Leaders of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) from both parties pushed the Biden administration to maintain a procurement rate of two Virginia-class attack submarines (SSNs) per year to keep up with industrial base needs for the AUKUS agreement.
“It is imperative to maintain a steady two-per-year procurement rate to assure our partners in our ability to meet commitments and address concerns about our nation’s undersea capabilities,” the lawmakers argued in a letter to President Biden dated Jan. 17.
The AUKUS agreement plans for the U.S., Australia and U.K. to cooperate on both attack submarines and other defense-related technologies. Under the submarine portion, the U.S. will sell three to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s before it builds and operates its own nuclear-powered SSN-AUKUS attack submarines starting in the early 2040s. The SSN-AUKUS design will be shared with the U.K., with both countries operating the same design but building them separately.
“The AUKUS partnership relies on our nation to sustain a consistent build rate for attack submarines required to fulfill our obligation to successfully transfer, via sale, Virginia-class submarines to Australia while meeting our own force structure requirements,” they said.
The letter was signed by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Trent Kelly (R-Miss.), and subcommittee ranking member Joe Courtney (D-Conn.).
The representatives said some of the most significant provisions in the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allow the U.S. to proceed with the AUKUS agreement. The provisions allow the U.S. to sell three Virginia-class submarines to Australia and accept payment to put back into the submarine industrial base (Defense Daily, Dec. 14, 2023).
The letter noted they support the two attack submarines per year build rate in the Navy’s FY ‘24 30-year shipbuilding plan.
“Our belief is based on the promising increase in U.S. submarine production tonnage in 2023. Part of this growth is due to investments from the Navy and Congress in workforce and supply chain development over the last five years, which requires continuous support to mature and stabilize the health of the industrial base. Even more importantly, this growth is dependent on the persistent two-per-year demand signal to the nationwide submarine industrial base that Congress has defended since 2011,” they wrote.
They argued this commitment has caused suppliers to make capital investments and expand capacity based on a predictable forecast of work as well as driven trades workers, designers and engineers to choose shipbuilding as good careers.
However, they warned “deviation from projected procurement rates in the FY2025 budget request would upend the faith of a steady procurement profile in the Future Years Defense Plan by our suppliers, as well as any plans for future capital investments in the supply chain.”
The HASC leaders argued in favor of maintaining these promised build rates with the FY ‘25 budget request, due to be released within months.
“The FY2025 budget will come at a pivotal time for the Virginia-class submarine program and sustaining our unmatched edge in the undersea domain. Any deviation from the planned cadence of the construction and procurement of two submarines per year will reverberate both at home and abroad, with allies and competitors alike,” they added.
In November, then-Commander of Submarine Forces Vice Adm. Bill Houston told reporters the U.S. plans to sell two in-service Virginia-class submarines to Australia in 2032 and 2035 before selling a new boat in 2038 (Defense Daily, Nov. 9, 2023).
Matthew Sermon, executive director of the Program Executive Office for Strategic Submarines, also said the government will largely devote the $3 billion in expected Australian AUKUS industrial base funds toward increasing SSN production.
Sermon said the U.S. plans to increase current submarine production from the current 1.3 SSNs annually to 2.33 plus one more to both produce two submarines annually for the U.S. and make up for the three to five SSNs sold to Australia (Defense Daily, November 8, 2023).
However, an October 2023 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report was less optimistic that the U.S. could fund and build SSNs at the rate needed for these plans (Defense Daily, October 30, 2023).
CBO said to buy three to five more SSNs to make up for sales to Australia the Navy would need to build 1.9 to 2.6 SSNs per year while the submarine industrial base is struggling to meet current demands.
“It would be very difficult and expensive” for the submarine industrial base to build and deliver two SSNs and one Columbia-class SSBN per year and increase production further to make up for AUKUS sales, the report said.