Halibut Hangar

Originally Published January 14, 2010; Last Updated July 13, 2010; Last Republished July 08, 2010:

Our navy is expected to present its proposed shipbuilding plan and budget on February 01, 2010, concurrent with the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 2010. The related Nuclear Posture Review 2010 has been delayed one month and is expected to be delivered to Congress on March 01, 2010 (Defense Committee Briefings February 01, 2010).

USS Virginia SSN 774

Partial Table - Virginia-class Submarine (VCS) Quantity 2011-2015¹

Res:

• UPDATED 06/12/2010 Debt, Deficits, and Defense: A Way Forward. Report link courtesy of the Arms Control Center.

  The Sustainable Defense Task Force (SDTF) report recommends keeping the production rate of the Virginia-class submarine at the current one per year instead of increasing it to the proposed two.

  This sensible SDTF recommendation will save $29 billion in procurement and $1.5 billion in operational and maintenance cost over 10 years, while still providing an entirely reasonable floor of 40 attack (SSN) submarines.

• UPDATED 05/20/2010 HASC, House Armed Services Committee Approves Fiscal Year 2011 Defense Authorization Bill. A summary of H.R. 5136, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 is included in above linked webpage.

  Unfortunately, HASC has approved the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee's recommendation to increase the VCS production rate from one VCS per year to two.

  "$5.1 billion to fund two Virginia-class submarines—the first time the Committee has ever authorized two ships in one year—and $1.7 billion for advance procurement of two additional vessels in FY12."--HASC Summary H.R. 5136--

  Reducing our obscene, wasteful, and unnecessary defense spending is impeded by the fact that equivalent jobs have not been created in the non-defense sectors—like our recent mortgage market, defense has become a self-perpetuating distortion of markets.

  Moreover, reducing our obscene, wasteful, and unnecessary defense spending is made more difficult because a not insignificant amount of defense spending is used to indirectly and non-transparently aid our commercial markets (e.g. pay for high risk basic and applied research).

  Furthermore, reducing our obscene, wasteful, and unnecessary defense spending is made more difficult by its opaqueness—we can't analyze or tell our "representatives" not to spend money if we do not know that they are spending it or what they are spending it on (a fact not lost on those doing the spending and classifying of information).

  Finally and not surprisingly there are considerable industry, military, and congressional concerns that additional VCS are needed to counter or balance a conjectured threat from China generally characterized as Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD).

  The (A2/AD) conjecture implicitly envisions a credible response using the VCS and ASW, generally referred to as AirSea Battle (ASB). It's axiomatic that our submarine builders, Navy, and congressional representatives whose districts build submarines will always conjecture as many threats as budgets, spending, and taxpayers will tolerate.

  Transparency with respect to the threat data, budget, and spending will act as a necessary check on these data. It's not that our planners and policymakers are not well meaning and sincere, it's just that they often misperceive and are wrong. Of course we will be told that transparency is impossible—no it’s not; it’s inevitable.

  Nevertheless, we must work like Hercules to rein in our out-of-control defense behemoth, reduce its obscene, wasteful, and unnecessary spending, and demand total transparency for all our defense components (e.g. let's begin by our Navy disclosing all the details for the above $5.1 billion dollars).

• UPDATED 02/28/2010 HASC, Opening Statement of Chairman Ike Skelton Hearing on the FY 2011 Department of the Navy Budget Request.

  The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) held February 24, 2010 hearing on the navy's proposed budget—testifying were Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (pdf), Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead (pdf), and Commandant Marine Corp General James T. Conway (pdf).

  "...The issue before us all, however, is affordability. Acquisition costs are rising faster than our budget's top-line, and without deliberate, sustained action to reverse this trend, we put the size and capability of the future force at risk...."--SON Ray Mabus, February 24, 2010--

  "...I am pleased with the accomplishments of the combined Navy-Industry team and look forward to even greater success as we ramp up production to two [Virginia-class] submarines next year...."--CNO, Gary Roughead--

• UPDATED 02/01/2010 Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011 and DoD FY 2011 and Supporting Documentation and Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)

  

  Since many of the budget and related documents are produced in parallel it's not uncommon for numbers to differ among CRS; OMB; DoD; or QDR documents.

  This is particularly true if you're trying to trace a single line item (e.g. a Virginia-class submarine).

  That said there's a whopping $5,132,688,000 ([QDR-R&D]/2) for two VCS and advance procurement for next years (FY2012) VCS, plus $132,039,000 for VCS support equipment in the unclassified budget.

  The president's budget still lists only one VCS and advance procurement, but then goes on to include this bit of budgeteering:

  "...[In all: $13,881,532,000] $15,724,520,000, to remain available for obligation until September 30, [2014] 2015: Provided, That additional obligations may be incurred after September 30, [2014] 2015, for engineering services, tests, evaluations, and other such budgeted work that must be performed in the final stage of ship construction:..."

  DoD P1 FY 2011 has proposed $15,724,250,000 for navy shipbuilding and conversion. Perhaps those inserting $15,724,520,000 multi-year obligation language into the president's budget meant $15,724,250,000?

Blog:

• UPDATED 01/15/2010 Lexington Institute⁷, Need For New Ballistic-Missile Sub Delays Development Of Virginia Replacement.

  Let's not ramp up the production rate¹ of the $2.8 billion dollar Virginia-class submarine (VCS) hoping for a threat to counter or even worse, begin designing a follow-on VCS without any understanding of the threat or mission it will perform (likely much different than past or present threats and missions).

  Instead, let's keep VCS production level at one per year¹ and extend the life of the billion dollar and perfectly good Los Angeles-class as far as its hull will safely tolerate.

  In the interim we can work on:

  • better understanding, defining, and refining the threats and missions we require our tactical submarine platforms to respond to; and
  • reducing the power plant footprint; and
  • ≈ halving the hull size⁸; and
  • maturing promising technologies and processes; and
  • recruiting and training indigenous engineering talent; and
  • halving the unaffordable and unsustainable three billion dollar price tag ($2.6 billion if the navy’s and contractors'³ affordability goals are realized); and

    • UPDATED 01/18/2010 To achieve the navy's goal of 48 fast attack submarines (313 ship navy) it would need to spend an estimated average of $27.4 billion⁴ on shipbuilding.

      In FY 2010 it spent $13.8 billion on shipbuilding, about half of what it would need to spend. All but the most ardent do not believe it is realistic to expect the navy to double its current shipbuilding budget.

      Stated differently the navy is unlikely to reach its goal of a 313 ship navy⁵ at the current average ship prices⁶. But then a 275-285 ship (40 fast attack submarines) navy is still an enormous and enormously expensive navy.

  • continue efforts too decrease the total life-cycle cost² of our submarine platforms.

Web:

• UPDATED 07/13/2010 National Review, How to Cut Military Spending.
• UPDATED 07/08/2010 Foreign Policy, Life by a Thousand Cuts.
• UPDATED 06/12/2010 UPI, Panel calls for $1 trillion defense cuts.

• UPDATED 02/21/2010 UPI, Future weapons should be cheap weapons. Just for clarity—three billion dollars¹⁰ for a fast attack nuclear submarine IS NOT cheap!

  You can still be a leading submarine designer and manufacturer producing $1.3 billion dollar fast attack submarines (in fact the leader!); $1.3 billion is still not cheap, but it's moving in the right direction.

• UPDATED 02/08/2010 Heritage Foundation, Submarine Arms Race in the Pacific: The Chinese Challenge to U.S. Undersea Supremacy

  An informative article arguing for closing the "submarine gap"⁹ by among other recommendations, increasing the production of the Virginia-class submarine (VCS)—the article fails to make the case for increasing the production rate of the VCS.

  It's of course very difficult to think about the future disconnected from the past, but to state the obvious China is not Russia. To state the not so obvious: disagreements with China over interpretation of Law of Sea Treaty; claimed ownership of seabed natural resources; Internet militarization and freedoms; Taiwan self-defense; ensuring stability in China's Autonomous Provinces; or how to guarantee global growth and stability; and protection of sea lanes and line of communication is not a U.S.-China Cold War.

  Yet, this article, other articles, and to some extent our navy persist arguing within a general Russia-U.S. Cold War framework. Telling us that China has 60-70 submarines verses versus our projected 40 is only to hint at the scrap value of each nation's submarine fleet.

  There is very little of significance that an informed submariner does not currently understand about China's submarine fleet (of course we always want to understand more). The open source data hints at nothing more than a heightened watch and respond with prudent interest. Our Chief of Naval Operations; naval intelligence; and military research components are doing just that...

  Admittedly China's authoritarian leadership's studied ambiguous silence; timidity or reluctance to engage in transparent, candid, continuous, and meaningful military dialogue; and periodic public bellicosity are not helpful.

  The article makes much of the Virginia-class submarine's not insignificant ability to stealthily insert some Special Forces troops. However, our SSGN platform is significantly stealthier (it doesn't run noisy reactor coolant pumps) and carries significantly more Special Forces (SF) troops, SF support and insertion equipment, and quantities of cruise missiles.

  Those arguing that our submarine fleet should continue on a Cold War trajectory or tempo carry a heavy burden that is not met by citing quantities of submarines. A burden this article does not even come close to carrying.

  Our navy and military thinkers must begin transparently discussing our military spending within the context of cooperatively leveraging other nation's military resources to ensure global growth and stability, including China's! Curiously the article cites Australia and India's submarine acquisitions as indicating the need for increasing our submarine production not decreasing it.

  Those still stuck in a Cold War framework or paradigm may again be relevant, but that relevance is not within the open source data or the period of our navy's next 30-year shipbuilding plan. If the relevance is asserted within closed source data that data must be open sourced.

• UPDATED 01/22/2010 Reuters, Exclusive: Pentagon budget seeks to kill 7 arms programs

  "Shipbuilding accounts for $14.1 billion [$300 million increase over FY2010] of the 2011 budget request, funding that would pay for nine new ships. Included are two DDG-51 destroyers, two Virginia-class submarines, two Littoral Combat Ships and one amphibious assault ship."--Reuters--

• Bloomberg, Gates Tells Navy to Buy 17 Littoral Combat Ships Through 2015

  "...Gates told the Navy to add $2.38 billion for the second Virginia-class submarine in 2015, one more than the Navy planned...."--Bloomberg--

• Bloomberg, Lockheed, Raytheon Gain in Gates’s Europe Missile-Defense Plan

-----notes-----

1. The table may not reflect the Navy VCS proposed shipbuilding plan or budget when it is submitted on February 01, 2010. Specifically, it's unclear whether the Navy will propose another delay until 2015 of the two per year VCS production rate.

• UPDATED 01/22/2010 congressional testimony on January 20, 2010 indicate our navy's 2011-2015 plan will propose two VCS each year for a total of 10 VCS.

  

• UPDATED 01/22/2010 It's too early to begin talking about the SSBN(X) (aka SBSD, Sea Based Strategic Deterrent or Ohio-class replacement) beyond saying:
  • the navy wants to produce 12 (why not fewer); and
  • envisions ≈15K ton displacement (why not less); and
  • envisions 16 missile tubes (why not fewer); and
  • estimates $80-85 billion for the class (an obscene $7 billion each); and
  • will be spending at least $2 billion by 2015 for advance design, missile, and power plant work; and

  • would like to find a non-navy line item for the $85 billion or portion thereof (freeing up funds for its 313 ship goal dream or nightmare; see NavyTimes, House panel: Navy could seek fleet funding help).

    • An alternative non-navy source of funding for the estimated $85 SBSD platform would increase the VCS submarine platform force structure by four (other non-submarine platforms would increase too).

      It should be noted that the fast-attack (SSN) submarine platform force structure is front loaded in the 30-year shipbuilding plan. So the quantities are greater for the first decade (2011-2021) than the last two decades (2022-2040).

  • UPDATED 05/20/2010 The recent HASC markup (see above) withholds 50% of the SBSD current and limited funding (design and trade-offs) until our Navy forks over a think-tank study on SBSD alternatives.

    Amazingly our Navy has thus far refused (technically they’re not refusing they’re reviewing) to turn over the study to the HASC Sea Power Subcommittee. The subcommittee chairman is withholding half the funding until our Navy forks over the study.

    Wonder what we can do until Chairman Gene Taylor (D-MS) forks over the study to us?

2. Life-cycle cost is significantly determined by design choices and trade-offs that are dependent on the availability and maturity of technologies.

3. Our submarine contractors (General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) are exquisitely sensitized to the need for producing submarines that are smaller, cheaper, with superior performance characteristics.

But to use a fashionable term, sensitivity alone will not "bend the cost curve" (cost curves have always been bent but we get the message) or reduce total life-cycle cost. Particularly for a monopoly or some might argue a duopoly in a mostly opaque environment.

4. Global Strategic Assessment 2009, Recalibrating American Power, Alternative Force Structures and Resource Constraints.

5. UPDATED 01/22/2010 See congressional testimony of Eric J. Labs, Senior Analyst, Naval Forces and Weapons The Long-Term Outlook for the U.S. Navy’s Fleet (pdf), January 20, 2010

6. From Long-Term Outlook (see above):

7. UPDATED 01/22/2010 Loren B. Thompson's January 20, 2010 written testimony submitted to the Sea Power Subcommittee has several interesting observation on the funding pressures confronting a 313 ship navy.

As nations increase their portion of benefit from a global economy they can expect to fund more of its stability—conversely as our portion of benefit declines we can expect to fund less (although not necessarily do less; a pass-thy-hat strategy to global stability).

The funding equilibrium between hardware and sailor's training-morale-welfare is changing. This is especially true for our submariners as our navy seeks ways of retaining more qualified submariners, performing increasingly complex and technical tasks, for longer periods of time, in more challenging environments.

In this regard it seems useful to note that our navy's recent decision to open submarines to women will be helpful. Additionally, halving the submarine hull size; reducing unit and hardware life-cycle costs; off-loading some functions to autonomous systems; and improving network-centric capabilities etc. will be helpful.

8. UPDATED 02/02/2010 Beyond the obvious enhanced performance and decreased material costs, a smaller submarine requires fewer personnel to operate.

As a bonus the smaller the nuclear submarine, the smaller the power plant required to propel it through the water. There are many other good reasons to have smaller nuclear submarine, too.

Of course the submarine's mission(s) impact(s) submarine size too. Ideally a submarine's broad mission spectrum results from the ability to dynamically configure the submarine for a particular mission. As opposed to building a fleet of huge statically configured submarine to accommodate all predicted or imagined missions (which invariable change).

9. The language is reminiscent of the infamous Cold War "missile gap" that caused so much wasteful spending and was later discovered to have not existed.

10. UPDATED 02/22/2010 Fortunately, our navy and submarine contractors have stopped the questionable (some might say deceptive) practice of telling us the VCS costs $2 billion. Leaving unstated that they were using prior year or deflated dollars.

They are now using a constant year (2009) dollar figure of $2.6 billion dollars, but still leaving unstated the assumptions attached to the figure (e.g. that the VCS production rate increase too two submarines per year).

If any assumption fails, as is likely then the $2.6 billion dollar figure will not be realized. Additionally, the current base sticker price of $2.8 billion could rise. Stated differently the $2.6 billion is an unrealized hoped for goal that is unlikely to be met when all the actual VCS cost data are accumulated and analyzed. Cost data our navy must make publicly available along with cost and work breakdown structures, statement of work, and current contracts and attachements.