The slow US carrier build rate reflects neglected industrial capacity and disagreement over who should pay to expand it. A private company must earn a profit, which can work well when several suppliers compete; it works poorly when one state is the yard's only customer and the yard is the state's only qualified source. The old royal-dockyard model is one response to a capability so strategically singular that losing the supplier would leave the navy nowhere else to go.
Notable Point · 3:00:13-3:02:47
A sole naval supplier and sole state buyer can trap each other
Privatization does not create a competitive market when one yard can build the ship and one navy can buy it, leaving infrastructure investment caught between two mutually dependent monopolies.