USS Jefferson City (SSN-759) left the Pearl Harbor- Hickham Joint Base on December 8, 2021 and headed to Guam Naval Base for home port shifts. U.S. Navy Photos
Virginia Beach, Virginia — The head of the Navy Maritime Systems Command said Wednesday that as demand for submarine remains high, less than a third of Navy attack submarines have completed maintenance on time over the past decade.
"It's really hard for us to get submarines to go to sea on time. In the past decade, 20% to 30% of [come] were done on time," said Lieutenant General Bill Galinis at the American Association of Naval Engineers' annual Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium.
The Navy currently deploys a fleet of 50 attack submarines, divided into the Los Angeles class (SSN-688), Seawolf class (SSN-21) and Virginia class (SSN-774), and more Virginia class are under construction. Although the U.S. attack boat force is the key to the Pentagon 's plan to fight against the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy, the service has difficulty meeting maintenance needs.
PEO Submarine Rear Admiral Jonathan Ruker said at the ASNE meeting that as of Thursday, 18 submarines were underway for some type of maintenance.
"This number is too high," Ruke said Wednesday.
The earliest Virginia-class submarines were one of the most difficult submarines to repair on time. "We have seen a significant increase in working days required for submarine availability, especially at the Virginia class," said Galinis. We are digging into why this is the case. It's really a continuous process. ”
Although private shipyards like HII’s Newport News Shipyards and General Dynamics ’s ’s ’s ’s ’s ’s ’s ’s ’s ”strikes took place in the Navy’s four public shipyards. In terms of maintenance priority, attack boats ranked third behind nuclear ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers and could bear the shortfall of shipyards in the first place.
These shipyards improved the on-time records of baby boomers and aircraft carriers , but public shipyards recorded record reductions and 1,000 The gap in a worker has penetrated into submarine repairs, while demand for attack submarines is growing. According to the Government Accountability Office, "Virginia-class submarines resume operations on average nearly nine months later than expected; Los Angeles-class submarines on average are four and a half months longer than scheduled to return to the fleet. As a result, some submarines missed deployment or shortened their maritime deployment. ”
This class was designed after the end of the Cold War , and it is a cheaper attack submarine than the high-performance Seawolf class submarine. The Virginia was designed to operate near the coast, with components meeting strict NAVSEA submarine safety standards, but not as durable as some of the older components on Los Angeles-class ships.
Luck said: “When we got off the Seawolf class, we had a very capable but relatively expensive submarine.” "We started with the Virginia class and we were responsible for designing and building a submarine early on at affordable costs to ensure we get the numbers we need." Maintenance of the
submarine class was not a major requirement of the program, and the Navy put maintenance aside for other cost-saving considerations.
"Unfortunately, some of these challenges are here today," Rucker said.
USS Virginia (SSN-774) was in service in 2004 and is ending its mid-term availability, and the repair and lessons learned from other early ships in the class are informing the class-wide maintenance program to assist in the arrangement and protection of materials.
The Navy will implement the plan from fiscal year 2023 and may not see improvements until fiscal year 2024.
"If you throw rudder on Titanic , it will take a while for the ship to turn," Rucker told USNI News. “It will take a little time just because there is lag and access to resources or changing behavior or ensuring we plan better for what we are going to do."In the long run, the lessons from the Virginia-class maintenance issue provide a basis for the Navy to plan how to repair and maintain the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and the next-generation attack submarine SSN(X). Maximizing the deployment time of submarines is key to the new design.
"The initial capability file actually contains requirements for operational availability and maintenance," Rucker said. "This is one of our four main requirements for SSN(X) …speed, [signature], payload, and operational availability. ”
