
The Navy has been able to reduce the cost of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine by $80 million per unit and the program remains on schedule, a top Navy acquisition official said last week.Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley, Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Submarines, said Nov. 2 that after the Columbia program reached Milestone B in late 2016 and transitioned to the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase, average procurement unit cost (APUC) was $7.3 billion.That was the average cost across all planned 12 boomers…