NSSN Virginia-class - current status and future

Grey Havoc said:
However given the hostility of McNamara to the CVN-68 program
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McNamara was supportive of the CVN-68 program and approved the funding the for the first few ships of the class. The CVN and DXGN programs mostly post date his time in office. I don't know where the 40 ship program comes from, around 1970 there were proposals for 23. By and large the program seems to have died prior to FY75 because the the ship's combat system was obsolete, and they were incapable of accommodating Aegis.
 
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Electric Boat awarded $1.3 billion contract modification for long lead time material for Virginia-class submarines - Naval News

The U.S. DoD awarded Electric Boat a $1.3 billion contract to purchase long lead time materials for Virginia Class Block VI submarines
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U.S. Navy Launches 26th Virginia-class Attack Submarine - Naval News

One of the U.S. Navy’s newest attack submarines, the future USS IDAHO (SSN 799), was launched from General Dynamics Electric Boat’s shipyard
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www.spacewar.com

Sidus Space Secures $2 Million Contract for U.S. Navy Propulsion Project

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 21, 2024 - Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIDU), a provider of precision space infrastructure solutions, has been awarded a $2 million subcontract by Craig Technologies. The contract involves manufacturing two Fle
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Grey Havoc said:
The supposed excessive costliness of nuclear powered cruisers and the like is mostly a myth, dating back primarily to the 1960s and the shenanigans of the McNamara era. For example, back in the 1980s it emerged that the cost of the Virginia-class cruiser (originally nuclear powered frigates prior to the great cruiser panic of the Carter period) was exaggerated by among other things the amortisation of the costs of a shore infrastructure originally planned to support around 40 ships having to be spread among only 4 ships. The original plan for what was then the DLGN program was to have at least 4 frigates for each of the then 8 planned CVN-68 (Nimitz) CVBGs, for a minimum procurement of 32 frigates. However given the hostility of McNamara to the CVN-68 program, the carrier admirals were increasingly forced to resort to drastic tactics to keep the program alive, among which I believe was not only quietly shifting funds and other resources from the DLGN program to the beleaguered CVN-68 program, but also moving R&D and other costs from the balance sheet of the latter program to that of the former. All of which ultimately ended up drastically reducing procurement of the DLGNs while (seemingly) driving their costs sky high, even before one took into account shore infrastructure designed for a much greater number of nuclear powered frigates.



Indeed, the so-called Carrier mafia have made a total mockery of that law, along with their entirely fallacious criteria for CGN survivability, all to ensure that any and all resources for nuclear powered surface vessels goes solely into CVNs. However, I rather suspect that the end result of all that is going to bite them in the butt in the near future big time, pardon my French.
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I don't know about the first part, but Rickover tried to kill US Navy gas turbine experimentation precisely because he knew that if their proponents in the Navy could present their own evidence to Congress about their effectiveness, then he'd never get another nuclear surface combatant built. Which is exactly what happened - gas turbines, being quick to start, much less manpower intensive, lightweight, standardizable, and *powerful beyond belief* for their size, were so much more bang for their buck that even if a lot of people hated the Spruance-class on general principle, the "four LM-2500 gas turbines" power plant is is only *now* getting replaced, 50 years later. And even in the 70s, gas turbines changed the affordability equation from "We can buy 3 conventional steam ships for the price of two equivalent nuclear ships" to "we can buy four gas turbine ships for the price of two equivalent nuclear ships"

And the "CGN survivability" criteria are based on the Stark, Samuel B Roberts, Sheffield, and Belknap incidents, and reinforced by the Cole bombing - they now know what a modern weapon will do to modern ship construction, with empirical evidence, and they've decided that this is what it takes to adequately protect a nuclear reactor in a surface ship.

The "CVN" mafia you speak of used to be Rickover's supporters in team "Nuclear power for everything" as compared to the "nuclear is too expensive for anything except subs" crew.
 
bobbymike said:
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One of the two boats is for the specialized special operations forces and seabed warfare and speculating cost an additional $1billion or so and if so makes the current post-pandemic pricing of a 10,000t Block V with its VPM approx. $5 billion per boat and expect the follow-on Block VI may cost around $6 billion? What other programs will the Navy have to cut in able to fund two per year or as in FY2025 budget cut to a single buy of a Virginia per year?
 
Cordy said:
One of the two boats is for the specialized special operations forces and seabed warfare and speculating cost an additional $1billion or so and if so makes the current post-pandemic pricing of a 10,000t Block V with its VPM approx. $5 billion per boat and expect the follow-on Block VI may cost around $6 billion? What other programs will the Navy have to cut in able to fund two per year or as in FY2025 budget cut to a single buy of a Virginia per year?
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If Congress allocates funds for 2x Virginia-class, Navy buys two boats.
 
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Update on Navy planning revealed on Virginia, SSN(X) and Columbia at the early November Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium.

Virginia build will extend to the 2040's with Block VIII when the SNN(X) takes over, possibility of additional Columbia numbers required
Virginia build rate only approx.1.3 per year, target 2.3 by 2028, but severely limited by industrial capacity both in manpower and materials, current industrial base less than half that in the Cold War.

Navy in negotiation with GD Electric Boat for the two FY24 Virginia's, Baltimore (SSN-813) and Atlanta (SSN-813), but short by $2 billion from Congress authorization which understand $9.4 billion, $2 billion seems big difference as it was based on the original Navy 2023 estimate in the FY2024 Justification Book

 

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