The Navy portion of the House Armed Services Committee’s draft of the fiscal 2021 defense authorization bill approved last week would add two vessels over the Senate version and argued a second attack submarine is needed to maintain the schedule for Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines.
The final HASC markup recommends authorizing the first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and a second Virginia-class attack submarine, despite the Donald Trump administration’s proposal to increase the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) budget to about $20 billion by starting construction of only a single attack submarine in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The House has not yet scheduled a floor vote for the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The House has been busy this week approving appropriations bills and still has a marathon spending markup to get through next week. The Senate, meanwhile, is due to vote on its NDAA after returning July 20 from a two-week Independence Day recess.
The House and Senate NDAAs both restored some Virginia-class funding cut by the president’s budget request, but the lower chamber’s version includes an overall additional $2.6 billion to fully fund a second attack submarine and continue advanced procurement to keep up the two per year production pace.
In contrast, the Senate committee’s NDAA has only one Virginia-class sub, but adds $472 million over the request in advanced procurement for the attack submarines. That, ranking Armed Services Democrat Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told reporters last month, preserve the option to procure the full 10 vessels in the multiyear procurement contract.
Columbia prime General Dynamics Electric Boat is also one of the two main contractors on the Virginia boats, so keeping the shipbuilder’s workforce employed throughout all the builds is critical to maintaining the Navy’s preferred schedule, boosters of the second Virginia submarine say.
However, a HASC committee aide told reporters that the Senate’s bill could not actually fund a second Virginia submarine, because that vessel already received approval for its advanced procurement funding. The Navy can spend such money only on certain things, including the boat’s nuclear reactor, the aide said.
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee provided about $2.8 billion for the first Columbia sub, and another $1.1 billion for advanced procurement of the fleet. The Navy traditionally frontloads the cost of developing new vessels, making the first iterations of a given class more expensive than subsequent copies.
The full House Appropriations Committee was set to mark up the defense spending bill next week. The Senate Appropriations Committee had yet to unveil its version of the Pentagon’s annual spending bill, at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
The Navy is buying 12 Columbia-class submarines to replace the current fleet of 14 Ohio-class vessels. These boats are the seaborne leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, carrying Trident II-D5 missiles tipped with a mixture of W76-1 and W88 nuclear warheads, plus some lower-yield W76-1 nuclear warheads. The missiles on the submarines, hidden in the world’s oceans, threaten other nuclear powers with nuclear retaliation for any nuclear strike on U.S. or allied territory.
This story first appeared in Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily.
