Recently, Brian Potter of Construction Physics (whose work I am generally a fan of) and Austin Vernon (who I met in person two days ago and liked) have released a a blueprint for fixing US naval shipbuilding. I have mixed thoughts on their three points:
1. Instead of complex, multi-role ships which have expensive and often unnecessary features, the Navy should focus on simpler ships with narrower use cases.
2. Rather than outsourcing design to third parties, ship design should be brought in-house, and NAVSEA should expand its staff of Naval Architects from around 300 to closer to 1200.
3. Production on ships should not begin until design is substantially completed.

Now, 2 is a position I've held for a long time, and really should write about more. I think they do a decent job of arguing for it, and I believe this is the thing they emphasized most in their policy paper, so I have no quibble at all here. 3 is patently obvious to everyone, and has been since forever. Unfortunately, this means that we'll need to go beyond simply pointing out that the problem exists, because if it was that easy to solve, someone would have solved it. The people who do this work are not stupid. I suspect political pressures are to blame here, but actually tracking down the drivers and providing solutions for them is not something I'm going to get into here. Read more...
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