National Security

Remember When A Long Sub Was An Extra 50 Cents?

By Mark Thompson | @MarkThompson_DC | April 13, 2011 | +

The New London Day, which does a good job covering nearby Electric Boat, one of the two sub-building shipyards in this country, has an wallet-opening story today about the company’s proposal to “stretch” its Virginia-class submarines:

EB has been working on a concept for a “stretch Virginia” to boost firepower. The task was to figure out whether the subs could be lengthened by about 90 feet to accommodate triple the number of Tomahawk missiles they now carry, and to launch the weapons of the future, including unmanned undersea vehicles. Preliminary estimates say the modification could cost up to $500 million per ship, adding roughly 20 percent to the cost of an attack submarine.

We’ve got a lot of problems in this country. Lack of available firepower on our fleet of 50 attack submarines is not one of them. It’s notions like this, amid our national cash crunch, that I’ll focus on in print this week, where I’m finishing up a piece on how to cut military spending, smartly.

Related Topics: submarines, National Security

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  • http://www.stevebeste.com Steve Beste

    It’s a shame that President Obama won’t talk about savings in Defense Spending when he talks about the Budget this afternoon.

    I could be wrong, but, naaaahh.

  • shepherdwong

    Look forward to your future piece, Mark. I’m all for jobs programs for engineers but this is getting out of hand.

  • nflfoghorn

    But cutting out missles from a nuke sub…that’s untouchable and you know it! We can’t afford to be without the best killin’ stuff $ can buy!

  • robbert5

    Just as long as we are not paying for it by tax increases… (or by cutting spending) The new (old) republican/TP mantra……

  • michaelfury

    “to accommodate triple the number of Tomahawk missiles they now carry”

    $$$

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/profits-and-losses/

  • yokem55

    What would the cost difference be to instead refit a couple more Ohio SSBN’s (Polaris Nuke subs) into SSGN’s? It seems that if you want to increase the volume of tomahawks you can toss out from close to shore, there would be more bang for buck there….

  • pintortwo

    The most inefficient Federal jobs program ever! And the only one receiving Congress-wide support.

  • http://grapemusing.blogspot.com/ grape_crush

    If they’re looking for ways to diversify their product line in order to generate more sales, maybe they could offer their submarines in different colors or flavors or include a rockin’ sound system…

  • square1

    The only way to kill this program would be to stretch a giant condom over the sub and fund it through Planned Parenthood.

  • nflfoghorn

    Buy you know the failure rate for those things is quite high.
    And can you imagine the sperm count?? Why can’t you teach sub-abstinence instead?
    .
    Also, given that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s business is abortion-related (Kyl’s statement) trying to defund them would cause irreparable harm to our vast nucular [sic] arsenal.

  • http://www.stevebeste.com Steve Beste

    I was wrong. POTUS calls for Defense cuts.

  • Mark Thompson

    Y — The cost of converting four Ohio-class boomers to carry Tomahawks instead of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles was about $1 billion per submarine. “Refueling and converting four Tridents avoids a near-term expenditure of about $440 million to inactivate and dismantle them,” the Congressional Research Service reported in 2008. So the net cost was $4 billion minus the $440 million we didn’t have to spend to dismantle them, for a cost of $890 million per sub.

  • http://patricksartor.wordpress.com patricksartor

    Which seems crazy to you:
    .
    Liberals want to build really fast trains as many other developed countries have had for a couple of decades speeding millions vacationers, commuters and business travelers in all weather up to 200 MPH to cities and towns across America in areas too close to fly to but too long to drive to for far less money and far less pollution.
    .
    Or
    .
    Conservatives wanting to spend massively large amount of money on an equally phallic submarine requiring us to pay crews money to be stuck underwater for weeks and months at a time, just in case Osama bin Laden and Al Qada have morphed into dolphins and have to be killed by submarine.
    .
    Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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