One of Maine’s largest employers is growing, but its future depends in large part on the actions of Congress.
The U.S. House and Senate are poised to set the goal of a 355-ship Navy into law. If they also provide the funds for those vessels, it will be good news for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the only large military facility left in the state of Maine.
This is the second part of a two-part series.
Overhauls are now the bread and butter for a shipyard that once built new subs for the Navy. But Capt. David Hunt, the commandant of the shipyard, says an overhaul is a major operation, taking a couple of years to complete and involving all of the major parts of the sub.
“Take all the critical components off the hull, refurbish them. So pumps, valves, we replace piping, we overhaul the equipment that we can’t take off,” he says. “The bigger pieces of equipment that are essential to the ship, we will do the overhaul right inside the ship.”
Hunt says it involves work in some very tight spaces. Imagine, he says, trying to overhaul your car with the glove box as the only access point. It’s also labor intensive, which is why he expects the yard to increase its more than 6000 person workforce by another 500 this year, and 300 more workers will also be hired to replace those retiring or leaving as the pace of overhauls increases.
Hunt says the economic effect of the yard on the area is very significant, with a payroll of civilian and military employees in excess of $500 million a year.
“The secondary and tertiary effects of that. We had a professor from one of the Maine schools actually do an economic impact study, and I think it is well over $1 billion in the seacoast on a yearly basis,” he says.
And that economic effect could grow dramatically in the years ahead as older subs are retired but are not replaced with new ones at the same pace.
Jerry Hendrix, a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank, says the projected gap in submarine numbers over the next 12 years is a serious national security issue.
“We will get down to 41 fast attack submarines in the fleet in 2029, and we really need to be in the 70s, and that 41 number is a huge strategic vulnerability,” he says.
But the shipyards that build those submarines are already operating at a maximum funding level of two new subs a year, and it takes years to complete a sub and to expand construction capability. That is why the Navy is looking at extending the service of some current subs beyond their expected life span of about 30 years.
“There are a few submarines that have another deployment or maybe another two deployments in them, so that is going to help fill in the gap in submarines over the next few years,” says Bryan Clark, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
Hendrix says that means more work for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
“Kittery is going to be key, because it is one of the key areas for doing service life extension and maintenance on our submarines,” he says.
But all of this depends on Congress appropriating the billions of dollars that it will cost to construct and overhaul the submarines. Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, says it will be difficult to fund all of the nation’s defense priorities.
“It’s going to take us a while to meet the goal, but I hope that we can do a fast start this year. We have had hearings in the defense appropriations committee,” she says.
Congress has yet to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, which lays out those defense priorities. Both the House and Senate versions set the goal of a 355-ship Navy, but its unclear whether the funds for a larger Navy will be appropriated.
Like the rest of the federal government, the Defense Department is operating under temporary funding until December.
