Navy Keeps Botching Shipbuilding and Modernization, Audit Warns

The Pentagon and the Navy have shelled out billions of dollars to the shipbuilding industry to improve construction of warships and support vessels but didn’t properly coordinate that spending or take a strategic approach toward contractors, according to a sweeping new assessment by Congress’s audit agency.

“Problems in Navy shipbuilding and repair have remained relatively unchanged over the past decades,” the Government Accountability Office said in the report issued Thursday. “Programs are not achieving cost and schedule goals, and as a result, the battle force is not sufficiently modernized and ready to meet national security needs.”