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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) and the nominee for Secretary of the Navy discussed utilizing lessons from the private sector to maintain best practices for ship designing, building, and maintenance. In a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), King pressed the Trump Administration’s nominee, John Phelan, on his plans to benchmark Navy ships against private sector companies. To make the armed services more efficient. Later in their exchange, Senator King invited the nominee, if confirmed, to visit Maine’s shipyards – Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard – to get a better understanding of workforce needs like child care and available employee parking.

King began, “I love your focus on maintenance. I have a half facetious, half serious suggestion. We should benchmark our availability of our ships against … cruise lines. If they had the low availability we have, they would be out of business a long time ago. You understand that when you have an enormous capital asset it should be used. Every minute that it is not used is penalizing the taxpayers and diminishing the effectiveness of the Navy. I hope that you will really focus on that and I would like to see the metrics over a period of years of time in dry dock versus availability. I take it that is going to be a significant focus of your work?”

“Thank you for the question, Senator King. I did enjoy our time together,” Phelan responded. “I jokingly say President Trump has texted me numerous times very late at night, sometimes after 1:00 in the morning, of rusty ships, or ships in a yard, asking me what I'm doing about it. And I told him I'm not confirmed yet and have not been able to do anything about it but I will be very focused on it. I view it as a critical issue and I think your idea about benchmarking versus some of the other private sector companies is a very good idea and understanding how they keep these things running is very important. I know under a prior secretary before they used Southwest Airlines to come in to help with our planes and getting more efficient. There are a lot of best practices to be shared across the two and I am hoping with my relationships and contacts in the private sector we should be able to do that.”

King responded, “I loved it when you said we've never done it before it is not a sufficient excuse. You've got to be looking forward and not backward.” 

King then followed up on the conversation to invite Phelan to Maine and highlight the workforce issues affecting Maine’s shipyards.

King continued to share, “By the way, I want to invite you to the ill-named Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and to Bath Iron Works where the DDGs are built. In our legislation, we talked about fostering a collaborative relationship between the Navy and the two major shipyards that build DDGs on the DDX design so it is buildable. One of the problems is that design is separated and then you go to build it and it is very expensive. I hope you will commit to continuing that collaborative relationship and stepping it up because I understand it has faltered to some extent.”

“Thank you for the question. If confirmed, I look forward to visiting Maine and New Hampshire with you.  I've been trying to spend time understanding how the whole process works. I read a book about how the B-2 bombers were designed by 12 people and I believe when I met with Senator Ernst she mentioned that on one ship we had 800 people designing a ship. I don't know how you build something with 800 people. It just adds to requirements,” Phelan responded.

King concluded, “Collaboration between the Navy and ship builders would bear fruit for the taxpayers as well as the buildability of the ship. Workforce and shipbuilding I wanted to talk about. Believe it or not, parking and childcare are issues in the workforce and that doesn't sound like it would be a Navy project to build a parking garage or a childcare center, but that is absolutely necessary in order to maintain the workforce in shipbuilding in the economy we are in today.”

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator King has championed funding for both Bath Iron Works (BIW) and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY). Last year, he strongly urged Mr. Frederick J. Stefany, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition to prioritize long-term investments in the defense industrial base – including Bath Iron Works—to avoid a ‘trough’ between contracted work, resulting in a likely loss of workers and threatening American national security. In the Senate passed FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act, Senator King secured authorization for the procurement of an addition DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer that Bath Iron Works will build.

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