Submarine Admirals: Building More Attack Submarines Only Way to Meet Demand

ARLINGTON, Va. — The building of additional attack submarines (SSNs) is the only way the Navy can avoid the forthcoming shortage in the next decade and have a capability to surge more boats in times of crisis or war, according to two of the Navy’s senior submarine admirals.

“The only solution to inadequate surge capacity is to build more attack submarines,” Rear Adm. Charles A. Richard, director of the Undersea Warfare Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said July 14 before the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee on Capitol Hill, noting that no other measures make available more SSNs to surge in event of conflict.

“One potential option available that we continue to explore is procuring a second Virginia-class submarine in fiscal year ’21,” Richard said. “Our industrial base can build this ship. If built, the second fiscal year ’21 Virginia-class submarine would fill about 27 percent of the late 2020s attack submarine shortfall. It is a matter of resources and we’re placing a high priority to address that challenge.”

Richard said the Navy is re-examining its SSN force-level requirement as part of the service’s new overall force structure assessment. He noted that the requirement for 48 SSNs was set more than a decade ago, before the recent emergence of major power competition with Russia and China, with the requirement possibly going up as a result.

After recapitalization of the ballistic-missile submarine force for strategic deterrent with the Ohio Replacement ballistic-missile submarine, “SSN procurement must be our second priority as dictated by the force structure trough [of the late 2020s],” he said.

“The smaller SSN force structure will require each boat to cover more physical territory and a wider array of new undersea targets and deliver an expanded set of capabilities that span the spectrum of military operations,” he said.

“We have long aspired for additional attack submarine capability,” Richard said. “We have known that this trough was coming for a long time. … I’m confident that the value of each attack submarine we have is only going to go up. There is a clear warfighting demand signal and that is driving us to look for every opportunity to provide this.”

He said that the Virginia Payload Module that will be installed in the second Block V Virginia SSN and all follow-on boats, but their capacity will not meet the Tomahawk missile capacity of the four Ohio-class cruise-missile submarines being decommissioned in the late 2020s.

Also testifying was Rear Adm. Michael E. Jabaley, program executive officer for Submarines, who said that the Navy has cut the construction span of a Virginia SSN by two years and implemented economies that has enabled the service to purchase 10 SSNs for the price of nine.

“As Adm. Richard stated, since the Navy will fall below the force structure requirement of 48 attack submarines in the late 2020s, it is critical that we continue to deliver Virginia submarines ahead of schedule and within contract cost at a pace of two per year for as long as fiscally possible,” Jabaley said. “The second Virginia in [fiscal] ’21 would, in particular, be the most valuable addition to the shipbuilding plan because it would [be delivered] just as the Navy starts to fall below the 48 SSN requirement and will be ins service for the entire remainder of the trough.”

Jabaley said that the Navy is “looking at the feasibility of constructing two Virginia-class submarines in the same years we construct Ohio Replacement … as that process has matured, what we have come to understand is that the real value is in continuing the cadence of the Virginia side because you can do that in the initial stages of the Ohio Replacement without overlap or competition between the two programs.”

“This opportunity for a second Virginia in 2021 is the last, best opportunity that we have to address that attack submarine shortfall,” Richard said. “Anything we do after this point, the ship doesn’t get delivered in time to affect that. We have industrial base to build that ship.”