Primer: How a Navy Ship Moves From Keel to Commissioning
A US Navy warship passes through five documented milestones between first construction and active service, each marked by an official event.
Shipbuilding
Naval and commercial yards reported through capacity, workforce, steel supply, module sequencing and the slippage visible years before a delivery date.
How A Navy Warship Moves From Keel To Commissioning
The construction of a U.S. Navy surface combatant or submarine follows a fixed sequence of ceremonies and milestones, each marking a documented stage of the shipbuilding process.
The Navy's Repair Backlog: How Ship Availabilities Work and Why They Fall Behind
Ship maintenance in the Navy is organized around scheduled availability periods at public and private shipyards, and successive GAO and Navy reports through 2024-2025 documented a persistent pattern of late starts, overruns, and an accumulating backlog that costs the fleet thousands of operating days.
LPD Flight II: A Program Guide to the San Antonio Class's Current Build Standard
LPD Flight II is the Navy's ongoing production run of San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks — LPD-29 onward — built solely at Ingalls Shipbuilding as the planned replacement for the retiring LSD-class dock landing ships.
Submarine Rotational Force–West: What AUKUS Is Building at HMAS Stirling and Beyond
SRF-West is the first AUKUS phase: U.S. Virginia-class submarines rotating through HMAS Stirling from 2027, backed by an 8-billion-AUD base expansion and Australia's own submarine shipbuilding path.
Submarine Industrial Base Investment: Where the Money Goes and What It Buys
The Navy's submarine industrial base investment — more than $2 billion across fiscal 2023 and 2024 and expanded by the April 2024 supplemental — funds suppliers, workforce, and facilities that must sustain Columbia and Virginia construction at the same time.