The Navy is in a crisis on shipbuilding and ship repair. The four existing yards of Portsmouth, NH; Norfolk, VA; Puget Sound, WA; and Pearl Harbor, HI are aging, decrepit, and cramped. The U.S. Navy is conducting a strategic re-capitalization of all four, but the reality is that the Navy (and the eight major private shipyards) are up to 40% behind schedule on new construction and maintenance. There’s only so much paint you can put on an old facility.
None of the Navy plans to date have included new, re-opened, or expanded facilities. With the increasing possibility of conflict with China, new facilities are needed on the Pacific Coast to expand the industrial base. With the Chinese presence in Panama, America may lose access to the Panama Canal to use East Coast bases and ships.
Navy Secretary Del Toro visited the San Francisco Bay region to take a peak at the old Mare Island Naval Shipyard. A historic Navy Facility, but the civil engineering question is simple, is it better to re-open an ancient facility or start from scratch? The old World War II shipyard site at Richmond, CA has relatively generous open space to start fresh with a modern, deep draft pier area. The Navy Secretary Staff visited this long vacant facility at Richmond.
Starting a new, large facility in the zombie ville of the blue SF Bay freakshow may seem like a jobs program for the those who want to destroy America, but we may have no choice. The war with China is already in progress through unrestricted warfare. Chinese bombs and missiles landing on American west coast sovereign territory will be the final stages of the war. Better to start on a new facility now and somehow create MAGA America access to a Pacific Coast Port and new Naval Shipyard.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was decrepit in the seventies, doubt there's been any improvements.
So where are they going to find the skilled labor for a shipyard, especially in a region with very high housing and other costs? All that the Chicoms have to do is drop the Golden Gate Bridge and seal off the entire SF Bay.
FJB must need a shipyard to build carriers for the Ukrainian navy.
That place is earthquake-central, a bad place to build!