US Navy’s New Warship Is Plagued by Worker Turnover
- First of Navy’s new frigates is running up to three years late
- Inexperienced labor and supervisors hobble Navy, analyst says
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The shipyard producing the US Navy’s new frigate has been hobbled by a failure to “achieve engineering and skilled workforce levels” for the medium-sized vessel, according to a service document on the project that’s now forecast to run as much as three years late.
Fincantieri Marinette Marine has experienced “unprecedented poor workforce retention — high attrition rates,” according to an unreleased Navy briefing slide prepared for senior service and Pentagon officials late last month. It spelled out the shipyard’s woes in more detail than the publicly released findings of top Navy programs released last week.