What are the key takeaways from this a16z Podcast episode?

Key insights include: **Workforce gap vs. budget gap:** The U.S. submarine industrial base faces a people shortage, not a funding shortage. Post-Cold War defense cuts eliminated nine out of ten manufacturing jobs, and an entire generation was steered toward four-year degrees. The skilled workers who remain are in their late fifties and sixties, with no replacement pipeline behind them.; **Scale of the production deficit:** In the mid-1980s, the U.S. built four nuclear submarines annually. Today, the combined Columbia and Virginia class programs require roughly 70 million labor hours — more than five times the approximately 13 million hours needed just a decade ago at a rate of one submarine per year. The gap is structural, not cyclical.; **Software-driven productivity as the only viable solution:** Hadrian's model targets 50–70% reductions in required labor hours by fusing software with workforce training. Traditional factory automation works for high-volume, identical parts like iPhones. Submarine manufacturing demands flexible, high-mix, low-volume production — software enables that flexibility while compensating for the missing skilled workforce.

What did Chris Power and Robert Goucher discuss on a16z Podcast?

Chris Power (Hadrian CEO) and Vice Admiral Robert Goucher (Pentagon's first submarine czar) discuss rebuilding U.S. submarine manufacturing capacity at Hadrian's new 2.25-million-square-foot Alabama facility, addressing a workforce crisis requiring 70 million labor hours to meet Columbia and Virginia class production targets. Key topics include: **Workforce gap vs. budget gap:** The U.S. submarine industrial base faces a people shortage, not a funding shortage. Post-Cold War defense cuts eliminated nine out of ten manufacturing jobs, and an entire generation was steered toward four-year degrees. The skilled workers who remain are in their late fifties and sixties, with no replacement pipeline behind them.; **Scale of the production deficit:** In the mid-1980s, the U.S. built four nuclear submarines annually. Today, the combined Columbia and Virginia class programs require roughly 70 million labor hours — more than five times the approximately 13 million hours needed just a decade ago at a rate of one submarine per year. The gap is structural, not cyclical..

How long is this episode of a16z Podcast?

This episode is 23 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

a16z Podcast

Submarines and the Future of Defense Manufacturing

March 25, 2026

23 min episode · 2 min read

Chris Power,Robert Goucher

Episode

23 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Investing, Fundraising & VC

AI-Generated Summary

Published Mar 25, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Workforce gap vs. budget gap: The U.S. submarine industrial base faces a people shortage, not a funding shortage. Post-Cold War defense cuts eliminated nine out of ten manufacturing jobs, and an entire generation was steered toward four-year degrees. The skilled workers who remain are in their late fifties and sixties, with no replacement pipeline behind them.
✓Scale of the production deficit: In the mid-1980s, the U.S. built four nuclear submarines annually. Today, the combined Columbia and Virginia class programs require roughly 70 million labor hours — more than five times the approximately 13 million hours needed just a decade ago at a rate of one submarine per year. The gap is structural, not cyclical.
✓Software-driven productivity as the only viable solution: Hadrian's model targets 50–70% reductions in required labor hours by fusing software with workforce training. Traditional factory automation works for high-volume, identical parts like iPhones. Submarine manufacturing demands flexible, high-mix, low-volume production — software enables that flexibility while compensating for the missing skilled workforce.
✓Single accountable leadership accelerates execution: Creating a direct-reporting portfolio manager role (the "submarine czar") reporting to the Deputy Defense Secretary short-circuits bureaucratic delays. Power notes that deals taking years previously now close in months. Concentrated decision-making authority — one person placing multiple bets simultaneously — is the structural change enabling faster industrial base rebuilding.
✓Sequence-critical parts as the primary production bottleneck: Submarine yards stall when a single missing component blocks the next construction step. Hadrian's facility targets this directly by manufacturing obsolete and hard-to-source parts on demand, including air flasks and escape trunk hatches. Reducing twelve-month supply chain waits to on-demand production directly increases yard throughput and submarine delivery cadence.

What It Covers

Chris Power (Hadrian CEO) and Vice Admiral Robert Goucher (Pentagon's first submarine czar) discuss rebuilding U.S. submarine manufacturing capacity at Hadrian's new 2.25-million-square-foot Alabama facility, addressing a workforce crisis requiring 70 million labor hours to meet Columbia and Virginia class production targets.

Key Questions Answered

•Workforce gap vs. budget gap: The U.S. submarine industrial base faces a people shortage, not a funding shortage. Post-Cold War defense cuts eliminated nine out of ten manufacturing jobs, and an entire generation was steered toward four-year degrees. The skilled workers who remain are in their late fifties and sixties, with no replacement pipeline behind them.
•Scale of the production deficit: In the mid-1980s, the U.S. built four nuclear submarines annually. Today, the combined Columbia and Virginia class programs require roughly 70 million labor hours — more than five times the approximately 13 million hours needed just a decade ago at a rate of one submarine per year. The gap is structural, not cyclical.
•Software-driven productivity as the only viable solution: Hadrian's model targets 50–70% reductions in required labor hours by fusing software with workforce training. Traditional factory automation works for high-volume, identical parts like iPhones. Submarine manufacturing demands flexible, high-mix, low-volume production — software enables that flexibility while compensating for the missing skilled workforce.
•Single accountable leadership accelerates execution: Creating a direct-reporting portfolio manager role (the "submarine czar") reporting to the Deputy Defense Secretary short-circuits bureaucratic delays. Power notes that deals taking years previously now close in months. Concentrated decision-making authority — one person placing multiple bets simultaneously — is the structural change enabling faster industrial base rebuilding.
•Sequence-critical parts as the primary production bottleneck: Submarine yards stall when a single missing component blocks the next construction step. Hadrian's facility targets this directly by manufacturing obsolete and hard-to-source parts on demand, including air flasks and escape trunk hatches. Reducing twelve-month supply chain waits to on-demand production directly increases yard throughput and submarine delivery cadence.

Notable Moment

Power describes submarine manufacturing as more precision-demanding than building a rocket — surpassing even Starship in tolerancing, welding quality, and complexity. The stakes compound because every component must perform flawlessly for thirty to forty years underwater, making this the first time a non-shipyard supplier has attempted this knowledge transfer.

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Episode Transcript

The real advantage that submarines bring is our stealth and access. We can pretty much go anywhere in the world undetected. We can carry nuclear missiles on our ballistic missile submarines, and that ensures that we continue our decades of peace without nuclear war, that any country that tried to attack us with nuclear weapons would be destroyed. At the end of the Cold War, we walked away from manufacturing. The amount of work that we need now to replenish our fleet is on the order of about seventy million hours. The power of combining the new workforce, American software, American steel, and American spirit is you have to get this productivity jump somehow with advanced factories. It's not a money problem. We have to get this productivity uplift by fusing workforce trading and software together to go a lot faster. In the mid nineteen eighties, The United States built four nuclear submarines a year. Then the Cold War ended, production collapsed, and nine out of 10 manufacturing jobs vanished. An entire generation was told to skip the factory floor. Four decades later, the navy needs more than five times the capacity it had a decade ago. The Columbia class program requires roughly 70,000,000 labor hours. The workers who could fill them aged out and nobody replaced them. This is not a budget problem. The money exists. The people do not. The question is whether software driven manufacturing can compress a decade of training into something the country can scale. David Ulevich speaks with Chris Power, founder and CEO at Hadrian, and vice admiral Robert Goucher, the Pentagon's first submarine czar. I am very, very, very, very lucky to have two incredible folks joining me on stage. This is gonna be a conversation you do not wanna miss. So in addition to having Chris Bauer, the founder and CEO of Hadrian, who you heard earlier, we also have Admiral Robert Goucher who charge of all submarine production for the United States Navy. Let me give you a quick background. For those of you that are not familiar with the defense industrial base, the Navy is an extraordinary force. They operate across the largest domain on Earth. They cover more than 70% of the planet, and the Navy is responsible for projecting American power, maintaining deterrence, and ensuring stability across that entire space. This is a service that has been operating continuously since 1775. That's two hundred and fifty years already. It's adapted into new technologies, new threats, new missions, and it remains one of the most capable institutions in the world. And that's why we're here in Cherokee. That's why we're opening this facility. We're of Hadrian's factory four, a 2,250,000 square foot advanced manufacturing facility that's gonna support the Columbia and Virginia class submarine programs. So let's just start out actually with you, admiral. For people that are not familiar with the real world problems, what problems do we solve with submarines? Why do we have a submarine program, …

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