America’s submarine woes keep worsening. The vaunted Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines were intended to replace America’s iconic, though aging, Los Angeles-class attack submarines. Yet, the Navy has failed to adequately produce enough Virginia-class subs in a timely or affordable manner. 

Today, even as the Navy laments its lack of Virginia-class submarines, it is already obsessing over the need to build an entirely new attack submarine, the ambiguously named SSN(X) program. This is at a time when the Virginia-class subs are still missing from the fleet. 

One of the biggest hurdles facing the Virginia-class submarine program has been its onerous cost. 

The Big Lie

Of course, the cost that the U.S. taxpayers are being made to bear is not the same as the costs that the defense contractors building these lavish boats told Congress it would be. Indeed, when the Virginia-class submarine program was first pitched to the United States Congress, the Pentagon, and their fat cat defense contractors assured the People’s elected representatives that the costs would be significantly lower than other programs and the rewards would be far greater.

Programs like the Virginia-class submarine, or rather, how the program has been mismanaged is why so many people voted for Donald Trump, who has promised to “drain the swamp.” 

Whether he will or not remains very much in question. 

Let’s just review the budgetary failures of the Virginia-class submarine, which serves as a painful example of the more general failures of America’s elephantine defense establishment that has lurched from one costly project to another, all while bleeding hard-up taxpayers dry.

A 139 Percent Price Increase 

For instance, the Virginia-class program is projected to exceed its budget by approximately $17 billion by 2030. This figure stands out even in the context of defense spending, where cost overruns are common. 

What this means is that the budget overrun adds to the program’s already hefty price tag, which in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 terms, makes each Virginia-class sub cost $2.8 billion to $4.3 billion, depending on whether those subs are fitted with the Virginia Payload Module or VPM. 

To be clear, each Virginia-class sub was originally meant to cost around $1.8 billion. So, that’s just shy of a 139 percent increase for each Virginia-class submarine.

This is at a time when the overall national debt for the country is running around $32 trillion, and counting each day. 

These numbers are unsustainable. That’s not an opinion. That’s just basic mathematics. 

Further, what private corporation would survive creating products that run 139 percent over their projected costs? What executive would be allowed to retain their cushy jobs under those conditions? 

Padding the Bill?

If you’re a federal employee or the leader of a major U.S. defense contractor, the answer is clear: you will never be made to answer for these failures. 

If the Pentagon were a private-sector endeavor, inflated numbers of the kind we’re seeing in the Virginia-class program would have resulted in White-Collared Crime investigations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), ultimately resulting in criminal convictions of the kind that befell Enron’s executives, unless you were Thomas E. White, of course.

There’s no way that the Virginia-class submarines, which are required to ensure America’s undersea dominance, will in any way deliver that which its proponents had promised to the American taxpayers. 

Not with price increases of the kind we’ve seen over the last few years. 

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

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