The lead contractor of the US Navy's submarine program has confirmed that there will be a decrease in the rate of production of the vessels due to supply chain-related issues.
During a recent third quarter earnings call with investors, Phebe Novakovic, CEO of General Dynamics (GD), said that GD's Electric Boat division would scale back its manufacture of Columbia-class and Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to adjust to "late deliveries from major component suppliers."
Novakovic remarked that it is "neither good for the boat over time nor cost" to speed up the manufacture of only some of the sections of each submarine only for the work to stop temporarily until the other essential components are finally delivered.
Novakovic assured that the slowing down of submarine production would not affect current delivery projections, which already take the anticipated delays into account.
The scaling back of submarine production is the latest issue to be faced by the US naval shipbuilding sector. Earlier this year, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) found that workers at its Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) division had not been applying the correct welding techniques on some of the submarines and aircraft carriers under construction at its facilities in Virginia.
HII said it found no evidence that the faulty welds were done with any malicious intent. However, the House Armed Services Committee has called on the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense to provide answers and a plan for how both the Department of the Navy and NNS will protect US Navy vessels against knowingly faulty work.