The Virginia-class submarine program is finalizing the Virginia Payload Module design and will start prototyping soon to reduce risk and cost as much as possible ahead of the 2019 construction start, according to a Navy report to Congress.
According to the “Virginia Class Submarine Cost Containment Strategy for Block V Virginia Payload Module Design” report, dated Aug. 31 but not received by the Senate until mid-October, the Navy says late Fiscal Year 2015 and early FY 2016 is a “critical” time period for the program.
“Since the previous report (in early 2015), the Design Agent (General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB)) finalized the concept design, reviewed and started updating the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), issued a prototype plan, commenced arrangement activities, and submitted all ship specification requirements and Key Decisions for approval,” the report states.
“In the remainder of FY15 and into FY16 GDEB will recommend a final module length, issue IMS Revision B, update cost estimates, complete payload tube arrangements, and begin prototyping efforts. The Navy will approve all Key Decisions and ship specification changes, commence module and host ship arrangement approvals, start approving design disclosures, and establish the module length.”
The Program Executive Office for Submarines would like to see the Virginia Payload Module built into all its Block V subs from a warfighting perspective but will have to verify that doing so will not hurt ongoing Virginia sub construction or upcoming Ohio Replacement Program construction..
PEO Subs executive director George Drakeley said last week at the annual Naval Submarine League symposium that the Virginia Payload Module would help the Virginia-class attack subs (SSN-774) replace the SSGN guided missile subs.
“The warfighters have come to love that platform,” Drakeley said of the SSGNs.
“Those ships are getting used and used hard,” with parts wearing out earlier than expected due to heavy use in the fleet.
“The VPM is the follow-on basically for SSGNs, and with the kind of support it has, the program is actually probably in pretty good shape,” he said.
“Right now the plan of record is to build one VPM a year starting in [Fiscal Year 2019] through the shipbuilding plan. There is now kind of support for the possibility of, after we start building Virginia VPM … to make all of the Virginias VPM-Virginias. I think that makes sense from a shipbuilding point of view, and from a capability for the Navy” point of view, he said.
The US Navy (USN) is solidifying a path towards acquisition of a large displacement unmanned underwater vehicle (LDUUV), an official said on 21 October.
The first increment of LDUUV will need to have the ability to not only launch and recover from both variants of the USN's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), but also to deploy from the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine via the Virginia Payload Module, or a modernised drydeck shelter, said Rear Admiral Robert Girrier, director of the USN's new unmanned warfare systems (N99) division that was established in September.
The Navy will deploy its first underwater drones from Virginia-class attack submarines for the first time in history later this year, the Navy’s director of undersea warfare said Monday.
The deployment will include the use of the Remus 600 Unmanned Underwater Vehicles, or UUVs, performing undersea missions in strategic locations around the globe, Rear Adm. Joseph Tofalo, told Military.com at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space annual symposium at National Harbor, Md.
“Now you are talking about a submarine CO who can essentially be in two places at the same time – with a UUV out deployed which can do dull, dirty and dangerous type missions. This allows the submarine to be doing something else at the same time,” Tofalo said. “UUVs can help us better meet our combatant command demand signal. Right now, we only meet about two-thirds of our combatant commanders demand signals and having unmanned systems is a huge force multiplier.”
The Remus 600 is a 500-pound, 3.25-meter long UUV equipped with dual-frequency side-scanning sonar technology, synthetic aperture sonar, acoustic imaging, video cameras and GPS devices, according to information from its maker, Hyrdoid.
The Remus 600 is similar to the BLUEFIN Robotics UUVs, such as the BLUEFIN 21, that were used to scan the ocean floor in search of the wreckage of the downed Malaysian airliner last year.
The upcoming deployment of the Remus 600 is part of a larger Navy effort to use existing commercial off-the-shelf technology, Tofalo explained.
It’s a problem the US Navy wants to have, but it’s still a problem. If the service gets enough money both to build its top priority, the Ohio Replacement Program nuclear missile submarine, and to keep producing its vaunted Virginia-class attack subs, then so much new work will be hitting the shipyards so rapidly that they’ll be hard-pressed to ramp up production fast enough.
There are just two shipyards in the country that can build nuclear-powered submarines, Virginia’s Newport News and New England’s Electric Boat, which along with their network of specialized suppliers have recently ramped up to building two Virginias a year. But the Navy wants to start buying a bigger, more powerful, and correspondingly harder-to-build version of the Virginia no later than 2019. Then in 2021, the Navy will officially start its first Ohio replacement. That’s not just another sub: “An Ohio is about twice a Virginia in terms of the workload,” Assistant Secretary of the Navy Sean Stackley told reporters yesterday.
“It’s a fairly steep growth [in production] compared to what it’s been in the past 10 to 20 years, absolutely, ” Stackley said when I pressed him on the point.
Is it a potential bottleneck in production?
The Navy is looking into the feasibility of accelerating design and development work on the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) in case the service decides to begin production earlier than the 2019 planned start, Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley said Wednesday at a House Armed Services Committee (HASC) hearing.
The VPM will add 28 missile tubes to Block V Virginia-class attack submarines (SSN-774), to provide more strike capability from undersea as the fleet prepares to lose the Ohio-class SSGN guided missile submarine fleet in the mid-2020s. The Navy planned to start VPM construction in conjunction with the next Virginia-class multiyear contract in 2019, but Stackley said that the SSGNs represent a 600-missile capacity and that sooner is better when it comes to rebuilding that strike capacity.
Stackley told the HASC seapower and projection forces subcommittee that he had spoken to the Program Executive Office for Submarines and to the submarine industrial base “to take a look at, can we in fact complete those design and development activities earlier than the 2019 timeframe to give the Navy and the nation the option to determine whether or not we want to advance Virginia Payload Modules earlier than the submarine build cycle.”
“We’re looking at first, can we pull [design and development] to the left a year, and the other aspect is what would be our ability to increase the rate of production of VPMs beyond one per year, which is in our current long-range plan.,” Stackley later elaborated. “Affordability comes into play, industrial base capacity comes into play.”
He said the discussions were ongoing and he would know by March or April what the options were in terms of accelerating VPM progress, though subcommittee chairman Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) pressed for the information sooner to help inform ongoing budget discussions in Congress.
The US Navy's (USN's) first Virginia-class attack submarine to be built with a redesigned bow has departed on its second ocean voyage for an extended set of sea trials, shipbuilder General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) told IHS Jane's on 6 August.
North Dakota (SSN 784) had returned to GDEB's facility in Groton, Connecticut, on 5 August after successfully completing its first ocean voyage, known as 'alpha' sea trials. The two-day at-sea period occurred nearly four months after officials publicly disclosed materiel issues associated with the bow's redesign, which prompted the navy to delay the boat's 31 May 2014 commissioning date.
The US Navy (USN) will continue to fund the acquisition of two Virginia-class fast attack submarines per year from fiscal year 2015 (FY 2015) through FY 2019 while it ramps up design work on the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine replacement programme.
The Navy’s Virginia-class fast attack submarines are slated to serve for the next 50 years, but service leaders are already debating what submarine or system might replace it.
The Navy’s 2014 30-year shipbuilding plan calls for the construction and delivery of Virginia-class submarines through at least 2043, an acquisition strategy which plans for a total of 48 to 50 boats, Adm. David Johnson, Program Executive Officer, Submarines, told Military.com.
Since the expected service life of a Virginia-class submarine is 33 years, the timeline means they will be expected to serve well beyond 2060, Johnson explained.
“We are starting to think about what upgrades do you need to make to the Virginia class to keep it relevant and competitive out into the mid-century. We’re also looking at options and concept studies of what should the new SSN (attack submarine) do,” Johnson said.
