Why a modern Liberty ship mobilization would be difficult

Could the United States recreate the mass Liberty and Victory shipbuilding programs of the Second World War?

The assessment is that rebuilding the industrial workforce and production system would take decades, with automation itself requiring extensive development.

The Liberty and Victory ship programs drew on a large population already accustomed to industrial work, even when workers had not previously built ships. A comparable expansion of armaments production would compete for the people needed by new shipyards. Highly automated yards would take substantial development time to establish. The scale of ship components and the difficulty of moving them efficiently also limit how easily industrial robots can replace people. Training a large workforce would remain necessary. The assessment allows that mass production could be recreated, but puts the effort on a timescale of decades.