The affordability of ships is a key concern of the Navy if it is to be successful in its plan to recapitalize the fleet. The Virginia-class submarine program, which delivered its first ship in 2004, had a target unit cost of $2 billion per submarine as a condition for increasing production from one to two boats per year starting in 2012—a cost reduction of nearly 20 percent per submarine.
Complicating the drive for cost reduction was the new joint production arrangement for building these submarines, between General Dynamics Electric Boat Corporation and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding.