Learning from Experience, Volume 2: Lessons from the U.S. Navy's Ohio, Seawolf, and Virginia Submarine Programs

Recognizing the importance of past experiences for successful program management, the Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Submarines from the United States, the Director Submarines of the United Kingdom's Defence Equipment and Support organization, and the Director General Submarines from Australia's Department of Defence asked the RAND Corporation to develop a set of lessons learned from previous submarine programs that could help inform future program managers. The research examined the Ohio, Seawolf, and Virginia programs of the United States; the Astute program of the United Kingdom (UK), and the Collins program of Australia. We developed the lessons from those programs through an extensive review of the literature in addition to numerous interviews with government and private-sector personnel involved in the programs. We were particularly interested in the following: (1) how political, budget, and operational environments influenced decisions made during the program; (2) how operational requirements guided the design and related to the technologies available at the time; (3) the contracting and acquisition processes used during the program; (4) how the private-sector industrial base that designs, builds, and maintains submarines and their systems changed over time; (5) the interactions between the government and naval organizations and the shipbuilding industrial base; (6) how integrated logistics support (ILS) plans were developed during the design and construction of the submarines to support the new submarines after they entered service; and (7) how other issues, both internal to the program and external, influenced decisions and outcomes. The lessons we strive to identify are managerial in nature, not technical. This volume describes important lessons from the Ohio, Seawolf, and Virginia programs. Separate volumes in the series provide lessons from the United Kingdom and Australia and a summary of lessons learned from all three programs.