The United Kingdom's Naval Shipbuilding Industrial Base: The Next Fifteen Years
Abstract
The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (MOD) is in the early stages of an ambitious effort to renew and upgrade its naval fleet over the next two decades through the production of new ships and submarines. Defence policy makers are seeking to gain a fuller understanding of the ability that shipyards, workers, and suppliers in the United Kingdom have to produce and deliver these vessels at the pace and in the order planned by the MOD. This analysis, done at the request of the MOD's Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), focused on answering three fundamental questions: Can the existing shipbuilding industrial base meet future demands?; Do problems exist with the numbers and types of facilities or the numbers and skills of the workforce?; and If problems exist or can be anticipated, what can be done to alleviate them? Relying both on public and proprietary data and on surveys of government and industry representatives, the analysis addressed these questions by examining the capacity of the UK industrial bases current workforce and facilities, identifying the demands for these resources over the next two decades, and exploring options to address situations in which future demands might exceed capabilities. The study aimed to help MOD policy makers do the following: (1) gain an understanding of the capacity of the United Kingdom's naval shipbuilding industrial base to successfully implement the MOD's current acquisition plan; and (2) gauge how alternative acquisition requirements, programs, and schedules might affect the capacity of that industrial base. The authors organized their analysis by decomposing capacity into three major elements: labor, facilities, and suppliers. For their capacity evaluations, they relied on data surveys and interviews with many firms and organizations associated with shipbuilding in the United Kingdom, including shipbuilders, ship repairers, suppliers, industry associations, and government organizations.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA435259
Entities
People
- Cynthia R. Cook
- Gordon T. Lee
- Hans Pung
- Jefferson P. Marquis
- Jessie Riposo
- Mark V. Arena