Bartlett Maritime Founder Addresses Shipbuilding Industry Group

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. – The crisis in U.S. submarine maintenance has grown to “an inescapable, urgent problem” that the Navy must address. That was the message Bartlett Maritime Corporation Chairman and CEO Edward L. Bartlett, Jr, delivered in his address to the 39th annual meeting of the Marine Machinery Association Oct. 5, 2023.

Bartlett told the gathering of shipbuilding industry suppliers that while Navy efforts the last few years to improve submarine maintenance shipyards have been helpful, more must be done.

“While these efforts clearly remain vital and are having a positive impact, it is equally clear that both additional industrial infrastructure and access to an expanded labor pool are needed.”

Recent criticism of the Navy’s ability to build and maintain submarines in the press and on Capitol Hill have put a spotlight on the problem that has been building for years, Bartlett said. Now, the delays in maintenance are keeping submarines from operations at sea at an unprecedented rate. The resulting reduction of available submarines decreases fleet readiness and damages the Navy’s warfighting capability amidst rising concerns about increasing danger of conflict at sea.

The solution, Bartlett said, lies in “fixing the fundamental underlying maintenance capacity and capability problem and to dramatically accelerate our submarine overhauls.”

Bartlett Maritime has proposed developing new facilities for repairing and rotating submarine components as a first step. The company’s founder called on members of the Marine Machinery Association support Bartlett Maritime’s proposal or some action just as timely, affordable and effective to solving the problem quickly.

“We know how to get back to where we need to be, to restore this urgently required submarine maintenance industrial infrastructure,” Bartlett said. “However, we must be creative and pro-active to help the Navy return to robustness in an accelerated manner. We don’t have decades to rebuild.”

Full text of the prepared remarks and the presentation to the Marine Machinery Association are available here.

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About Bartlett Maritime Corporation
America’s submarine industrial base consistently delivered a new submarine into service every 44 days in the 1960’s. As recently as the 1980’s, it delivered five new submarines into service each year while maintaining more than 100 submarines. Today, just as the Navy is being called on to satisfy strategically essential AUKUS obligations, the submarine industrial base is in the midst of a serious capacity and capability crisis. In fact, according to the Congressional Research Service, 37% of nuclear-powered attack submarines are unavailable for operation due to long term depot maintenance delays. In response, Bartlett Maritime Corporation is preparing to execute an immediately actionable, cost-effective public-private-partnership proposal to add required capacity and capability to the submarine industrial base.