The Bunker: Undersea help wanted!

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: The Navy is seeking 140,000 new workers to build subs; congressional Afghan-war panel not eager to assign responsibility; Pentagon mum on V-22 crashes; and more. Housekeeping note: The Bunker’s heading out on summer maneuvers, back on September 4.

SERVICING THE SILENT SERVICE

Spending billions to buy submarine builders

The U.S. Navy has launched a mammoth program to hire 140,000 workers over the coming decade to produce the three submarines it wants to buy each year: two $4.5 billion (PDF) attack subs and one $10 billion (PDF) nuclear missile-launching “boomer” sub.

These boats (yes, that’s the Navy’s term for underwater vessels) are built only by two shipyards: General Dynamics’ Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. The last time The Bunker checked, these were both for-profit hardware-building concerns. But all is not well under the seas. New contracts to non-submarine builders — including a recently-created non-profit — highlight the Navy’s desperate need for people to actually build them.

On July 15, the Pentagon awarded a potential $2.4 billion contract to Deloitte Consulting to bring those welders and metal-benders aboard. “The Department of Defense is on a generational journey to recapitalize its sea-based deterrent and warfighting capabilities in times of both peace and conflict,” the Pentagon said in its contract solicitation (PDF). “Industry lacks the capacity to solely solve the workforce shortfalls caused by the combination of baby boomer retirements, far fewer workforce entrants, low unemployment, and intense competition for workers.”

The non-profit BlueForge Alliance is reinforcing Deloitte. Last fall, it relaunched the moribund BuildSubmarines.com website, along with partnering with baseball teams, NASCAR racing, and beer (“Underwater Summer Lager”) to drum up interest in building subs. A pair of Texas A&M University engineers created BlueForge in November 2022 to entice workers to become sub-builders (and no, we’re not talking the Italian-cold-cut-variety). They set up shop in far-inland Bryan, Texas “because both are Aggies and both have ties to the area,” a local TV station noted.

“Industry observers are also eager to understand how BlueForge Alliance, a mysterious, year-old non-profit, came to be ‘executing more than $300 million’ for workforce recruitment, worker retention and submarine industrial base capacity-building in a matter of months,” veteran Navy watcher Craig Hooper has asked. “How the Navy justifies sole-source funding for this insular organization — which somehow decided to buy a multi-million-dollar luxury office in Texas before even bothering to release their latest IRS Form 990s to the public — merits far greater naval oversight, outside scrutiny and accountability” [The Bunker’s added these links].

Like all good bubbleheads (Navy nickname for submariners), the service has largely stayed quiet. “Navy officials did not answer questions about the origins of this innovative approach and how much money they are pouring into it,” Defense One reported last month. Sounds just like the classic 1958 film about World War II submarine warfare starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, Run Silent, Run Deep.

LOSER’S LAMENT

No one’s to blame for nation’s longest war

It took only 26 days after 9/11 for the U.S. military to begin bombing the bejesus out of Afghanistan. Then it took 20 years, $2 trillion, and the lives of 2,324 U.S. troops to fail there. Four months after that debacle ended in 2021 — once the Taliban took the country over again — Congress ordered the creation of the Afghanistan War Commission to find out how come the U.S. screwed up so badly.

Finally, on July 19, more than two years after lawmakers legislated it to life (PDF), the bipartisan panel held its first hearing. “Today we make history,” AWC co-chair Shamila Chaudhary said. “Never before has the United States commissioned such a wide-ranging and independent legislative assessment of its own decision-making in the aftermath of a conflict.”

We don’t need such a rear-view mirror. It was clear to anyone paying attention that U.S. progress in Afghanistan peaked shortly after it kicked the Taliban out of Kabul. Then began two decades of fits-and-starts fighting doomed by the perfidy of neighboring Pakistan. The Bunker spent time in Afghanistan during the conflict and listened to dozens of top U.S. officials spinning — but not winning — the war.

Colin Jackson, the other commission chair, oversaw Afghanistan as a Pentagon official during the Trump administration. He said the panel wasn’t looking to point fingers. “While accountability is centrally important, our focus is less on assigning credit or blame for the war — a war that spanned four presidential administrations and 11 Congresses — than on extracting and applying its lessons,” Jackson said.

If everyone is responsible, in other words, no one is responsible.

War. Rinse. Repeat.

TILT-ROTORING AT WINDMILLS

Congressional quest for V-22 info sputters

Accountability is also MIA when it comes to recent crashes of the Pentagon’s long-troubled (PDF) V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft. On July 16, a pair of Republican lawmakers complained to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that they have “encountered significant delays and hurdles” since formally requesting information about the aircraft’s safety last December. Leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability are seeking safety probes into every V-22 Osprey crash since 1991. Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Glenn Grothman (R-WI) say the Pentagon has only coughed up “highly redacted documents” already made public. They threatened to subpoena the documents if the Defense Department doesn’t hand them over by July 30.

“Osprey-related crashes have killed more than sixty servicemembers since 1992 and the program has spent more than $130 billion in taxpayer funds,” they wrote (PDF). “DoD must be transparent with Congress and the American people to show that the Osprey program is safe and that it will bring significant advantages to combat operations.”

The Pentagon grounded the V-22 fleet following a crash last November that killed eight Air Force personnel. Although investigators were unable to pinpoint the cause of the crash, the V-22 fleet resumed flying, with restrictions, three months later. The Pentagon is confident a redesigned clutch will solve whatever the problem is once it’s installed beginning in mid-2025.

Highlighting bipartisan concern, on July 18 three Massachusetts Democrats told Austin that returning the V-22s to the skies without knowing precisely what caused the November crash was “premature” (one of the eight killed was from the Bay State). “If another Osprey goes down, we’re done,” Rep. Stephen Lynch, a fourth Massachusetts Democrat, said at a June hearing. “This program’s done.”

The Pentagon pucker factor is peaking.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Military-industrial perplex

China’s combativeness and innovations happening in the Ukraine war are threatening to upend the U.S. military-industrial complex, Colin Demarest reported July 17 at Axios.

→ Lady killer

An unidentified Navy F-18 fighter pilot became the first U.S. woman to score an air-to-air kill when she downed a Houthi drone over the Red Sea, The Hill’s Brad Dress reported July 22.

→ Someone else’s recruiting problem, for a change

The Rand Corp.’s Dara Massicot issued a report July 16 diving into Russia’s woes filling its military’s ranks since it invaded Ukraine.

Once again, The Bunker won’t be back from bivouacking until September 4. But it’s never too soon to forward this on to pals so they can subscribe here.