America underwater woes continues to get worse. The vaunted Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines were intended to replace the iconic emblem of America, although aging, Los Angeles-class attack submarines. Yet the Navy has failed to produce enough Virginia-class submarines in a timely or affordable manner.

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

One of the biggest obstacles facing the Virginia-class submarine program was its expensive cost.

The big lie

Of course, the cost to American taxpayers is not the same as the costs that the defense contractors building these lavish boats have announced to Congress. Indeed, when the Virginia-class submarine program was first presented to the United States Congress, the Pentagon and its major defense contractors assured the people’s elected representatives that the costs would be significantly lower than other programs and the rewards would be much greater.

Programs like the Virginia-class submarine, or rather the way that program was mismanaged, are why so many people voted for Donald Trump, who promised to “drain the swamp.”

Whether he does so or not remains very uncertain.

Let’s just review the budgetary failures of the Virginia-class submarine, which constitute a painful example of the broader failures of the American defense establishment, which has lurched from one expensive project to another, while bleeding drying up hard-pressed taxpayers.

A price increase of 139 percent

For example, the Virginia-class program is expected to be approximately $17 billion over budget by 2030. This figure is remarkable even in the context of defense spending, where cost overruns are common.

That means the budget overrun adds to the program’s already high price tag, which for fiscal year 2024 makes each Virginia-class submarine cost between $2.8 billion and $4.3 billion, according to whether these submarines are equipped with the operating system or not. Virginia Payload Module or VPM.

To be clear, each Virginia-class submarine was initially expected to cost around $1.8 billion. So that’s an increase of just under 139% for each Virginia-class submarine.

This is happening at a time when the country’s overall national debt is run everywhere 32 trillion dollars, and counting every day.

These numbers are unsustainable. This is not an opinion. This is just basic math.

Furthermore, what private company would survive creating products that exceed their projected costs by 139%? Which manager would be authorized to keep his comfortable job under such conditions?

Pay off the bill?

If you are a federal employee or the manager of a major U.S. defense contractor, the answer is clear: you will never be held responsible for these failures.

If the Pentagon were a private sector company, inflated numbers like those we see in the Virginia class program would have prompted white-collar crime investigations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ), ultimately leading to criminal convictions of the type that befell Enron executives, unless you are Thomas E. WhiteOf course.

There is no way the Virginia-class submarines, which are necessary to ensure America’s undersea dominance, could somehow deliver what their proponents promised American taxpayers.

Not with price increases like those we have seen in recent years.

Brandon J. Weicherta national security project of national interest analystis a former congressman and geopolitical analyst who contributes to The Washington Times, 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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