2007 - Sustaining U.S. Nuclear Submarine Design Capabilities

This 2007 Navy-funded RAND study seeks to answer the following questions:

How much of the submarine design workforce at the shipyards

would need to be sustained for the least-cost transition to the

next design? What are the implications of different approaches to

allocating the workload?

To what extent is the shipyard supplier base also at risk?

How will the Navy’s own design skills be affected by a gap, and

how easily might they be recovered?

Taking all answers to the preceding questions into account, what

steps should the Navy take in the near future?

Authors included Todd Weeks