A recent advertisement from Build Submarines, a new recruitment initiative from the defense industry talent-mongering organization Alliance for Defense Tech, Talent, and Innovation (SENEDIA), is making waves (or not, depending on depth) for good reason — though the commercial is what would result from Michael Bay running an ad agency staffed with Oberlin undergrads.
We Build Giants, Because It Takes One to Build One.
Learn more at https://t.co/nRgVhBLlTm. pic.twitter.com/hz7K2004bo
— Build Submarines (@BuildSubmarines) September 8, 2023
The net effect is positive — the video almost had me grabbing for my old coveralls to go do some pipefitting. The message is one of strength (“giants among us” and “beasts”), ongoing development (growth and “next-generation”), and construction (“forged,” always goes hard). But the ad misrepresents a couple of things.
First, the individuals welding and turning wrenches are far too attractive to have ever been near a ship. Unless the actors can properly communicate the wrinkles of a tag-out audit, the stress-induced tics of a truck payment, and the effects of 20 years of chewing tobacco on their lips (with an included half-filled spit cup in the back pocket), then this cannot stand as a representation of the industry.
However, if the intent is to suggest that the old salts are fixing to retire, and the video is showing the types who must fill those seasoned (ripe) Red Wings, or Bates if the owner hated his feet, then that would be fair. It takes all hands. The ad also failed to note the sub service’s matchmaking success — a guaranteed partner after every cruise.
Intra-Navy jokes aside, this ad should be but one part of a wider effort to promote naval expansion and repair. As Seth Cropsey writes for the magazine, “at any given time, around 40 percent of attack submarines are not deployable because of repairs, maintenance, refueling, and ageing, which shrinks the fleet to around 30 boats.”
Add to this morass the backlog at overhaul facilities and we have a problem. Like a village with 50 Ferraris and only one mechanic (Random Lake, Wis., in summer time), the ratio between machines and the men plus facilities able to repair them is inadequate. Merely irksome delays in peacetime become devastating shortages if war arrives at the nation’s door.
It doesn’t take giants to build subs, it takes the willingness and grit of everyday Americans from Groton, Conn., to Kings Bay, Ga., and Everett, Wash.