Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
6/5/2015
Members of the House Appropriations Committee are “confused” about why the Navy “prematurely down-selected” to a “single material system” in 2014 to develop sonar bow domes for the Ohio-class Replacement (OR), according to the report accompanying the committee’s version of the defense spending bill for Fiscal Year 2016. The panel finished marking up the bill and reported it to the House floor this week. While the Navy’s plan originally called for development of sub domes derived from two different composite material systems, the service down-selected to one system last year, before either system was fully qualified by the OR design yard, according to the report.
OR entered the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction phase—Milestone A—in FY 2011, and is scheduled to enter the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase—Milestone B—in FY 2016. While the committee is “extremely supportive” of the Navy’s plan to acquire OR bow domes, it also believed the two-material plan would reduce program risk and ensure competition, “an extremely important factor for a program whose potential cost was described by a former Secretary of Defense as ‘being capable to suck the life from the Navy’s shipbuilding budget,’” the committee report notes.
Did Navy Do a Cost-Benefit Analysis?
Sonar domes are located on submarine hulls, and house electronic equipment for detection, navigation and ranging. Subs’ sonar domes are made of either steel or glass-reinforced plastic, according to GlobalSecurity.org. “The Committee assumes that a cost benefit analysis was conducted and provided a convincing case for the early selection,” the report states. Appropriators want the Navy Secretary to provide an analysis backing up its decision, according to the report. “[T]he Committee directs the Secretary of the Navy to provide the Congressional defense committees the cost benefit analysis that led to the early selection of a single material system for the bow dome not later than 30 days after the enactment of this Act,” the report says. “If a cost benefit analysis was not conducted, the Committee directs the Secretary of the Navy to conduct a cost benefit analysis and provide the results to the Congressional defense committees not later than January 31, 2016.”
Bill Would Prevent Money Transfers into Sea-Based Deterrent Fund
The committee’s defense spending bill would prevent money transfers into the Sea-Based Deterrence Fund, after the House last month passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2016, which would authorize the shift of up to $1.4 billion into the account from the Navy’s R&D coffer. The full House will debate the FY 2016 defense spending bill in the coming months. Navy officials have repeatedly called for Congress to fully fund OR, underscoring it as the Navy’s No. 1 priority in any fiscal scenario and as the most survivable leg of the U.S. nuclear triad. While senior service officials have praised the Sea-Based Deterrence Fund as a good first step toward bankrolling OR, appropriators have not funneled any money into the account since its establishment in the FY 2015 NDAA.
Rear Adm. Joe Tofalo, Director of Undersea Warfare (N97), late last week became the most recent Navy official to push for a financial plus-up to fund OR. During a speech in Washington, he mentioned several potential ways to reduce OR’s financial impact on the Navy, including funding it “in a manner that does not impact the already stressed Navy shipbuilding budget.” The Navy’s shipbuilding budget increased by $5-$7 billion in FY 2015 dollars during procurements of the Ohio-class and the “41 [ballistic missile submarines] for Freedom” commissioned in the 1950s and 1960s, he said.
OR to Be Same Size as Ohio-class
While plans call for the Navy to reduce the number of missile tubes from 24 on the Ohio-class to 16 on the OR, the next SSBN will be about the same size as its antecedent, Tofalo said. Part of the reason is that OR will employ an advanced propulsor for movement, instead of a propeller akin what the Ohio-class contains. “[T]here’s size associated with some of the way we’re building it, but that is a significant part of bringing the costs down and keeping the schedule down, so the construction process adds to that some. … The bottom line is, I can assure it is the right submarine from a requirements standpoint,” Tofalo said. Stealth, including OR’s electric drive capability, also factors into its planned size, Tofalo said. “Because of certain stealth requirements … we’re building a submarine that has to be around until the 2080s, and we would not be comfortable with the Ohio and the stealth that’s associated with the Ohio—projecting that into the 2080s, so there are some additional things, whether it’s electric drive, other aspects of the design that are also part of [the increased size],” he said.
Navy Aims to Finish Most Design by Construction Start
While Tofalo touted the incorporation of Virginia-class design features into OR, he cautioned that budget-driven impacts on design could negatively affect construction and delay entry into service. To execute its plan to keep 10 ORs operational at all times, the Navy needs stable design funding, Tofalo said. The Navy hopes to complete 83 percent of OR’s design by the time it enters construction in 2021, he said.
The Navy remains on track to meet its cost estimate of $4.9 billion per follow-on sub in FY 2010 dollars, Tofalo added. “The bottom line is that the design is going well,” he said. “It’s on track. We haven’t designed a ballistic missile submarine for decades, so there’s always some starting pains and whatnot, but there’s nothing I’m concerned about.” Tofalo added: “I talk about how that first patrol is in FY 31. To be true, it’s October of 2030, so we’ve got plenty of pushups to do between now and then, and we’re on track. That’s the bottom line.”
SSBN Maintenance Risk Margin ‘Chipped Away At’
Tofalo also expressed concern that years of fiscal cutbacks have delayed and extended deployments of Ohio-class subs. The risk margin of operating the SSBNs has been “chipped away at” since they debuted in the 1980s, he said. “There have been delayed preparations for deployment and delayed deployments, in turn, required us to extend deployments for those units that were already on station,” Tofalo said. One “perfect example” of this, he noted, happened this past year when maintenance issues on one SSBN required the USS Pennsylvania SSBN to patrol for a record 140 days. “The good news is that our fantastic sailors were able to keep the Pennsylvania at sea for that record amount of time with absolutely no loss in strategic coverage. …The SSBN force doesn’t cross that red line of not reaching or meeting our strategic coverage, but it’s that margin to the red line that has continued to be chipped away at over the years,” Tofalo said.
To alleviate pressures like this, Tofalo said the Navy plans to invest additional funds in the near future to restore “acceptable margin.” Congressional testimony submitted in March by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert stated that in addition to the $10 billion the Navy has programmed toward OR research and development and advanced procurement through the Future Years’ Defense Program, the service will require about $2.2 billion from FY 2016-2020 to boost civilian end-strength in shipyards and Nuclear Strategic Weapons Facilities, to accelerate investments in shipyard infrastructure, fund additional manpower for nuclear weapons surety and pay for nuclear weapon training systems.
