just outsource the damn thing
Navy to cut orders; job losses seen
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | February 7, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The Navy has dramatically scaled back plans for new warships and submarines in a move expected to lead to major job losses in one of New England's largest manufacturing sectors, according to senior Pentagon officials and naval specialists.
In a revamping of military priorities amid rising federal deficits, the Navy is poised to unveil plans today to slash by up to half its planned orders for vessels that were to be built at shipyards in Bath, Maine, and Groton, Conn., that employ a combined 18,000 people.
The Navy planned to buy two new destroyers and submarines per year well into the next decade that are constructed in New England by Bath Iron Works and Groton's Electric Boat Co. Now the Navy plans to buy only one DDX destroyer and one Virginia-class submarine per year.
"One or more of these shipyards may effectively go away," said Ronald O'Rourke, a shipbuilding specialist at the Congressional Research Service, suggesting that the shipbuilding industry at large could go through a significant contraction. "The yard that is most at risk is Bath Iron Works."
Both Bath, which employs about 6,400 workers, and Electric Boat, which employs about 8,750 people in Groton and 2,100 more in Quonset Point, R.I., are owned by General Dynamics, the Falls Church, Va., defense company.
"Both Bath and Electric Boat will go into a lower production," said a senior General Dynamics official who declined to be named before the new plan is made public. "There will be a lack of work."
Officials at Bath Iron Works declined to comment until the budget is released.
President Bush's federal budget for fiscal year 2006, to be sent to Congress today, will call for a 4.8 percent increase in overall annual defense spending to roughly $419 billion, officials said.
But due to the war in Iraq and the battle against terrorism, the armed forces have traded some prized weapon systems -- particularly in the Navy and Air Force -- in order to allocate tens of billions of dollars more to the Army and Marine Corps