Virginia-class submarine production is struggling with increasingly severe labor shortages, according to the Government Accountability Office’s annual review of Defense Department weapons programs, which estimates construction time for Block V vessels will take an average of more than two years longer than the previous year’s report predicted. “Performance on [Virginia-class submarine] construction continues to degrade,” the GAO report states , attributing the program’s lengthening delays and rising prices largely to labor shortages exacerbated by growing workforce demands for Columbia-class submarine...
