During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) questioned Rear Admiral Jonathan E. Rucker, Program Executive Officer of Attack Submarines, about the use of funds allocated to Navy shipbuilding.
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00:00Mr. Sermon, I guess the, I don't know if it was you did this or somebody else, but you shifted
00:07from executing industrial-based funding through shipyards to a new not-for-profit Blue Forge
00:12Alliance. Can you talk about how much money we've given to Blue Forge Alliance and if we've gotten
00:18a return? Yes, sir, I can. So over the course of, since 2023, we have done approximately
00:30200 supply chain projects as well as numerous workforce efforts as well as coordination of
00:36our advanced manufacturing college, bringing together colleges and our technical community
00:42efforts via a non-profit company called Blue Forge Alliance. That company has about right
00:52around $2 billion that has flowed through it to the industrial base on the efforts I talked
00:59about, primarily on supply chain projects, right? The company is a non-profit. The company has
01:06a overhead rate and an execution rate that is actually less expensive for executing these
01:15projects than we had as we were executing them with the shipbuilders. But just as importantly,
01:20the projects that they are executing, it has, and I believe that the shipbuilders would share
01:27this perspective, takes pressure off of the shipbuilders' supply chain team who is buying
01:32this 5x, really 6x by components increase across the industrial base. We bring the Blue Forge Alliance
01:39team into battery to go and execute the actual investment projects that raise capability and
01:44capacity. I'm by no means stuck on like, hey, we got to use Blue Forge Alliance for this either.
01:51My plan going forward is to maximize bringing in partners from across the defense industrial base,
01:58from other parts of the United States, from other industrial base places of excellence where we've
02:04seen these kind of uplifts and learning and having more partnerships to ultimately get us to one plus
02:10two, to get us to one plus two and a third. Thank you.
02:13All right, thank you.
02:15Every week when you talk about the different ballistic missile submarines, when they're going to be
02:19ready, is that actually ready to go to combat? Or is that just delivered and there's still going to be a lot of work to do afterwards?
02:27Yes, so the dates I was quoting earlier were delivery dates out of the shipbuilder. There is another,
02:32you know, approximately 18 months of time it takes from when the ship is delivered
02:37until it's ready for first patrol. Lead ship is a little bit longer, but we are partnering with the
02:42fleet to shrink that to as small a period of time as we possibly can.
02:47Is that still way later than what they thought?
02:51Yes, it's still, you know, we're still looking at, you know, it basically carries forward into that
02:57into that on patrol date, although we're looking to shrink some of that as well as the, as I mentioned
03:01earlier, the work we're doing with the shipbuilders to try accelerate delivery schedules to get the ship
03:06delivered as soon as possible. So that's, that's the fastest right now. That's the thing we can do.
03:11We're also working with the fleet to optimize that post delivery to first patrol time frame to make
03:18sure we're, we're cutting out all the extra stuff in there and make sure it's, it's really just the
03:22things we have to do. Okay.
03:24So how many shipyards can we build at nuclear aircraft carrier and how many do we have?
03:32Sir, you know, given the size of the aircraft carrier and the specialized facilities,
03:39we only have, we only have one shipyard in the United States that's capable of building them and
03:43that's Newport News Shipbuilding under HII. Okay. And could they be built overseas?
03:49Are the shipyards overseas? Not, not that, not that immediately could build a carrier. I'd have to,
03:57you know, check and see if the reward net were, were big enough potentially, but obviously with
04:01the nuclear power aspects of the carrier, the complex machinery, which is part of what makes
04:07forward capability so special. You know, I w I would say it would probably be unlikely in my opinion
04:12that we could do that overseas. But, you know, I'm always willing to look at any alternative to improve
04:18performance. And so, so if we, if they don't perform, then what do we do? We're just, we don't have any
04:26options? Sir, Newport News Shipbuilding is our partner in building aircraft carriers, but we also
04:33hold them accountable under the contract. All of the provisions that are in there are designed to
04:41incentivize their performance. If they don't do that properly, they don't get those incentives. We do
04:47that and we hold them accountable in many other ways day to day on their performance, right? But at
04:52the end of the day, we do have to partner with them. I do believe that we can do both and both
04:58RPO Navy organizations, such as the supervisor shipbuilding exercise accountability of the builder
05:04at all possible levels at the same time as we work with them to produce the ships.
05:09Wouldn't we, wouldn't it be beneficial to have competition?
05:11Sir, it's always beneficial to have competition. Prior in my career as a, as a captain, I was the
05:18destroyer program manager for the Arleigh Burke class. I very much enjoyed having two shipbuilders
05:23that were in competition with each other as we built that class. It has to be a class-by-class basis,
05:29and obviously the carrier brings special constraints.
05:32So, Emma Rucker, so we, so, um, we're continuing to be way behind on the Virginia class program. I mean,
05:41is it, I mean, is it really anything that's happening now? Because didn't they tell, uh,
05:47tell us before we were going to be on time and it still hasn't happened? Is it, I mean, what's realistic?
05:52And the same question I asked Emma Weeks, when you say you're going to deliver something,
05:56it doesn't mean it's ready to go to, um, to war, right? And there's significant delays after that.
06:03Yes, sir. Thanks for the question. I'll kind of work my way from the second question here first.
06:07Um, when we deliver Virginia class today, they are the highest quality platforms in the Navy,
06:13um, independently assessed by our, what's called our in-serve team. They have the highest quality score
06:17of any ship in the Navy. Um, from the time we've delivered them, the, we've worked with the fleet
06:23based on the fleet's needs to actually deploy multiple submarines. So both New Jersey, um, and
06:29Rick over both deployed before their post shakedown availability and Iowa's on track to do that this
06:33year as well. So my answer is on that we do to support the fleet and let them use them, um, and
06:39adjust our schedules when world events require that. Um, where we stand today on production, sir,
06:45we need to continue to improve. Um, it's both an issue with the supply base and at the shipbuilders.
06:51We've got actions ongoing, both with congressional help to support the uplift of the supplier base.
06:56We've already seen some bottlenecks removed. We have more to go. And then at the shipbuilders,
07:00we need to get after their production capacity as well. So we're, we're producing a little over
07:05one a year, right? And what are we funding? Are we funding more than that? Um, the, we have funded
07:11two, the Congress has appropriated two, um, and authorized two in the past. The 25 budget has one
07:18that's in there. Um, the advantage of that one, which I've talked on the record before about is
07:23right now the production system is what I would say is out of balance across manufacturing, kind of
07:28the steel production outfitting and final assembly and tests. We need to get that back re rebalance.
07:34We actually slowed down portions of the production system that were at a two per year rate to make
07:38sure the whole system could then be uplifted together. And so that one boat and 25 allows us
07:44to resynchronize and rebalance the production system. And then going forward, the two per year
07:48rate that we anticipate doing allows us to do a more efficient ramp up to get to the two per year
07:53that we need to achieve. So does it make sense to keep funding at a rate weighing excess of what
07:59we're producing? Great question, sir. I understand that perspective. Um, part of the continuing to look
08:07going forward as we go into the 26 budget, obviously that's still being looked at, but the advantage of the
08:12two per year is if you look across the production system, we need all phases of it to get to that
08:16two per year. And so if we go back down to one per year, looking out in the future, the ability to ramp
08:21back up to two would cause us to have that same challenges of ramp, which we're going through now.
08:26We have a clear plan working with Matt Sermon's team in the industrial base, and then with our
08:30shipbuilders on a path to get there. So going back down, we would still have to get back up again
08:34to support what we need for our force structure of 66 submarines, and then also our ARCUS partners.
08:42It just didn't seem to make much sense when we fund, we're funding two, we're not getting two.
08:47But if we don't keep funding two, we'll never get to two. Seems, it seems completely out of whack
08:52of how, what we're spending. I understand, sir, which is why in 25 we put one forward to kind of allow
08:58the system to catch back up and ensure we get rebalanced.
09:01Okay. Anybody have any questions?
09:04Yeah, I have a couple. Thanks, Mr.