In advance of the Department of Defense officially releasing their 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, there was all sorts of speculation in the media on the stance the QDR Report would take about the rate of acquiring more latest-generation Virginia-class fast attack submarines (SSNs). Now the QDR is out, and senior levels of the Navy have separately but simultaneously commented on future shipbuilding plans in general. Alas the conclusion one might draw regarding the ongoing vitality (viability?) of America's Submarine Force comes across as “No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.” There are, instead, some discouraging clauses.

Firstly, because the myth that the Virginia-class is a useless Cold War relic persists in some mainstream daily newspapers, I refer readers to my previous essay, “‘Alternative QDR' Bonkers?”, for an overview of facts that make the Virginia build-rate so crucial to national defense -- both in “long wars” like the GWOT, and in potential “major combat” versus a rising naval foe such as China.

Alas, the specific language of the QDR about the Virginia-class production rate has an insidious twist which represents, I think, not a status quo relative to recent Navy plans as publicly stated, but more of a step backward or even a vicious Catch-22. The exact language, on page 48 of the QDR, is “Return to a steady-state production rate of two attack submarines per year not later than 2012 while achieving an average per hull procurement cost objective of $2.0 billion.” Recent pronouncements by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mullen seem to make it clear that a per-hull price of $2.0 billion (in today's constant dollars) is a prerequisite to start acquiring two Virginia-class subs per year even in 2012. Admiral Mullen's justified concerns are the limited total shipbuilding budget available to the U.S. Navy each year, and the current actual costs of a single Virginia. The Virginia-class is being built in a unique teaming arrangement between General Dynamics Electric Boat in Connecticut, and Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. The actual total cost right now at the rate of one Virginia per year is about $2.5 billion dollars.

Herein lies the dangerous crunch of conflicting forces which leads to a possibly unwinnable Catch-22. The teaming arrangement resulted from the need to maintain highly-specialized nuclear submarine design and construction infrastructure -- especially irreplaceable human skills -- at two contractors, for healthy competition and redundancy of facilities. Even with this teaming arrangement in place to share the work, Electric Boat recently announced 222 pink slips for crucial managers, design staff and seasoned union craft experts, with up to 2,400 more layoffs during 2006. Sad experience has shown that once such seasoned and cohesive teams are broken up to become unemployed, the men and women scatter to find different jobs -- and the collective expertise and one-of-a-kind knowledge sets are lost, forever.

This happened rather painfully in the UK in the 1990s, to the point where their new SSN project, the Astute-class, almost collapsed. Ironically, it was a team from Electric Boat, who went over to the UK to get the project back on track, that made the Astute project come alive again. As another indicator of the dangers of letting design/build personnel dwindle to eventually scatter as dust, consider the serious problems being faced by the Advanced SEAL Delivery System minisub, whose development is contractually in the hands of a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is on record as badly needing a functioning commando minisub, a critical tool in the (long) Global War on Terror. The moral is that starvation budgets for essential weapon systems can put a country's defense capabilities into a downward spiral like anorexia nervosa -- a condition which is all too often fatal.

Another part of the Catch-22 is that cost reductions result from volume construction. At the 2005 Naval Submarine League Open Symposium, an active duty admiral said that if the Navy were to order two Virginia subs per year, economies of scale would drive the unit cost down to right around $2.0 billion -- Admiral Mullens's goal. Yet the QDR seems to have put the cart before the horse: insisting on a cost reduction before the rate of orders is increased. If I've got this right, it seems like asking for a strange new manifestation of the wrong sort of voodoo economics. In the real world, the orders simply must come before the cost savings; that's Business 101.

To put 2012 in perspective, as the time to start building two Virginia SSNs per annum, this pivotal year had at one time been set as 2007, then later was push back to 2009, then to 2012 -- and I have to ask, as many are asking, what keeps the Navy or the Pentagon or Congress from putting things off even further? By the time we reach 2012, will that pivotal year be announced as 2016?

Speaking of the Navy and the Pentagon and Congress, at that same NSL Symposium last June, during the Q&A period of one panel discussion, I asked what the Submarine Force could do to convince these other entities of the need to avoid getting locked in now to a catastrophic dip in the number of front-line SSNs in commission in the mid-2020s. A retired admiral, senior official of the NSL, replied to the effect that “The Navy doesn't buy ships, Congress buys ships.” Thus, there's some hope to reverse a damaging situation. The 2006 QDR is important, yet it's only a recommendation to Congress. Congress can, and has in the past, added to or subtracted from the incumbent administration's military spending budgets. The House Armed Services Committee, and the House Submarine Caucus in particular (yes, there is such a body!) will undoubtedly have some things to say about the fiscal resources actually made available to buy ships. The CNO, after all, facing many conflicting priorities, can only work with the budget he's given by Congress.

What's wrong with the current picture is that we need to be building two Virginia-class subs right now, not just to create enough work to keep Electric Boat and Newport News humming at optimum utilization, and not just to save money on buying new subs through economies of scale. We need to start funding two Virginia SSNs per annum because they're essential to national security goals as laid out in the 2006 QDR. China has now been formally recognized as an emerging threat in the Pacific. She's declared the goal of having a world-class, blue water submarine fleet by 2025, in numbers designed to overwhelm America's overstretched undersea power. China formally complained to Washington about the QDR's “groundless accusations” which “misled public opinion.” To this, I'd retort that China's idea of how to properly lead public opinion is when a Chinese newspaper publishes something critical of the communist system, local police storm their offices and beat the editor to death. ‘Nuf said, I think, about China as an emerging military threat.

There's a point at which nothing can compensate for lack of force of SSN numbers on our side. It's up to Congress to act with vision and speed. 2012 is much too late to first start building two new U.S. Navy fast-attacks per year.