US President Donald Trump is attempting to revitalise the country's maritime industry, with a focus on submarine manufacturing. The post US opens funding tap to boost submarine manufacturing appeared first on Naval Technology.
The US Navy's Columbia-class SSBNs will be central to the US nuclear deterrent once in service.
US-based General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) has been awarded a $15.4bn cost-plus-incentive-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to a previously awarded contract for additional services for the US Navy’s future Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN).
The contract states that GDEB will provide lead yard support and sustainment, integrated enterprise plan initiatives for the class, and submarine industrial base supplier development enhancement efforts to support Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine programme.
According to an 18 March contract notice from the US Department of War, the industrial base development work is for the “furtherance of the [US] Navy’s plan of serial production of Columbia– and Virginia-class attack submarines”.
Work will be performed at key US submarine and support yards including Groton, Connecticut, and Newport News, Virginia, and is expected to be completed by June 2035.
The United States is seeking to increase the rate of production of its Columbia-class SSBNs and Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN), as it struggles to maintain its subsurface advantage over China.
In 2025, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to reform the country’s maritime industrial base, as the return to Great Power politics placed ever-greater emphasis on the naval domain and the demands that will be placed on the US Navy.
Unlike the surface domain, where US Navy dominance is now actively challenged, and potentially surpassed by China, the balance of power beneath the waves is still maintained by the United States. In 2025, the US Navy operated a fleet of 47 SSNs of the Virginia– and Los Angeles-class, which is expected to drop to 47 boats by 2030 as older hulls are retired without replacement.
However, China’s ability to manufacture submarines at a far faster rate than the US is eroding the US Navy’s advantage.
As reported by Naval Technology in 2025, China’s industrial base has, for several years, been outstripping the productive capacity of the West, delivering four submarines in the past year.
Such a rate is wishful thinking for Europe and the United States, with the US struggling to produce two nuclear submarines over a 12-month period, and the UK and France still further behind.
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