Shifting strategic goals and changing their acquisition strategy at the same time. Every time the Government tries to change or shortcut acquisition, contractors - especially shipbuilders automatically raise their prices because "It wasn't in our scope of work"
The Navy also wasn't ready for the Iran War, and with the amount of smart Admirals re-assigned, encouraged to retire, or outright fired because they dared to be a minority or suggest a more strategic plan with an actual mission and goal rather than Hollywood or video game planning replete with musical training or repair montages, cut scenes, and reset spawn points...
And don't get me started on AI. Seriously, people are being forced to use it, and it's taking twice as long to coordinate the data and check it for errors - especially since AI anticipated schedule milestones based on averages, and can't handle slippage of the presence of prerequisite requirements at all.
Also, *Rump's "Golden Fleet" initiative had been kicking off. The amount of redirection and prioritization of resources that is creating... Where the Fuck is Congress?
Time is money in the Navy, especially if there's a rapid increase to deployments or engineering updates being pushed.
A naval vessel that is deployable is a mobile mini-community; it's not like you can just call a local repair shop, go down to Home Depot or Auto Zone, or open up the Amazon browser for a next day replacement part or consumables when a ship breaks down in the middle of the ocean.
Especially with modern technology and "black boxing" components, there's a lot of logistics and mission planning that goes on before a deployment, and there are limits to the amount of time a ship can be deployed before things start to seriously - and expensively - go wrong.
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