Thanks for inviting me here to speak today about what Team Submarine is doing for undersea dominance. A lot of good has happened since last year’s Corporate Benefactor Days. Now, I guess it’s Corporate Member recognition days. We awarded, in April, you remember, the largest ship building contract in history, the ten ship Virginia Block IV contract; $17.6 billion. $17.6 billion for the FY ’14 through ’18 ship, ship-building contract. We delivered the first Block III Virginia-class USS NORTH DAKOTA in August and we delivered that ahead of schedule and under cost. Virginia Payload Module, it is now in the PB ’16 budget with the first installation in FY ’19 Block V Virginia. The submarine fleet upgrade for acoustic superiority is moving ahead. Forward fit on Virginia Block vs and Ohio Replacement. Back fit on Virginia Block III’s and IV’s and back fit on the current Ohio-class SSBNs. The Ohio Replacement and the U.K. Successor programs are in production with the order placed in October for the first17 missile tubes and the Ohio Replacements requirement document, CDD, and our parlance, it’s moving ahead towards JROC approval this summer. These are but a few of the significant things that we’ve gotten done in the last 12 months.
So, understanding the significance of the change ahead for our submarine enterprise, we’re doing the planning on the concurrent build, Virginia’s VPM and Ohio Replacement. A Submarine Unified Build Strategy with its clever acronym of SUBS has been developing since last summer, working towards decisions this summer. When we’re into full production of Ohio Replacement and Virginias with VPM, we’ll have an enterprise of the production workload almost twice that of today’s two per year, non-VPM Virginias. And that brings me to the thought I’d like to leave with this audience, carefully managing the change that’s ahead and working with the Navy to keep our standard of on time, under budget and high quality ship deliveries.
Starting now, we’re managing two large-scale designs and a smaller scale acoustics superiority program. By FY ’19 we’ll be building the first VPM Virginia-class, procuring Ohio Replacements two-year advanced procurement and hopefully, buying economic order quantity material for both Virginia Block V and Ohio Replacement Block I ships one and two and inserting large vertical arrays on both classes and new coatings on Virginia’s.
If you think about this program or record scenario, you’ll realize we haven’t been in this spot since the early 2000’s, when we modified JIMMY CARTER with a 100-foot hull insert and finished the lead ship, USS VIRGINIA. So, twice the workload. The lead ship SSBN, with the additional support required for the United Kingdom’s lead Successor class SSBN, and the potential for a mixed configuration Block V if we don’t achieve two per year Virginia’s, VPMs that’s change and that’s a challenge that our world’s best Navy industry team must take head on. I talked last year about retaining a SEAWOL Fedge and not becoming over confident and complacent in our impressive record of success. That edge is required even more. We are facing the most challenging test of our submarine industrial base in an era of highly contested resources and in tolerance to cost and schedule overruns,and I think that’s a sobering thought for us all.
This is the third year of our team SUBS calendar year 2015 focus areas. It’s the result of my leadership team’s all day off-site. The focus areas are not representative of the entirety of our efforts, but they’re just as they’re titled: main focus areas for the enterprise. Since it’s hard to read,I’ll read a few. Obviously in the platforms number one, delivering stuff. So, delivering JOHN WARNER out at Newport News mid-May and ILLINOIS may be by this December out of Electric Boat. Continued design work on Virginia Payload Module and completing our OSD acquisition decision point this August in setting the final length this December. Updating the Virginia class acquisition program baseline to extend the program through FY ’33 Block VII for 48 ships that will match the PB ’16 ship building plan. We’re going to get the JROC approval of our Ohio Replacement CDD by August. We’re going to release the request for proposal for Ohio Replacements SCN detail design contract this December and we are going to establish an overarching acquisition strategy to align Virginia and Ohio Replacement. That’s platforms.
In weapons and sensors, Captain Del Toro, he’s still delivering surface ship torpedo defense to the fleet. Roll on roll off configurations and it’s going on the CVN 71, which will deploy here this month and an engineering development model on the 75, deliver and install fixed systems, fixed surveillance systems, that’s a growth market and we’re frankly going to have a hard time keeping up with the demand signal. Deliver low profile photonics mast to Admiral Sawyer and SUBPAC,field 18 TB29A, we call them green arrays. Arrays with all the engineering change proposals by 30 September. That way the fleet will not go to sea without a green array hopefully by this year and all the way through ’16 before we get new technology arrays to the fleet.
Release the Mk 48 torpedo restart for the RFP’s for the after-body/tailcone and the guidance,navigation and control fore body by 30 May. We just released the draft RFP for the forward end. And now in service, develop a comprehensive SSBN modernization plan by 15 June. That is very important and it ties right in with Admiral Connor’s Aoefforts in the SSBN fleet. We’re going to complete contract award for the dry dock shelter mod (it’s an extension of 50 inches)by this April and preliminary design by this December. Reduce our SWFTS back fit installation costs. That is something we don’t talk about a lot, but we have to continue to get better. Return the submarine rescues Pressurized Rescue Module to fleet by the end of April—a long haul that Captain Tom Monroe and his crew have persevered on. And technology we can’t forget.
We need to start working on SSN(X), its concept design, tool development, and science and technology planning. We need to field improved firewalls for networks on all our SSN’s and all our SSGNs and we need to support SOCOM’s acquisition of dry combat manned submersibles. A lot. Not everything, but quite a bit in the next year.
So, today I’m just going to talk about a few items and leave some time for questions. I know that’s shocking, but usually I run over so I’ll try to not run over. Platforms and payloads today.
As I noted last fall, it’s been ten years since Virginia was delivered on 12 October,and we have enjoyed a decade of acquisition excellence since. Our ships are delivering with progressive schedule and quality improvements,and they’re delivering within budget. We have 11 delivered, 10 under construction, the 11th starts later this September. The first Block III ship delivered two days early, under cost with 20% design change. The first three Block IV ships are all under construction. Seven ships completed one or more full-length deployments. The Block IV contract was signed on 28 April;it was the largest contract in Navy ship building history. Two boats per year. Minimal design change. I tell people the eight in Block III were prototypes for the ten we bought in Block IV. There are some As I noted last fall, it’s been ten years since Virginia was delivered on 12 October,and we have enjoyed a decade of acquisition excellence since. Our ships are delivering with progressive schedule and quality improvements,and they’re delivering within budget. We have 11 delivered, 10 under construction, the 11th starts later this September. The first Block III ship delivered two days early, under cost with 20% design change. The first three Block IV ships are all under construction. Seven ships completed one or more full-length deployments. The Block IV contract was signed on 28 April;it was the largest contract in Navy ship building history. Two boats per year. Minimal design change. I tell people the eight in Block III were prototypes for the ten we bought in Block IV. There are some Everyone’s familiar with this slide, the Virginia-class blocks. We’re in the heart of production on our Block III Virginia’s, 11, ships 11 through 18. The first ship, NORTH DAKOTA, today is being fitted with a dry dock shelter. The first test of the VPT’s and Tomahawk launch scenario should happen, I think, later next year. JOHN WARNER, it’s in its delivery stroke in Newport News. And alphatrials in April.
We’ll be in alpha trials and we’re going to deliver that thing in May. Three months early to its66-month contract delivery. ILLINOIS, Jeff Geiger and his team, they are right behind. And it’s very challenging, but if the Navy Electric Boat Team pulls it off it will be the first Virginia-class to deliver in under 60-months. That’s ship number 13. Lucky 13 I guess, right? That 60-month goal is important just beyond the additional early availability to Admiral Connor and Admiral Sawyer. 60-month also lowers the acquisition cost and will enable VPM and acoustic superiority to be affordably forward fit into this class. Block IV is under construction with the first two ships in 14 in progress and the first15 ship just starting I think this week. Block V is ahead of us, but very much a part of today’s design workload with both VPM and acoustic superiority changes. When these ships start to deliver ten years from now, in 2025 they’ll be a new breed of SSN (longer than our 41 for freedom SSBN’s)in carrying the most capability and flexibility than the U.S. has ever fielded in a fast attack submarine.
This is a great one slide in our program.We should make it available to everyone in this room. Contracts on the left, authorized year, delivery, spans, and graphic of how this team has done against a progressively harder span. This is the machine we have created. A stable, continuously improving enterprise delivering world’s best capability. We’ll have 18 ships worth of practice and 8 years of two per year delivery before Block V and the introduction of significant change both in configuration and build rate.
This is the year we’re updating the acquisition program base-line to extend the class beyond the 30 ship program of record to 48 ships and priced to Virginia payload module.On the top, the build rate aligned to the PB16 ship building plan, yellow is the extension. On the right, the price for extending the class from a selected acquisition report view. Below that, two options; one per year build rate for 15 VPM’s and another option that has an occasional two VPM build rate picking up all remaining Virginia-class through FY ’33. Now, the pricing our NAVSEA cost estimate is as shown. The Virginia-class in total will grow by 75% in cost with this change and the APB extension of 48 ships. The chart on the bottom is the funding of PB16. I credit strong support in the Navy and DOD to sustain the design funding for the FY19 insertion and place the ship construction Navy funding commensurate with a 1VPM per year rate. The build costs are just budgetary at this point. They’ve been priced by NAVSEA, however our expectations should be to lower the acquisition costs below the first ship’s $704 million and the second ship’s $577 million. Secretary Stackley, when we pre-briefed him for the Navy’s Gate 6 review that approved the VPM insertion and class extension challenged Captain Dave Goggins, my program manager, to get the VPM price down such that we can buy 20 for the price of 15. Why? Because 20 is what the Navy needs to fulfill its undersea role. It is our job to work this challenge. I go back to my note on why 60 months for construction span is so darn important. We must drive down VPM’s cost and the ship’s cost so we can give the nation the capability it needs. It’s pretty heady stuff, but I’m convinced we’re up to it. Now, since we’re extending this class, some changes are necessary to pace the threat. The Block VII Virginias will be in service until 2071.
The PB16 budget supports the installation of significant changes to the last EB delivered ship in Block III, the FY 13-1 SOUTH DAKOTA. That ship will deliver in 2017, begin a one year post shakedown availability in 2018 and be at sea with the acoustic superiority package in 2019. That timing allows sufficient at sea experience to influence the form fit design for Block V. Why make these changes and why now?The Navy hasn’t made significant investment in new hull array technology really since the Virginia’s lightweightaperture rays and the high-frequency chin array in the ‘90s. The same is true for hull coating. Virginia’s coating was developed in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. SOUTH DAKOTAinsertion program will demonstrate the requisite changes necessary for the Virginia class to maintain its undersea dominance throughout the mid-century. A number of modest changes to machinery internal to the ship. Looking ahead, portions of the package will be back fit on Virginia’s and Ohio’s and forward fit on Virginia and Ohio replacements. This is a very important change and along with VPM and Ohio Replacement design prototyping and build must be carefully managed to ensure oncost, on schedule, and on quality performance.
I will finish my Virginia-class section here talking about Virginia Payload Module. With any cost effectively inserted change,the requirement must be clear, thoughtful, and stable. On the left, the requirements document, the CDD has been approved by the JROC. The need for VPM’s capability, unquestioned. We are the first program, however to have key cost and key schedule parameters inserted into the CDD;something we gladly took on.
Congress has recognized the value that a Block V with VPM value brings to the fight and has asked the Navy to assess if the VPM can be installed in a Block IV Virginia. You can read it in Secretary Stackley’s testimony to the House last week. We’ll have an answer in April.
Significant progress since our last Corporate Benefactors meeting.The design is progressing on schedule with a design force of up to over 300 personnel at Electric Boat.The VPM’s general location and arrangement are set, the concept just forward of the reactor compartment bulkhead and incorporating an internal ballast tank. There’s work ahead in understanding just how an internal ballast tank works. It is very different than any tank we have put on a modern SSN. There are 38 key decisions to get to finalship length by 30 September and ship specs complete by the end of December. Now we’ve looked ahead and developed a payload strategy. Numerous payloads are accommodated by the baseline payload module. Space and weight has been reserved for key capabilitiesidentified by a 2014 payload study. Specific features will be included in the VPM including upper level access doors to affordably accommodate likely future payloads such as the Universal Launch and Recovery Mechanism and the large diameter UUV. We’re also reserving topside space for the 50 inch extended dry dock shelter. Affordability, flexibility, and low technical risks all very important aspects of the Virginia payload module.
Now, from an acquisition perspective the Navy’s gate is progressing as a paper gate, so effective was Dave Goggin’s pre-brief leading to an in-progress review in August with Secretary Kendall. There’s no doubt that the next decade of work in Virginia is our most challenging. The last year of work has positioned the program well for this work ahead. All right, that’s Virginia.
On to Ohio Replacement. We all know this is strictly replace-ment forthe Ohio-class SSBN. The Ohio Replacement is the most important program in the nation and a generational investment that is a responsibility versus a burden it is often portrayed as. 70% of our nation’s operationally deployed nuclear warheads will reside on this platform. We are producing a national capability that should be funded with national investment. Where the program funds are managed, that’s not an issue. The Navy ship construction Navy account or National Sea Based Deterrence Fund. The issue augmenting the nation’s shipbuilding budget. Secretary Ray Mabusnoted that the U.S.either needs to fund the Ohio Replace-ment Program as a national asset or increase the amount of money the Navy gets to build other ships in the coming decades. As he eloquently put it at the Navy Surface Association, “The Navy should not fund one ship with another ship.” Our CNO, Admiral Greenertreaffirmed sea-based deterrence as the service’s number one priority because of its homeland security implications. He stated, “I would propose no reductions” during his 26 February testimony before the House Appropriations Committee. “We are committed to it,” he says,“it has to be done.” To me, that’s pretty clear direction.
We’re delivering a capability. The capability entails all the platforms supporting elements: reactor, electric drive, strategic weapons, requisite developments like the missile compartment prototyping. The Navy has aligned the budget lines for each element to ensure we have all aspects and development at the rate necessary to meet our lead ship dates and our U.K. partners Successor Class.As I noted previously, Ohio’s Replacement funding is the Navy’s number one priority. That means the funding across all these lines must be maintained at the PB16 levels to keep the development on track. We are beyond the harvesting of any more near term savings form deferring lead ship construction. Thebumper sticker is our theme. There is no margin for delay and you’ll see why in the next slide.
Most here are very familiar with this schedule. The markers haven’t changed. First patrol 2031. Delivery 2028. Start build 2021. Seven-year span. Start a design greater than 80% complete at construction start. First article quad-pack. Start building it in 2017. SCN design contract FY ’17, milestone B FY ’16. The heart of technical product development is here.System descriptions, system diagrams, arrangements for the missile compartment, and for the missile compartment design, disclosure, and construction. The non-ship work prototype is both being built in the U.S. and is being disclosed across our electronic bridge to the U.K.’s design yard BAE.
There are over 2,500 designers at Electric Boat and Newport News as well as hundreds of subcontractors and Navy personnel working on Ohio replacement design right now. The pace is increasing, prototyping is progressing, the design is maturing, all critical to making Ohio Replacement’s lead ship construction happen on cost and on schedule. I’ve given my Ohio Replacement team a challenge, break the paradigm that lead ships grow in cost by as much as 30% after milestone B and are late some up to two years. Our mantra is this lead ship will be on cost and will be on schedule and will be ready for its first patrol in 2031. $17.2 billion for design and prototyping over a 20-year span, a 14-year lead angle to lead ship construction start. The most extensive and well thought out prototyping and risk reduction strategy everemployed. Three major test facilities, the relentless drive to keep on schedule and on quality without R&D and design in the extremely successful Virginia-class foundation.
At ship 33, when Ohio’s lead ship is authorized, that will make this a reality. What everyone associated with this program, government or industry, should be laser-like focused on. If you don’t believe it, you probably shouldn’t be on the team. What can or should we be doing now tomake this paradigm-breaking goal our reality? It is that important and it can be done.
Now we’re much more than paper or digits. It’s moving and fast. Tina Wujick showed some of you on Tuesday the significant progress as did Brian Wilson. Since Corporate Benefactors last year we have finished the large scale vehicle testing at Lake Pend Oreille. Some large scale vehicle testing. We’ve completed the Virginia Payload to shock testing. That’s a cost saving measure to lower this cross class test. We’ve awarded the construction contract for the first 17 missile tubes and completed another ship control system concept of operations. We’ve awarded develop-ment of the first article contracts for the major electric drive components and we’ve broken ground on Electric Boat’s QuonsetPoint facility for the quad pack manufacturing. There’s more ahead. Continue propulsortesting, full scale signature testing on a full scale Virginia-class, missile tube construction, our first review of non-propulsion electronics and HM&Ecomponent prototyping; diesels, air conditioning plants, RO units. A lot going on.
Now Will showed you these curves to those of you who attended the Submarine Industrial BaseCouncil briefing. Major program milestones at the top, time on the bottom through 2023, curves representing the propulsion plant, missile compartment and the rest of the ship all aggregated for the total program. This is the design work at the heart of Ohio Replacement’s technology development phase. Will showed you 2015. This is what we accomplished in 2014; both the design yard and Navy are maturing their teams to match the schedule rate and meet the tough throughputahead 2015. Getting to 100% in descriptions, 96% in diagrams, 83% in component specs, and 36% in arrange-ments and even 5% in disclosures. This is hard, hard work. Not shown is the work to support the U.K.’s Common Missile Department. That relationship is next.
U.K. Successor SSBN has its lead ship milestone in 2016. They call it Main Gate. From there,they will press ahead with ship construction leading to a 2025 delivery and a patrol 2028. Two-and-a-half to three years before the U.S. That does put both the U.K. and the U.S. in an unprecedented position of having the U.K. be first of firing a D5 missile from a new U.S. designed missile compartment makes one think how we meet the Polaris sales agreement intent. The middle word is sales of an existing system. Vice Admiral Terry Benedict and I have committed our collective resources to making this work. Strategic Systems Programs, they’re about one-thirddone constructing a strategic weapons systems ashore facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is the bottom line in this chart. And let the contract for the China Lake launch test facility. These two major test facilities are critical aspects of de-risking the U.K.’s program. The U.S. will run tests before the U.K.’s need and is shown here.
The U.S. is also building the first quad pack in QuonsetPoint before the U.K. does it in Barrow. Our commitments arecodified in a technical agreement TA80 to the PSA, signed by the U.K. project officers.EB is disclosing the design to the BAE on a daily basis with literally thousands of model transfers taking place to meet the U.K.’s lead ship design schedule. An impressive achievement worked through an Integrated Collaborative Environment, ICE, set up for this specific task. Just another challenge for this unprecedented program. The U.S. is strongly committed to keeping the U.K. program on track for sustaining their continuousat seadeterrence capability.
Now the affordability. The director for Ohio replacement, Jack Evans, is very focused, as is his team, on driving down costs in all areas: in engineering and design, in construction, and in life cycle. Our philosophy, credible capability at the lowest possible cost, it still stands. There’s been progress. Non-recurring engineering, we’re really down over a billion dollars from where we started at 18-and-a-half. The difference from what you see there for Jack’s estimate and what the NAVSEA shows is accounting for the Missile Tube Module. I prefer to keep the MTM in the cost of the ship, because it actually is a part of the ship, but we’re doing it in prototyping so it’s already funded. Lead ship, that 6.2 is really more reflective of the Missile Two Module moving out into the R&D. In real dollars, that’s $8.8 billion. You’ll hear the CNO talk about the lead ship’s about 9, that’s what that number equates to. 6.2 in $10. Follow ship, we’re only $300 million from the affordability target. That’s $9.8 billion in then year dollars all the way through FY ’34 so, 4, 5.2 that equals almost 10 in real dollars through the build of Ohio Replacement. In O&S, we’re already under the target, but believe me we are not done.
So, finishing the Ohio Replacement section, we’re heading for milestone B in August. Two key intermediate points. August of ’16 that is. A JROC approves CDD in August, andan RFP release this December with an in-progress review with Secretary Kendall just before that. We are in the heart of developing an acquisition strategy. There are significant strands, the SUBS effort I talked about we just received the ship order input on how we should jointly build Ohio replacements. Contracts, continuous production, multi-program material buys all have to be resolved and this summer is the time when we bring that together. Obviously extremely important work.
I’m going to breeze through an unimportant topic like torpedo research. Next slide.
All right, at the top, this is how we’re trying to manage current CBASS kit production with my friend Michelle and her Lockheed Martin team and torpedo restart. Our next two program of record updates APB 5 and APB 6/ technology insertion 1. So, the chart on the top shows the next kit contract. Lockheed Martin is our current prime here. Production restart, we just released the draft request for proposal for the guidance control with a CLINfor the CBASS kits. The afterbody tailcone,draft RFP will soon follow. The nexton development, APB 5. Look, we can go faster on APB 5. Look how long the OT line is, two years. Almost two hundred weapons shot. It is a software only upgrade. Ridiculous. So, we recognize that and we’re working withmy acquisition leadership, and DOT&E to try to work a much better strategy of effectively using an environmentally friendly weapons analysis facility do about 1,500 simulation runs with far more representative targets. Then shoot the weapons in the water that help do some of the points to validate the model and do some of the things that you can’t frankly get captured adequately in a model especially end to end testing all the way ahead and it’s one wayto try to get the capability tothe fleet much faster.
Now we’re threading in future navalcapabilities and prototyp-ing that you see on the bottom there. APB 6 TI 1 is where I think we have a logical landingpad for injecting phase changesin the torpedo’s architecture and modularity upgrades and forward build. The modular torpedo work, it doescontinue; we have not ignored what Admiral Davis and his Restart Review Panel told us. Joe Tofaloin N97 is working a requirement study with SPA. Penn Statereally championed by guys like Admiral (retired)Paul Sullivan and PMS404 are standing up a heavy weight torpedo working group to put programs and plans behind moving towards a more modular and a more capable Mark 48. There’s significant attention in this area. Probably the most in the torpedo business in the last two decades.
And I’m going to close on my systems piece with one about electronic warfare. Steve Debushas done some pioneering work in trying to bring us into the modern age in the electronic warfare biz doing it much like we do ARCI and how it revolutionized the submarine’s approach to SONAR.The rest of this decade we will see a dramatic shift in submarine electronic warfare as we recapitalizethis critical mission capability. While our existing BLQ-10EW system remains extremely capable as an intelligence collection system itsability to rapidly adapt to the changing EW threat environment, an environment driven mostly by the proliferation of mobile data service and low power commercial radars,has to be improved. To address this we’re undertaking an accelerated fielding of the electronic warfare next generation architecture. EWNGA and its BLQ-10system look first to digitize the EW environment and provide this data to modern COTS-based processing where we can respond to the new threats more rapidly through software based solutions. The evolution of the BLQ-10is being taken in steps to reduce the risk, but also field incremental capability as rapidly as possible.
This year we will takeprototype portions of the architecture and participate in both land and sea based tests to validate the proposed digital approach. Starting in FY ’17 we will begin installation of a subset of EWNGA in conjunction with our TI-16 SSN modernizations. This subset focuses on the ELINT or radar-based threats to the ship and adds a vastly increased processing suite to start utilizing the digital data that’s being provided. For our TI-16 new construction ships, they’ll receive a larger increment of the EWNGA to include digital basedCOMMIT or Communications Intelligence equipment. Both of these early efforts establish the layered architecture framework for future updates as we move EW processing into the digital software-based approach common with the rest of the SWFTSTI/APB process. Now while these efforts are underway we continue to work with ONR,industry and the rest of the S&T community to expand EWNGA into a system that can monitor the full EW spectrum simultaneously and provide the digital outputs on request to apps based solutions. This is a monumental effort mostly in signalprocessing and network data management, but one we are confident we can field with ourTI 20 based systems. All these efforts are not being done alone. BeyondONR we also have full partners with NAVAIR on the early EWNGA efforts and have a growing consortium participating inthese proposed solutions that currently include PEOIWS5, Naval Cyber Warfare Development Group (NCWDG)and even the U.S. Army. The goal of this group is aset of common hardware and software that can be used across multiple war fighting domains.The CNO has spoken strongly about how the Navy needs to move forcefully into the EW cyber arena and with EWNGA I think we’re responding rapidlyto that call.
It’s important to know that next SSN is being seriously con-sidered and we’re building a plan to keepworking it in the next five years. We were successful in getting the Submarine Technology Symposium of 2015 to devote an entire session dedicated to it. It looks like a government led effort, however it is government led with significant participation from our UARCS,our ship building partners, and industry as we can bring you in. Each concept design cycle in the top will have a specific theme: survivability, operational availability, etc. If you go back to 1988 and how we did the submarine technology ASTAP, Advanced Submarine TechnologyProgram under guys like Mark Kenny,Dave Carlson, and many others, we’re repeating that. As a matter of fact, we’re bringing some of those, I’ll call them old dogs, they’re not here, but we’re bringing them back to help mentor this new group of submarine concept designers so that we build the team, the tools, the processes, identify gaps, and start working on it so when it comes time in 2024 to really get in to the concept design work, we’re ready. We’ll have people, tools, we’ll even have a budget line. Very important work.
This crown jewel industrial base, the best in the business of delivering unmatched capability consistently meets or beats cost, schedule, and quality standards. You should feel justifiably proud of this record. I’ve given you a brief look at what’s possible at the ship platform level and at the subsystem and component level. We can deliver when we put our collective minds to the task. Who would’ve thought we’d have 12 new thin line towed arraysin the fleet’s hands in less than two years or new low profile imaging mastin also about two years or that we would deliver a Virginia in less than 60 months. We can meet Vice Admiral Connor’s move faster undersea dominance tenant, however, as I’ve noted before we can become inured by our success; confident that we can do anything.
Monday,I was in Port Hueneme, California talking to one of my young, new engineering commanders. He happened to be a reservist and he worked for NASA and hewas very familiar with the Columbia accident. He actually knew some of the astronauts like Willie McCool, who was my company mate. I’ve been fascinated by the organizational ignorance, arrogance, and complacency in NASA that led to this tragedy. You can read it online at the Columbia accident investigation board, chapter 7, the organizational aspects of that tragedy. It’s required reading, by me, for all the new engineering duty dolphin candidates. Now we are not NASA, and we were held up to a standard SUBSAFEand the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Standard, Admiral Sullivanhimself testified about the SUBSAFEpiece,Admiral Bowman, Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. However, I think it’s a telling example of what can happen when we let ourselves become too satisfied with our success. We have a daunting challenge ahead: carefully managing the change that’s ahead and working together to keep our standard of on time, under budget, and high quality ship delivery. In my opinion, we are facing the most challenging time of our submarine industrialbase in an era of highly contested resources and intoleranceto cost and schedule overruns. We are exactly the right community to take on Admiral Richardson’s challenge to us. What should we be doing today to prepare ourselves to push through the work ahead and do it at our standard? I am committed to the goal I’ve given to my Ohio Replacement team and to this industry; a lead ship that is on cost and on schedule. If you roll your eyes, you’re off the island. You have to believe it. If you don’t believe it’s possible, why not? What should we, or can we do to make this become a reality? It’s a true break from our historic chains and a standard that is entirely within our control. Take stick and rudderand make it so. I like these kinds of challenges, it getsme up in the morning and frankly, it should for you also. I thank you for the time and for the privilege of being the PEO for this outstanding undersea warfare business,and I look forward to the work ahead. Thank you.
