Globalization of Navy Shipbuilding: A Key to Affordability for a New Maritime Strategy
Abstract
The Navy states that 313 ships are necessary to support U.S. national security requirements. To build this fleet, the service is requesting a significant increase in its shipbuilding budget. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office contend that the Navy request underestimates true shipbuilding costs. Worse yet, current budget pressures and historical budget trends leave even the lowest budget figure in jeopardy. How then can the Navy make its plan affordable? To meet shipbuilding requirements it must look beyond domestic industrial sources and fully exploit the comparative advantages of globalization. Globalization exploits the advantages of multiple countries through not only labor and technology but also "trade, finance, production, and even the rules of national economies and how they relate to each other." Its impact on manufactured goods is complex and widespread. Today the meaning of an American or Japanese label on a computer or automobile is problematic, in that over two dozen components come from more than half a dozen countries. A "made in the United States" security requirement has become an arcane vestige of the industrial age. At best, it is a comfortable fantasy. At worst, it is a waste of national resources. In practice, in fact, it is already a fiction. One needs to look no farther than the HARM, Patriot, and Tomahawk missiles or the "Marine One" ?presidential helicopter to realize that foreign sourcing is already well under way in military systems. Can global production reduce the Navy's shipbuilding cost risk? This article examines such a strategy to rationalize the budgetary means with the shipbuilding goals of the U.S. Navy. The service needs to exploit the efficiencies of foreign shipyards to meet its force planning goals. Globalization should be embraced as an affordability measure within the new maritime strategy now being formulated.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA519520
Entities
People
- Robert J. White
Organizations
- Naval War College