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.
Petra VogelShipbuilding
Shipbuilding covers the yards themselves: dock capacity, module construction, welding workforce, steel and component supply, repair throughput and program schedules. Reporting quantifies backlog and identifies exactly where delivery dates slip. Aimed at suppliers, yard management, procurement staff and analysts tracking the industrial capacity behind naval expansion plans.
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.
Petra VogelThe 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.
Petra VogelLPD 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.
Petra VogelSubmarine 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.
Petra VogelSubmarine 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.
Petra VogelThe SHIPS for America Act: Explaining the Push to Rebuild U.S. Commercial Shipbuilding
The SHIPS for America Act, introduced in December 2024 and reintroduced in April 2025, bundles tax, financing, workforce, and cargo-preference measures aimed at reversing the near-total decline of the U.S. commercial shipbuilding and shipping industry.
Petra VogelBuilding the Navy's Amphibious Ships: How Huntington Ingalls Constructs the LHA and LPD Classes
Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi is the Navy's sole builder of large-deck America-class LHA carriers and San Antonio-class LPD transports, assembling them from modular blocks while Congress and the Navy debate the size of the amphibious fleet.
Petra VogelSSN(X): Explaining the Navy's Next-Generation Attack Submarine Program
SSN(X) is the Navy's planned successor to the Virginia-class attack submarine — faster, quieter, and carrying more torpedoes and payloads — with procurement targeted for the 2030s while the design remains in early development.
Petra VogelThe Navy's Four Public Shipyards: A Guide to Locations, Workloads, and the SIOP Rebuild
Four government-owned naval shipyards — Portsmouth, Norfolk, Puget Sound, and Pearl Harbor — perform most nuclear-powered ship maintenance for the Navy, and a decades-long infrastructure program is working to replace their aging dry docks and facilities.
Petra Vogel