INDO-PACIFIC: U.S. turns to private Japan shipyards for faster warship repairs

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U.S. turns to private Japan shipyards for faster warship repairs​

As China grows fleet, Navy eyes similar collaboration with Singapore, Philippines

TOKYO -- The U.S. Navy is studying the use of Japan's private shipyards to maintain, repair and overhaul its warships in a bid to reduce servicing backlogs back home -- an idea that could expand to South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines.

If realized, the move would signal a new level of integration with allies and partners as the U.S. maneuvers in the face of a now-larger Chinese naval fleet.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel is leading the efforts, speaking with members of Congress and mobilizing embassy staff to reach out to the Japanese government, Nikkei Asia has learned.

The Japanese shipbuilding industry is likely to welcome the idea. Japan was once one of the world's most prominent shipbuilding nations but has recently lost market share to China and South Korea. Shipyards have been forced to converge to save costs. A constant flow of repair work from the U.S. Navy would be a boon for the industry.

In the past, the Navy has used shipyards in Japan, India and the Philippines to repair logistics ships, such as auxiliary vessels and replenishment oilers. But the new concept envisions expanding this in a fundamental way to include warships, such as destroyers, cruisers and amphibious ships forward-deployed to Japan, a U.S. official told Nikkei Asia.

The Navy also envisions conducting short-term maintenance on continental-U.S.-based warships that transit through the region to reduce the burden on American shipyards squeezed by labor shortages.

Nuclear-powered ships, such as aircraft carriers and submarines, are not part of the consideration.

The U.S. is also interested in exploring industrial partnerships between Japanese and American shipyards to expand capacity in both countries for maintaining and manufacturing naval vessels, a U.S. official said.
In a speech to the National Press Club in Washington in February, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said, "The ability of the United States Navy to be able to do forward-based repair and maintenance is critical."

Noting the successful experience of repairing a U.S. Navy ship in India last summer, Del Toro said, "We're also looking at other opportunities throughout Asia as well to where we might be able to do that as well to perhaps in the Philippines and Singapore and other places like that."

Currently, Japan-based ships are serviced on-site at U.S. naval bases in Yokosuka in Kanagawa prefecture and Sasebo in Nagasaki prefecture, using contract Japanese workers. In the case of multiyear overhauls, the Japan-based ships are assigned a home port shift to the U.S. and a replacement vessel is forward-deployed to Japan.

Warships being serviced at off-base Japanese private shipyards would help spread the workload. Shipyards that handle Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels are found at Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture; Maizuru, Kyoto prefecture; and Kure, Hiroshima prefecture.

The U.S. Navy, which has a fiscal 2024 ship maintenance budget of $13.9 billion, has a serious repair bottleneck. A Government Accountability Office report released this month found that the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, the Navy's mainstay surface ship, averaged 26 days of depot maintenance delay in fiscal 2021. Due to such delays, Navy ships are getting fewer steaming hours.

Much of American surface warship maintenance is conducted by two private providers, General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company and BAE Systems Ship Repair. "If one of these suppliers decided to exit the market, the Navy would need time to find alternate providers," a RAND Corp. report noted.

One such alternative could be Japanese facilities that have experience servicing JMSDF ships.

Secretary of the Navy Del Toro recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that over the past two decades, the People's Liberation Army added over 100 combatants to its naval fleet. "Today it has approximately 340 ships and is moving towards a fleet of 440 ships by 2030," he said.

In contrast, the U.S. Navy is expected to only reach 367 ships by 2052 under the most aggressive scenario, according to the fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding plan.

The U.S., then, needs each and every ship available on the sea to be able to compete with China.

Emanuel floated the idea of tapping Japanese shipyard capacity at a seminar in Tokyo hosted by the Milken Institute in March.

"When I started in politics working for President [Bill] Clinton, there were 10 naval bases in the United States that built ships. Today there are six," Emanuel said. "Japan has a tremendous amount of naval capacity, of shipyard capacity. Japan's industrial base can be a big part of this solution. And it's going to be an important part of the United States [readiness] because to do what we have to do for our Navy, we cannot be limited to six shipyards."
Later, Emanuel told Nikkei Asia that "Japan still has much to offer in shipyard maintenance."

New business would be a welcome development for Japanese shipyards, said Nobutaka Kawai, CEO of Sanyo Kousan, a shipbuilder in Kure. Kawai's company is a subcontractor for the country's second largest shipbuilder, Japan Marine United, and handles the maintenance of Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels.

"For local shipyards like ours, a contract with the U.S. military is something we desperately want," Kawai told Nikkei. "I would say there is both the intent and the spare capacity."

At the Yokosuka naval base, companies such as Sumitomo Heavy Industries, JMU and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries send workers to help with on-site maintenance. If these companies could service U.S. warships in their own shipyards, that could revitalize Japan's industrial base, which until the 1970s held a roughly 50% global market share in shipbuilding.

Once on track, the U.S. side will suggest Japanese shipyards also service ships from friendly third countries such as the U.K. and Australia, a source said. Such cooperation would fit the mold of U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's concept of "integrated deterrence," in which allies and partners join hands with the U.S. to deter adversaries.

In April 2019, the U.S. Navy experimented with repairing a warship in a Japanese shipyard, when the missile-guided destroyer USS Milius entered dry dock at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Yokohama Dockyard and Machinery Works.

While the repair went smoothly, some activists slammed the move as potentially turning Yokohama Port, in addition to Yokosuka, into a military port.
Lt. Jeong Soo Kim, a U.S. naval officer based in Sasebo, wrote in the influential naval magazine Proceedings that expanding the on-site ship repair facilities in Yokosuka and Sasebo might be an easier option.

"Since the Navy does not have recent experience outsourcing shipbuilding to foreign firms, significant growing pains can be expected," he wrote. "Using and augmenting an existing U.S. Navy vessel maintenance organization in Japan would give the Navy another tool to increase maintenance capacity while avoiding the pitfalls of standing up an entirely new organization."

U.S. turns to private Japan shipyards for faster warship repairs

As China grows fleet, Navy eyes similar collaboration with Singapore, Philippines

asia.nikkei.com

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