Submarines and the Future of Defense Manufacturing

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.