American Shipbuilding Association
Yards take action today to ensure the U.S. shipbuilding capability tomorrow
by Duane "Buzz" Fitzgerald, CEO, Bath Iron Works
The six largest shipyards in the U.S. formed the American Shipbuilding Association (ASA), a new Washington, D.C.-based
industry trade association. The six
yards include Avondale, Bath Iron
Works, General Dynamics' Electric
Boat Div., Ingalls Shipbuilding, Na-
tional Steel and Shipbuilding, and
Newport News Shipbuilding.
The ASA will work to focus public
and government attention on the
need for additional action to pre-
serve America's capability to build
major naval ships and oceangoing
commercial vessels.
Among them, ASA member ship-
yards build all of the U.S. Navy's
complex combatant ships and large
auxiliary ships including: AEGIS
guided missile destroyers; aircraft
carriers; amphibious assault ships;
amphibious landing ships; attack
submarines; fast ammunition sup-
ply ships; fleet oilers; strategic bal-
listic missile submarines; and stra-
tegic sealift ships.
The Navy shipbuilding budget
has dramatically declined in recent
years.
ASA members have taken steps
to restructure operations and re-
enter commercial markets.
Doing so can help sustain the
unique defense industrial base ca-
pabilities that the ASA member ship-
yards and skilled workers possess.
Prior to the November 1994 for-
mation of the ASA, the six largest
U.S. yards had relied primarily on
the Shipbuilders Council of America
(SCA) to represent its namesake
industry the public and our national
leaders.
In addition to the major Navy
shipbuilders, the SCA membership
has included a number of smaller
firms engaged primarily in ship re-
pair, the building of coastal and
inland waterway commercial ves-
sels, and the building of smaller,
mostly non-combatant, naval ves-
sels and craft.
The interests and policy objec-
tives of the large new construction
yards and those of the smaller yards
and repair firms have grown in-
creasingly different as conditions in
the industry have changed in the
post-Cold War period.
U.S. shipbuilding yards must find
ways to re-enter
the world mar-
ket for commer-
cial ships, a mar-
ket that almost
completely dis-
appeared for
U.S. yards and
suppliers when
our government
terminated the
Construction
Differential Sub-
sidy (CDS) pro-
gram without
corresponding
action by our
trading part-
ners.
The response
by our trading
partners to the
end of CDS in 1981 was not to follow
suit and end their direct subsidy
programs. Instead, they expanded
their ship construction and ship-
yard infrastructure subsidies.
They have dominated the market
for more than a decade. In that
time, they have become highly pro-
ficient at constructing commercial
ships.
The case for preserving the de-
fense shipbuilding industrial base
has not been made
in recent years with ^hbihhi
clarity.
The member
yards of the Ameri-
can Shipbuilding
Association con-
front a very differ-
ent challenge: to
retain the unique
capability to design
and construct com-
plex Navy ships.
We must diversify
our businesses and
adopt the best prac-
tices of commercial
shipbuilding while
also preserving n^^^B^^m
those skills, sys-
tems and business practices that
are essential and unique to the de-
sign and construction of complex
ships for the U.S. Navy.
Preserving elements of our ship-
building industrial base will mean
little if we are unable to preserve
and advance the capability and tech-
Duane "Buzz" Fitzgerald
nology to design
and build ships
critical to our
national de-
fense.
ASA member
companies have
actively sup-
ported recent
government ef-
forts to revital-
ize commercial
shipbuilding —
the expanded
Title XI loan
guarantee pro-
gram,
MARITECH
matching funds
for commercial
shipbuilding
technology de-
negotiation of an
ship-on
It isn't a
