It Will Be 5 More Years Before Virginia Attack Sub Production Hits 2 Boats Per Year

The Navy’s latest estimates of the production schedule for Virginia-class attack boats show that it will take five years to increase production to two submarines a year. General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding would put the program on a two-boat-per-year delivery schedule by 2028 with steady improvement in shipyard workforce recruitment and retention. They are currently delivering about 1.2 submarines a year.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro is concerned about the construction of the sterns and bows in Virginia and integrating them all. The production schedules have been affected by COVID-19 work stoppages, the expanded workload for the Virginia-class payload module, and balancing the construction of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine line.

The shortage of workers in the submarine community and across the country is a national challenge, according to Del Toro. The Columbia program is on pace to meet its contract goal for a 2027 delivery while the Virginia-class program has been affected by the ongoing insurance dispute between the Navy and General Dynamics. The advanced procurement contracts for the next two Virginia-class attack boats are more than a year late.

Newport News said that they continue to work with urgency to deliver the highest-quality submarines to the Navy. The Navy is working with industry to close gaps and manage Columbia’s schedule with its six key areas: shipbuilder infrastructure, supply chain capability and capacity, scaling new technologies, addressing workforce trade skill gaps and constraints, expanding productive capacity, and government oversight of expanded industrial base efforts.