WASHINGTON — A Navy admiral and the head of U.S. Strategic Command sent conflicting signals in Washington on Tuesday about whether a botched welding job on long-lead parts of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine could spell delay for the Navy’s top procurement.
BWX Technologies, which reported record earnings this week on early work as a subcontractor on the Columbia project, incorrectly welded 12 ballistic missile tubes over the summer. As of Tuesday, the company was about 15 percent of the way through its planned fix, Chief Financial Officer David Black told analysts on an earnings conference call.
The fix will not consume the “many months of margin left in that program,” Rear Adm. John Tammen, director of the Undersea Warfare Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said during a panel discussion hosted by the Heritage Foundation here.
But just down the road from Heritage, Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told a Senate panel he was “very concerned” about how much margin the welding issue would consume at a time when prime contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat is hustling to start construction on the first ballistic missile submarine in 2021.
“I’ve gone with Adm. Caldwell, head of navy nuclear reactors, up to the shipyard at Electric Boat and done a deep dive,” Hyten said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “And when I went through that, I have to be honest … I was very concerned because there was so little margin in the overall schedule.”
Like Tammen, Hyten did not say exactly how much margin the welding mishap had consumed. However, the general told Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), if “you’re eating margin and not putting margin in, that causes me concern.”
Columbia is the Navy’s top-priority procurement. The service plans to replace its current fleet of 14 Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines with 12 Columbia-class submarines, the first of which would go into service in 2031.
Vivienne Machi, staff report with Weapon Complex Morning Briefing affiliate publication Defense Daily, contributed to this story from Washington.
