Virginia remains the most capable
multi-mission submarine in the world, bar
none rear admiral Doug Perry, the
director of the undersea warfare
division on the chief of naval
operations staff
opnavn97 said last week. But we must maintain our undersea
advantage by investing for future
capabilities
and we know we need to start that work
today to make sure we can deliver SSN(X) in time of need and without lots of
technical or schedule risk.
In 2019 the congressional budget office
estimated that the SSN(X) boats could
cost up to 5.5 billion per hull. The current virginia-class boats cost
about 2.8 billion dollars per hull while
the block versus with the 80-foot
virginia payload module will cost about
3.2 billion dollars. The navy indicates that the next
generation attack submarine should be
faster, stealthier and able to carry more
torpedoes than the virginia class, similar to the seawolf class submarine.
CBO therefore assumed that the ssn x
would be a seawolf-sized ssn which
displaces about 9100 tons when submerged
and would have an all-new design in
keeping with the navy's description of
it as a fast lethal next-generation
attack submarine. The CBO wrote, before virginia the navy developed the
seawolf class to be a deep diving
submarine with a weapons room that can
field about 50 torpedoes.
Perry said in broad strokes ssn x would
take the heavily armed sea wolf template
combine the stealthy technology
developed for virginia and keep the time
and maintenance to a minimum. Outside of
a classified initial draft capabilities
document, we don't know the specific
characteristics that will be in SSN(X), but we do believe that the next
submarine will have a large horizontal
payload capacity. You can read that as it's going to carry
a lot of torpedoes
and we know how to do that it'll be fast
and it'll have acoustic superiority, that's both sensors to hear the other
ships out there as well as stealth
staying quiet.
Perry said, we know how to do all of these things
but we have to integrate them into one
platform, speed and large payload we did that on
seawolf and we need to pull that forward
to a modular construction submarine.
The
heavyweight torpedo will remain the
weapon of choice for the submarine for
this for the foreseeable future. Primarily due to its inherent stealth
its destructive effects in the
battlespace and it's pretty difficult to
defend against and it also preserves, the
stealth of launch platform, perry said.
The development of the navy's acoustic
superiority program began on virginia
class USS South Dakota SSn-790 which
commissioned in 2019, Perry said. The package includes a large vertical
array mounted on the hull just after the
sail a special exterior coating and
machinery quieting improvements inside
the boat. Based on the timing of the construction
of the columbia class the new class
would come just as the construction of
the class of 12 nuclear ballistic
missile submarines as ending in the
2040s and in the short-term design work
should begin soon.
With columbia 95% design complete now is
the time to begin transitioning that
experienced design workforce, Perry said. Fielding any new class submarine is
challenging but we got to strike while
the iron is hot. The virginia boats now and the columbia
boats in the future are built in a
teeming arrangement between huntington
ingalls industries and general dynamic
electric boat. Each yard builds part of a boat and the
components are barged to each yard for
final assembly with ebb being the lead
yard for the design of each class.
Perry said that the workforce would be
key to making SSN(X) affordable. This maintains a steady demand signal
for the shipyard workforce which is a
key element of developing and sustaining
a resilient submarine industrial base. Perry said
the navy is also considering how it will
leverage unmanned undersea vehicles with
its new class. We know the ability to influence the
battle space and leverage the sea floor
is to get to the bottom of the ocean you
will need UUVS, that requires a submarine interface that
will drive what ssn x has to be in terms
of a dimension for an interface that
will launch and recover uuvs. It may be a torpedo tube it may be
something different.
On the other end of
construction the navy is working to
increase the amount of time the
submarines can operate by reducing time
and maintenance. SSN(X) has to have high operational
availability we've got to be able to
keep that ship at sea
and that gets to sort of the class
maintenance plan, we've learned a lot
from operating the los angeles class, then seawolf and virginia.
We are analyzing those class maintenance
plans with peo subs and making sure that
the class maintenance plan we've come up
with gives us the highest operational
building availability possible, Perry
said. That'll be really part of our calculus
as we define the work through the
capability development document and
requirements, process in defining what SSN(X) needs to be.
