Groton Economic Development: US Navy Avoided A 2022 'Trough' In Submarine Fleet Size, But Industry Challenges Threaten Future Growth

Groton CT

05 January, 2022

2:41 AM

Description

Press release from Groton Economic Development: January 3, 2022 This fiscal year was expected to be the first in which the U.S. Navy dipped into a "trough" in its submarine force, falling below the previous requirement for 48 attack subs and facing two decades of reduced numbers, with as few as 41 at times. Instead, the Navy is holding steady at 50 and plans to only grow the fleet, thanks to efforts to extend the lives of many aging Los Angeles-class SSNs by about three years each and to refuel five of them altogether for additional years of operations. Still, the remaining 27 Los Angeles boats will retire by the mid-2030s, putting pressure on the industrial base to continue building at least two Virginia-class attack subs a year, if not more, as the Navy looks to grow the size of its submarine force to its new requirement of 66 to 72 SSNs. "We are currently forecast to sustain a force of 50 SSNs throughout this decade, and that's almost a 20% improvement over previous assessments," Rear Adm. Doug Perry, the director of undersea warfare on the chief of naval operations' staff (OPNAV N97), said in November at the Naval Submarine League annual conference. Navy leaders say avoiding this trough — which was previously expected to start when the Navy hit 48 boats in fiscal 2022 and finally end when the submarine force grew to 49 in FY42 — is a testament both to the high-quality design and construction of the Los Angeles-class submarines and sheer luck in finding five unused nuclear reactor cores that could refuel some LA attack subs. Michael Breslin, an executive director at the Program Executive Office for Attack Submarines, said at the Sub League conference the Los Angeles subs were planned to last for 30 years, but the Navy previously extended the class to 33 years after an engineering effort confirmed the hulls could handle it. Now, he said, the Navy is assessing hull by hull and regularly approving boats in this class for another three years, for a total of 36. For five boats whose hulls are in good shape but whose nuclear reactors are low on fuel, the Navy will perform engineered refueling overhauls at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine and replace the reactor cores with the ones sitting unused in storage. This decision was approved in FY21 and helps avoid the trough, Perry said. But, he noted, in 2016 the Navy upped its requirement to 66 SSNs. The outgoing Trump administration then proposed a goal of 72 to 78 attack subs, and the Biden administration has since settled on a range of 66 to 72 — still far out of reach for the Navy unless something changes. The industrial base, led by prime contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat and supporting shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding, has struggled to deliver two Virginia-class attack subs a year on schedule. The two yards each build different portions of the boats and then alternate who performs final assembly and delivery. For boat after boat, the contractors have delivered them to the Navy late. Each block of Virginias has had successively shorter construction schedules. Block IV, of which only one has been delivered to the Navy so far, was supposed to get down to a 60-month timeline, though the industrial base has not been able to achieve and sustain that pace. The second boat in the block, the future Oregon, has still not delivered despite its schedule previously calling for a fall 2020 delivery date. Electric Boat President Kevin Graney told Defense News in a Nov. 17 interview construction times today are in the "low 70 [month]s" and that the company is looking module by module for ideas to cut that to 67 or 68 months. The first Block V with the Virginia Payload Module, the future Arizona, is under construction already. These boats will have an additional mid-body section that holds 28 missiles, helping the Block V Virginias make up for the loss of the retiring guided-missile submarines that provide significant land-attack and surface-ship strike capacity. Virginia submarine program manager Capt. Todd Weeks said at the Sub League event the industrial base in total puts in about 750,000 man-hours of work on the Block IV Virginia program each year, which will increase to about 1 million man-hours of work in the next two or three years for Block V. This press release was produced by Groton Economic Development. The views expressed here are the author's own.