The first Block V with the Virginia Payload Module, the future Arizona, is under construction already. 17 interview construction times today are in the “low 70 s” and that the company is looking module by module for ideas to cut that to 67 or 68 months. The second boat in the block, the future Oregon, has still not delivered despite its schedule previously calling for a fall 2020 delivery date.Įlectric Boat President Kevin Graney told Defense News in a Nov. 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. For boat after boat, the contractors have delivered them to the Navy late.Įach block of Virginias has had successively shorter construction schedules. The two yards each build different portions of the boats and then alternate who performs final assembly and delivery. 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 Navy's newest attack submarine, the future Oregon, is christened in a ceremony at Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., on Saturday. 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. This decision was approved in FY21 and helps avoid the trough, Perry said.īut, he noted, in 2016 the Navy upped its requirement to 66 SSNs. 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.įor 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.
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. 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.
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