Simmons, Dodd Ask for More Submarines in 2009
By Sara Hatch
WASHINGTON, March 16-Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Robert Simmons Thursday joined submarine industry representatives in calling for doubling the production of submarines by 2009. Currently the Navy wants to increase the number of subs built each year from one to two by 2012.
John Holmander, vice president of programs at Electric Boat, said that getting two ships a year will help to create “stability in the market.” Electric Boat and Northrop Grumman, at its Newport News, Va., facility, together produce one ship a year,
The “sooner we get two ships a year, the lower the cost will be,” Holmander said.
The goal is to bring down the cost of building a sub from $2.4 billion to $2 billion.
Holmander was one of more than 50 executives attending the Submarine Industrial Base Council’s annual congressional breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill.
At the current time, Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, trades off building two-thirds of a ship each year with Northrop Grumman. The sub is then sent to the other company to finish the final third. The new plan, which the companies want to move up to 2009, would call for two subs to be built a year, one at each base.
One of the positives that has come out of the cooperation between the two companies is that it has streamlined the practices used to build the ships, said Matthew Mulherin, senior vice president of programs at Northrop Grumman. He said the two shipbuilders been able to combine the “best practices” of both companies to create a better way of making submarines.
One of the goals of Electric Boat is to “engage the vendors in the same process” to bring the costs down, Holmander said, adding that “our vendors are part of our team.”
Terry O’Brien, the northeast regional director for Ocean Design Inc., who is based in Pawcatuck, Conn., said that the main reason to move up production is jobs. Ocean Design, which deals in electrical and fiber optics, does electrical work for the subs built by Electric Boat.
O’Brien said the main problem was that at the current rate of producing ships Ocean Design can’t “keep the lines running” and thus employs one-third fewer employees than it did four years ago.
Simmons, who spoke about the need to revitalize the submarine industry because of competition from China, which is building up its own sub fleet, said in an interview that the goal of building two ships a year by 2009 is an “attainable goal.”
“Who are we going to go to? China?” Simmons told the council, saying that the submarine industry needs to start working toward the future now or it will face the same problems Great Britain faced when it let its submarine industry decline.
Dodd spoke to the council about improving the research and development capacity of the submarine industry in coming years. He was somewhat skeptical of getting advance procurement money in the fiscal year 2007 budget, which he described as “tight,” but it may be possible to get $120 million for research and development, he said in an interview.
In his remarks to the council, Dodd said the submarine industry needs to increase its “intellectual capacity” to produce “a new generation” of submarines. He added that the industry has the capacity to build boats for less money if the Navy authorizes it to build more boats.
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