(upbeat music)
- [Reporter] In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon
when it comes to revitalizing
and revamping the defense industrial base,
there's no bigger topic than shipbuilding.
- As you know, we're desperately in need of ships.
Our ships are, some of them have gotten old
and tired and obsolete,
and we're gonna go the exact opposite direction.
- [Reporter] The US wants more ships faster.
And with the pressure rising,
Leonardo DRS recently cut the ribbon
on a brand-new facility.
The product, new propulsion systems for submarines
for both the American Navy and international customers.
A range of officials were on hand
for the official opening of the building on January 23rd.
- This facility is a direct result
of what can be achieved when industry,
government and community work together
with a shared sense of purpose.
The work that will take place here is critical.
This facility expands our ability to deliver complex,
high-quality submarine and surface ship products
critical to the readiness and effectiveness
of the US and its allied navy fleets.
- You walk in, you see a giant building,
you see cranes, pretty obvious stuff.
There's some really cool things in this building.
These cranes, for example,
technology from the automobile industry,
we can lift giant motors and flip them around,
which currently we cannot do
where we build them today.
Millions of dollars in tooling to set them on the ground
and move them around.
So this increases our production pace,
reduces cost, all a win-win.
That's just phase one,
which we're standing in today,
it's about 150,000 square feet.
Phase two, other side of that wall,
it's another 70,000 square feet.
We've already started continuing our investment
to support final assembly and test
of steam turbine generators
for Virginia class submarines.
That's off and running.
- We're bringing you a brand-new manufacturing facility
that makes the main propulsion motors
on our Columbia class submarines.
Those are the most lethal
and powerful warships ever created.
The firepower from a single ballistic missile submarine
is more firepower than was unleashed
in all of World War II.
But that sea power is more than just those navy ships.
It materializes in that industrial base,
the shipbuilders, the vendors, the contractors,
the engineers that are represented here in this room.
The Secretary of the Navy
has been direct about the need for urgency
in increasing the shipbuilding capacity.
Revitalizing the industrial base
is not a problem we can solve slowly or incrementally.
We must scale with great speed and great urgency.
This manufacturing facility will support
the Department of Navy's top acquisition priority,
which is the Columbia class,
and it will also support the Virginia class,
with the main propulsion motor and the turbine generators
adding resiliency, capacity and competition
in that industrial base
is key to a strong navy and a strong nation.
- [Reporter] Leonardo president and CEO John Baylouny
said his company could see the demand
for naval components rising
and were able to respond quickly.
- We didn't need the administration
to tell us that we needed to expand the industrial base.
You could see that coming for years,
that the submarine industrial base needs to expand.
We stepped up and did it.
This is exactly what the administration's looking for.
It's looking for us to step forward,
invest in facilitation,
invest in capacity expansion.
We've done exactly that for this.
And the submarine industrial base
is one of the key areas
that needs expansion.
Today, we make about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 submarines per year.
We need to build three to 3 1/2 submarines per year.
This is exactly the kind of investment
that our industry needs to make
to be able to reach the goal of three to 3 1/2.
There's a lot of impediments to shipbuilding today,
all the way into the supply chain,
all the way from labor and manpower
to be able to build the ships.
The skillset required to do that is tremendous.
But it goes all the way down into the supply basin.
And that that's where we sit,
we're not building ships,
we're building components for ships.
We're building the propulsion system
for the Columbia class
for the next generation of ships.
And so the investment has to be all the way down
in the industrial base,
not just at the shipbuilder.
(upbeat music)
- [Reporter] Officials also gave "Defense News Weekly"
a tour of the new facility,
showing how the process will work
to create the massive submarine propulsion systems.
- So here we are in the receiving area
of our new Goose Creek, South Carolina facility.
In this area, we can receive very large pieces of equipment.
We manufacture very large pieces of equipment, very heavy.
So the receiving area has a large entry door,
very large cranes
for being able to take them off the machinery
that's bringing them into the facility,
storage area for smaller items,
and then they're offloaded for inspection,
and then further production
as they move down the facility
into the larger production areas beyond this.
You can see the long travel lane
that progresses down the length of the facility
for moving equipment.
And then the area to the right,
which is an unfinished portion of the floor
for doing actual assembly of the equipment.
It's set up so that the larger cranes
are at the furthest end
and the smaller cranes are at this end,
because as we build the equipment up
from the parts that we bring in from receiving,
it'll increase in weight
as it moves down the facility
and the machine is constructed and completed.
What I'm standing on is a specialty platform
for doing the final factory acceptance test of the motor.
So the motor will be up
mounted on these specialty locations in the floor
where the motor's bolted down to the floor,
and operated in this facility.
The tests is immediately behind me.
So the motor will be finally finished in this area
and tested in this area
to prove that it's ready to be sent to the shipyard.
So the motor is final tested here.
After the testing's complete,
the motor moves into this area,
where it'll be mounted
on a large trolley-like, self-propelled piece of equipment
that can carry the motor over the ground,
its full weight,
and move it onto a barge
at a barge slip that's outside the building to this side.
So as it moves through this traverse lane,
it'll be prepped to ship in this area
and then taken out the doors in the back here
towards the barge slip
where it'll be put onto a barge
and taken to Quonset Point, Rhode Island,
at least the Columbia motor in that application.