Expanding Undersea Dominance

Late last month, Inside the Navy reported that a small team had been chartered to propose a five-year plan for the service's new attack submarine program -- dubbed SSN(X) -- which will come online in 2034 in lieu of the eighth block of the Virginia-class submarine:

Rear Adm. David Johnson, program executive officer for submarines, said Oct. 23 at the Naval Submarine League's annual symposium in Falls Church, VA, that an analysis of alternatives will begin for SSN(X) in 2024.

"2034 may seem far off but the design and research community needs to take action now," Johnson said. "We need to estimate the environment the SSN(X) is going to live in out in the 2050 time frame."

Johnson said it is important to determine what technologies will be necessary to counter the future threat. His team will have nine years to identify, develop and demonstrate any significant long lead technologies, he added.

"We're going to start concept studies to explore capability cost and tech trade space, identify potential candidate technologies in the S&T community early enough to sufficiently mature."

SSN(X) will emphasize integration and interoperability especially with off board systems. The next-generation attack submarine will also take into account cybersecurity, Johnson said.

We now have the briefing slides Johnson used that day. View them here.