ARTICLE

September 2004

Newport News Christens Its First Sub in a Decade

by Harold Kennedy

When first lady Laura Bush smashed a champagne bottle against the black hull of the Texas (SSN 775) in July, it was the first time in a nearly decade that the Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Newport News shipyard had christened a submarine.

The shipyard—which sprawls for 550 acres along the north bank of Virginia’s historic James River—is best known as the sole supplier of the 12 nuclear aircraft carriers in the U.S. fleet today. Currently, it is building the last of the Nimitz class of carriers, the George H.W. Bush. Advance design work is underway on the first of the next generation of flattops, known as CVN 21.

Newport News, however, has been building submarines for a century, said Becky Steward, the company’s vice president for submersibles. “We’ve been in the submarine business since there have been submarines,” she said.

In the past four decades alone, Newport News has built 53 attack submarines, Stewart said. But it is coming out of a long, dry spell.

The most recent submarine completed by Newport News was the USS Cheyenne (SSN 773), a Los Angeles-class nuclear vessel christened in 1995. She was commissioned in 1996. Shortly after that, many submarine workers were laid off because there was too little work for them.

In 1997, when the company teamed with General Dynamics Electric Boat, of Groton, Conn., to produce the Virginia class, Newport News had to rush to find new workers.

“We really had to go through a workforce ramp up,” Stewart said. Newport News had to fill more than a dozen shipbuilding specialties, and do it quickly, she said. “The machinists and electricians were the hardest to find,” Stewart said.

The recruiting effort eventually succeeded, she said. About 2,000 employees out of a total of 19,000 at Newport News now work on submarines.

Many of the new recruits entered through the shipyard’s apprentice school. Dating back to 1919, the school uses a combination of shop training and classroom instruction to teach 17 skilled crafts.

Welding classes have been thoroughly revamped to include computer-based training, said Bob Leber, who recently was named director of education and workforce development at Newport News.

“We cannot teach a person to weld just using a computer,” he said. “However, by selectively concerting instructor-led training to computer-based training, our instructors now have more time to work on-on-one with new employees in the welding booths, where they actually learn to weld.”

Job applicants must be at least 18 years of age and have a high school education, with at least four units in such subjects as higher math, chemistry, physics, mechanical drawing and computer science.

Finding workers who can meet these standards is a challenge, admits Bob Meyer, construction manager for the Virginia class. “Very honestly, building submarines is hard work,” he told National Defense. “We get a steady stream of people passing through here.”

A complicating factor is that many aspects of working on Navy ships involve classified information, requiring workers to obtain security clearances, which is a time-consuming process, Meyer said. “We have a lot of people still trying to get their clearances,” he said.

Those workers who meet Newport News’ standards consider themselves part of an elite group, Meyer said. “A lot of these guys think they are the cream of the crop,” he said. “I think they are, too.”

The Navy plans eventually to build 30 Virginia-class submarines. (related story p. 40). Currently, Newport News and Electric Boat have contracts to build 10 of them. They are sharing the work, with each shipbuilder constructing parts—called modules—of every boat and alternating responsibility for final assembly.

“Right now, we have five ships in various stages of construction at this shipyard,” Stewart said. The process of building a submarine—from the start of fabrication to delivery to the Navy—takes about 80 months, she explained.

At Newport News, the submarine that is nearest to completion is the Texas, the second in the Virginia class. The first of the class is, of course, the Virginia, which has been assembled by Electric Boat. She was scheduled to begin sea trials in July and to be commissioned in October at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., which is located at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, just across from Newport News.

As part of the sharing arrangement, parts of the Texas were built at both shipyards, but final assembly and testing is taking place at Newport News.

The next submarine to be assembled at Newport News is the North Carolina (SSN 777), the fourth of the Virginia class. Her keel-laying ceremony was held in May of this year. Submarines no longer have a keel—the structure that runs lengthwise along the vessel’s base—but shipbuilders continue to stage the event to mark the beginning of the construction process.

The North Carolina is scheduled for christening in 2006 and commissioning in 2008, when she will be declared officially ready for service.

While Newport News is conducting final assembly and testing of the Texas and will do so for the North Carolina, the company also is building modules of other submarines for Electric Boat to complete. It constructed modules for the Virginia, and is now doing the same for the Hawaii (SSN 776), which also is being assembled by Electric Boat. The third ship in the Virginia class, the Hawaii is scheduled to enter the fleet in 2007. Also under construction are SSN 778 and 779, both still unnamed.

The modules are self-contained sections of a submarine that are welded together to form the finished vessel, Meyer explained. “One of the things we emphasize is that when we build the modules, we put everything into them that the submarine is going to need to operate after it is delivered,” he said. “In the habitability module, where the crew will live, for example, we put in Formica countertops, commodes, hand dryers, a full galley.”

The modules are huge, weighing hundreds of tons, Meyer said. They are built in Newport News’ modular outfitting facility, which is 10 stories tall and 420 feet long, big enough to accommodate a fully assembled submarine.

“I wish it were a little bigger,” said Meyer. “There’s a lot of stuff to put in a submarine.”

The size of the modules defines the manufacturing process, Meyer explained. “The assembly line—where a worker stands in one place and the work comes to him—doesn’t work here,” he said. “My workers have to move from module to module to do their jobs.”

The modules are designed to take advantage of commercial, off-the-shelf technology, Meyer said. “We’re supposed to look for opportunities to include COTS whenever possible.” The galley’s refrigerator, for example, is commercial, rather than a traditional Navy unit.

To hold down maintenance costs, module surfaces are covered with a durable powder coating, rather than traditional paint, Meyer said. “The powder coating just doesn’t go away,” he noted. “You don’t have to have highly trained sailors doing a lot of painting.”

Once a module is complete and ready for shipment to Electric Boat, it is loaded onto a shuttle boat and ferried up to Groton, a 5,200-hour trip, Meyer said. When the terrorist threat is elevated, security for the voyage is increased, he said.

The modules can be lifted, using a massive crane with a lifting capacity of 900 tons, Meyer said. The crane, however, cannot handle a complete submarine.

“Nothing can lift an entire submarine,” he said. “A Virginia-class submarine weighs about 7,800 tons.”

When a submarine is ready for christening, it is moved from the modular outfitting facility on a specially designed railroad system to a concrete patio next to the river.

Well before the christening—early in the construction process—the submarine’s crew is brought to the shipyard so that sailors can familiarize themselves with all aspects of the boat. “The Texas crew has been here since December 2002,” Meyer said.

“We let crewmembers walk around and see the modules while they are still under construction,” he explained. “Later on, when the boat is assembled, they won’t be able to get to some sections. So this is a great opportunity for them to get to know their boat.”

The weapons module is equipped with 12 vertical-launch system tubes for Tomahawk cruise missiles and four torpedo tubes for Mk-48 advanced capability torpedoes. Using both sets of tubes, it can fire a salvo of 16 Tomahawks at a time.

The weapons module also is designed so that it can be reconfigured easily to transport special operations forces, Meyer said. To ensure that the module meets their needs, SOF personnel were included in the design process. “The Virginia class is unique in that respect,” he said.

To play its intelligence-gathering role, the Virginia-class submarine carries a mix of standard and innovative acoustic sensors. The heart of the sonar suite includes a spherical active/passive array, a lightweight wide-aperture array and the TB-29(A) thin-line towed array.

The new lightweight wide aperture array helps locate quiet diesel-electric submarines that are being acquired by growing numbers of countries. A high-frequency sonar suite consists of an array mounted on the sail, and another mounted on the “chin,” located right up under the bow.

These sensors significantly improve the submarine’s ability to detect and avoid mines, Meyer said. Active sonar is controversial, however, because environmentalists charge that it harms marine mammals.

The Virginia-class boats are the first submarines designed specifically to accommodate an advanced SEAL delivery system—a miniature submarine being developed to transport special operators, usually members of a Navy sea, air and land team—to and from shore. Developed by Northrop Grumman’s Oceanic & Naval Systems division, of Annapolis, Md., the first ASDS was delivered to the Navy in 2003 and is still undergoing tests.

Virginia-class boats also are compatible with dry-deck shelters, which are long cylinders that can be mounted aft of the sail, or conning tower, to allow rapid SEAL deployment while the mother ship remains submerged.

“The SEALs can exit the ship, come to shore, return again and be on their way,” Meyer said. “The bad guys don’t even know they were there until everything goes boom.”

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