From the article below:
With renewed focus on our Navy to counter China in Asia, this is an unacceptable problem:
For the U.S. Navy, buying warships that are defective, unfinished or both has become the norm.
The habit is expensive, dangerous and leaves overworked sailors to deal with faulty ships in need of repair from day one — yet it has escaped sufficient scrutiny in Washington.
Contrary to the Navy’s own policy, and despite spending nearly $16 billion on average in each of the last 30 years on new warships, most U.S. combat vessels are delivered from private shipbuilders with flaws significant enough to impair the vessels’ ability to perform missions or to keep crews safe, according to recent audits conducted for Congress.
It's not just the builders who are at fault:
The technical problems on most Navy warship programs almost always start, experts say, with the Navy launching a new class of vessels before its technologies are mature, and then building ships before their designs are complete.
Although how engine and electrical systems are failing when that hardly seems like groundbreaking technology is beyond me.
I've long been aware of the problem with our shipbuilding industry. The only consolation was that in the post-Cold War era we faced no serious threats to our control of the seas.
Unfortunately, the collapse of the Soviet fleet did not create a new norm for long as China's fleet expanded in numbers and sophistication to replace that threat that a smaller Navy must now face.
The flaws in our new ships is now potentially a matter of life and death.
Maybe our naval expansion should use European or Asian allied shipbuilders to build our new frigates as a shot across the bow to our own shipbuilders.
