Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding
5th January 2024
We can quantify the US Navy’s cost disadvantage because Japan and South Korea are US allies that build destroyers similar to ours. They have the same radars, many of the same weapons, etc. Japan and South Korea can construct their Maya class and Sejong class destroyers for almost half the cost of a US Arleigh Burke-class ship. The construction time is also significantly shorter. And the Burke-class ships are the ones we build the most efficiently! Performance for other classes is likely much worse because of poor design choices, etc.
The US could double our fleet on the same shipbuilding budget! But are we building optimal designs? And is the US government well suited to replicate the Asian shipbuilding model?