Shipbuilding: Here today, gone tomorrow

“If we do nothing else, the Navy must begin building three Virginia-class submarines a year as soon as possible.”

That was the pronouncement of Defense Secretary Mark Esper in September when the Pentagon chief rolled out the basics of Battle Force 2045, a beefed-up naval fleet with fewer large surface ships, more submarines, and more unmanned surface and subsurface vessels.

He has reason to want to jump-start sub building. With the retirement of the Los Angeles-class attack submarines over the coming years, the Navy expects to drop from 52 to 42 attack boats by the late 2020s, which has led to calls to increase attack submarine building to as many as three per year. All of this is in the name of keeping up with a rapidly expanding Chinese Navy.

But the companies that build the submarines — General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries — as well as the multitude of smaller businesses that supply niche, highly specified parts to assemble nuclear reactors or missile launch tubes, have every reason to ignore Esper’s latest grand designs.

Industry well remembers the 1990s when costs drove the Navy to slash the Seawolf-class sub order from 29 hulls to just three, with no immediate replacement vessel ready to keep the lines hot.