The D Brief: $7.3B request for sub work; New promotion hold; Musk’s conflicts of interest; Trump’s Africa policy; And a bit more.
More money for sub work
White House asks Congress for $7.3 billion to goose submarine construction. That’s $5.69 billion to pay for cost overruns on three Virginia-class submarines and workforce development at General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding; and $1.59 billion to “keep Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine construction on track during the current stop-gap federal funding bill, which expires in about a month,” USNI News reported.
A senior Navy official on Monday: “Our Virginia-class fast attack submarine program is not where it needs to be right now, the program and the shipyards are not producing submarines at the rate that our national security strategy and the national defense strategy require.” Read on, here.
- Background: “The Navy’s new missile sub could cost ‘hundreds of millions’ extra: GAO,” by Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams in September.
Expert reax: “There needs to be an accounting of the leadership and the management of these programs,” Brent Sadler of the Heritage Foundation told Defense One. “It's frustrating because those that run those programs probably knew about these problems a year ago, and so just finding out about it now is unacceptable,” he said.
Even if all that money were to be put to use today, “It takes about two to three years to certify a new supplier base and also get that workforce up to speed,” Sadler said. “So there's going to be a delay, and we're already inside the window of where China thinks it's at maximum advantage—the so-called ‘Davidson window.’ But we're also at a point where the old Ohio-class submarines are going to have to be decommissioned because their hulls just can't sustain any more operations. And there's no way around that. It's metal tension, stress and fatigue—you just have to decommission the submarines.” Considering production delays in the Navy’s Columbia-class sub program, “We're going to take a hit, an unavoidable hit, in our ability to maintain strategic nuclear deterrence,” Sadler said. “And we're pretty much at a point to where that's inevitable, and that comes with unacceptable risk. So there's going to be a lag, it's unacceptable. [But] There's a failure of leadership in some respects on this, too.”
Watch this space: We’ll be posting a U.S. Navy and commercial shipbuilding explainer + podcast in the days ahead. So stay tuned…
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1968, Air Force UH-1F helicopter pilot James Fleming rescued six Green Berets stranded and under fire in Vietnam’s western highlands. Fleming was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
GOP senator blocks promotion of last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., has placed a hold on the promotion of Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Mullin did not respond to a Reuters query about the hold. In August, then-candidate Donald Trump said he would get rid of every senior official "who touched the Afghanistan calamity." He has said: "You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody.”
Former SOCOM commander: "The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn," Tony Thomas posted on X.
Prelude? “Reuters has reported that Trump's transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.” Read on, here.
Related reading:
- “Musk's government roles create 'clear avenues for serious conflicts of interest,'” writes Mike Gruss at the GovExec Space Project.
- Op-Ed: “How might Trump 2.0 approach Sub-Saharan Africa policy?” from Colin P. Clarke and Raphael Parens.
Etc.
Lastly today: A South Korean man tried avoiding mandatory military service by gaining more than 40 pounds. But a court this week found him guilty and sentenced him to a year in prison—in addition to still having to serve out his military term, AP reports from Seoul.
His scheme appears to have begun in 2017 when the 5’ 6” man weighed in at 183 pounds. “But with the advice of his acquaintance that he could get a social service grade if he was overweight, he doubled his daily food consumption, focused on eating high-calorie food products and quit his part-time job as a delivery worker,” AP writes. By 2022, he weighed more than 220 pounds. And just before his weigh-ins in both 2022 and 2023, “he drank a large amount of water” hoping to seal the deal.
“It was unclear how the crime was caught,” AP notes, but he did not appeal the ruling. Read more, here.