“White Western” Shipbuilding Problems

In response to French Anonymous' second comment and Anonymous’ comment on February 25, 2024 (on what I call the “white Western” world nuclear submarine welder shortage) I have written the following:

In general the end of the (first) Cold War “peace dividend“ 1988-2001 led to a reduction in Russian and “white Western” European, US, UK and Australian naval ship building. This was in the framework of lower naval defence spending in Russia and the "white" West overall. 

Dual-use electronic industries, including those relevant to submarines, continued to expand. This was even during War on Terror (WoT) (“9/11” 2001 to the West's Afghan collapse of 2021) in part because counter-terrorism infantry ops using aerial drones were packed with new electronics.

Perhaps most effected from 1988 and much of the WoT was Russian and “white Western” high precision welding training and work that is essential for submarine pressure hulls and reactors. Submarine funding reductions led to far fewer SSN launches as well as early retirements of SSNs - see SSNs laid up. All this meant a sharp downturn in submarine and reactor welder training even in the US.

In the 1990s the a “white Western” ideology grew of downsized government technical training and instead a tendency to hire private sector supplier/contractors. Governments relied on buying labour “top dollar” to sustain a semi-employed, limited contract, labour market. 

In contrast Northeast Asian naval shipbuilding was far less impacted by the peace dividend as there was (and is) a continuous build submarine arms race between China and North Korea (NK) versus Japan, South Korea (SK) and now Taiwan. Large scale building of naval and civilian surface ships also kept welders continuously employed in Northeast Asia. These countries trained welders at a higher tempo with very long contracts, even jobs for life. 

Many Russian nuclear weapon, missile, and submarine engineers, unemployed in the 1990s, found work in NK. This sharply accelerated NK's progress in all three fields during the 2000s. 

In “white Western” batch building, temporary contracts with considerable downtime, can lead to loss of welding skills. The UK and France in particular saw long multi-year gaps between the end of their SSBN building projects and full resumption of their new SSN (Astute and Barracuda) building phases. Corporate memory in nuclear construction skills was lost.

All this is impacting the tempo of current SSN and SSBN construction in the UK, France and US. France is trying to improve nuclear welder availability with HEFAÏS’ https://hefais.fr/  . HEFAÏS’ is a high-level industrial school “whose ambition is to train the best welders in France for the nuclear and naval sectors.” This is to meet the nuclear naval (submarines and the Charles de Gaulle carrier replacement) and civilian nuclear welder shortages in France.

Australia launched its last submarine (an SSK) in 2001. So it will be more than 4 decades when Australia will attempt to start much larger, more complex and unforgiving SSN-AUKUS’ construction from around 2045.

Also in Australia many of the best technicians and engineers are working where there is more money and (even better) constant work in the non-batch building, non-shipbuilding electronics sectors in Australia and overseas. Young welders might prefer not to chance their careers in Australia as surface shipbuilding continuity here is a highly political, uncertain, and occurs in just 2 relatively isolated states of Australia. Those states are South Australia (with an economy totally dependent on federal shipbuilding) and Western Australia (WA) (which demands reinvestment of the massive amounts of GST WA's mining/energy industry contributes to Australia's Federal Government.