WASHINGTON — This fiscal year was expected to be the first that the U.S. Navy plunged into a “sink” in its submarine force, dropping below previous requirements for 48 attack submarines and facing two decades of reduced numbers, with fewer than 41 times.
Instead, the Navy is holding steady at 50 and only plans to grow the fleet, thanks to efforts to extend the life of several older Los Angeles-class SSNs by about three years each and completely refuel five of them for additional years of operations.
However, the remaining 27 boats in Los Angeles will be retired by the mid-2030s, putting pressure on the industrial base to continue building at least two Virginia-class attack submarines per year, if not more, as the Navy looks to increase its size. The submarine force required its new 66 to 72 SSNs.
“We are currently expected to maintain a force of 50 SSN personnel throughout this decade, which is an improvement of approximately 20% over previous assessments,” said Admiral Doug Perry, Director of Subsea Warfare in the Chief of Naval Staff (OPNAV N97), He said in November at the Naval Submarine Association annual conference.
Naval commanders say avoiding this trough—which was previously expected to begin when the Navy struck 48 boats in FY 2022 and finally end when submarine strength grew to 49 in FY42—is evidence of both the high-quality design and construction of Los. Angels-class submarines had great luck finding five unused nuclear reactor cores that could refuel some of the Los Angeles attack submarines.
The Los Angeles subs were scheduled to last 30 years, but the Navy previously extended the class to 33 years after an engineering effort confirmed the hulls, Michael Breslin, executive director of the Attack Submarines Program Executive Office, said at the Sub League conference. He can handle it. Now, he said, the Navy is assessing hull by hull and regularly approving boats in this category for another three years, for a total of 36.
For five well-hull boats but their low-fuel nuclear reactors, the Navy will carry out engineering repairs to refueling at the Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Maine and replace the reactor core with those in stock. Perry said that decision was approved in fiscal year 21 and helps avoid the downturn.
But he noted that in 2016, the Navy increased its requirements to 66 SSNs. Then the outgoing Trump administration suggested a target of 72 to 78 attack submarines, and the Biden administration has since settled on a range of 66 to 72 — still out of the Navy’s reach unless something changes.
The industrial base, led by prime contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat and supporting Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News shipbuilder, has struggled to deliver two Virginia-class attack submarines annually on schedule. Both yards build different parts of the boats and then alternate final assembly and delivery. For boat after boat, contractors handed them over to the Navy late.
Every Virginia block has shorter building schedules in a row. Block IV, only one of which has been delivered to the Navy so far, was supposed to reach a 60-month schedule, although the industrial base has not been able to achieve and maintain that pace. The second boat in the block, the future Oregon, has yet to be delivered although its schedule previously calls for a fall 2020 delivery date.
Electric boats chief Kevin Granny told Defense News in an interview on November 17 that construction times today are at a “low 70”. [month]And that the company is looking at ideas unit by unit to narrow that down to 67 or 68 months.
The first V-Block with the Virginia Payload Unit, the future Arizona, is already under construction. These boats will have an additional mid-body section containing 28 missiles, helping Block V Virginias compensate for the loss of retired guided missile-powered submarines that provide significant land and surface attack capability.
In total, the industry base puts about 750,000 man-hours into the Block IV Virginia program each year, which will increase to about one million man-hours in the next two to three years for Block V, Virginia Submarine Program Director Capt. Todd Weeks said at the affiliate event.
“We are doing some very innovative things that are collapsing the timelines to the left. They have grown excessively, and we have focused on getting them back again,” said Granny, noting that Electric Boat has been particularly focused on finding efficiencies in final assembly and test parts.
Overall, he said, the company hasn’t done a great job of incorporating lessons learned into building plans and other documents and has experienced significant workforce turnover. He said that new employees were good at questioning old processes and suggesting new ones, but that successful ideas were not always codified.
Granny said the company is more careful about writing things down, as seemingly simple, to ensure efficiencies are gained from boat to boat.
“We didn’t get out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the continued focus on these things started moving the needle in a good way.”
However, some issues, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are still outside his direct control.
The pandemic is “a burden on the system, we’ve slowed it down,” he said, but vaccines and masks have helped relieve some of the pressure.
Other than COVID, the arena is struggling to find new recruits willing to work in manufacturing, which is a challenge across the industry.
With the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine in place, the Pentagon’s highest acquisition priority—and therefore Electric Boat Company’s top priority—many of the best and most experienced employees are being transferred to this project.
“If we were short, we’d be short in Virginia,” Granny said.
There is also a broader industrial base for submarines.
“The concern I would have been would be from the supply base: We’re working on expanding it. The Virginia submarines were two stretches of one submarine. The lead ship Columbia was extended. And I think, in order to go into serial production [on Columbia]“We really have to increase volume and productivity through the supply base,” Granny said.
“Let’s face it, the supply base is fragile,” he added. “Just as we educate the next generation of shipbuilders, each of our suppliers is teaching the next generation what to do, whether it be manufacturing turbines or valves and components.”
He noted that the naval and industrial base recently underwent the fifth critical review of suppliers, which showed improvements.
“I would say that our important suppliers are ready today for the work we’re doing on our plate.” Granny said. “How do we expand that to get to serial production in Colombia, I think, is the next hurdle we have to get over.”
Even as The Electric Boat Company and its subcontractors struggle to get the Virginia program back on schedule, the next challenge is already in the background: the next-generation attack submarine, or SSN(X), that will follow.
“We have to move quickly, because our opponents are not going to slow down” when it comes to bringing new capabilities to undersea warfare, Vice Admiral William Houston, commander of the Naval Submarine Forces, told the Sub-Association Conference.
“Even as soon as we go to SSN(X), we won’t have that platform until the early 1940s. We need to keep investing in research and development so we can get SSN(X) because it takes a long time, more than 12 years of [research and development before construction begins]Houston said. “But if we don’t have that research and development and we don’t maintain the advantage we have with Virginia, we will lose our advantage under the sea.”
Perry added in his remarks that design work, not just research and development for SSN(X) sensors, networks and weapons, should begin now.
“We know we need to start this work today to make sure we can deliver the SSN(X) in time to meet [growing global threats] “Without a lot of technical and schedule risks,” Perry said. “With the Columbia design 95% complete, now is the time to start moving this experienced design team… from Columbia to the next submarine.”
For Granny, this design work can’t begin soon enough. The Electric Boat Company is looking at innovative ways to keep engineers busy, including incorporating engineers into production teams in Columbia. In this case, the benefit is twofold: engineers remain paid, and first-time shipbuilding components and modules can ask designers questions and do the new work right the first time.
In addition, Electric Boat has designed a new seabed battleship unit for the Navy, modeled on the Virginia Payload unit that adds surface-to-surface lethal power to the submarine with a mid-body insert. However, Granny said the new unit only keeps some engineering manpower working because the unit doesn’t touch the submarine’s propulsion system and other technical components.
“Right now, we’ve got kind of a hot hand coming out of Colombia: We just did it, we have all these resources flowing in. And I think it’s important that we look at that critical skill set, like we did when we got out of Virginia into Colombia, and make sure that we keep This skill set does well,” said Granny. “We’re going to have to take advantage of the guys who just came out to train the next generation of designers and engineers.”
Megan Eckstein is the Naval War Correspondent for Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, focusing on US Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs, and budgets. She has reported from four geographical fleets and is happiest when you log stories from a ship. Megan is a graduate of the University of Maryland.
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