{"id":1509,"date":"2017-01-06T21:32:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T21:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/?p=1509"},"modified":"2017-01-06T21:32:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T21:32:13","slug":"fleet-of-12-ssbn-in-line-for-us-pentagon-approval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/2017\/01\/06\/fleet-of-12-ssbn-in-line-for-us-pentagon-approval\/","title":{"rendered":"FLEET OF 12 SSBN IN LINE FOR US PENTAGON APPROVAL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"110127-N-1325N-043<\/a><\/p>\n

Sourced : Bloomberg<\/p>\n

By Anthony Capaccio<\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s top weapons buyer has approved advanced development for a fleet of 12 new nuclear-armed submarines, a potential $128 billion project that the Navy calls its top priority.<\/p>\n

Frank Kendall, the undersecretary for acquisition, signed the decision memo that officially moves the program forward late Wednesday. Shortly before acting, Kendall, who\u2019s departing when President Barack Obama steps down on Jan. 20, said in an interview,\u201cI\u2019m hoping to have it done before I leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new Columbia-class submarine is part of a trillion-dollar program to modernize the U.S.\u2019s sea-air-land nuclear triad over the next 30 years, including maintenance and support. Obama has backed the effort, to the chagrin of some arms control advocates, and President-elect Donald Trump has seemed to signal his support. \u201cThe United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,\u201d Trump wrote in a Twitter posting.<\/p>\n

The Navy is in contract talks with General Dynamics Corp., which will lead the program to replace aging Ohio-class submarines, with Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. as the top subcontractor.<\/p>\n

General Dynamics rose 1.4 percent to $177.99 at 10:57 a.m. New York time. Huntington Ingalls rose 1.7 percent to $195.16, after initially climbing as much as 2.8 percent, the most since Nov. 10, 2016. Huntington Ingalls is the Pentagon\u2019s top shipbuilder and depends heavily on revenue from such contracts.<\/p>\n

The projected $128 billion acquisition cost, an estimate that factors in expected inflation, puts the new submarines behind only the $379 billion F-35 aircraft and the $153 billion multiservice ballistic-missile defense network among the costliest U.S. defense programs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Latest Estimate<\/p>\n

The final version of of Kendall\u2019s memo includes the Navy\u2019s latest cost estimate for the submarine: $13 billion in research and development and $115 billion in procurement.<\/p>\n

He directed that the 12 submarines be produced for an average procurement cost of $8 billion each, which doesn\u2019t include equipment such as the nuclear reactors that would power the vessels and the weapons they would carry.<\/p>\n

Approval for the submarine program to enter full development — known as \u201cMilestone B\u201d — is significant \u201cin terms of the importance that the Navy has attached\u201d to it, the program\u2019s \u201ctight development schedule\u201d and concerns over its impact on other defense priorities, Ronald O\u2019Rourke, a naval analyst with the Congressional Research Service, said in an e-mail.<\/p>\n

For the next decade, the military is budgeting $193 billion to modernize nuclear delivery systems, including $43.7 billion for the submarine program, up $9.4 billion from the estimate last year, according to a congressionally mandated report to lawmakers late last year.<\/p>\n

Kendall praised the Navy in a draft memo obtained by Bloomberg News, saying that \u201cit is clear that significant achievements have been made to control current and future costs\u201d and to ensure the submarine\u2019s schedule will be met. \u201cDespite tight schedule margins that leave little room for future issues, there are adequate plans in place to manage this risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, \u201cwithout additional resources, which have not been identified, the Navy will have to make substantial reductions in other parts of the Navy budget,\u201d Kendall wrote.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bigger Navy<\/p>\n

Underscoring that theme, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday in a summary of its annual shipbuilding report that the bigger, 350-ship Navy like that endorsed by Trump — which would include the 12 Columbia-class submarines — could require $25 billion a year, or about 60 percent above historical annual funding for Navy shipbuilding.<\/p>\n

More immediately, the Navy estimate sees procurement spending for the submarine program increasing to $2.8 billion in fiscal 2019 from $773 million this year. It would hit $5.1 billion in 2022. That doesn\u2019t include long-range operating and support costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sourced : Bloomberg By Anthony Capaccio The Pentagon\u2019s top weapons buyer has approved advanced development for a fleet of 12 new nuclear-armed submarines, a potential $128 billion project that the Navy calls its top priority. Frank Kendall, the undersecretary for acquisition, signed the decision memo that officially moves the program forward late Wednesday. Shortly before… Continue reading FLEET OF 12 SSBN IN LINE FOR US PENTAGON APPROVAL<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1189,954,1188,1107,499],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-industry","tag-columbia-class-submarines","tag-f-35","tag-general-dynamics-corp","tag-navy","tag-pentagon","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions\/1511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}