US lacks submarine repair capacity, leading to $3.4 billion in downtime

Brief retelling from RIA II

The US lacks the capacity to speed up submarine construction, leading to repair delays and downtime.

From fiscal years 2016 to 2025, U.S. shipyards completed only about 11% of multipurpose submarine overhauls on time.

The Los Angeles-class submarine Pasadena will wait nearly four years to unload its nuclear fuel, costing the Navy more than $300 million.

WASHINGTON, September 8 - RIA Novosti. In the United States, there is not enough capacity to speed up submarine construction, overloaded shipyards and a shortage of dry docks have already led to repair delays and downtime, costing the fleet $3.4 billion over ten years, according to government audit data reviewed by RIA Novosti.

On July 15, American leader Donald Trump demanded that the management of General Dynamics accelerate the construction of submarines for the American fleet.

“Over the past ten years, the U.S. Navy has lost more than 15,000 operational days due to repair delays and downtime on operational attack submarines, resulting in approximately $3.4 billion in costs for maintaining crews and submarines that were unable to perform their missions during this time,” the report says.

From fiscal years 2016 to 2025, U.S. shipyards completed only about 11% of multipurpose submarine overhauls on time. The average duration of such repairs increased from 744 days in 2016-2020 to 809 days in 2021-2025, that is, by about two months.

A separate problem was the submarines that had already completed their service. Before final decommissioning, nuclear fuel must be unloaded from their reactors, but this requires a free dry dock, and there is not enough space at the shipyards.