October 29, 2019 | International, Naval
By: David B. Larter
WASHINGTON — Submarine building, the pride of the U.S. Navy's shipbuilding efforts over the past decade, is facing a mountain of uncertainty, a point underscored by the replacement of senior members of General Dynamics leadership, compounding delays with construction of the Virginia-class submarine and nagging questions about the quality of the work after a high-profile welding issue threatened to trip up the Columbia-class ballistic missile sub program at the starting line.
Adding to the uncertainty for General Dynamics, which operates the Electric Boat shipyard in Connecticut, are indications that profits from constructing Virginia-class subs may be slipping. And challenges in training new workers in the complex world of building subs as well as concerns that the Columbia program might negatively affect General Dynamics' bottom line are impacting General Dynamics' partner yard Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News, Virginia, as well as the U.S. Navy.
Furthermore, a contract for the significantly larger Block V Virginia-class submarine, expected to be one of the largest in the Navy's history, has been repeatedly delayed amid disputes over labor rates, sources told Defense News. That contract is more than a year past due, according to Navy budget documents.
In September, General Dynamics pushed out Electric Boat President Jeffrey Geiger. Industry and Navy sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Geiger's replacement was the culmination of mounting frustration on the part of the Navy. That came to a head when quality control issues surfaced with missile tubes in production destined for the Virginia Payload Module, Columbia-class subs and the United Kingdom's replacement ballistic missile sub.
Geiger's ouster came on the heals of General Dynamics replacing long-time executive John Casey as head of the Marine Systems division when he retired earlier this year.
The shakeup, delays and lingering issues put the Navy and the submarine-building enterprise at a crossroads. It's clear that the Navy's efforts to ramp up production of its Virginia-class attack boats ahead of Columbia have encountered myriad issues and delays. But while delays may be acceptable for the Virginia program, the interconnected nature of submarine building means those delays could eek into a program that the Navy has for years insisted cannot be delayed any further: the replacement of its aging Ohio-class ballistic missile subs, part of the nuclear deterrent triad.
The Navy has said Columbia must be ready for its first patrol in 2031 to ensure the nation doesn't fall below a dangerous threshold where retiring Ohio-class submarines leaving the country without an adequate number of boats to execute its deterrent strategy. But to head that off, the Navy may have reduce its expectations of the industrial base's capacity to build submarines, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank and a retired submarine officer.
“The Navy is going to have to reduce its appetite for submarine capacity while it gets the construction process in a better position,” he said. “All of the things we have seen in the past year in the submarine-building enterprise are the results of the ramped-up production levels and the challenges that EB [Electric Boat] faces in hiring more workers up in Connecticut.
“They've been growing capacity, investing in infrastructure; they're trying to hire a bunch of workers and design engineers. [But] there just isn't a large workforce of those kinds of people up there as opposed to in Hampton Roads or the Gulf Coast. So there are a lot of challenges in ramping up production to [increase] Virginia-class production and, in addition, starting Columbia and beginning the Virginia Payload Module-equipped Virginias, which is a 30 percent larger submarine.”
A bridge to Columbia
In March, Defense News reported that all the Virginia-class submarines under construction were between four and seven months behind schedule. Naval Sea Systems Command pointed to the cumulative effect of ramping up to building two Virginia-class submarines per year. In a statement, the service's top acquisition official said the Navy was continuing to confront material, labor and shipyard infrastructure issues.
Labor issues in particular hit the Newport News yard, which told investors in a recent earnings call that profits had slipped by about 23 percent on the Virginia sub building because of delays associated with labor issues.
In the face of the mounting issues, the Navy should be willing to make difficult choices to get back on an even footing, Clark said.
“Are we going to make some tough choices and dial back submarine construction deliberately to make sure we can get Columbia started correctly?” he asked. “And that means maybe we slow down Virginia, maybe we go to one per year for at least a couple of years to catch up.”
Clark said the Navy should continue to fund two submarines per year but should expect that they will take longer to build while General Dynamics and Newport News stabilize their labor and parts issues.
Paring back submarine production is a tough pill to swallow for the Navy, as it's been fighting for years to prevent a shortfall of attack submarines in the coming decade. The Navy expects its inventory of attack boats to drop from 52 to 42 by the late 2020s as Cold War-era Los Angeles-class attack subs retire.
Furthermore, there's the question of whether scaling back production might invite a funding cut, which could make matters worse. The supplier and labor issues, after all, primarily stem from the 1990s when the Navy all but stopped buying submarines, which resulted in a contraction of the number of businesses that built submarine parts and a loss in skilled laborers who knew how to build them.
Less funding would likely have a detrimental effect on sub-building efforts, said Bill Greenwalt, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staffer.
“Under our current budget and appropriations process, slowing down — which likely implies cutting program funding — would exacerbate industrial base problems as it already has in the past due to lack of program demand,” Greenwalt said. “Congress and the Navy need to be prepared for industrial base surprises and seriously face the past problem of the underfunding of naval shipbuilding.”
“A flexible schedule and more realistic and flexible funding mechanisms will be needed to meet whatever industrial base challenges ... will inevitably arise,” he added. “In the near term we may even need to look at some of our allies' capabilities to meet shortfalls and help us keep on schedule until we rebuild U.S. capacity.”
Greenwalt's view tracks with that of General Dynamics, according to a source with knowledge of the company's thinking on the difficulties it has faced. The company considers ramping up production on the Virginia-class sub as essential to building a sufficient labor force and supplier capacity so the resources are available to build Columbia class on schedule, the source said.
‘Two-hump camel'
The Navy's top acquisition official, James Geurts, has similarly described the issue. On the possibility of building a third Virginia-class submarine in 2023, Geurts told the House Armed Services Committee's sea power panel in March that it would benefit the Columbia-building effort.
“We can get some of the additional workforce trained up, get some more of the supplier base and get some of the supplier builds out of the way before Columbia gets here,” he said.
Officials everywhere seem to agree that the labor force is the most critical factor when it comes to getting submarine building on track. In an exit interview with Defense News in August, outgoing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said turnover at shipyards was a challenge but also an exciting chance to build a new generation of skilled labor.
“We're asking a lot of the submarine industrial base right now to continue with Virginia, two to three per year including that payload module, and deliver Columbia,” Richardson said. “And the workforce is going through a transformation.
“The people who built and delivered the Virginia program, the Los Angeles program and Seawolf — those folks are retiring. We used to have this two-hump camel in terms of the demographics of the shipyard: You had the Cold Warriors and you had the post-9/11 folks. And that Cold War hump is gone. And I think that although it's going through some friction right now, it's really inculcating, indoctrinating and educating a brand-new workforce.”
Richardson also sounded a note of warning about work quality, saying that the managers overseeing the work for the submarine-building enterprise must be on top of their jobs.
“We've had some welding issues: We've got to be on that,” he said. “[It's] a lot closer oversight as we educate this new team.”
Clarification: The story has been updated to better reflect the arguments surrounding the future of submarine building.
October 6, 2021 | International, Aerospace
L3Harris Technologies will modernize the U.S. Air Force B-52 aircraft to protect aircrew from enemy radar threats under a new 10-year, sole-source US$947 million IDIQ contract.
June 10, 2019 | International, Aerospace
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Cost appears to have played a major role in the Army's decision to pick GE Aviation's T901 engine for its future helicopter engine, based on a look at documents laying out the service's post-award analysis, obtained by Defense News. Yet, other factors not shown could have also contributed to the Army's choice, which the Government Accountability Office upheld following a protest from losing team Advanced Turbine Engine Company (ATEC) — a partnership between Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney. The GAO is expected to release a redacted version of its decision next week, which could shed more light on how the Army decided to move forward with GE. While the cost of GE'S engine seems to have been a deciding factor, the document outlining the service's criteria to determine a winning engine design to move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase states that “all non-cost/price factors when combined are significantly more important than cost/price factor.” According to that chart, the Army said it would primarily measure the engine submissions against its engine design and development, followed by cost/price, followed by life-cycle costs and then small business participation in order of importance. The Army assessed ATEC's and GE's technical risk as good and gave ATEC a risk rating of low while it gave GE a risk rating of moderate when considering engineering design and development for each offering. Both GE and ATEC had moderate risk ratings when it came to engine design and performance. And while GE received a technical risk rating of moderate for component design and systems test and evaluation, ATEC received low risk ratings for both. Almost all other technology risk assessments and risk ratings were the same for both engine offerings. GE scored “outstanding” in platform integration capabilities. Based off the chart, it appears ATEC won, so its likely the documents are not an exhaustive representation of how the Army decided to move forward with GE. While both ATEC and GE offered prices within the Army's requirements, GE came in 30 percent lower in cost. And according to Brig. Gen. Thomas Todd, the program executive officer for aviation, in an interview with Defense News in April, GE was also working on trying to shrink the timeline within the EMD phase by roughly a year. But, in ATEC's view, the charts show it had offered the best value product to the Army. ATEC's president, Craig Madden, told Defense News that the company took the Army's selection criteria laid out in the request for proposals seriously across the board from engineering design and development factors to cost to even small business participation, where it scored higher than GE in the analysis chart. “We did come in higher in cost but this was considered a best value evaluation and not lowest price, technically acceptable,” Madden said. “I think low price is good for a plastic canteen or a bayonet, it's not good for a highly technical turbine engine.” And despite coming in at a higher cost, Jerry Wheeler, ATEC's vice president said, the up front cost in the EMD phase will be higher but the delta would shrink when considering life-cycle costs of both engine offerings. Both ATEC and GE received good technical ratings and were given risk ratings of low. When just going by the chart, GE's four moderate risk ratings in key categories means “they could have disruption in schedule, increased cost and degradation of performance,” Madden said. He added ATEC was also focused on lowering risk, so that, although the Army offered incentives to finish the EMD phase earlier than 66 months, ATEC presented a plan to complete at 66 months with a plan to look at acceleration wherever possible. ATEC is now pushing to be a part of the EMD phase, essentially extending the competition, so that more data on engines can be garnered. The Army had periodically weighed keeping the EMD phase competitive with two vendors, but ultimately chose to downselect to one. For GE, the Army made the right decision and had enough data to do so. “The U.S. Army competitively selected GE's T901 engine over ATEC T900 engine after more than 12 years of development,” David Wilson told Defense News in a statement. “Those 12 years included the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) program, during which both companies ran tow full engine tests,” he said. Additionally, both companies executed a 24-month technology maturation and risk reduction contract where GE self-funded and successfully completed and tested a third engine, a full-sized T901 prototype engine, with successful tests on all components, Wilson said. “We've done three full-engine tests and provided an unprecedented amount of test data to the Army for them to determine which engine was the best to move forward with in EMD,” he added. Funding a second engine through EMD would cost more than twice as much and delay critical Army modernization by at least two years, Wilson argued. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/06/07/how-did-the-two-offerings-competing-to-be-the-us-armys-future-engine-measure-up/
November 19, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security
T-Mobile targeted in Chinese cyber espionage campaign stealing telecom data; U.S. warns of ongoing threats.