Excerpts below on the sub fleet, including the
Columbia class:
Defense NewsQuote:
Interview: US Navy’s top officer talks acquisition, sub building and naval warfare
By: David B. Larter 4 days ago
WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Navy’s top officer made clear from the time he came into office in late 2015 that his job is to prepare the service for an era of renewed great power competition with Russia and China.
Key to that effort has been his belief that getting new technologies to the fleet can no longer take a decade to complete. In an age when advances in technology can happen overnight, the Navy has to be adaptable and agile to keep pace with the threat.
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Quote:
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Moving on to Ohio-replacement: It’s a very tight schedule, and the Navy is reportedly eating into the schedule. Where do you think you can buy back some time?
If you ask anyone in that program, the thing that I’ve been driving is that we have to get as much schedule margin into that program as possible. The technological risk is understood, the mission and the requirements are certainly understood, we have an experience industrial base in this regard. I feel confident we are going to be at about 83 percent design maturity before we start to build. So that helps a lot in terms of controlling costs. All of that is trending in the right direction.
Having said that, it’s complicated. And while it is on schedule, we need to get ahead of schedule. Because inevitably something will happen, we’ll discover something in test. And it’s such a critical mission that we need to retire risk and pull everything to the left as aggressively as we can.
There is going to be a lot of strain on suppliers with two Virginia-class submarines in Columbia-class years, and perhaps even three Virginias in off years. And then the Columbia is equivalent to, what, a submarine and a half when compared to a Virginia?
More like two.
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