Bartlett Maritime submitted a news submarine overhaul proposal to the Navy that claims it will cut the time attack boats are out of service by 100 days.
Bartlett, founded in 2019, plans to concentrate component repair at two new facilities in northeastern Ohio and buy a specialized foundry at an unspecified location in order to shorten the timeline.
The comapany said in a release that the location of the facilities “takes advantage of experienced trades resources, and solves the ever-looming funding issue.” Northeastern Ohio already has in place a labor force in the trades to support the facilities, according to the release. “This labor pool is largely idle or underemployed” due to the shutdown of automotive and truck manufacturing plants in the region.
In its original proposal announced in March 2022, Bartlett proposed building a shipyard for Lorain, Ohio, on Lake Erie, to do overhaul work and its component work done there and in Lordstown. While the Bartlett plan has support from members of the Ohio congressional delegation, nothing has yet moved forward legislatively.
The company said then the plan was under review in the Navy.
Senate and House seapower committee members contacted by USNI News on the new proposal had no comment.
The facility at Lorain in the revised proposal would be a “ship component overhaul, repair, remanufacturing and testing facilities.” The one proposed for Lordstown would be a “ship component and equipment rotatable pool and material stocking and kitting facility.”
Bartlett’s report said the specialized foundry has already been selected. After the acquisition, it will be modernized to install new forge equipment for the submarine work.
The Ohio facilities are close to East Coast public and private shipyards and can also service West Coast yards, the company’s plan said.
Bartlett Maritime said “critical to the successful execution of the plan” is partnering and collaborating with four public naval shipyards and General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington-Ingalls Industries Newport News yards.
“The aim is to form a united front in addressing the maintenance crisis,” reads the report.
It added that moving this work to new facilities would ease the pressure on Electric Boat and Newport News to keep to its schedule of delivering two Virginia-class attack submarines per year and the construction program for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine on track. how?
Bartlett added with the advice of Goldman Sachs, investment bankers and Squire Patton Boggs, law firm, costs can be kept within the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. Eventually, the Navy could own the facilities through a long-term lease-purchase agreement.
While the idea of building a submarine overhaul yard at Lorain has been shelved, the plan lays out an option for a fifth public yard at the Naval Weapons Station Goose Creek, S.C. That construction would be contingent on the “funding and oversight regimes are proven” for the component repair facilities, the company said.
Among the obstacles to the Lorain site would be moving submarines through the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway and securing permission from Canadian national and provincial governments for passage through the seaway and their portion of the Great Lakes.
