While I agree that the Navy doesn't need 6oo ships anymore, I do think that the Navy needs substantially more ships than they have now and that without a doubt more subs and more importantly more modern subs are required (70 sounds like a good number). The idea of capping Virginias at 10 units just sounds silly to me, the cost will be to high per boat and we wont get full return on the R&D and production investments we made into the design, which from what I have read, is the best SSN in the world.
Building this supposed "new" light nuke just seems goofy and SSK's sillier still for many reasons:
1) The R&D time and costs of new designs when we have a perfectly good one already
2) The costs associated with operating and training personell for five boat types (Ohio, Seawolf, Virginia, XSSN, XSSK) as opposed to the previous objective three (Ohio, Seawolf, Virginia)
3) The costs and training associated getting back into the SSK buisiness that the US abandoned in the 80's
4) By the time these alternative boats are built we probably could have bought more Virginias at a lower overall cost
Bottom line- we should ramp up production of Virginas and concentrate on incorporating any new technological developments into later flights of that design- it's the logical thing to do!
