Navy Closes 4 Dry Docks, Putting Fleet, Budget And AUKUS At Risk

In an unusual move, the U.S. Navy has publicly taken four West Coast dry docks offline over seismic concerns. Releasing a terse statement, the Navy said it will “temporarily suspend submarine docking at Dry Docks 4, 5, and 6 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility” as well as a dry dock at the nearby Trident Refit Facility in Bangor, Washington.

The abrupt closure of the four nuclear-certified dry docks, if extended, will complicate the Navy’s ability to field and decommission nuclear ships and submarines. With the four dry docks effectively closed, the Navy now has few dry docks on the West Coast that are both available and currently certified to repair or maintain nuclear-powered vessels.

Despite taking months to ramp down operations at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard’s waterfront, naval officials couched the closure as “temporary” and “cautionary.” Those assurances, however, could not disguise the sense that the “recently conducted seismic assessment, executed as part of the Navy’s long-range, $21 billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP)” had uncovered something particularly dire—or at least something that required a public closure announcement and the urgent summons of “a team of more than 100 experts” in seismic risk.

Politically, the Navy’s closure announcement comes at a very interesting time. The closure announcement will wield a disproportionate influence on the Navy’s overall budget request, informing future submarine procurement plans. Even the multinational AUKUS accord, aimed—in part—at granting Australia nuclear submarine capability, may suffer collateral impacts. AUKUS members are due to determine the “optimal pathway for an Australian conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability” in about a month.

Why Close The Dry Docks Now?

The Navy’s sudden move is particularly notable given that seismic risks have never stopped the Puget Sound shipyard before.

Built in an active seismic zone, the Navy has analyzed the earthquake risks in the yard since at least 1975. A particularly strong 2001 earthquake only inflicted $8 million in damage, but it induced the shipyard to conduct a comprehensive two-year seismic vulnerability study and make hundreds of millions in seismic improvements.

The waterfront risks at the shipyard were significant and well known. In particular, the seismic shortcomings of Dry Dock 6—the only dry dock certified for nuclear aircraft carriers on the U.S. West Coast—were no secret. NAVSEA, when explaining the need for the multi-billion dollar SIOP initiative, wrote that Dry Dock 6 “was built on unconsolidated earth and fill, which increases the likelihood of liquefaction during a seismic event and destruction of the dry dock.” But the risks never stopped NAVSEA from running nuclear carriers and submarines through the dock for maintenance.

Seismic refits were already underway. In 2016, a Navy study estimated Dry Dock 6 needed “roughly $667 million in structural, mechanical and additional improvements.” In mid 2022, the Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan held a public scoping meeting to evaluate the planned waterfront improvements, including a seismic refit of Dry Dock 6 and the addition of a second, carrier-sized dry dock.

The closure comes on the heels of a steady drawdown in nuclear dry dock work at Puget Sound. Despite an enormous maintenance backlog—36% of the Navy’s attack submarine fleet is either in maintenance or waiting for maintenance—the Navy seems to have been ramping down dry dock operations at the Puget Sound shipyard for some time.

The declining tempo is undeniable. The Navy’s Puget Sound shipyard has six dry docks. the big Dry Dock 6 has been vacant since August 2022. Dry Dock 5 completed submarine inactivation work in September. Dry Dock 4 was scheduled to undergo a refit in 2022 and seems to have remained empty into 2023. Dry Dock 3 is not certified for nuclear work, and Dry Dock 1 was devoted to non-nuclear projects for most of 2022. The only current resident of a Puget Sound dry dock is the guided missile submarine USS Ohio. The old submarine is sitting in Dry Dock 2, hopefully winding down a refit that got underway in early 2022.

Put bluntly, the Navy had arranged enough slack in the utilization of the Puget Sound dry docks that a crew of seismic researchers could have wandered through the facility with little notice. Rather than go about assuming a “business as usual” posture, and quietly going about gathering information on risk and formulating new options, the Navy chose to go public instead.

Expect The Unexpected:

While disconcerting, the discovery of unknown risks in America’s public shipyards should not come as a surprise. Puget Sound Naval Shipyard has been in constant use for more than a century, and like any owner of an older house knows, a comprehensive refit that digs into an old, long-used facility risks revealing unexpected issues.

In the announcement, the Navy failed to discuss the impact the new seismic information may have upon the yard’s current modernization plans and ongoing earthquake mitigation efforts. With SIOP plans and projects already underway, NAVSEA and shipyard executives may well be reluctant to change course after already awarding some big contracts for the shipyard.

Inflexibility is a real risk. Over the past several years, as the Navy developed their comprehensive multi-billion-dollar plan for improving each of the Navy’s four public shipyards, naval leaders at all levels have been far too confident that they had an adequate understanding of the shipyards they intended to modify. But as I warned in 2019, “when you start digging into these facilities, you’re going to discover things that are going to add complexity and potentially add cost.”

This seems to have happened. Over the past year, the shipyard’s 8-decade old Dry Dock 4 received an “upgrade its electrical systems, service gallery and future capabilities.” Conceivably, work on the on the aging dry dock could have revealed concerning conditions that sparked the Navy to reassess the waterfront. New survivability standards or analytical approaches to seismic risk may have revealed something particularly concerning. We don’t know yet.

Nobody outside of the Navy knows for sure, but, at some point in 2022, the Navy seems to have realized Puget Sound had a major problem, and started slowing things down. The risk information, however, seems to have moved slowly up the chain of command, and was only released to the public now, at a particularly interesting time. The information may have been held back to maximize the Navy’s influence on discussions ranging from the budget to AUKUS.

The closure is, of course, a prudent—even gutsy—move. It could even be interpreted as a sign that the Navy, after the debacle at Hawaii’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, is moving to address the Navy’s array of long-known and long-ignored infrastructure issues. No matter how anybody cuts this, the seismic issues at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard should be dealt with now, before it all explodes into a major crisis.

But there’s also something of a sense, in this announcement, that the Navy isn’t letting the crisis go to waste. If “newly discovered” seismic issues can help ram through improvements needed to support Ford and Columbia Class vessels, that’s great. And by generating a crisis now, the Navy can, to some extent, get an advantage in sidestepping Congress, redirecting funding away from Congressional-directed investments Navy leaders may see as excessive. Without the West Coast submarine maintenance facilities, the Navy can justify rejiggering the build schedule for Virginia class submarines, create the impetus for funding an additional maintenance facilities, and even influence the AUKUS submarine decision. But right now, it’s all a mystery—one that, hopefully, even the most docile of Pentagon stenographers will be tempted to figure out.