Submarine Industrial Base Under Strain as Virginia-Class Parts Wearing Out Early; Implications For Columbia-Class
By: Megan Eckstein
April 20, 2021 2:24 PM
Some parts on Virginia-class attack boats are wearing out faster than the Navy anticipated 20 years ago, and buying replacement parts is further straining a nuclear submarine industrial base that’s already juggling an expansion of construction of new hulls and maintaining the current fleet.
The Navy has found that engineering analysis from 20 years ago isn’t holding up compared to actual attack boat performance in the fleet. During the Virginia-class attack sub (SSN-774) design phase, the Navy had expected “that parts were going to be on the ship and fully functional for longer than it’s turned out to be,†Rear Adm. Ed Anderson, who commands the undersea warfare directorate at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA 07), said last fall at the annual Naval Submarine League conference. As a result, the Navy is writing contracts “for parts that we never thought we were going to replace on the ships that we’re replacing early†– which has implications for the already strained industrial base.
“We’re finding that some of our engineering assumptions and analysis are not bearing out, so that’s causing some changes to class maintenance plans, it’s causing some changes to resourcing on the ships and provisioning. And we’re using the data that we’re getting from the fleet to make that [provisioning] as effective for the fleet as possible. … And everything we’re learning here is going to Columbia class and [Rear Adm. Scott] Pappano there, PEO Columbia, to make sure that ship is as resilient as possible,†Anderson said at the event, noting that there are many commonalities between the Virginia-class and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN-826) design and materials in certain areas of the boats.
https://news.usni.org/2021/04/20/submarine-industrial-base-under-strain-as-virginia-class-parts-wearing-out-early-implications-for-columbia-class
