For Carlos Del Toro, the delays in the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding programs can fundamentally be attributed to manpower issues.
The secretary of the Navy and 2024 Wash100 winner told lawmakers during a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that private and public shipyards in the U.S. “simply don’t have the people,” a problem that he traced back to the 1980s “when we gave up on commercial shipbuilding in this country.”
Del Toro made the remarks in response to Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who had described the Navy shipbuilding program as being “in disarray” and ascribed the problem to management issues.
The Navy official acknowledged proximate issues — a delay in a major component for the Virginia-class submarine, for example, resulting in a delay for the whole program — but considered manpower insufficiency, whether in terms of numbers or experience, to be foundational.
“That’s sort of the base denominator of it all,” Del Toro said.
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