposes. President Trump’s shipbuilding budget for 2018 is a placeholder that legislators can increase, the chairman of the Senate seapower subcommittee told me this morning. After Sen. Roger Wicker chaired a hearing with shipbuilding executives, following a classified hearing with Navy leaders, I asked him about Trump’s budget. Despite Trump’s […]
[UPDATED with Sec. Stackley comments] WASHINGTON: The Navy is seriously considering derivatives of foreign designs and the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter for its new frigate, after three years pursuing an upgraded version of its current Littoral Combat Ship. The shift has shaken up the industry, panicking some players, while others quietly reposition: Wisconsin’s Marinette Marine, […]
WASHINGTON: At least three shipyards that do work for the US Navy have bought and used drydocks from China. This would seem to lower the stakes for Huntington-Ingalls Industries, currently searching for a Chinese drydock of its own with help from homestate Senator Thad Cochran, as reported yesterday in the Washington Post. BAE Systems’ San Diego yard […]
CAPITOL HILL: Despite tight budgets at the Pentagon, the Navy wants to speed-up several shipbuilding programs — amphibious warships, destroyers, and submarines — and Congress seems inclined to give them the money. That’s testimony both to the perennial political popularity of shipbuilding, which employs a lot of voters, and to the rising strategic anxiety over […]
The Navy’s plan for building new nuclear missile submarines — the $80 billion Ohio Replacement Program — tips the balance between the nations’ sub-builders in favor of New England-based Electric Boat. Yes, the “Submarine Unified Build Strategy” carefully allocates work between EB, owned by General Dynamics, and Virginia’s Newport News Shipbuilding, owned by Huntington-Ingalls. Yes, […]
We’ve got something here for Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Angus King and Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft to read before they speak Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on “National Security Challenges and Icebreaking Operations in the Arctic.” Scott Truver, known to most serious students of Navy shipbuilding, argues the case for icebreakers. […]