A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the development of the Navy’s new fast-attack submarine identifies aspects of the program’s development that highlight the risk of repeating the mistakes of several recent shipbuilding programs. (For more on prospective challenges to the submarine’s development, see “Designing SSN(X) Will Require Modern Digital Modeling.”)
According to the 30 August report by CRS Navy expert Ronald O’Rourke (no relation), the Navy would like SSN(X) to be an “apex predator.” The service’s ideal for the new submarine would be “to incorporate the speed and payload [of] the Navy’s fast and heavily armed Seawolf (SSN-21) . . . the acoustic quietness and sensors of the Virginia class. . . and the operational availability and service life of the Columbia class.” That is a lot to incorporate into a single design.
At nearly $10 billion per hull, the Columbia-class ballistic-missile boats will be the most expensive submarines ever built. The SSN(X) design is likely to be the most expensive attack sub. General Dynamics Electric Boat
CRS says the upshot would almost certainly be an SSN(X) “larger than the original Virginia-class design, which has a submerged displacement of about 7,800 tons, and possibly larger than the original SSN-21 design, which has a submerged displacement of 9,138 tons.”
In April 2021, CRS reported the estimated average unit cost of an SSN(X) to be between $5.8 billion (the Navy’s number) and $6.2 billion (the Congressional Budget Office’s number). Given inflation and that production will not begin for at least 10 years, those figures will surely grow. For comparison, the newest Virginia-class boats cost around $3.6 billion each, and the Seawolf class, some of whose capabilities the Navy seeks to emulate, was canceled in 1995 after its unit cost ballooned to $3 billion—about $5.8 billion today.
The Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines—which the Navy has repeatedly called its top shipbuilding priority—are expected to cost nearly $10 billion each. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Navy’s average shipbuilding budget over the next 30 years to be around $30 billion (in current dollars). Submarine construction will consume a huge amount of that when both classes are in production.
Numerous programs in recent years have highlighted the problems with incorporating too many new technologies at once into a new ship. The Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyers, littoral combat ships, and Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers all should be object lessons in the dangers of trying to make a vessel all things to all combatant commanders at one time.
The Navy’s newest surface combatant—the Constellation-class frigate—also may be suffering from program offices’ inability to resist the temptation to shoehorn additional capability into everything. To reduce program risk, the frigate was supposed to be an off-the-shelf design already in service with other navies and merely adapted to incorporate US sensors, communications, and weapons. Instead, Fincantieri Marinette Marine cut the ship’s first steel in September, about a year after the previously announced plan. Its displacement reportedly will be almost 10 percent larger than the European FREMM frigate on which it is based. The Navy attributes the delay to a “design maturation” process, but the FREMM has been in service with other navies for 10 years.
One risk may not originate in the Navy. According to the Federation of American Scientists, some in Congress want SSN(X) to be powered by new nuclear reactors that use low-enriched uranium (LEU); existing nuclear-powered ships use highly enriched uranium. Changing reactor designs would substantially increase technological risk. The CRS report quotes the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s estimate that “at least 15 years of advanced fuel development and significant investment would be required” to develop an appropriate LEU reactor.
All in all, the Navy, the SSN(X) designers, and the shipbuilders have their work cut out for them.
The Solomon Islands Pivot Toward China
The fast-response cutter Oliver Henry (WPC-1140) arrives in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, for a port visit on August 23, 2022. US Coast Guard (Karl Wethe)
The Solomon Islands refused a port visit by a US Coast Guard cutter at the end of August. The rejection of the planned refueling and replenishment visit of the USCGC Oliver Henry (WPC-1140) was widely seen as evidence of China’s growing influence in the South Pacific island nation, despite its government calling such speculation “misinformation” and attributing the denial to bureaucratic issues.
According to USNI News, the Solomon Islands’ government has since announced an indefinite moratorium on all future naval ship visits. The country’s prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, said the action was taken “to give us time to review and put in place our new processes before [reviewing] further requests for military vessels to enter the country.”
China and the Solomon Islands signed a security agreement in May, on an occasion that was widely reported at the time. Observers have speculated that it is a first step toward China establishing a permanent presence there, a thousand miles or so from Australia.
The Brookings Institution analyzed a leaked draft of the security agreement, noting that:
Beijing has agreed to send armed police, military personnel, and other law enforcement forces to assist Honiara [the country’s capital] in “maintaining social order, protecting people’s lives and property, and providing humanitarian assistance.” The draft text also states that China, with the consent of Honiara, can use its forces to protect Chinese personnel and projects, and for its ships to stopover and carry out “logistical replenishment” in the Solomon Islands.
Shortly before the cutter’s aborted visit, according to The Guardian, the government began censoring the country’s primary source of news, the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation.
China’s influence may be growing beyond security cooperation.
Supply Chain Complications for the F-35
An F-35B Lightning II from Marine Strike Fighter Squadron 121. US Navy (Peter Burghart)
Global supply chain issues have disrupted many aspects of the civilian and military industrial bases since 2020, although cargo ship backlogs at many ports have eased in recent months. But in August, a different kind of supply-chain issue arose for the Lockheed Martin F-35: A magnet in the aircraft’s power system is made from an alloy sourced from China.
According to Bloomberg, the magnet is used in a component related to the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit. Honeywell, the component’s manufacturer, reported the problem to the F-35 program office on August 19, after learning that a subcontractor had been supplying the part with the problematic alloy since 2003.
USNI News reported in early September that the Pentagon does not believe the component poses a threat to safety or security. Though the results of the official investigation are pending, it is unlikely that any of the more than 800 aircraft delivered so far will be retrofitted with a new magnet. Instead, the Pentagon is likely to issue a waiver for the unauthorized alloy, and a new supplier will be found for the component.
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