President Donald Trump, who has targeted major military aircraft programs for cost-cutting in recent weeks, has now turned his sights to the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines.
In an interview aired late Jan. 27 on Fox News, Trump said the Navy needs more submarines but that he plans to slash their costs.
“We’re going to build new submarines but the price is too high, so I’m cutting the prices way down,” Trump told the cable television channel.
Two U.S. lawmakers from Connecticut, whose state is home to submarine builder General Dynamics [GD] Electric Boat, responded to Trump’s comments by saying that the Navy has already made significant progress in making its two major submarine programs more affordable.
“I think we’ve got some really good momentum in terms of cost reduction in both programs,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) told Defense Daily.
Courtney, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower panel, said the cost of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program has been reduced by $50 billion, partly by borrowing technology and lessons learned from the fielded Virginia-class attack submarine. “That’s real money,” Courtney said.
In early January, the Columbia-class program received approval to enter its detail design phase, with the expectation that the Navy will spend $100 billion to develop and buy 12 submarines. “The Navy is committed to delivering Columbia on time and within budget while taking advantage of every opportunity to achieve further cost savings,” Capt. David Goggins, the Columbia program manager, said at the time.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, defended the Virginia-class program, saying in a statement that “the congressional delegation, the Navy and Electric Boat have been working together for years to reduce costs and increase efficiency while providing our armed forces the technological weaponry they need and deserve.” The program, which has used “block buys” to reduce acquisition costs, “is both under budget and ahead of schedule,” Blumenthal added.
The Navy’s recently completed force structure assessment calls for buying 66 Virginia-class submarines, up from the previous goal of 48.
Seth Cropsey, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower, said the cost of all major weapon systems, including submarines, could be reduced by streamlining the Defense Department bureaucracy, clarifying who is responsible when something goes wrong, and using more fixed-price contracts.
“Over the past 25 or 30 years, the bureaucracy at the Pentagon has just grown topsy-turvy,” Cropsey said. “It’s made it more and more difficult to be able to place responsibility and accountability for large cost overruns because the fingers are all pointing in different directions and no one’s really responsible.”