​​This report was updated 5/9/2022 at 11:43 a.m. ET to clarify the status of Bartlett’s second submission to the Navy.
WASHINGTON: It was an uncomfortable, although not wholly surprising, admission by one of the Navy’s most senior officers. In a January speech, the head of US Fleet Forces made it clear that if the US got into a naval war, there was no way the service could keep damaged ships in the fight.

“If I went into conflict, high-end conflict where I had to repair numerous ships simultaneously, I don’t have enough capacity. I don’t have enough dry docks, and I don’t have enough shipyards to get after that,” Adm. Daryl Caudle said then.

Ship maintenance isn’t the sexiest issue, but getting it right is the backbone for any hope to be able to challenge China in the Indo-Pacific, let alone keeping America’s global presence afloat. And clear-eyed assessments from both Navy leadership and various third-party auditors all agree that the current shipyard structure simply isn’t good enough.

With the Navy working through its long-term plan to relieve the notorious submarine maintenance backlog and other well-known issues piling up at the service’s four public shipyards, into the space has stepped Ed Bartlett, an engineer and former enlisted sailor who has spent the last several years arguing that the solution is obvious: It’s time to build a fifth shipyard.
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After examining U.S. defense stockpile data and running two dozen wargame simulations, CSIS' experts concluded that the most important American missile stocks would be gone in a week of combat in a Taiwan Strait invasion scenario.

CSIS' simulated U.S. munitions expenditure for a three-week war with China averaged about 4,000 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs), 450 Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs), 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, 400 land-attack Tomahawk cruise missiles, and large numbers of the SM-6 multirole missiles carried by Navy destroyers. Since China's anti-access/area-denial capabilities are powerful within the First Island Chain, long-range munitions were essential in the opening phase of every simulation. Without the capability to get close to the Chinese fleet or to resupply ground forces on Taiwan, U.S. forces leaned heavily on bomber-launched cruise missiles to strike from outside of China's air defense envelope. In every simulation, the U.S. burned through the entire LRASM missile inventory in less than a week, and on average, all JASSMs were gone by Day 9.

Replacements would not be available on any meaningful timeline. Some of these precision weapons take two years to build from the signing of an order to first delivery, according to CSIS - far too long to be relevant in an emergency. Augmenting production capacity takes years as well, and the ongoing workforce shortage issues in defense manufacturing make boosting output even harder. In addition, missile production is vulnerable to the disruption of Chinese-dominated component supplies, like rare-earth metals and battery components.

"The reality is that the timelines for a conflict—and consequently for credible deterrence—are shrinking in an increasingly competitive international security environment. The defense industrial base—including the munitions industrial base—is struggling to replenish some of its stockpiles and is unable to meet wartime needs," cautioned CSIS. "'Just in time' and lean manufacturing operations must be balanced with carrying added capacity to enable a surge in case of a war."

To improve America's ability to deter and fight, CSIS called for a deep reassessment of U.S. munition requirements for high-intensity combat in order to determine the needed stockpile size. It also recommends creating a strategic reserve of missile components - metals, rocket propellants, explosives and electronic systems - to reduce production timelines and ensure the supply chain in the event of an emergency. In addition, it calls for better contracting practices to keep down cost and guarantee long-term revenue for defense contractors, like the multi-year buys that the U.S. Navy uses to purchase series of ships. Co-production arrangements with allied nations like Australia, Norway and Japan could also increase resilience and economies of scale.

"The good news is that there appears to be a great awakening in some areas of the Pentagon and Congress about challenges with the U.S. defense industrial base and the lack of preparedness for the wartime environment that now exists," concluded CSIS. "But there is still more talk than action at lower levels of the DoD and the military services."

The Little Rock suffered a major failure at sea in 2020, six weeks after departing Mayport on its first deployment due to a flaw in the propulsion system, according to defensennews.com.

The nine Lockheed Martin-built high-speed vessels were designed to operate in shallow waters, and they were outfitted with some 8,000 computer sensors. All were hit with the propulsion problem. The ships will likely be scrapped or sunk to the bottom of an ocean — the fate of many decommissioned ships.
But the $762 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2023 included a request from the Navy to decommission 39 warships, including the nine Freedom-class littoral combat ships.Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, put the cost of the nine vessels — the newest of which was commissioned in 2020 — to be decommissioned at $4.5 billion, according to defensenews.com.

“That’s a lot of money going, literally, right down the drain,” said Mike Vogel, president of the Buffalo Lighthouse Association. “It was a very expensive ship that had all kinds of potential, and it was certainly an honor to have it commissioned here in Buffalo. It’s kind of heartbreaking to see it a little bit later being decommissioned and probably scrapped.”