ARE SHIPBUILDING PROBLEMS SINKING THE U.S. NAVY?

PHOTO XINHUA: LAUNCHING OF CHINESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER FUJIAN

BY STAS MARGARONIS

INTRODUCTION: U.S.-LIBERTY SHIPS HELP WIN WORLD WAR II

During World War Two, the mass-production of Liberty and Victory ships at U.S. shipyards pioneered modular construction and the new use of welding of steel plates, resulting in lower costs and faster construction times.

New shipyards built by Henry Kaiser and others helped trailblaze the new shipbuilding practices.

This program was directed by the U.S. Maritime Commission (now the U.S. Maritime Administration) and provided the logistical supply chain to military theaters in Europe and Asia that helped win the war.^[1]

However, the mass-production of Liberty/Victory ships and T-2 tankers was not continued after 1945 and the United States reverted to its reliance on less advanced naval shipyards.

Daniel Ludwig, a super T-2 Tanker builder during World War II and a pioneer in building ships using welding of steel plates, lost patience with his unsuccessful attempts to build larger commercial vessels in the United States after 1945.

In 1951, he established shipbuilding operations in Japan and became the father of modern Japanese shipbuilding.^[2]

These methods were later passed on to Korean shipyards and then adapted at Chinese shipyards.

It was one of the first major U.S. technology transfers that would create new competitors to U.S. shipbuilders, ocean carriers and ultimately to the U.S. Navy.

PROBLEMS WITH U.S. NAVAL SHIPBUILDING: THE USS GERALD FORD AIRCRAFT CARRIER

The U.S. Navy has promised that numerous defects related to the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, built at the Ingalls Newport News shipyard, have been overcome.

However, numerous problems have delayed the new aircraft carrier’s commissioning.

According to a December 23, 2021 report in the War Zone, the U.S. Navy announced that the final advanced weapons elevator on the USS Gerald R. Ford has been declared fully functional: “The 11 elevators on the service’s newest aircraft carrier, which permit movement of ordnance from the ship’s magazines to the aircraft, have been a continuing problem since before the Ford was officially commissioned in 2017.”^[3]

With the announcement from the Program Executive Office – Aircraft Carriers, the U.S. Navy has kept a commitment it made to complete the elevators in 2021, and it has removed a major obstacle to the carrier’s expected first deployment in 2022: “ As recently as August 2021, only seven of the elevators were considered fully operational. At that time, the Navy announced its expectation that the remaining elevators would be functional by the end of 2021.”^[4]

The elevators are one of several new technologies incorporated into the carrier. Traditional carrier elevators use hydraulics and mechanical linkages — cables — to raise and lower platforms:

“According to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the Ford’s advanced elevators replace those maintenance-intensive and comparatively slow elevators with ones run by electromagnetic motors. With fewer moving parts, the system should in principle be less complex to operate. However, the manufacturing tolerances for such a system require greater accuracy and precision than a purely mechanical one.”

According to the War Zone, the “… Congressional Research Service, the Navy and builders struggled to incorporate such tolerances and, in 2019, the Navy told Bloomberg that as many as 70 elevator doors and 17 hatches did not meet requirements because of how changes to the ship have evolved. Without fully functioning weapons elevators, a carrier will struggle to generate the desired sortie rate because it will take too long to move weapons from the magazines to aircraft on deck.”^[5]

The elevators are not the only major problem the Ford has had to resolve:

“Among other issues, the Navy has addressed the ship’s waste management — its toilets overflow — as well as propulsion and electrical systems. In April, the Navy announced that the ship’s formerly troublesome Advanced Arresting Gear and Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System had accumulated 8,000 launch and recovery cycles, an important turnaround for another system that had plagued the carrier from early on, and another that directly affects how quickly the carrier can launch and recover aircraft.”^[6]

There are also other problems:

“It is years away from being able to operate F-35Cs, the Navy’s carrier-borne version of the Joint Strike Fighter. The Navy’s explanation for this, according to Breaking Defense, is that Ford was laid down in November 2009, with a design that had been finalized even earlier, while the F-35C was still in relatively early development. The upshot is that at least the first two carriers in the Ford class — the Gerald R. Ford and the future John F. Kennedy — will need retrofitting and upgrades to carry the Navy’s most advanced strike fighters. In a December 2021 report, the Congressional Research Service estimated the cost of the Ford at $13.3 billion, and the future Kennedy at $11.9 billion.”^[7]

The War Zone report goes on to state:

“According to a November 2020 contract award, the Navy has committed some $285 million to ensuring ‘a single-phase delivery approach to meet both Fleet requirements and a congressional mandate of ensuring that CVN 79 [the Kennedy] is capable of operating and deploying Joint Strike Fighter (F-35C) aircraft before completing the post-shakedown availability.’ The award specified a targeted completion date of June 2024.”^[8]

These technological issues and the delay of its deployment operation have made officials in the Pentagon’s testing office worried about the ship’s defensive capabilities, according to a January 2022 report in Bloomberg:

“The persistent shortcomings undercut the Navy’s hope to showcase the Ford as the first in a new class of nuclear-powered carriers that can project U.S. power globally and are more combat-capable, reliable and affordable to operate then (sic) the Nimitz class it’s replacing. The latest assessment raises new questions for Pentagon officials and lawmakers about how fully the Navy will demonstrate improvements before the Ford is deployed in mid-September on its first patrol with aircraft and escort vessels.

The report, which contains unclassified and ‘controlled unclassified’ information and has been circulated to the Navy, found that ‘only a limited assessment’ of the combat system’s effectiveness is possible at this point. It said Nickolas Guertin, the new head of the testing office, plans to send Congress an interim report on the Ford’s self-defense capabilities by Sept. 30.”^[9]

These concerns were shown during tests of the Ford’s defense systems:

“The Navy’s three tests so far of the Ford’s self-defense system on board a specialized vessel designed to evaluate performance were ‘not adequate to assess the combat system’s capability against supersonic antiship (sic) cruise missiles and subsonic maneuvering missiles, and there were no future test events planned against threats that could provide additional data,’ according to the testing office.

The vessel’s Gatling gun-like system ‘experienced numerous reliability failures that in several cases prevented the system from executing its mission,’ the test office said.”^[10]

MORE U.S. NAVY SHIPBUILDING PROBLEMS: THE ZUMWALT CLASS DESTROYERS

Another shipbuilding program that the U.S. Navy is having problems with pertains to the Zumwalt-class destroyers. Originally, the ship class was planned to replace the venerable but aging Arleigh Burke-class destroyers for anti-ship and air defense.

According to a December 2021 National Interest article, “Why the Zumwalt-Class Destroyers Failed to Meet the Navy’s Expectations”, the Zumwalt class has become a massive money sink, with each ship costing $4.5 billion dollars on top of the $10 billion that was spent on developing the ships’ capabilities.^[11]

The Zumwalt’s extensive automation allows the ships to have fewer crewmembers than any other destroyer (around 158 crew).^[12]

The Zumwalt’s advanced gas turbines allows the class of ships to produce

“… 78 megawatts of power, similar to the energy generated by a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to the US Indo-Pacific Command.”^[13]

In addition, the ship’s tumblehome hull (which makes the ship wider below the waterline) would allow the ship to be stable in rough seas and decrease the ship’s radar cross signature and giving it stealth capabilities.

Another feature of the Zumwalt was that it was designed to replace the decommissioned Iowa-class battleships’ role of naval gunfire support:

“As the Navy phased out its last battleship, it decided its next destroyer should mount long-range guns that could … provide more cost-efficient naval gunfire support than launching million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missiles.”^[14]

However, the Zumwalts experienced the same problems that have plagued the Ford-class carriers: cost overruns, technological problems, and delays.

The Zumwalt’s costs rose due the integration of advanced technologies that were still being developed.

According to a 2018 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, only 5 of Zumwalt’s 12 new technologies were “matured”. This delayed the operational deployment of the lead ship of the class, USS Zumwalt, until 2021.

In an attempt to reduce the runaway costs of the ship class, the Zumwalts received downgrades which decreased key capabilities:

“The need to curb runaway costs led to crippling downgrades. Instead of fitting combining (sic) a powerful SPY-4 volume search radar with a SPY-3 hi-resolution targeting radar, the Navy ditched the former and rejigged the SPY-3 to handle volume-search as well. This saved $80 million per ship but significantly degraded air-search capabilities…

Even the destroyer’s radar cross-section has been degraded to cut costs, with the adoption of cheaper steel for the deckhouse and the incorporation of non-flush sensor and communication masts.”^[15]

The report concluded that the Navy was discontinuing the Zumwalt program:

“Already by 2008, the Navy sought to ditch building more than two Zumwalts in favor of procuring Arleigh Burke Flight III destroyers with ballistic-missile defense capabilities. Maine Senator Susan Collins nonetheless wrangled a third destroyer to keep her state’s Bath Iron Works shipyard in business.”^[16]

HOW SHIPBUILDING PROBLEMS HURT THE U.S. NAVY

In an analysis in Foreign Policy, Alexander Wooley, a former officer in Britain’s Royal Navy,^[17] ascribes the failures of the Zumwalt and the Ford projects due in part to the U.S. Navy’s desire to create revolutionary ship designs and technologies to leap ahead of its competitors. This desire to produce highly advanced warships that would be the backbone of the Navy’s future combat fleet has instead produced:

“… ships that struggle to even ‘float, move, and fight’—the basic functions of the most rudimentary warship. Ship classes have been cut, and many vessels have been retired early, while others wait years for repairs. These include supposedly cutting-edge vessels that were meant to be the backbone of the current and near-future fleet.”^[18]

The October 2021 Foreign Policy article, “Float, Move, and Fight How the U.S. Navy lost the shipbuilding race,” states that the failures in new technologies were not caused by the U.S. Navy trying to match their rivals, but instead were caused by the hubris for rapid innovation. Following the success of Operation Desert Storm (which was the debut for multiple new and advanced weapons at the time), U.S. Navy planners believed that by incorporating more advanced capabilities for their ships, they could create fewer hulls with less crewmembers.

The report went on to say that in 2001, when Donald Rumsfeld was sworn in as U.S. defense secretary, he pushed for radical change in military technical progress. During the Ford’s development, he overruled “… the Navy’s preference for taking a slow, evolutionary approach to developing the Nimitz’s successor, deciding the plans were not sufficiently transformational. Instead, he forced through a program that tried to pull together various revolutionary (and untested) technologies. The result: Some 20 years later, the ship has still not deployed.”^[19]

In a July 2019 Forbes magazine article written by Senior Contributor Loren Thompson, stated that the Navy’s shipbuilding problems can be summarized as follows:

“Unstable, unpredictable demand. The federal government is the sole customer for warships built in U.S. shipyards, so how it manages its budgetary processes can have a profound impact on the industry’s fortunes …
Capacity shortfalls. When every new defense budget materializes like the cliffhanger outcome of a serial adventure, it doesn’t encourage companies to invest for the future …
Lack of workforce skills. At the moment, naval shipbuilders are struggling to increase capacity by hiring new workers. However, Washington’s failure to sustain the sinews of a domestic industrial base in the face of competition from countries like China has greatly reduced the pool of workers from which to draw welders, pipefitters and other specialties essential to naval shipbuilding. With the commercial side of the shipbuilding business shrunk to modest proportions—Washington has done little to counter foreign subsidies—naval shipbuilders must compete for workers in sectors such as energy and automotive where skilled personnel may feel there is more predictability to their futures. The only way to successfully recruit such people is to offer compensation that might later become a drag on shipyard performance. Many of them will need extensive training before they can work on warships.
Sole-source suppliers. A prime … concern leading to last year’s industrial-base assessment was the worry that critical industries had too many single points of potential failure, where loss of one supplier might bring an entire industry to its knees. Naval shipbuilding is a good example of what has the administration worried. Many of the heavy industrial inputs to warship construction come from one-of-a-kind contractors whose products could not be replaced from other domestic sources. For instance, there is only one forge in the U.S. building propulsion shafts for surface combatants…
Lack of competition. This was the fifth and final overarching problem that the White House’s interagency task force identified in the naval shipbuilding sector. Obviously, when the sole customer only buys one hull of a given ship type every five years, as in the case of aircraft carriers, competition isn’t likely. But unlike in the aerospace industry where there is robust competition in the lower tiers of the supply chain, competition is rare at all levels in naval shipbuilding.”^[20]

A US SHIPYARD WORKERS’S PERSPECTIVE

In his book Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of Shipyard Workers Who Build America’s Supercarriers, the author Michael Fabey relates the challenges of workers and managers at Newport News Shipbuilding, where the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier was built and the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier is being built.^[21]

The book is a sympathetic look at the challenges faced by workers and managers including the politics of getting the funding for the carrier program.

There is an interesting introduction describing attitudes at the Newport News shipyard in 2011 toward Chinese efforts to build aircraft carriers:

“The way the American shipbuilding pros reckoned it, China was at least two decades behind the US. It would be years before PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) could deploy…”^[22]

Later on in the book, Fabey describes defective construction practices in painting and welding that would be unacceptable in any respectable shipyard around the world including in China.

An incident in Fabey’s book describes the work of a Newport News shipyard painter named Jordan Patterson:

“Jordan Patterson … found that some trades workers cared little about the condition of a space they left for painters. He had entered many a space, brushes in hand, and discovered a chaotic mess, the metal in some cases damaged by a welder’s carelessness, and he spent half his time just cleaning the steel so he could start the actual painting.”

As a result, reworking might take two to three hours:

“Sometimes, another trade would come in, install a new box, and ruin a perfectly good paint job, forcing him to repaint everything he had just finished a day or so before. He also often found some resin patches throughout the space, requiring him to ball himself up for 2 to 3 hours scraping that mess off; the grinder proved absolutely useless. Uncramping his hand, he’d silently curse the steel worker who left the space like that.”

Sometimes, touching the same space had to be done four times due to sloppy work:

“Patterson often retouched the same space four times due to sloppy work by other trades. He’d shake his head. You think after so many carriers they’d be able to plan this better. It all seemed so backward. ‘It’s like they want you to paint something just for someone to later mess it up and for you to go back and repaint it,’ he complained later at the union hall. Most of the paint protected metal that had just been ground, welded, or cut, in which case, he told folks at the union hall, it made more sense to spread a temporary gel over the bare metal for protection.”

Patterson discovered a pattern of defective welding in the aircraft carrier construction:

“But for now, he just repainted. First, he prepped the metal, cleaning off every bit of soot and debris. He checked every weld to make sure the hot worker had tacked it just right: he needed to avoid painting over a bad weld. If the weld looked somehow wrong, he needed to contact his foreman, which, as noted, often was difficult. His foreman then needed to fix the situation with the welders’ foreman to get the weld done correctly, requiring more iffy communications. The way daily tasks lined up at the yard, Patterson could not move on to some other job in another space, because it would be filled with other trades workers doing their daily tasks. Worse, depending on how long it took to resolve the wonky weld, the prepped metal could easily start rusting; it happened very fast in that salty coastal air.”^[23]

CHINA LAUNCHES THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER FUJIAN

Photo courtesy Xinhua taken on June 17, 2022 shows the launching ceremony of China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian

On June 17th, the Chinese news service Xinhua announced that “China launched its third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, in Shanghai on Friday.”

The report went on to state:

“The carrier, named after Fujian Province, was completely designed and built by China.”

The new carrier “was put into the water at a launch ceremony that started at about 11 a.m.

Xu Qiliang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), presented a naming certificate to the navy unit receiving the carrier.”

Xinhua noted: “It is China’s first domestically-made carrier that uses catapults. With a full-load displacement of more than 80,000 tonnes, the carrier is equipped with electromagnetic catapults and arresting devices.

The new carrier will conduct mooring tests and sea trials as scheduled.”^[24]

CNN reported that China launched its third and most advanced aircraft carrier from Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard:

“… with new combat systems that experts say are fast catching up with the United States …

Its electromagnetic catapult-assisted launch system is a major upgrade from the less advanced ski jump-style system used on the Liaoning and the Shandong, its two predecessors, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.

The new system, similar to the ones used by US aircraft carriers, will allow China to launch a wider variety of aircraft from the Fujian faster and with more ammunition.

In addition to the launch system, the Fujian is equipped with blocking devices, and a full-load displacement of more than 80,000 tons, Xinhua reported, adding that the ship will carry out mooring tests and navigation tests after the launch.

Matthew Funaiole, senior fellow at the CSIS’s China Project, told CNN previously that the new ship would be the Chinese military’s first modern aircraft carrier.

‘This is a pretty significant step forward,’ he said. ‘They’ve really committed to building out a carrier program, and they continue to push the boundaries of what they’re able to do.’

China names its aircraft carriers after its coastal provinces, with Liaoning in the northeast and Shandong in the east. Fujian, in the southeast, is the closest province to Taiwan, separated by a strait that is fewer than 80 miles (128 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims sovereignty over the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan, despite having never governed it. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly said that ‘reunification’ between China and Taiwan is inevitable and refused to rule out the use of force.

China now wields the largest naval force in the world, and aircraft carriers are the core vessels of any major power’s fleet. The massive ships are essentially a mobile airbase, allowing for the rapid, long-term deployment of aircraft and weaponry… ”^[25]

The article continues:

“Aircraft launched by catapults can get airborne quicker and with greater quantities of fuel and ammunition, giving them an advantage over planes launched by ski jump, which rely on their own power when lifting off.

However, despite the advanced launch system, CSIS’ Funaiole said there are still signs the Chinese carrier lags behind its US counterparts, which have more catapults, a larger airway and more elevators to allow for quicker deployment of aircraft.

All US aircraft carriers are also nuclear-powered, while the Fujian is believed to run on conventional steam propulsion, which Funaiole said would limit its reach. ‘(Although) this may be less of a factor for China right now as many of its interests are in the near seas,’ he said.

Following its launch, the Fujian will need to be tested and fully outfitted before it is fit to be commissioned and officially enter service.

Initially the US Department of Defense had estimated the carrier to be ready for active service by 2023, but it has now pushed that date back to 2024.”^[26]

The CNN report concludes by noting: ”Even the US has had difficulty utilizing the same system on its latest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, leading to lengthy deployment delays.”^[27]

CHINA’S STATE SHIPBUILDING CORPORATION

The Washington, D.C. based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) issued a report entitled “In the Shadow of Warships: How foreign companies help modernize China’s navy.”^[28]

The CSIS report says that one factor behind the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) growth has been foreign commercial orders at shipyards such as those at the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC). These orders have bolstered, not only the productivity and efficiency of the construction of commercial vessels, but also improved the efficiencies utilized in the construction of warships:

“China is one of only a handful of countries capable of building the large ocean-faring vessels that transport around 80 percent of global trade in goods. The industry leader is China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), which alone holds … 21.5 percent of the global shipbuilding market. The sprawling state-owned enterprise was formed in 2019 by the merger of China’s two largest shipbuilders, and today it directly controls over 100 subsidiaries.

CSSC is more than just a commercial shipbuilding giant. It also produces warships for the Chinese navy. The company proclaims itself to be the ‘main force’ in furthering the development of naval weapons and equipment in support of national defense. CSSC is a linchpin in Beijing’s military-civil fusion (MCF) strategy, which aims to upgrade the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and level up China’s military science and technology industries while simultaneously strengthening instruments of national power across the board.”^[29]

The CSIS report says military ship construction is concentrated at several shipyards:

“Yet, the well-documented connections between CSSC and the Chinese military have done little to dampen its commercial operations. Four shipyards operated by CSSC subsidiaries—Dalian, Jiangnan, Hudong-Zhonghua, and Huangpu Wenchong—are of particular interest. They collectively produce scores of surface combatants for the PLAN and attract shipbuilding contracts in the millions (and sometimes billions) of dollars from companies based outside of China and Hong Kong.”^[30]

THE JIANGNAN SHIPYARD BUILDS AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER AND EVERGREEN MARINE CONTAINER SHIP

The CSIS report includes a photo taken in February 2022 showing the Jiangnan Shipyard with a new aircraft carrier, the Fujian launched on June 17^th, 2022, being built alongside a container vessel with the green hull of Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine.

Photo: CSIS & Maxar Technologies

The report says that commercial satellite imagery taken at the Jiangnan shipyard on February 21, 2022, when the Chinese aircraft carrier and Evergreen container (ship) were sited together, also found that at least three Evergreen hulls were under construction “… near China’s Type 003 aircraft carrier (i.e., the Fujian).”^[31]

The report summarizes the commercial military synthesis going on at the shipyard as follows:

“This blurring of military and commercial activity is best exemplified at Jiangnan Shipyard. Nestled on the mouth of the Yangtze River near central Shanghai, Jiangnan is where China’s third and most capable aircraft carrier, known as the Type 003, is being constructed. Right next to the warship, work is underway on a commercial container ship that bears a distinctive green hull, the hallmark of Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corporation.”^[32]

Evergreen’s purchases of ships from Chinese shipyards may be undermining Taiwan’s national security:

“Buying merchant ships from China presents a real security concern for Taiwan. The island lives under constant pressure from Beijing, which seeks to unify Taiwan with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary. It should raise more than a few eyebrows in Taipei that Taiwan’s premier shipping company is pouring money into the coffers of shipyards assembling warships for the Chinese navy.

Evergreen is by no means the only foreign firm that relies on China’s shipbuilding prowess. French shipping titan CMA CGM has placed at least 46 orders totaling several billion dollars with a handful of Chinese shipyards since 2017. These orders include some of the world’s largest container ships powered by liquified natural gas (LNG), many of which were built at Jiangnan. This represents an encapsulation of the growing worry over “dual-use” technology…”^[33]

CONCLUSION

The United States needs to follow China’s lead and support construction of commercial vessels such as container ships, chemical tankers and Roll-On, Roll-Off vessels. These measures will help U.S. shipyards become more competitive and lower the costs of construction while improving shipbuilding methods.

A reflection of the continued short sightedness of U.S. policy makers is the view that China’s successful economic and military model doesn’t work. This “don’t build it in the U.S.A.” philosophy encourages outsourcing of everything from semiconductors to military sealift shipping.

The result in 2022 is that the United States finds itself increasingly challenged by China on a number of different fronts, including the construction of aircraft carriers in which the launching of the Fujian is the most recent example of China’s success.

At the same time, the United States’ ability to build ships including the Ford-class carriers and the Zumwalt-class destroyers is problematic and clearly in need of a new direction.

The hour is late for the United States, but as the late New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once said: “It ain’t over til it’s over.”

FOOTNOTES

Kevin Policarpo provided research for this report.

^[1] Please see Frederic Lane, “Ships for Victory: A History of Shipbuilding under the U.S. Maritime Commission in World War II” for a comprehensive history of the U.S. World War II shipbuilding accomplishment.

^[2] https://rbtus.com/review-how-u-s-shipbuilder-daniel-ludwig-modernized-japanese-shipbuilding/

^[3]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43652/navys-newest-carriers-problem-plagued-weapons-elevators-saga-appears-to-be-over

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Capaccio, Anthony, Navy’s $13 Billion Carrier Sows Doubt That It Can Defend Itself, Published 24 January 2022, bloomberg.com, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-25/navy-s-13-billion-carrier-sows-doubt-that-it-can-defend-itself#xj4y7vzkg

^[10] Ibid.

^[11] Roblin, Sebastien, Why the Zumwalt-Class Destroyers Failed to Meet the Navy’s Expectations, Published 25 December 2021, nationalinterest.org, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-zumwalt-class-destroyers-failed-meet-navys-expectations-198412

^[12] Descalsota, Marielle, A $4.4 billion US destroyer was touted as one of the most advanced ships in the world. Take a look at the USS Zumwalt, which has since been called a ‘failed ship concept.’, Published 6 June 2022, businessinsider.com,https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-largest-destoryer-uss-zumwalt-us-navy-ship-biggest-2022-6#the-uss-zumwalt-is-one-of-the-largest-surface-combatants-in-the-world-3

^[13] Ibid.

^[14] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-zumwalt-class-destroyers-failed-meet-navys-expectations-198412.

^[15] Ibid.

^[16] Ibid.

^[17] https://foreignpolicy.com/author/alexander-wooley/

^[18] Wooley, Alexander, Float, Move, and Fight How the U.S. Navy lost the shipbuilding race., Published 10 October 2021, foreignpolicy.com, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/10/us-navy-shipbuilding-sea-power-failure-decline-competition-china/

^[19] Ibid.

^[20] Thompson, Loren, Five Problems That Could Torpedo America’s Naval Shipbuilding Capability, Published 19 July 2019, forbes.com, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/07/19/five-problems-that-could-torpedo-americas-naval-shipbuilding-capability/?sh=4eee383434d9

^[21] https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/carrier-kennedy-to-start-emals-testing-later-this-year

^[22] Michael Fabey, Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of Shipyard Workers Who Build America’s Supercarriers, pp 3-4

^[23] Michael Fabey, Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of Shipyard Workers Who Build America’s Supercarriers, pp 142-143

^[24]https://english.news.cn/20220617/9ba72721f4a249888b301db08d164ea0/c.html#:~:text=SHANGHAI%2C%20June%2017%20(Xinhua),started%20at%20about%2011%20a.m.

^[25] https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/china/china-new-aircraft-carrier-fujian-launch-intl-hnk/index.html

^[26] Ibid.

^[27] Ibid.

^[28] Funaiole, Matthew P., Hart, Brian, Bermudez Jr., Joseph S., In the Shadow of Warships How foreign companies help modernize China’s navy, Published April 2022, features.csis.org, https://features.csis.org/china-shadow-warships/

^[29] https://rbtus.com/u-s-naval-experts-says-china-will-soon-have-the-capability-to-invade-taiwan/

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Ibid.

^[32] Ibid.

^[33] Ibid.