Eurasia Review
15 February 2017
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- Southeast Asia’s Naval Shipbuilding Industry: Challenges Ahead – Analysis
Southeast Asia’s Naval Shipbuilding Industry: Challenges Ahead – Analysis
Naval shipbuilding in Southeast Asia, although ambitious in scope, is likely to remain limited to low-tech manufacturing (hulls and sub-assemblies), MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul), and a few showcase projects.
Nearly every large country in Southeast Asia possesses a shipbuilding industry. Some local shipbuilding sectors are quite large, in fact – Vietnam, for example, is the world’s fifth largest shipbuilder. These countries are engaged, in a limited way, in the construction of warships for their respective navies.
Moreover, most countries wish to expand their shipyards and production capacities, and into more ambitious shipbuilding programmes. However, Southeast Asian shipyards face some long-range problems when it comes to further developing their shipbuilding capabilities.
… Richard A. Bitzinger is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is formerly with the RAND Corp. and the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies.
IDSS / Online
Last updated on 16/02/2017
