U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) questioned Admiral Daryl Caudle, the nominee for Chief of Naval Operations, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday. The discussion centered on strategies to strengthen U.S. naval capabilities and the potential benefits of working with allied nations in shipbuilding efforts.
Tuberville emphasized Alabama's role in shipbuilding and addressed workforce shortages affecting the industry. He noted that the United States faces a significant deficit of electricians, stating, “We’re 500,000 electricians short in this country. In mine and your lifetime, we can’t catch up. We’re gonna have to use our allies to help build some things.”
Admiral Caudle responded by highlighting the importance of international partnerships in addressing capacity challenges within the U.S. Navy’s industrial base. “Well, Senator, thanks for meeting with me. I enjoyed our time in your office. I wanna work with the Secretary of the Navy and the Department of Defense on looking at this hard. Again, I’ve said this is an all hands on deck [effort]. I don’t know how we do what we need to do without bringing international partners into the capacity problem that we have, while we build up our capacity because we need ships today.
And, so, there are no magic beans to that. There’s nothing that’s just gonna make that happen. So, the solution space has got to open up. And I think part of that has to look at international partnerships to give us a little bit of a relief valve while we work on our own organic industrial capacity.”
Tuberville further remarked on the urgency: “As you said, we need them yesterday. And again, this education problem is not going away. Our workforce problem is not going away. We gotta use the best that we know how. And we gotta build ships and we gotta build them fast. But they gotta be good ships, and I think working with our allies is gonna be one way for us to address this problem.”
The conversation also included discussion about unmanned vessels such as sail drones manufactured in Alabama and their role in maritime security operations.
“What’s your thoughts on unmanned vessels like sail drones that we make in our state of Alabama? Are you familiar with those?” Tuberville asked.
Caudle affirmed his familiarity: “Senator, I am familiar with them. Those are type of technologies that are crucial. Sail drones are part of the fabric of how we improve our Maritime Domain Awareness. You’ve, I’m sure, heard of the instantiations we’ve had with our Task Force 59 in the Arabian Gulf using those type of technologies. We’ve had them in the Gulf of America with our southern border watch. We’re using them there with [U.S.] Fourth Fleet and other places. So, yes, that’s a part of exactly what we need to network persistent capabilities where I don’t want manned vessels spending time just collecting things that unmanned can do much more affordably and effectively.”
Tuberville concluded by noting their effectiveness: “Yeah. Those have been used well down in the Caribbean on the war on drugs. And we’re proud of how they worked, and we need to continue to expand that there. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. A lot of eyes out there that we don’t have to man [with] people and train people, but it’s good that you go along with it."
Senator Tuberville serves as a member on several Senate committees including Armed Services.
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