Virginia Block VI Subs Will Focus on Special
Operations, Unmanned
By: Megan Eckstein
May 13, 2019 7:11 PM
USNI
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. - The Virginia-class
attack submarine program office is in the early stages of determining what its
Block VI design might look like and what payloads it would need to accommodate,
the program manager said last week.
After some concerns that the Virginia-class
hull design was beginning to run out of margin to add new capabilities, the
program office is now spending 2019 looking at its options and will begin to
make some final decisions next year, Capt. Chris Hanson said during a panel
presentation at the Navy League's annual Sea Air Space conference.
"We're currently in the phase of looking
at various concepts and capabilities and determining their feasibility for the
rest of this year. In about the next year we'll start going through the
decision points in terms of requirements of what we want to have in that lot
and out," Hanson said of the Block VI design, which would go into
production in Fiscal Year 2024.
The Tactical Submarine Evolution Plan (TSEP), a
plan that maps out desired capability additions and monitors their technical
readiness, will guide decisions surrounding what to include in the Block VI
requirements. What the program office does know, Hanson said, is that the next
iteration of the SSN will focus on special operations forces integration and
will add interfaces for unmanned systems and other new undersea weapons.
Hanson said his office is looking at all manner
of potential payloads that could be used by the submarine and determining what
they would need in terms of power, heating and cooling, communications and
more.
"As we work through the Block V design and
head into Block VI, we're trying to optimize the designs so that ... we
minimize any changes or interfaces, special interfaces, that we have to
use" as new payloads are developed and fielded later in the sub's life.
Hanson said there is likely a gap between
today's subs - all the Block I and II Virginia-class subs have delivered, along
with all but one Block III boat - and the payloads the Navy will want to field
in the near- to mid-term. He said the goal of Block VI was to identify those
gaps as early on as possible and bridge them where possible so that the Block
VI sub is as flexible as possible to keep up with future fleet needs as
undersea warfare evolves.
The Navy had previously planned to build seven
blocks of the Virginia class SSN before moving into what it then called SSN(X).
However, plans have become murkier in the past few years, as an emphasis on
unmanned vehicles and offensive weapons appear to have pushed up plans to move
into the "New SSN," which is the current term for the follow-on sub
class.
During the panel presentation, Hanson also
addressed delays in the Block IV submarines. Blocks III and IV both attempted
to reduce the cost of the program - Block III by redesigning parts of the boat
to reduce construction time, and Block IV by extending the time between major
maintenance availabilities. Block IV also sought to reduce the construction
time down to 60 months and deliver at a pace of two per year, further reducing
the cost of the boat, but builders General Dynamics Electric Boat and
Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding have struggled to
reduce their delivery timelines and keep in line with the Navy's plans.
"We've not come up to that six-month
cadence evenly across the whole production system," Hanson said.
"To me, I view the whole production system
as more of a factory with a bunch of conveyor belts that, in an ideal world,
come perfectly together at the perfect time; and if one or two conveyor belts
is off just a little bit, that has large consequences to the entire system. So
we're currently, in Block [III] we're currently delivering our submarines
between 66 and 70 months ... and in Block IV we go down to 62 months for the
first three boats, down to 60. So my goal is to stabilize the system"
through additional focus on hiring and training at the builder yards, and hit
60 months by the end of the block contract.
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