Will the Navy's New Missile Submarine Become the Next 'F-35'? (In a Bad Way)

PO1 Tony Holland good/read and share.

Electric Boat started the trend of paying for stuff "not yet built." And it makes sense. Can't build ships, lay everyone off, then expect them to come RIGHT BACK IN and start building again. Only an idiot would plan that way. So EB told the Government it didn't work that way.

There have always been large challenges with developing new submarine classes, with new hull types and metals, new reactor plants, weapons systems, etc. As surprising as it may seem, even in these days of extremely powerful computer modeling, there is uncertainty in these things.

Consider as an example, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It was a production disaster, but now that it's up and running it's a successful airframe. Same story here and with the JF-35.