With bad news coming out about the U.S. Navy's shipbuilding and readiness, the Biden administration's Navy is canceling its traditional briefings.
Navy leadership has been instructing programs managers not to regularly brief on shipbuilding progress amid the damning report of supply chain and regulatory hurdles slowing the production of U.S. ships, sources told Politico before the three-day U.S. Navy trade show begins Monday.
"Our nation should be incredibly frustrated to see such systemic delays to our marquee shipbuilding programs," said Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., a founder of the new bipartisan Congressional Defense Modernization Caucus.
Delays in ship production range from one to three years and are in the shadows of Chinese actions in the Pacific requiring bolstered U.S. naval assets in the region, according to the report.
"We don't have detailed plans of action, milestones, initiatives — we are identifying and deeply looking into where we are now in a 'get real, get better' approach," senior Navy acquisition executive Nickolas Guertin said from the Pentagon on Tuesday, reviewing the results of the Navy-ordered 45-day study.
"We found that we have issues that need to be resolved, but we don't have all those things completely nailed down yet."
Among the issues facing the naval production are supply chains and beaurocratic red tape, but getting more information beyond that report has been met with silence, according to the report.
The briefings on Navy production were common, but Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro's 45-day shipbuilding study has brought a moratorium, sources told Politico.
"The delays we see today across these programs will have real ramifications for our national defense as we seek to deter adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran," Wittman told Politico.
Biden administration regulations are largely to blame for the delays, according to retired Navy submarine officer Bryan Clark from the Hudson Institute.
"The Navy just keeps larding new requirements on the ships," Clark said. "And each new generation is so much more sophisticated than the predecessor that inevitably you're going to get to the point where you're just asking too much of the shipbuilding industry to punch out the ships on quick timeliness."
While the Pentagon has spent billions to ramp up production, Democrat spending advocates note $3.4 billion for the submarine industrial base is struck in the supplemental spending bill that is held up in the House.
"I'm committed to ensuring our shipbuilders have the resources and workforce they need to deliver ships to our military in a timely manner," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee. "This report shows we still have much more to do to get there."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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