The Navy is counting on innovations to help it build and staff submarines and ships more efficiently as demand for the capability grows, the head of the service’s nuclear propulsion program, Adm. William Houston, said, US Naval Institute News reports.
“We’re getting better at the same time as the demand is increasing,” Adm. Houston said. In terms of new submarine construction, he added. “We’re building more subs in tonnage than we were in the Cold War.”.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, submarine construction dropped as demand waned. “It’s a national endeavor,” not confined to General Dynamics Electric Boat’s facilities in New England or Huntington Ingalls Industries’ in Newport News, Virginia and also now in South Carolina. Houston mentioned shipbuilding -related activities now happening in Indiana, Utah and the Pacific Coast, showing the geographical spread.
“We have to have that industrial base,” for both Navy ships and commercial vessels, Houston said. The lesson learned is, “Keep building submarines; we need them,” he added.
Houston said the newly created Office of Shipbuilding in the White House will help make the process more efficient.
“We’re reducing our steps to build ships” without sacrificing quality in delivering them into the fleet more quickly, he said.
That will help the U.S. keep its promises to its partners. The United States entered an agreement in 2021 with Australia and the United Kingdom [AUKUS] to cooperatively field and build a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine force for Canberra. The United States will sell three Virginia-class submarines to Australia between 2032 and 2042, though Congress is concerned about that timeline, as USNI News has reported. Meanwhile, Australia and the United Kingdom will design a submarine “with a lot of U.S. technology” for Canberra’s use.
The three nations agreed to share an unprecedented amount of information about high technology research, development and fielding.
Right now, America’s two submarine building yards are delivering 1.3 submarines per year. To meet the AUKUS commitment, they would need to be delivering 2.33 boats per year, USNI News has reported. Australian naval officers are already in American Navy schools and will serve aboard U.S. Virginia-class boats until Canberra receives the American boats. Houston said the Australian officers are doing very well in the American schools, in part because the navies use many of the same systems.
Houston also noted that USS Hawaii (SSN-716) was piloted by an Australian officer as it came to HMAS Stirling last year for the first-ever overhaul of a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine in a foreign port. As USNI News reported from Hawaii at the time, the visit allowed the American and Australian navies to conduct a Virginia-class maintenance period together.
Attracting and retaining civilians to work in the nation’s shipyards and in the shipbuilding industrial base has been a challenge. Low pay is the number one problem for retaining newly trained electricians and even naval architects in shipyards.
For those in the trades – welders, electricians, pipefitters and shipfitters – the working conditions can be “hot, cold and dirty” with wages only a couple dollars more than fast food workers, the Congressional Budget Office’s Eric Labs told the House Armed Services Committee at a recent hearing.
Houston said at the Navy Memorial event that skills like welding are changing as yards modernize building and repair practices. With autonomous welding, he said, “there’s still a human in the loop,” but the time to finish the work drops from days to hours. “The quality is there,” he added.
Those kinds of developments could make shipbuilding careers into tech jobs instead of “blue-collar” work. Looking at the impact of additive manufacturing on the supply chain, Houston said, “there still be business for them,” but “we need to bring along with us.” He noted some of those businesses “have been with us since 1948” when the Navy’s nuclear program began. Like the shipyards, “we’re in a battle for talent” to crew the Navy, he said.
“Our biggest challenge is in retaining submarine officers,” Houston said. To keep those officers, “we’ve revamped the entire career path,” including he enlisted career paths.
Houston noted that on the uniform side the Navy successfully met its recruiting goal of 40,000 enlistees last year.
USNI News reported the sea service has recruited 14,000 enlistees through the first four months of this fiscal year and was on track to meet its 40,000 recruits this fiscal year. Houston said the newest recruits “are incredibly smart” and “they ask why for everything.”
“In the submarine force and nuclear power community, we get the best of the best,” Houston said, and the Navy wants to retain them.
