New Attack Submarine

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Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m. in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.<br><br>Opening Statement Of Hon. Duncan Hunter, A Representative From California, Chairman, Military Procurement Subcommittee<br><br>Mr. Hunter. The subcommittee will come to order. As we prepare to begin the conference on the fiscal year 1996 DOD authorization bill this afternoon, one of the most contentious issues to be resolved will be the issue of nuclear attack submarines. As members may recall from our earlier hearing in March, the Navy's No. 1 priority in its fiscal year 1996 procurement budget request are submarines, the third and final Seawolf, SSN-23, and its follow-on, the new attack submarine, the so-called NAS. The Navy requested $1.5 billion to complete the SSN-23 and $705 million for advanced procurement of the NAS.<br><br>The administration's Bottom-Up Review plan was to construct both the Seawolf and the entire NAS class of 30 submarines at Electric Boat, the EB Division of General Dynamics in Groton, CT.<br><br>The committee did not authorize the SSN-23, which the Navy has admitted for the last 2 years is not required for operational purposes but rather is needed as an industrial bridge to keep EB in business until 1998 when the NAS is to begin serial production.<br><br>Furthermore, the committee rejected the notion of having one shipyard produce the next-generation submarine at the expense of having the skills to build such submarines atrophy at the Nation's other nuclear-capable shipyard, Newport News Shipbuilding, known as NNS.<br><br>The committee focused its attention on the Seawolf not on the Seawolf, but on the NAS. Its objectives were, one, to avoid production of a scaled-down, less-capable version of the Seawolf in recognition of the fact that despite an economy experiencing great difficulty, Russia's defense polic