A report released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office estimates the total cost of production of the Ohio-class replacement submarine at $92 billion, compared with the Navy’s estimate of $79 billion. Additionally, CBO estimates research and development on the next-generation submarine to cost $10 to $15 billion, bringing the total projected cost to $102 to $107 billion. While the report, titled “An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2015 Shipbuilding Plan,” states that the design, cost and capabilities of the Ohio-class replacement are among the “most significant uncertainties” in the Navy’s and CBO’s analyses of the U.S. shipbuilding budget, CBO also points to historical facts and compares the Ohio-class replacement to construction of Virginia-class fast-attack submarines to explain its analysis. The report notes that the Navy’s estimate for the Ohio-class replacement reflects improvement in the cost-by-weight ratio compared with the first Virginia submarine, a savings largely generated by the Navy’s plan to recycle design, technology and parts of the Virginia class.
“Furthermore, because ballistic missile submarines (like the Ohio Replacements) tend to be larger and less dense ships than attack submarines (like the Virginia class), they will be easier to build and therefore less expensive on a weight basis, the Navy argues,” according to the report. “Yet the historical record for the lead ships of new classes of submarines in the 1970s and 1980s provides little reason to believe that ballistic missile submarines are cheaper by weight to build than attack submarines.” The report notes that the first Ohio-class submarine was more expensive to build than the lead ships of the two classes of attack submarines built during the same period, noting that the average costs by weight of the first 12 to 13 Ohio-class ships closely paralleled analogous costs of the original and second-generation Los Angeles-class subs.
CBO used data from the Virginia-class submarine program to arrive at an estimate of $13.8 billion – in 2014 dollars – for the first Ohio-class replacement submarine, and the organization projects each subsequently produced SSBN to cost an average of $7.1 billion. “The cost of the first submarine of a class with an entirely new design is particularly difficult because of uncertainty about how much the Navy will spend on nonrecurring engineering and detail design,” the report states. The Navy estimates the cost of the first Ohio-class replacement at $12.4 billion, the study notes.
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