The problem with these kind of proposals - and from a quick read of the WSJ article, this one isn't an exception - is that they argue the merits of buying this or that, while ignoring all the additional logistics, training, manning, and support "tail" that goes along with procuring fundamentally weapon systems. The author also makes the error of assuming that the current SSN production rate represents the maximum capacity of the yards, rather than the result of spreading out production across multiple FY budgets.
The Navy could buy conventional boats off of foreign yards. It’d be a political shitshow but it’s technically feasible. Then it’d have to invest the considerable capital to build and man additional training and support facilities, and retrain a significant portion of the sub force to operate and maintain them. And the additional parts train. And presumably you’d have to outsource major repair availabilities to foreign yards since US yards aren’t set up to do it - another political shit show and impractical besides. And where do we get all these extra sailors to man them? I don’t imagine the sub force has a dozen boats’ worth of extra sailor just polishing brass. And where do we get the instructors and tech reps? The last USN guys who worked on conventional boats are long gone, and those were totally different designs and several generations of technology back anyway.
Other than that, yeah. Great idea so long as you don’t have to figure out how to actually do it, or pay for it. It requires Big Navy to somehow find all that extra shipbuilding (procurement would still come out of the build budget) and OMN funding, and the political appetite in Congress to spend it all on subs built in foreign yards. Or, they could instead spend it on accelerating SSN construction. Much more practical and politically palatable than this Rube Goldberg “solution.”
The Navy could buy conventional boats off of foreign yards. It’d be a political shitshow but it’s technically feasible. Then it’d have to invest the considerable capital to build and man additional training and support facilities, and retrain a significant portion of the sub force to operate and maintain them. And the additional parts train. And presumably you’d have to outsource major repair availabilities to foreign yards since US yards aren’t set up to do it - another political shit show and impractical besides. And where do we get all these extra sailors to man them? I don’t imagine the sub force has a dozen boats’ worth of extra sailor just polishing brass. And where do we get the instructors and tech reps? The last USN guys who worked on conventional boats are long gone, and those were totally different designs and several generations of technology back anyway.
Other than that, yeah. Great idea so long as you don’t have to figure out how to actually do it, or pay for it. It requires Big Navy to somehow find all that extra shipbuilding (procurement would still come out of the build budget) and OMN funding, and the political appetite in Congress to spend it all on subs built in foreign yards. Or, they could instead spend it on accelerating SSN construction. Much more practical and politically palatable than this Rube Goldberg “solution.”
