CT’s Courtney emerges as a key figure in a boom in submarine construction and jobs

When President Joe Biden stood on a dock at a San Diego naval base and revealed details of a landmark security agreement involving billions of dollars of submarine sales to Australia, he mentioned just one other American politician: U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney.

The low-key Democrat who represents Connecticut’s second congressional district is being recognized by Biden and others as a key player in what has been described as one of the most important U.S. strategic moves in a generation, the U.S., Australian and British AUKUS agreement created to constrain China’s influence in the western Pacific.

Most AUKUS headlines have focused on the U.S. commitment to sell submarines and share technology to help Australia build a modern submarine fleet. But in addition to a trilateral commitment to double down on containing China, there is an economic bonanza in AUKUS for Courtney’s eastern Connecticut district, as well as the wider region and country.

When combined with the U.S. Navy’s rapid expansion of its own fleet of submarines, AUKUS will be part of a submarine construction boom not seen since the Cold War and that promises to extend decades into the future — thousands of new manufacturing jobs, billions in ship and technology sales and billions more invested in expansion of a moribund industrial manufacturing base.

“An initiative as ambitious, as broad, and as complex as AUKUS needs champions,” said Charles Edel, Australia chair and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “and Congressman Courtney has been instrumental in charting the path forward.”

Courtney created the bipartisan AUKUS caucus in Congress and used leadership roles on armed services and labor and education committees to ramp up spending on submarine construction, workforce recruitment and training, supply chain and industrial base expansion and the enactment of legislation to open U.S. nuclear training to Australian naval officers.

Combined, it was an effective defense of AUKUS against the main argument against it, one that lingers in some quarters of the Navy over concern that the industrial base and supply chains needed to support construction of state-of-the art nuclear submarines has shrunk so dramatically that the U.S is hard pressed to build subs quickly enough to defend itself, let alone arm the Australians. Courtney was a leading voice arguing that America can do both.

Courtney portrayed AUKUS as a means of turbo charging a U.S. industrial base that has shrunk by more than half to 12 percent of the U.S. workforce since the end of the Cold War, in large part by foreign outsourcing.

“Perhaps most important has been his efforts to raise awareness and support among fellow legislators for AUKUS,” Edel said, “and his argument that AUKUS represents an unique opportunity to expand U.S. and allied industrial capacity, increase the size of the American navy and strengthen America’s commitment to stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Said Kevin Graney, president of Electric Boat, a division of General Dynamics: “There isn’t a guy who understands our industry better than him. And so too with his staff. They are absolutely first rate in their knowledge of the submarine industrial base and what our issues are.”

Biden was joined Monday in San Diego by the prime ministers of Australia and Great Britain and they revealed early details of how AUKUS will unfold. The allies committed to AUKUS – an acronym for Australian, United Kingdom and U.S. – in September 2021 and over the last year and one-half, met in secret to work out the details.

They disclosed last week that Australia would buy between three and five, $3.5 billion Virginia class submarines from the U.S. beginning in the early 2030s. Later in the decade, the U.S. will supply nuclear propulsion technology and an array of armament and equipment to a new class of submarine to be designed by England and built jointly with Australia.

The U.S. Navy wants to add more than 60 Virginia class ships to fill out its aging fleet of attack submarines, with Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, each building about half. Electric Boat alone also is building a new fleet of 12, $9 billion Columbia class ballistic missile submarines for the Navy.

The AUKUS announcement was the latest development in a negotiation in which Courtney has been involved, directly or indirectly for years.

Characteristically for Courtney – uncharacteristically for many other members of Congress – he was uninterested in taking credit. Being singled out by the president, he said, “was obviously much appreciated.”

“We have been working with the White House and of course the Navy since the minute this thing was announced back in 2021,” he said. “A lot of politicians talk about ‘historic legislation,’ or ‘historic whatever.’ But it really felt like history in the making in San Diego. Opening up technology to another country is something that hasn’t happened since 1958. It was really powerful and significant. And Connecticut really is very connected.”

Courtney’s relationship with the Australians predates AUKUS. He has a long-standing friendship with former Australian Ambassador Kim Beazley, who he met in Washington. Beazley had been a member of the Australian Parliament and the two shared an interest in military shipbuilding and their respective navies.

“The more we were talking we realized that his district and my district were really strikingly similar,” Courtney said. “He has a navy base in his district. He was very involved in their effort to build the Collins class submarines. He was extremely knowledgeable about the U.S. Navy. We really became great friends.”

Courtney traveled twice to Australia and learned the Australians were having misgivings about a deal with the French to buy new diesel submarines to replace their aging fleet of Collins class diesel submarines. When Australia eventually canceled the deal with France it created an extended diplomatic row that pulled in the U.S.

“It was very expensive and they were already running into cost overruns,” Courtney said. “A lot of the hopes for Australian shipyard involvement were really shrinking as the design work evolved. I think they really hit a tipping point where they said, ‘If we are going to spend this kind of money we should get something of higher value.”

At the same time, concern was building in Australia over China’s naval expansion and intrusion in its domestic affairs. Among other things, China shocked the Australian economy by banning its exports when Australia called for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. There was a realization that diesel submarines, with limited range and increased vulnerability, would not give Australia an effective weapon against China in the vast western Pacific.

Their best option, the Australians decided, was the American Virginia class. Nuclear propulsion gives the Virginia boats unlimited range and ability to remain submerged and undetected.

The problem for Australia was that the secret U.S. nuclear propulsion technology that has been shared only once, with the British.

After private discussions with the British, the Australians approached the Biden administration in the spring of 2021. Although not directly involved in the approach, Courtney became a key player in efforts to win approval. The admiral involved in negotiations for the U.S. was a friend who had been stationed for years in Courtney’s district, at the U.S. Naval Submarine base, a mile or so up the Thames River from Electric Boat.

“I was aware of the deep hesitation about sharing the technology,” Courtney said. “But because it was Australia, because of the strategic picture with China and cooperation in the past, it was not surprising that the Navy agreed.”

Within hours of the September 2021 announcement of the allied commitment to AUKUS, then Australian defense minister Peter Dutton was in Groton with Courtney to study Virginia class submarines and EB’s construction processes.

“The first thing he did after the announcement in Washington was make a beeline to Groton,” Courtney said. “He was literally there within 48 hours.”

The allied leaders said last week that Australia will deploy Virginia class submarines to fill out its aging diesel fleet while collaborating with the British on construction of what will be a new, British-designed nuclear powered attack submarine now referred to as the SSN AUKUS class. The joint British-Australian built submarines will be substantially fitted out with U.S. weapons systems and other technology, much of it from Electric Boat.

It takes about five years to build a Virginia class submarine and seven to build a Columbia. The U.S. Navy has said it needs EB and Newport News to produce two Virginia and one Columbia class submarine annually — referred to as a 2 plus 1 schedule — to meet U.S. national defense requirements, as older Los Angeles class ships are retired or overhauled. The Navy has said the pace of production will have to increase if submarines are to be delivered to Australia.

At present, the U.S. Navy is getting one Columbia, its top priority, and slightly less than two Virginia submarines a year. Graney said the lag was pandemic-related and he believes a schedule of 2 plus 1 is achievable in the near term and 3 plus 1 later on – with continued investment in the manufacturing base and Electric Boat’s success in meeting its ambitious hiring goal of 5,000 people a year.

“I think we have the capability to do that, certainly,” Graney said “But to be fair we’re not at a 2 plus 1 rate today. And I don’t think that’s a news bulletin. We got hit pretty hard with COVID, particularly in the work force. We are staffing up now. And as we do that, it feels to me like we are making steady ground up in getting back to 2 plus 1. Given what has happened in AUKUS, we have evaluated getting to 2.3 plus 1. With a little more still, and some investment in the broader industrial base as well, I think 3 plus 1 is in the cards.

“But it is going to take us a while. We are at a point right now where out average age of our supervisor is south of seven years. That is pretty young for our industry. And the average age of our trade worker is south of three years. So as they get more proficient and really start to cut their teeth on what it means to go build submarines, I see a lot of upside in terms of our capacity.”

To help boost capacity, Graney said Electric Boat has invested $2 billion in manufacturing facilities and, among a long list of other things, is recruiting across New England, training anyone willing to work and partnering with schools at all levels to recruit and introduce Electric Boat and manufacturing careers to students, some of whom will not join the workforce for a decade or more.

EB now is now Connecticut’s largest private employer, employing about 19,500 in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Courtney said the employment figure could increase to old War levels of more than 25,000 – figures Graney said are possible. Those numbers have not been seen since the aggressive naval expansion under former President Ronald Reagan.

The challenge will be finding enough people to hire – not just at the shipyard, but in the supply chain that feeds it. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when employment at EB approached 30,000, there were 15,000 thousand supply chain companies feeding submarine construction. Courtney said the number has since fallen to between 3,000 and 4,000.

“We let our manufacturing sector and our shipbuilding sector shrink to a really unacceptable level,” Courtney said. “And frankly it is throughout the entire economy. The manufacturing sector is scrambling not only to build submarines, but semi conductors and chips and everything else that we outsource to an unacceptable level. What we are trying to do is recover this as quickly as we can.”

He said the number is rebounding and should continue to do so because of private and government investment in the supply chain and industrial base. The federal government is budgeting another $1.4 billion infusion. And as part of AUKUS, the Australians are committed to putting another $2 billion or so into the U.S. small businesses that make up the submarine industrial base. Electric Boat is spending more than $1 billion on subcontractors, laboratory testing and suppliers in Connecticut alone.

“Ultimately the details of AUKUS are going to manifest themselves over probably the next two decades or so,” Graney said. “So it is hard to project when and how it’s all going to come together. But certainly this is a strong demand signal for more submarines. Obviously that is a benefit to Electric Boat from a business perspective. But I think it is more important if you think about the regional impact it gives us.”