Electric Boat to help build Australian sub fleet

suggested Electric Boat and Newport News could keep up with U.S. Navy needs while producing subs for Australia, noting a historic rate of shipyard production at the height of the Cold War of four attack submarines annually along with strategic ballistic missile subs.

“Everybody understands this is something that you can just flip a switch and you’ve got an industrial base to take on, really, probably one of the most complex types of manufacturing imaginable,” Courtney said. “The Australian workforce ... contributing to the Virginia program is just a logical way to increase proficiency for welders and electricians and all of the skilled jobs that take that repetition and take that cadence to get up to the high level of quality in doing that.”

Courtney added China’s missile capabilities against surface ships make a bolstered submarine force in the region essential.

“This is about having the type of stealth and the type of reach which the strategic environment requires,” said Courtney, who is co-chair of the Seapower and Projected Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. “Surface ships right now are so vulnerable.”

In its proposed budget released Monday, the U.S. Navy made a formal request for a second Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine that would be launched at Electric Boat’s main shipyard in Groton, with components barged there made at its auxiliary plant in Quonset Point, R.I., and at the Newport News Shipbuilding plant in Virginia. The Navy wants a dozen Columbia-class subs in all, with contracts expected to top $130 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The Navy ordered a pair of Virginia-class attack subs as well, even as it envisions a long-term replacement for the fleet as the case with the new Columbia-class subs that will phase out Ohio-class missile boats in the coming decade.

“American shipbuilders and sailors will be critical to making AUKUS work — both constructing Virginia Class submarines and training our allies to operate and maintain them,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a news release Monday. “The Navy now must work harder to expand and extend our submarine workforce, as we continue to build two Virginiaclass boats a year as well as the Australian submarines.”

During a Monday afternoon news conference, Biden answered “yes” to a reporter’s question on whether he believed the deal would remain in place in the event any “isolationist” president was elected.