CBO: Attack Submarine Maintenance Work Less Expensive at Private Shipyards

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis has found that performing a common type of maintenance work on the U.S. Navy’s Los Angeles-class attack submarines (SSN-688) at the service’s public shipyards is more expensive than at private shipyards, USNI News reported Thursday.

The finding stems from CBO’s examination of Docking Selected Restricted Availability overhaul work for attack submarines and three cost comparisons made between private and public shipyards for different time periods.

The agency also found that public shipyards recorded $26.1M in unadjusted average cost of DSRA maintenance compared with $20.9M at their counterparts in the private sector, according to the report’s summary obtained by the publication.

CBO then took into account the overhead costs to reflect the move to the mission funding model and found that the average DSRA costs “at private shipyards were 38 percent lower than at public shipyards” between 1993 and 2017.

“The Navy looks forward to reviewing the details and analysis in the CBO report. Ship maintenance is critical to meeting the [National Defense Strategy],” Capt. Danny Hernandez, a spokesman for the service, said in a statement.