Why Can’t We Keep Our Attack Submarines Ready for Action?
Bartlett Maritime Corporation and its Bartlett Maritime Plan™ Industry Team, including the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, Goldman Sachs, Fincantieri Marine Group, Squire Patton Boggs and the Mayors of Lorain and Lordstown, OH, will host a Panel Discussion and Press Conference entitled, “Resolving the Submarine Maintenance Crisis: Restoring National Security,” Wednesday, March 9, 2022, at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, DC 20041. The Panel Discussion and Press Conference will be live streamed via webcast on our website.
In October 2016, a 688-class submarine entered the shipyard for a planned 6-month overhaul. This ship finally completed its overhaul and left the shipyard in October of 2021 – more than five years later. In the meantime, the next submarine scheduled for that dry dock slot sat, waiting at the pier for 4 years – completely inoperable because its dive certification had lapsed. With a 35-year planned service life, that ship is going to go more than a decade between operational deployments due to the delays in starting its overhaul. These are not isolated cases – between 2008 and 2018 the submarine force lost 10,363 operational days at an added cost of more than $1.5 Billion, according to GAO Report 19-229. This National Security problem also keeps getting worse. Just last year, according to Pacific Submarine Force Commander Rear Admiral Jeffrey Jablon, the fleet lost nearly 1,500 submarine operational days to idle time.
According to the Commander of Fleet Forces Command, Admiral Daryl Caudle, “I don’t have enough capacity. I don’t have enough dry docks, and I don’t have enough shipyards.”
The Bartlett Maritime Plan™ is a proactive immediately actionable public-private-partnership designed to solve this problem and to restore National Security. The plan includes building American Naval Shipyard in Lorain, OH, and American Naval Depot in Lordstown, OH, and training a ready workforce in greater Northeast Ohio/Northwest Pennsylvania to staff these urgently required new maintenance facilities.
While there is an exceptionally challenging shortage of skilled trades personnel along the Nation’s Ocean coasts, there is an abundant, ready pool of skilled trades personnel and apprentice candidates along the North Coast. Bartlett Maritime has partnered with the Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO to develop this entirely new workforce.
Capital for this project will be provided by an innovative and unique public-private-partnership between Bartlett Maritime Corporation and both the State of Ohio and the US Navy, applying existing federal and state laws. The Goldman Sachs Public Sector and Infrastructure Banking group has been retained to advise in the establishment of the project capital structure.
Squire Patton Boggs, through its Cleveland, OH, and Washington, DC, offices, is providing outside legal counsel to Bartlett Maritime Corporation to support development and execution of the Bartlett Maritime Plan™.
Submarines to be overhauled at American Naval Shipyard at Lorain will require buoyancy assistance through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Fincantieri Marine Group’s Bay Shipbuilding of Sturgeon Bay, WI, will develop and build the Oceangoing Transit Carriers (patent pending) for this project, basing this new vessel on an existing vessel type now built at Sturgeon Bay.
Commenting on the project, Dario Deste, President and CEO of Fincantieri Marine Group here in the U.S., stated, “We believe this plan represents a potential ‘win-win’ for the Navy and for numerous Midwest communities, specifically in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. We support this plan, and we are keenly interested in partnering in any way possible.”
Lordstown, OH, Mayor Arno Hill and Lorain, OH, Mayor Jack Bradley will each discuss what these projects will mean to their communities.,
US Navy Submarines are currently built by General Dynamics Electric Boat in Quonset Point, RI, and Groton, CT, and by Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, VA. The 4 existing Naval Shipyards are in Portsmouth, VA; Kittery, ME/Portsmouth, NH; Bremerton, WA; and Pearl Harbor, HI. The new facilities proposed in the Bartlett Maritime Plan™ will collaborate with these 6 shipyards, not compete with them – providing the additional industrial capacity and capability which is so desperately required to restore the US Navy’s attack submarine force to full operational readiness.
RSVPs are requested at info@BartlettMaritime.com.