MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last week, the Trump administration announced a new class of warship to be named after the current president.
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JOHN PHELAN: The future Trump-class battleship, the USS Defiant, will be the largest, deadliest, and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world's oceans.
KELLY: That is secretary of the Navy, John Phelan. And the timing here is interesting because lately, the Navy has had a hard time building any ships at all. Entire lines of warships have been scrapped in recent years. Back in March, the Government Accountability Office said most Navy ships under construction as of 2024 have been delayed. Why? We're going to put that to Cynthia Cook, senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who just coauthored a big report about this. Cynthia Cook, welcome.
CYNTHIA COOK: Hello. Thank you.
KELLY: Start with your first reaction to this announcement - this new golden fleet, they are calling it - of Trump-class warships.
COOK: My first reaction was that this aligns with President Trump's long interest in shipbuilding and revitalizing the shipbuilding industrial base. The shipbuilding industrial base has some long-standing challenges, and in our assessment it is going to need top-level, presidential-level emphasis to address some of these long-standing challenges.
KELLY: Well, and I want to get to the challenges in a second, but this class of warships, President Trump, his administration, say these will be 100 times more powerful than any previous battleship. One hundred times?
COOK: I am more appreciative of the emphasis on shipbuilding than the plans for this particular ship. The design of any new class of ships is a lengthy and complicated endeavor. It just is going to take a very, very long time to design a ship, to design a new supply chain, to hire workers, to find space in the docks. I don't think that investing in this is going to be easy. I don't think it's going to be quick, and I think it's going to be very, very expensive.
KELLY: So step back and give me the bigger picture. I mentioned the Navy has had a hard time building any ships for years now. Why?
COOK: Well, the Navy itself does not build ships. It has contractors. Ships are being constructed slower than we'd like them to be for a number of reasons. And really, one of the biggest reasons is labor force challenges. I had one shipyard executive tell me that he would love to have a second shift, but he just can't find the labor. During the pandemic, a number of workers retired, and so the labor force is relatively new, or, as they're called, green labor.
KELLY: I guess I'm wondering why it matters that the U.S. be able to build ships? Like, in an era of drone warfare, of cyberwarfare, why does it matter if the U.S. has fewer ships in its Navy than we did in the past?
COOK: That's a great question because we think of these ships as contributing to the fight, but they have a lot of other uses as well. They help create a foreign presence. They help contribute to deterrence. They enable sea control. They make sure that commercial ships can go through different sea lanes. They offer humanitarian aid. U.S. Navy sailors go to ports and represent the United States wherever they go.
KELLY: Help me square up two of the things you've just told us. One, that you think - whether or not this new Trump-class warship they've just announced is a realistic proposal or not - that the president's interest in building ships could devote attention to the issue, could be useful. That's on the one side. On the other hand, some of the challenges you're describing don't appear to be directly in the president's control, like lack of a skilled labor force to build the ships.
COOK: That's exactly why some of this is a challenge. We have terrific ships that are currently being produced. We could enhance our shipbuilding industrial base through contracting for 10 ships at a time over a period of years versus one or two ships at a time. So it's not that building ships is a bad idea. It's just that I question whether building an entirely new class of ships will take funds that could be used to other capabilities that would contribute more effectively to deterrence.
KELLY: Cynthia Cook, of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
COOK: Thanks very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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