Navy Outlines Plan to
Solve Attack Submarine Shortage
27
Nov 2018
Military.com
| By Matthew Cox
Lawmakers on
Tuesday pressed U.S. Navy officials
to explain what the service is doing to fix its shortage of attack submarines.
Navy officials
testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on Seapower
that the service is on track to achieve a 355-ship fleet by 2034.
Lawmakers, however,
were concerned about the more immediate problem of the Navy's submarine
shortfall.
Sen. Mike Rounds,
R-South Dakota, said that retired Adm. Harry Harris, former head of U.S.
Pacific command, had testified that "only half his requirement for attack
submarines in the Pacific theater was being met."
"This
challenge will only grow worse in the 2020s as attack submarines retire at a
faster rate," Rounds said. "How is the Navy planning to mitigate the
attack submarine shortfall in the 2020s?"
James Geurts,
assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said
the most "looming shortfall ahead of us in terms of capability is in
attack subs."
Geurts said the
service is ramping up Virginia-class submarine
production to two per year, with the potential of producing more than two down
the road.
The Navy is also
looking at where it can do "service-life extensions on some of our
existing submarines," he said.
Sen. Richard
Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, referring to a recent Government Accountability
Office report on maintenance delays in the attack sub fleet, said that since
"2008, 14 attack submarines have spent a combined 61 months -- 1,891 days
-- idling while waiting to enter ship yards for maintenance."
"We need
action now to address the backlog that is bad for our national security and the
harmful impact on our industrial base," he said. "We have been
talking about this maintenance backlog for a year with no clear solution in
sight."
As part of a
larger, 30-year ship repair/sustainment plan the Navy plans to release this
year, Geurts said he intends to make submarines a high priority.
"Going forward
under the new role this committee provided me to oversee sustainment readiness,
I am really focused on getting predictability and advanced planning in the
readiness area for ship repair, with a particular focus on submarines," he
said.
Currently, the Navy
has four submarines in "maintenance availabilities" and the service
plans to award at least two more "into private yards" next year,
Geurts said, adding that the requests for proposal for those efforts are
scheduled to go out by next summer.
"My strategic approach to this is balancing
out that work and getting predictability into the maintenance plan, so that we
have capacity to get those ships both in and out of those availabilities on
time, to give the combatant commanders the capability they need," he said.
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