Navy Ships

Lessons learned from prior submarine programs, particularly the Seawolf, could help the Navy save as much as $100 million in acquisition costs while improving design quality and construction for the SSN, the latest class of nuclear-power attack submarine. Specifically, the Navy may want to (1) contract with a single shipyard to both design and build the lead submarine, (2) delay lead ship construction until the ship's design is substantially mature, (3) strengthen the specification development and approval process, (4) identify critical components and supply vendors early in the program, and (5) reduce submarine combat system development risks. Because of the importance of applying both management and technical lessons, GAO believes that the formal Defense Department approved acquisition strategy should spell out specifically how the Navy will avoid repeating the problems of earlier programs.

GAO found that: (1) by incorporating management lessons from prior submarine construction programs, the Navy could reduce its costs and avoid the schedule delays that it has experienced in the Seawolf SSN-21 program; (2) the NSSN project manager intends to incorporate lessons learned from the Seawolf SSN-21 program into the NSSN program acquisition strategy, but the extent to which these lessons will be applied cannot be assessed until the Department of Defense (DOD) approves the strategy and makes it available to the public for evaluation; (3) the Navy estimates that NSSN cost savings could range from $90 million to $100 million; and (4) the DOD acquisition strategy should explicitly address how the Navy will avoid repeating the problems of prior construction programs.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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