Getting submarines, or funding the US to get them

December 17, 2025

US nuclear submarines are phenomenally complex machines. Their advanced technology (reactor plants, sonar arrays, combat systems) requires intensive and meticulous maintenance. The public shipyards responsible for major overhauls and refuelling (Norfolk, Portsmouth, Puget Sound, Pearl Harbor) have been plagued by ageing infrastructure and equipment, critical skilled labor shortages and a massive backlog of deferred maintenance.

This has dramatically extended maintenance periods. It’s not uncommon for planned availabilities to run years over schedule, drastically lowering the operational availability rate. In the last decade, this rate has been devastatingly low for attack submarines.

Add to that new construction delays (Virginia & Columbia Classes).

The two private shipyards building all US submarines (General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding) are stretched beyond their limits.They are simultaneously building Virginia-class attack subs, designing the next-generation SSN(X), and, most critically, building the colossal Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. In addition the specialised submarine industrial base of over 16,000 suppliers was hollowed at the end of the Cold War.

All this means that the billions being handed over by Marles will go to assisting the US to meet their needs but not ours.