To preserve its ability to design, build, and support complex warships and submarines, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) will need to preserve and sustain several key technical skills in the maritime domain.

In particular, it needs to nurture detailed designers and professional engineers involved in various stages of surface ship and submarine acquisition and support. Although MOD has taken into account its need for these skills, its significant future maritime programme likely will have to be modified or augmented to sustain these technical skills in the long term.

This is the key conclusion of a study of naval technical skills that RAND Europe pursued on MOD’s behalf between 2006 and mid-2007. The study, the second investigation of demand for maritime labour in the UK that RAND has performed for MOD, is the first to investigate specific technical skills that the UK’s maritime industry will need to sustain to preserve the country’s ability to design, build, and support complex warships and submarines.

What Is the Problem?
The UK is pursuing several shipbuilding programmes—including the Astute submarine class, the Future Aircraft Carrier (CVF), the Future Surface Combatant (FSC), Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability (MARS) vessels, and the Type 45 destroyer—that may stress the UK’s domestic shipbuilding and maritime support industry capacity over the next 15 years. Motivated by that possible overcapacity, MOD asked RAND in 2006 to help it better understand issues surrounding the UK’s ability to sustain technical skills in its maritime sector. In particular, it was interested in exploring the relationship between the demand created by its ship and submarine acquisition programme and the technical workforce needed to design, build, and support those war vessels.

MOD’s future shipbuilding programme involves acquiring more than 50 ships and submarines over the next 30 years, according to official announcements and publications. To ensure that industry has the capability and capacity to fulfil this programme, MOD published its Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) in December 2005.2 This document established guidance for policymakers with respect to industrial goals and capacity that the UK will need to fulfil its military acquisition programmes over the next several decades.

The section of the DIS pertaining to maritime industrial issues is referred to as the Maritime Industrial Strategy (MIS). The MIS identifies six strategic capabilities that the UK will need to retain to preserve the domestic ability to design, build, and support complex warships and submarines onshore: maritime systems engineering, shipbuilding and integration, submarines and nuclear propulsion, maritime combat systems, maritime support, and maritime systems and technologies. ... (Summary)

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Prepared for the UK Ministry of Defence
By: Hans Pung, Laurence Smallman, Mark V. Arena, James G. Kallimani, Gordon T. Lee, Samir Puri, John F. Schank
© Copyright 2008 RAND Corporation

Preface:
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) is pursuing several shipbuilding programmes—including the Astute submarine class, the Future Aircraft Carrier (CVF), the Future Surface Combatant (FSC), Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability (MARS) vessels, and the Type 45 destroyer—that will potentially stress the UK’s domestic shipbuilding industry capacity over the next 15 years.

In 2005, RAND published an examination of this issue, The United Kingdom’s Naval Shipbuilding Industrial Base: The Next Fifteen Years,1 which has been widely cited in government and press circles in the United Kingdom and was referenced by MOD in the maritime section of its recently released Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS).

Since the release of the RAND study and the DIS, MOD has identified a series of new but related questions connected with that original work. Those questions focus on the need for, and retention of, specific technical skills in the UK’s maritime industry.

As a result, in 2006, MOD asked RAND to undertake a followon study using a similar but expanded analytical approach to help it better understand how to sustain technical skills in the maritime sector. In particular, MOD was interested in exploring the relationship between the demand created by its ship and submarine acquisition programme and the supply of the technical workforce needed to support that programme.

RAND analysed these issues between 2006 and mid-2007, employing both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. This monograph describes the analytical procedures that the RAND team followed and summarises its findings and recommendations. The results indicate that the supply-demand relationship is highly complex and that some technical skills are extremely sensitive to demand.

As part of this project, RAND provided MOD with management tools that allowed it to model these dynamic relationships and assess options for sustaining these skills.

This research should be of interest to MOD’s Defence Equipment and Support organisation, as well as to service and defence managers and policymakers involved in weapon system acquisition on both sides of the Atlantic. It should also be of interest to shipbuilding industry executives in the United Kingdom.

This research was sponsored by the Ministry of Defence and conducted within RAND Europe and the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD).

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