Submarine Production Is Booming Now and Well Into The Future at Electric Boat

[jonathan]

Bow Wave of Subs Rolling Through Yards
By Christopher P. Cavas
April 13, 2015

Submarine Production Is Booming Now and Well Into The Future at Electric
Boat

GROTON, Connecticut — A surge of work is rippling through the building
yards of General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB) the likes of which has not
been seen since the end of the Cold War.

At the manufacturing facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and the
assembly and design facilities in Groton and New London, Connecticut,
thousands of employees have been added, with more hires to come. Quonset
Point is expanding and erecting new buildings and the Groton waterfront
is getting a major refurbishment. The ramp ups are expected to continue
for at least another decade, into the mid-2020s and beyond.

All this is in reaction to a heightened tempo of submarine attack boat
construction, increased conversion and overhaul work, and the beginnings
of the program to build the biggest undersea craft the US Navy has ever
fielded — a new class of ballistic missile subs known as the Ohio
Replacement Program (ORP), designated SSBN(X) by the Navy.

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The pace of construction for Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack
submarines has doubled since 2011, when the US Navy upped the
construction rate to two subs per year. Construction is split between EB
and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia — each yard builds specific
parts of the submarines — and the shipbuilders alternated in assembling
and completing the subs.

But two per year means that, beginning this year and next, each yard
will start to deliver one Virginia-class submarine per year, and both
shipbuilders have been steadily increasing their workforces to deal with
the surge. The wave of increased production already has swept through
the manufacturing facilities at Quonset Point, and when the Illinois is
delivered in December, the surge will be increasingly felt in Groton.

EB is hard at work on four major projects: Virginia-class Block III and
Block IV submarines are under construction, and work on the first of two
moored training ship conversions is under way. In development are Block
V Virginias, incorporating an added 85-foot midsection called the
Virginia Payload Module, and work to prepare for and design the ORP has
already begun, long in advance of 2021, when the first ship is expected
to be fully funded.

"We have got 2,700 people or thereabouts, designers and engineers and
other pre-production personnel, working on the ORP right now," Jeff
Geiger, president of Electric Boat, said April 1. "That is doing the
work now. That is not prepping. That is actually producing the systems
engineering and the early functional design and basic arrangements for
the submarine."

The workload numbers are impressive: A total of 17 Block III and Block
IV subs are expected to be built, along with up to 20 or more Block Vs.
The Navy plans to build 12 ORPs in a program that stretches well into
the 2030s.

Parts of at least nine submarines are being worked on in Quonset Point
and Groton. The Illinois, with all hull sections fully assembled, is
expected to be launched next month at Groton, and parts of the
Washington, Colorado, Indiana, South Dakota, Delaware, Vermont, Oregon,
the yet-to-be-named SSN 794, and the Hyman G. Rickover can be found in
various stages all through the yards.

In other words, EB is full up with Virginia-class construction.

"We're at capacity now in certain areas, and one of them is hull
construction," said Sean Davies, general manager of the Quonset Point plant.

To handle the increased ORP workload, GD in December 2013 leased an
additional 42 acres from the state of Rhode Island specifically to
support ORP construction. The length of the 25-year leases are, Davies
said, "unprecedented for GD."

The new acreage is adjacent and in addition to the existing 133-acre
Electric Boat plant, of which GD owns just 33 acres.

Construction already has begun on the newly leased land on a new
Automated Frame and Cylinder building (AFC), which will handle
construction of the ORP's pressure hull and other structures.

After completion, the first work in the new AFC building will support
the common missile compartment, a cooperative arrangement to design and
build the missile compartments for the ORP and the United Kingdom's
Successor ballistic-missile submarine. Work to build the first four-tube
missile assemblies for the British subs will begin in 2017, before the
ORP units.

Already in use at Quonset Point is an annex added to an existing
building to assemble components for the Moored Training Ship (MTS), a
project to convert the Los Angeles-class attack boats La Jolla and San
Francisco into static training assets.

"We were already at capacity," explained Walter Tift, manager of
operations for the MTS project. "We needed this space." Around him were
new hull sections for the La Jolla, which entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard
in February to begin the conversion. Up to 420 EB employees are working
on the MTS program.

The MTS facility has been set up in just over a year.

"We went from a building that did not have a certificate of occupancy a
little over a year ago to having 400 to 500 people cranking out
modules," said Geiger. "It has been a very compressed and
schedule-critical effort, but it has gone very well."

Quonset employment is shooting up from less than 2,000 employees in
2010, to 3,400 today, and will continue to grow to 3,750 by this July,
Davies said. The Rhode Island facility expects to add about 2,200
employees over the next decade, reaching a peak of nearly 6,000 in 2025.

The previous peak was 5,900 in 1984, when Ohio-class and Los
Angeles-class submarine construction was at its highest point. As
production wound down, employment at Quonset dropped to about 1,000
employees in 1996.

At Groton, the plant isn't expanding as it is in Quonset Point, but
rather a number of facility replacements and upgrades are underway or
planned. Among the improvements, said Tom Plante, director of strategic
planning at EB, are a new pontoon barge for the dry dock, a new
built-for-the-purpose barge to shuttle submarine sections between
locations, waterfront improvements to support the big ORPs in the
post-launch fitting-out period, and possibly a new pier to handle the
increased activity.

EB is also working to get back on the step to deliver its submarines
ahead of schedule, and to increase that rate with each successive hull.
That pace suffered a setback last year when the goal of delivering the
North Dakota four months ahead of schedule couldn't be met, primarily
because of challenges stemming from the ship's altered configuration as
the first Block III submarine. The ship ended up being delivered just
two days prior to the contract date.

But construction of the Illinois is back on the fast track, said Ken
Blomstedt, EB's Virginia program manager, with a goal of a 58-month
building time — which would be a new class record.

"It is aggressive," Blomstedt acknowledged, "but we're very confident we
can get under 60 months."

With its expanding workforce, EB has increased the number of submarine
overhauls, or availabilities, done at Groton. The Minnesota,
commissioned in 2013, is in the yard now undergoing its post-shakedown
availability — all Virginia-class submarines undergo their PSA, the
first overhaul performed on a new submarine, at Groton — but the yard is
bidding on contracts to take in the Los Angeles-class submarines
Columbus and Montpelier this year, and it performed four similar
overhauls in 2014.

(Editor's Note: The paragraph above was updated to reflect the correct
submarines involved and the status of the overhaul contracts)

EB's ability to handle overhauls is getting better, as the time it takes
a Virginia-class sub to undergo its PSA is being cut nearly in half; the
Minnesota is the last to schedule a year-long overhaul, and subsequent
PSAs will be closer to six months.

While Congress and the Navy in Washington wrangle over how to pay for
the ORPs, there does not appear to be any major dispute that the ships
will be built. Not surprisingly, Geiger is optimistic about his
shipyard's future.

"We are a pretty popular entity" in New England, he said. "Not just
because of what Electric Boat offers but because of what that does
throughout the supply base and how it ripples both in the communities
locally and nationally. To have the US Navy and the congressional
support for the submarine programs in the midst of the very tight fiscal
environment for defense and otherwise, it is a great place to be."

Email: cca...@defensenews.com


http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/show-daily/sea-air-space/2015/04/12/submarine-virginia-class-ohio-class-replacement/25537589/

[Bill]

I was on a submarine way back in the early sixties. It was a diesel boat
commissioned in 1944, hot and foul, nothing like the nukes that came out
later. Submarines are the most effective anti-ship machine ever developed so
the more the better if you're going to be a naval superpower.

Bill

[Mr. B1ack]

Alas their effectiveness also makes them "destabilizing".
Sometimes "stability" can be more important than raw
power.

The (short-term) future of submarines isn't Russia anymore
but China instead. It *is* acting to increase its power and reach.
In the longer term technology will render "hiding underwater"
obsolete. Subs were a solution - but only within a certain
timeframe.

[Bill]

In warfare surprise and stealth are preferred. Armies on the ground and
ships on the seas are visible and, by ballistic missile standards,
stationary. Having served on a submarine, I know their effectiveness at
sneaking up on stuff. Now I was on an old diesel boat and it was very good
at escaping detection. The newer boats are many times more powerful.

The best approach to settling disputes is compromise but nationalism and
patriotism make that impossible. If no one backs down then war at some level
is inevitable. I don't like it and I especially don't like the way naive
kids are pushed into impossible situations, war is a crime.

Bill