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Sub-Maker Electric Boat Could Get New Role Designing Reactor Systems For Navy Surface Vessels
By JESSE A. HAMILTON | Washington Bureau Chief
March 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — - The U.S. House subcommittee that keeps an eye on Navy shipbuilding seems to have a new identity in mind for Groton's Electric Boat: designer of the reactor systems for the next generation of surface nuclear vessels, the Navy cruisers.
At a hearing on the Navy's shipbuilding budget proposal Friday, sea power subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi raised the idea, asking a panel of experts whether such a relationship would work.
Ronald O'Rourke, a specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said, "I think it's certainly a viable option for the committee to consider." He said it could be "one means for helping sustain especially that portion of the submarine design and engineering base."
Another expert, Eric Labs from the Congressional Budget Office, said, "The precedent is there." Electric Boat handled some Aircraft Carrier design work recently, which certainly strayed from its usual submarine tasks. Labs acknowledged that the size of the reactor would be larger than in a Virginia-class submarine, but it's "worth exploring."
Otherwise at the hearing, lawmakers seemed generally unsatisfied with the Navy's budget for building only seven ships in 2009. Influential members of Congress had the same view last year, and the Navy budget ended up supplemented with extra ships.
Taylor was clearly taking the Navy officials' words with a boulder of salt. "You say all the right things," he told Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy Allison Stiller and Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, "but you don't seem to follow it up with your budget."
Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, called the plan "an almost incoherent arrangement." But he was specifically interested in the undersea budget, spending much of the hearing trying to talk the Navy into building an extra sub sooner
By JESSE A. HAMILTON | Washington Bureau Chief
March 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — - The U.S. House subcommittee that keeps an eye on Navy shipbuilding seems to have a new identity in mind for Groton's Electric Boat: designer of the reactor systems for the next generation of surface nuclear vessels, the Navy cruisers.
At a hearing on the Navy's shipbuilding budget proposal Friday, sea power subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi raised the idea, asking a panel of experts whether such a relationship would work.
Ronald O'Rourke, a specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said, "I think it's certainly a viable option for the committee to consider." He said it could be "one means for helping sustain especially that portion of the submarine design and engineering base."
Another expert, Eric Labs from the Congressional Budget Office, said, "The precedent is there." Electric Boat handled some Aircraft Carrier design work recently, which certainly strayed from its usual submarine tasks. Labs acknowledged that the size of the reactor would be larger than in a Virginia-class submarine, but it's "worth exploring."
Otherwise at the hearing, lawmakers seemed generally unsatisfied with the Navy's budget for building only seven ships in 2009. Influential members of Congress had the same view last year, and the Navy budget ended up supplemented with extra ships.
Taylor was clearly taking the Navy officials' words with a boulder of salt. "You say all the right things," he told Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy Allison Stiller and Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, "but you don't seem to follow it up with your budget."
Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, called the plan "an almost incoherent arrangement." But he was specifically interested in the undersea budget, spending much of the hearing trying to talk the Navy into building an extra sub sooner