{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Paul Truesdell Podcast","title":"The Essential National Security Economics of the U.S. Navy - Part 2","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":702,"description":"Newport News — The Crown Jewel and the BottleneckWhen people in the United States think of shipbuilding, the conversation almost always comes back to Newport News, Virginia. And for good reason. Newport News Shipbuilding is the only place on earth that builds nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and it is one of only two places in the United States that constructs nuclear submarines. That makes it the crown jewel of American naval power. But being the crown jewel does not mean it is perfect. In fact, it is both a symbol of unmatched capability and a warning sign about fragility.Let us talk size first. The yard at Newport News covers a little over 550 acres. That sounds large until you compare it to the mega-yards in South Korea or China. Remember, Ulsan sprawls across more than 1,500 acres. Jiangnan, outside Shanghai, covers close to 3 square miles. By comparison, Newport News looks compact, even cramped. The James River hems it in on one side, the city on the other. There is no more room to spread out. What you see is what you get.Now consider throughput. Newport News builds the most complicated ships ever put to sea: aircraft carriers that displace over 100,000 tons each and nuclear submarines that can stay underwater for months. But here is the catch: an aircraft carrier takes close to a decade from keel laying to commissioning. A submarine takes years. At any given time, the yard is juggling a small handful of projects, each one consuming massive amounts of labor, materials, and oversight. This is not a place that can suddenly double output if the Navy needs more hulls.And that gets to the bottleneck problem. If Newport News is the only place that builds carriers, then every carrier in the U.S. Navy depends on one yard. If that yard faces a labor shortage, a supply chain problem, or even just an accident, the entire fleet feels the ripple. There is no backup. During World War II, America spread its shipbuilding across dozens of yards. Today, our most valuable...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/115-XsjkdwCpJ99xv-8oZ76t6jr8ScWEC5MYSKzL0ig/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82MTUx/OWRiNTc0NTk0Y2Nk/M2VjYTliMGVhN2Zm/YTZkZi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}