Planned orders and the shipyard workforce gap

The near-term tables propose battleship orders in FY2028, FY2030, and FY2031, with one carrier ordered in FY2029. Frigate orders begin with one in FY2027, another in FY2029, and two in FY2031. Two attack submarines per year fall short of the three-per-year ambition discussed here, illustrating the gap between desired output and yard capacity. Recruiting apprentices alone cannot replace the missing middle of experienced welders, electricians, and other production workers. An anonymous shipyard source compares the cost of replacing experienced shop-floor judgment with a machine to roughly fifty years of a worker's pay. This is a reported cost comparison rather than an audited figure or an account of an actual replacement. Low production volumes also give machine-learning systems relatively few completed examples from which to learn, leaving practical experience important.