This is hardly surprising as many details surrounding AUKUS are still uncertain and the current AUKUS schedule is measured in multiple decades. When asked about the impact of AUKUS on their forecasts and plans, both shipbuilders reiterated their focus on present goals to meet 2+1. However, the industry remains uncertain about the impact of AUKUS on production and whether or not to center their investments around the effort. As such, many commentators have started calling for the US Navy to readjust its construction goals from 2+1 (two Virginias and one Columbia) to 3+1 to account for the potential sales, while others have called for the US Navy not to sell any submarines until more and yet-to-be-defined investments have been made in the industrial base. This is due to one of the key proposals under the 1st pillar of the agreement calling for Australia to potentially buy three to five Virginia-class submarines from the United States. The announcement of the security partnership called AUKUS between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, has been viewed by many as taxing the already strained submarine Industrial Base. A 200,000 square foot building dedicated to the construction of the Columbia class of ballistic missile submarines, expected to be completed in 2023. The Block V boats, in particular, are longer and displace more than the prior Blocks due to the addition of the Virginia Payload Module.ĪUKUS and Shaping The Future Industrial Base GDEB South Yard Assembly building. Despite the difficulties in reaching this figure, the workload now is many times higher than what the industry was anticipating a few years ago. The goal is to deliver one Columbia-class and two Virginia-class submarines a year. Today, shipbuilders are working around the clock to scale production up. “I think the way I think about that is prior to COVID, if you look at the couple quarters leading up to 2020, we were - as a team, we were right on the threshold of getting to two per year on the Virginia-class program, so it is imminently doable in terms of the industrial base and the team that’s working that program,” said Jason Aiken, Executive Vice President, Technologies, and Chief Financial Officer in an earnings call. However, the industry teams were close to reaching this goal before the pandemic complicated things. Attendance at Newport News Shipbuilding droppedto about 50 percent during the second quarter of 2020.Īside from the pandemic, the cadence was also affected by the switch from delivering one submarine a year between the two yards to delivering two submarines. The deadly pandemic was one of many compounding factors that affected the industrial base. In recent years, both shipbuilders have been working around the clock to get back the construction cadence they had before COVID-19. Rickover commissioning ceremony held at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, CT. Jason Aiken, Executive Vice President, Technologies, and Chief Financial Officer. “…this year has turned out to be quite a bit different than we originally anticipated, and that’s largely attributable to the increased throughput that we’ve seen at Electric Boat in particular as the hiring and retention dynamics have really improved faster than we thought,” The sentiment at Electric Boat was similar to that at HII: The company is also the sole builder of the US Navy’s Ford-class aircraft carriers. The company’s Newport News Shipbuilding division co-builds the Virginia-class and Columbia-class submarines with Electric Boat. Retention and attendance and the acceleration of workforce development will remain consistent focus areas for us going forward,”Ĭhris Kastner, President and CEO of Huntington Ingall Industries in an earnings call. We have work to do to improve our retention rate and the shipbuilding teams are laser focused on addressing this challenge. “…turning to labor, we have hired nearly 5,400 craft personnel year-to-date through the third quarter, which puts us 8% ahead of our full-year plan of approximately 5,000. The announcements, which run contrary to the general sentiment surrounding the US Submarine Industrial Base, come during a turbulent period for the industry and the broader US Navy submarine force.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |