There should be no shortage of naval nuclear reactors when the U.S. shipbuilding industry begins churning out historic numbers of submarines before the end of the decade, the Navy’s senior submarine procurement official said Monday.
Rear Adm. Scott Pappano, the Navy’s program executive officer for strategic submarines, said there are no signs that reactor demand will outpace supply after 2026 when the Navy expects to build at least one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and three Virginia-class ballistic missile fast-attack submarines a year.
Both submarines are powered by nuclear reactors produced by just one company, Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies (BWXT). In a little over two years, the Navy plans to produce more tonnage of submarines than it ever has, Pappano told a virtual meeting of the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center.
“We are embarking, starting in FY ‘26, as we build up to one per year for Columbia and to three per year for Virginia, shipbuilding rates in the submarine force that we’ve never seen before, based on tonnage,” Pappano told attendees of the Washington-based non-government group’s meeting. “Part of that is making sure we have an industrial base that has the ability to support that and those shipbuilding routes that we need.”
Add to those programs naval reactors required by the Ford-class aircraft carriers and requirements under the new AUKUS agreement between the Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. to provide Virginia-class subs to the Australian navy and BWXT has its work cut out for it. Australia will buy three U.S.-built Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines beginning in the 2030s as part of the tripartite AUKUS deal.
Asked if that volume of shipbuilding would stress the nation’s nuclear propulsion industry, Pappano said, without naming BWXT, “the short answer is ‘no.’” Nuclear propulsion systems are overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Naval Reactors office.
“The propulsion plant is designed and built by naval reactors, who then provide them to us to go integrate with the shipbuilders into the ship,” he said. “There are no indications, in my discussions with Naval Reactors, that there are concerns with the ability to meet propulsion plant deliveries … for current and future ships.”
Meanwhile, there also is no risk of delaying either the Columbia– or Virginia-class boat production if a controversial nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N, becomes a program of record. Congress in both the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act has included funding for the SLCM-N, though the Biden Administration considers the lower-yield W80-4 variant it will carry superfluous to existing weapons.
“I have no opinions on SLCM-N as the strategic submarine shipbuilder,” Pappano said. “So, outside of my purview to answer that question. I will tell you … I don’t see the SLCM-N decision, one way or another, affecting me in shipbuilding of the Columbia class and bringing that platform to bear.”
BWXT Chief Executive Rex Gevenden in May said the company sees the ramp-up in shipbuilding, as laid out in the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, as a boon for the nuclear propulsion builder and its suppliers.
“This strong naval spending backdrop serves as a good tailwind for our Naval propulsion franchise at BWXT, but also lifts the business prospects of the two acquisitions we made almost one year ago to the day,” Gevenden said during a May call with Wall Street analysts to discuss the company’s first-quarter earnings. “Dynamic Controls and Cunico are both important suppliers of precision parts to the U.S. and U.K. navies.”
The Navy plans to build more Virginia-class subs for itself in the 2030s to backfill the ones that will be sold to Australia as part of AUKUS. The service is currently building about two subs per year, which with the ramp-up in Columbia-class production and another Ford-class carrier on the way presents a lot of concurrent work for BWXT to build the reactors to power those ships
