Closed hearings to examine harnessing artificial intelligence cyber capabilities; to be immediately followed by an open hearing at 3:30 p.m. in SR-232A.

2025-03-25

Summary

The Sea Power Subcommittee held a hearing on the U.S. Navy's deteriorating conventional shipbuilding performance, where witnesses detailed severe delays, cost overruns, and systemic failures across programs like the Constellation-class frigate and Zumwalt-class destroyers. Dr. Brett Seidel, Vice Admiral James Downey, and GAO’s Shelby Oakley highlighted that the Navy has delivered only 9.7% of ships on time and on budget over the past five years, with critical design changes, ineffective business cases, and workforce shortages undermining progress. Witnesses emphasized that the shipbuilding enterprise is falling behind China, which now has over 150 major surface combatants, while U.S. programs face growing budget and schedule gaps. The panel concluded that transformative reforms—such as finalizing designs before construction, improving workforce conditions, adopting modularity, and reducing change orders—are urgently needed to restore credibility and capabilities. The hearing called for bold, sustained action to modernize the industrial base and ensure the Navy can meet emerging global security challenges.

Participants

Transcript

Unknown (SPEAKER_03)

Thank you, each of you, for being here. I'm Honorary Service Chair of this important subcommittee, and I look forward to working with my colleague, Ranking Member Kane from Virginia, to ensure our Navy has the ships and resources they need. The Navy is very significant to both of us. First off, I want to introduce our witnesses. We're joined by three experts in the state of our nation's naval shipbuilding, starting with Dr. Brett Seidel, who serves as the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research. Development and Acquisition, and is responsible for the overall management for shipbuilding programs. Nice, easy time.

Jefferson Scott Shreve

Next is Vice Admiral James Downey, who serves as the commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command, providing technical direction, contracting authority, construction oversight, and other critical functions for Navy shipbuilding. And finally, Shelby Oakley, who is the Director for Contracting and National Security Acquisitions at the Government Accounting Office, where she has received our shipbuilding efforts, has reviewed our shipbuilding efforts extensively. Thank you again for being here, and thank you for your service to our country. So many of you have heard me talk about my father. My dad, I'm blessed. My doctor dad, he was crazy. He joined the Army very young, underage. He was one of... 3,000 Americans did all four combat jumps in the Second World War. I think he got paid more to do jumps. He thinks about 80 out of 80 people came back alive. He told me the Germans were bad, the foxholes were bad, the food was bad, so I joined the Navy. But I'm proud he did all four combat jumps with the 82nd Airborne that they did and then fought in the Battle of the Bulge. I thought the food was going to be better, but it was really not very great. I served as radar man aboard the USS Glover. I'm proud to be a Navy veteran, but we can all acknowledge that it's facing significant challenges and in need of a turnaround. President Trump has made clear that his administration is focused on making our military the lethal fighting force it should be, and I'm glad we have a president focused on this. In the past few years, unfortunately, we've seen the Navy failing to recruit, pass the audit, and most relevant to our discussion today, deliver ships on time and on budget. In the last five years, 41 ships were delivered to the Navy. Of those 41 ships, only four were delivered on time and on budget. That's 9.7%. So I'm a business guy. I build businesses. No one would consider less than 10% success acceptable. In the private sector, something would have changed. You wouldn't keep using the same company. The company would probably go bankrupt. You'd clearly change people out. Yet over the past four years, we've seen the Navy failing to improve ships, innovate or deliver things on time and on budget.

Jefferson Scott Shreve

That's a failure to the American people who expect their federal government to use their tax dollars wisely and expect their Navy to be on the cutting edge of innovation to defend our national security. We clearly have to make some changes. I think my colleague, Senator Kaine, is in the same position. We want to do everything we can to help with the turnaround, and we've got to do it fast. In today's subcommittee on sea power hearing, we will provide oversight on our Navy's conventional surface shipbuilding efforts, see why our naval readiness and shipbuilding are falling behind Communist China, and understand how we can work to rapidly change course. I have serious concerns about the challenges to our maritime dominance. The United States is losing ground, unfortunately, to Communist China and naval power, and our shipbuilding enterprise is failing to keep up. Commerce China Navy has 370 ships and submarines with over 150 major surface combatants, and they continue to pioneer innovative designs like large unmanned surface vessels and carriers for unmanned aircraft. In contrast, the United States has failed to capitalize its naval shipbuilding since Ronald Reagan led the production surge over four decades ago. Our surface combatant fleet is growing old, with the average age of a ship succeeding 20 years. Meanwhile, programs intended to modernize our force have completely failed. The Cruiser Replacement Program, the Little Combat Ship, the Zumwalt-class destroyers, this failure to modernize forced us to restart production of older DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class ships as a temporary fix, even though these ships were already desperately in need of innovation to begin with. What's even more concerning is that we don't seem to be learning from our mistakes or taking any significant steps to improve the process.

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