Navy Contract Marks Start Of Building Next Gen Boomers

WASHINGTON: The Navy today awarded a $9.4 billion contract for General Dynamics Electric Boat to start work on the first two Columbia-class submarines, work considered so critical to the Pentagon that Congress granted it an exception in the two-month continuing resolution passed in October.

Getting the work started is critical because the Ohio-class submarines they’re slated to replace in the 2030s will begin retiring at the end of this decade. The 12 Columbia subs will eventually carry 70 percent of the nation’s nuclear weapons, so any gap between the Ohio retirements and new Columbias could have a serious impact on the nuclear triad.

The Navy was granted a rare exemption from the prohibition on funding any “new start” programs in Congress’ latest Continuing Resolution, allowing the service to begin buying parts and getting to work on the $110 billion Columbia effort.

Construction is to begin this month and continue on a tight delivery schedule of 2028, according to Navy plans. Service officials have warned for the past year that any schedule slippage would ripple across the entire submarine fleet, so getting the Columbia boats in the water is more important than other shipbuilding programs.

In a call with reporters this afternoon, Columbia’s program manage pointed out the Navy hasn’t designed and built a new class of ballistic missile submarines since the 1970s, but has wrapped up its design efforts with plenty of time to test new technologies on land first. 

“We have the schedules locked in,” Capt. John Rucker said. The missile tubes will be done for the first ship by February, and the stern should be complete by the spring. “We have some big efforts as we roll through calendar [year] ‘21 — large sections of the ship are already under construction and other big strides as we roll through the year.

“It is very important that the Navy continue progress on Columbia, given the extremely tight timeline for deploying it before the first Ohio-class SSBNs retire,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former submariner (also fondly known as bubbleheads) . “Even if construction starts now, the Navy will still be hard-pressed to meet this deadline” before the first Ohio subs begin to retire. 

If the program experiences delays, the Navy and Strategic Command would coordinate to decide just how many Ohio subs would need to stay in service as the new subs begin to come on line in the early 2030s.

The first boat, USS Columbia, is estimated to coat about $9.2 billion, with the following boats taking advantage of the usual cost savings that come with lessons learned on the first hull. The second sub will be built in 2024, and the remaining 10 at a rate of one per year from 2026 through 2035.

In an interesting Columbia-related twist, the chief executive of BWX Technologies, the company that makes nuclear reactors for the Navy’s submarines, said earlier this week he expects that the next generation of attack submarines, dubbed SSN(X), would be larger than the current Virginia-class submarines.

“We do expect it will be a larger type of submarine, probably in the size class of the Columbia,” Rex Geveden said. “But there’s not much more to tell than that. But we’re working with our Navy customers on what that would look like and how we could take that into production,” he added. Geveden’s comments were first reported by USNI News. 

Navy acquisition head James Geurts said today that any speculation about the SSN(X) program would be premature, however.

“Our focus right now is get Columbia out of the gates, on track, and in a position to succeed. It is our number one priority,” Geurts said.  “We have not chosen a hull form or come anywhere near that level of discussion in terms of what that submarine will look like yet. We’re still in the technology and analyzing of alternatives phase. And so to say it would be a Columbia Hall would be a premature statement.”

Rep. Joe Courtney, Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, fresh from his re-election win on Tuesday, said in a statement, “the Columbia-class program will also be a major opportunity for industry partners up and down the supply chain for years to come,” he said. “Generations of shipbuilders and manufacturers will get their start working on this multi-decade program.”