Sea Control - Sea Control 354 - Sub Shipyards for Northern Ohio with CAPT Edward Bartlett

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

The Bartlett Maritime Corporation intends to build a brand-new naval repair depot and submarine construction support facility, alongside potential repair shipyards in Lordstown and Lorain, Ohio. The ambitious project would build and use Oceangoing Transit Carriers to transport new submarine sub-modules and, eventually, complete submarines through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Host Matthew Hipple discusses the Lordstown-Lorain project w/ its entrepreneurial architect, CAPT Edward Bartlett. Relying on Ohio’s industrial revenue bond program and the Navy’s facility lease-purchase program, this public-private partnership would mobilize Unions, governments, school, and businesses across Northern Ohio. The financial mechanisms employed would eventually transfer ownership to the Navy of vital new industrial facilities and support craft deep w/in the Rust Belt, where skilled industrial labor is plentiful.

Hey, folks, it's Jared. Matt Hipple is making his triumphant return as host this week, and he's talking with Captain Edward Bartlett about his proposal to bring Navy shipbuilding to northern Ohio. Matt edited and produced this episode. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles

wherever you download your podcast. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome to a special Northern Ohio edition of Sea Control Podcast. I am your former host, long lost and returned, Matthew Hipple, putting our interview in context today. Our battle force numbers are in a state of crisis. However, those numbers hide a greater problem when it comes to the supporting shipbuilding and repair infrastructure,

the trained manpower that supports and grows its sustainment. From San Francisco to Charleston, urban development has long displaced our abandoned shipyard and repair facilities. But Merchant Marine Captain Bartlett, co-horse of Mariner and entrepreneur at the head of Bartlett Maritime Corporation, has a solution, rekindling a small piece of the Rust Belt's Great Lakes shoreline to its maritime glory with the Lordstown Lorraine Project. Sir, thanks for joining us on the Sea Control Podcast today. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you, Matt. So for our listeners who may not be familiar with you or your project, if you would just introduce yourself and how that has informed you on this path to the Lordstown Lorraine Project, maybe a strategic vision of what that project is. Sure. As you mentioned, I'm an old Cold Warrior.

During the Cold War, I served on three attack submarines, the Bergall, the La Jolla, and the Gato. La Jolla, I was a member of the pre-commissioning unit. And, of course, you're in San Diego. You're familiar with what the name means, a village in San Diego. So I was pleased to take the ship around through the Panama Canal. And it was originally home ported in San Diego. Eventually, it moved out to Pearl, completed its service, and has now been converted. and it's part of the uh nuclear power school in charleston south carolina as a training vessel so

three ssn's i also served on a submarine tender which was my quote shore duty tour of course we deployed during my shore duty tour to uh to the med 1985 i was gone the entire year two deployments one on uh fulton and one on uh one on gato fulton by the way was a participant in the battle of midway uh anybody associated with the navy knows what that was and it was a brand new ship back then commissioned in 1939, and I was serving on it in the 1984-85 time frame. The ship that had the most impact and why we're doing this was the Gato. The Gato was the last of the Thresher-class ships. We lost Thresher during sea trials. It was the lead ship of the class, 63. I served on it in 85-86. When I served on it, it was the last one commissioned, the last one decommissioned.

had a great career and in fact on the deployment i went on with it it had a uh an outstanding deployment we brought back a muck but the ship was getting ready for its final shipyard period for the long story short we had to fight the ship almost as much as we had to fight our adversary in terms of executing the mission we almost sank a couple times uh obviously we did not we uh you know operated the ship safely at 594 tough is a thing among among submariners uh for people that veterans of that very difficult class. Maintenance was burned in my soul as being so important with my service on Gato. Later on, after I left the Navy, worked at an electric boat, and then led the design of a Virginia-class submarine, the initial conceptual design. Then later on,

I went off and rescued a business that was failing, making equipment for all Navy ships. We had equipment on every ship you've sailed on. We had equipment on. The Cutler Hammer motor controllers were made in my factory in Milwaukee I you know left all that and when I was an entrepreneur and in 2018 when jail report 19-229 was issued and published publicly let everyone know the sad state of the maintenance of our submarine force I just decided damn it if no one else is going to fix the problem I guess I'm going to have to so that's what started me off on this project. I'll give the scene setter for everyone. For those of you not from Ohio, Lorain is a little bit west of Cleveland. It is the former home of Republic Steel

or sorry, U.S. Steel, though somebody got the Republic Steel brand name and there is a roller plant out there. Cleveland was LTV. Most of that industry fell apart. So you've got some rail yards. We've got connection down to Lordstown, which is the Naval Depot in your business plan. We're looking at Rust Belt access to Lake Erie, some heavy industry and, you know, middle level industry, some specialty machining that remains up there. So what is the project? Kind of describe your vision for the Lorraine Lordstown project and and why they're so connected, because we're not just talking about one facility. We're talking about a system of systems, if you will, to use the lingo. Right. The initial concept started out with the realization that we needed more dry docks for nuclear-powered ships, and we therefore needed another repair shipyard. Since we closed so many shipyards, it was the BRAC at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.

They attempted to actually close another one in 2005. Fortunately, it was not closed. But we've only got four naval shipyards to repair these ships, and all the aircraft here, the submarines are repaired all there. So not enough. We'll build another shipyard. And then through consultation with the Navy, they talked to us about accelerate the time in the dry dock, reduce that time. They wanted to outsource the repair of the major components to a centralized location. And so we looked and did a lot of research and decided that Lordstown was about the best centralized location we're going to get. It's on the Ohio Turnpike, very easy access to all three of the naval shipyards stateside, plus also to Oakland to get you out to Pearl Harbor on the Mattson lines.

Bottom line, Lordstown is a great location. Lordstown had just lost the GM factory. So it looked like a good place to us. And it was that area is very good with this kind of work. became a second facility. Since we started, we also have come to realize, in fact, in the last three or four months, that the Navy's construction program is also significantly behind. If you look at the authorization dates for the Virginia-class submarines and their original build dates, we actually should have received, out of new construction, three more ships by now than we've received. We're behind on deliveries by three ships. We're supposed to be getting two a year we've been buying two a year and since 2011 when we started ordering two a year we're

behind three ships on deliveries. So the construction side has got challenges as well and then when you layer in the Columbia class which has to be done for strategic defense that even accelerates the challenge on the construction side. So we're actually going down a visit with the Navy in a week or so and we're going to be talking to them about initially starting with supporting the construction work in the Lorain site and supporting the component repairs to accelerate overhauls with the Lordstown site with the option at the Navy's desire to put the dry docks and the shipyard in at Lorain. Still going to employ the same number of people. And in fact, if we eventually do put the dry docks into Lorain, that'll be even more

people employed. The Lorraine site is going to initially focus on construction support for the ships under contract to build. And when we're talking about construction support, we're talking about building sub-assemblies of as much as 300 tons each that then get loaded into the hulls. And then on the component side, major components like pumps, valves, hydraulic power plants, propulsion shafts have to be inspected every time the ship goes in dry dock, requires specialized equipment plus the navy's interested in foundries and forges one of our team members is an expert in that area so if they want more foundries and forges we'll build them more foundries and forges it's what the navy wants what the navy needs to accelerate the program

and fortunately because of our location in ohio the two advantages we've got that aren't existing elsewhere. Because number one, we've got a ready, robust workforce up here, whereas on the coast, you don't have the people who work in the shipyards. They're desperate for shipyard workers on the coasts. Now, we're going to have to train our people fine, but the blue-collar skilled tradespeople are available in good numbers in Ohio. We think we're going to have an easy workforce to train up and work. The second thing, Ohio has an industrial revenue Bond Program, which actually makes the financing of this thing very convenient and easy for us and very affordable for the Navy. We're talking about building billion-dollar,

multi-billion-dollar facilities within whatever the Navy decides on that are affordable within the current Navy budget top line because of the way it's financed over a long period of time. So that's kind of the vision. Affordable, actionable, no need for legislation. It's already approved in legislation answers the mail with regard to where are the people available to do the jobs so it sounds like we're already on the path to success so the navy has committed to they haven't committed we're still working with them trying to get them to commit got it so even even for the construction component that is under development okay understood we could be if they decide to go we can actually be in production both for new construction support and repair support as early

as the first quarter of next calendar year in a limited way while we build the facilities using temporary facilities. So I think we, I was about to ask why Northeast Ohio? Now I know why, because I'm from Cleveland, but the listeners don't. I think you've answered that question, talking about a lot of the workforce that's available uh some of the industrial facilities talk about rail lines but for the workforce some folks on twitter uh when we were talking about this this project noted especially our our yard bird said hey listen i'm a specialty i'm a specialty now great i'm glad you guys have swedge lock and materion and all these other cool guys or public steel up there in northern ohio but what i do is a specialty and that's absolutely right i noticed in your

business plan that you've already got the afl cio on board the lorraine community college is on board i assume these folks are going to take part in some of that specialty training if you could speak to that training strategy because shipyard work is very different than a lot of the plant work and manufacturing that we're used to up north even for somebody that's an experienced tradesman They're going to require training. And so we're going to have an apprentice school. We're starting with like we're also partnering with Lincoln Lecter, which is a Cleveland company in welding and welding equipment and welding training. And so we're going to start with a 16 week apprentice schoolhouse program, basic skills, and then understanding about working on Navy ships, quality requirements, particular submarine requirements, whatever. And then we'll have an apprentice program to work through, just like the shipyards have.

We expect there'll be some churn. There always is. But the shipyards, Newport News EV and the Four Naval Shipyards, have been having to hire three people to get one person in the program, you know, to be a productive worker at the end of the day. We think we'll have much less churn than that. This is a much better environment. The cost of living is lower here. And, you know, we're going to pay competitively. So these will be tough jobs. They'll be hard jobs. With our partnership with Union and the schools and working with the Navy, working with the other shipyards, we think that we'll be able to train up our workforce and get going in a good fashion.

Long-range vision. We're talking about submarines now, but once you build this industrial base, both in material and skill sets and the institutions, local institutions being bought into this process, what do you see as the future? Is this a submarine specialty facility, or do you envision a broader project of engaging with the Constellation class or Coast Guard cutters and other platforms that can get through the St. Lord's Seaway, which we will discuss next. That will be our next question. Put that one on hold, though. The easy answer to this is the nature of our financial structure is that the Navy will end up owning these facilities at the end of the day. Whatever the Navy wants to work on is what we'll work on. Quick answer to an easy problem.

The nature of the way the laws we're using to make this work, the Navy ends up owning it at a low cost and affordable cost. That's fascinating. I did not know the component where these would be Navy yards, so I'm even more excited. But before we get too excited, there is the St. Lawrence Seaway. So for those that are unaware of the Niagara Falls, it sits between Lake Erie and the rest of the ocean. Thankfully, someone dug a big old channel to get us past it. Problem is, it's 26 feet deep at its shallowest point and 78 feet wide. Submarine's not going to chug all by itself through that.

So with a sub that's 34 feet wide, you've got about 15 feet of space on either side. What's the Bartlett solution to the St. Lawrence Channel and getting these big, heavy nuclear subs through that tiny space? Well, this is part of the reason why we're actually deferring the dry docks part until we prove out this piece. But we've submitted a patent application for something called an ocean-going transit carrier. It is a modification of an existing vessel design called an articulated tug barge. Our friends up at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, Fincantieri, make these. They're the largest manufacturer of these in the United States. They're used to transport typically petroleum products along the ocean coasts, you know, up and down the East Coast, West Coast, the United States, Gulf Coast, United States.

ATBs are everywhere. And these ATVs are very safe and very seaworthy transport patrolling. We're just going to change the design of the barge a little bit to pull this up. If to use it with the submarine, to pull the submarine in, lift it up a little bit, and then just drive it up. But in the early days, assuming we proceed with the manufacturing support first, we'll build the same vessel and use that to transport the submodules. so we're talking about 300 ton module you choose that same system drop it into a insert in the transit carrier and just take it through the seaway and you know we're like 550 600 feet up from the ocean so we've got to go down through this series of locks around niagara falls and

then up around montreal which is at sea level we don't think that's going to be a problem we think the vessel is going to be very robust the fincantieri is very satisfied with the idea There are critics, you know, you can find critics of anything, but we'll prove this thing out. We're comfortable that it's going to work. And by starting with construction support, we can prove this thing, transporting 300 ton submodules before anybody wants to transport a ship. If, in fact, they do want to transport a ship. What's the cost? What's the timeline? Because, of course, if your dry dock requires these vessels, we talked about a testing period, but we got to build them first. And then, because you mentioned earlier that these yards would be Navy owned, does that mean these OGTCs would also become Navy vessels? Interesting. They would be, at the end of the 30 years, they would be owned by the Navy.

They would be paid for with the same funding approach that's being paid for the facilities, because they're part of the equipment required to make the facilities work. The Ohio bond program allows us to use the secured bonds for any facilities and the equipment required to make it function. These things are about $150 million each kind of thing, tug and barge, maybe a little bit more because of customization work. We haven't gone through the full rigorous cost assessment, but it'll be paid for under the same thing. So it doesn't have to come out of SCN, comes out of the facility cost, which once again gets amortized over a long period of time. And we would operate them with SIVMAR crews, kind of like the MSC. And at the end of the day, when the Navy finally takes ownership of it at the end of the program, we probably would give them to MSC or Charter Armada.

I don't know what they want to do with them, but, you know, be very conventional and operate as Jones Act merchant marine vessels. Critical path. What are the major tasks or barriers that you have remaining to at least start the module component of the work and proving out the OGTC? Well, this is what we're going to be talking to the Navy about in a week or so. The critical path we call phase one. We've partnered with, we've retained, partnered with Goldman Sachs on our financial strategy side. we've got a bunch of financial guys on our team we need to develop a comprehensive program plan with the navy's input and active involvement because you can't go price this thing until you know exactly what the need we've got two sites set out we know exactly what they want the facilities to have for capabilities we've got general ideas we've got everything laid out

but do they want a foundry okay if you want a foundry what kind of foundry do you want You want a steel foundry? You want a brass foundry? You want a nickel foundry? What kind of foundry? And what type of castings do you want to do? And if you want to forge, once again, where are you going to forge? That has a big impact on the way you design it. We have a six-month phase one program we've proposed. During that program, we will define the facilities. We will develop the program plan from there based on the definition of the facilities. And we will also work with our friends at Goldman, with our friends at the state of Ohio, and our friends at the Navy to put together this three-way public-private partnership proposal, which has to be approved

both by the state and by the Navy. And then once phase one ends, we'll submit formal proposals in the Navy to do the facilities, formal proposal to the state for the financing, which will be mirrors of each other developed together. Everybody will be working on it together. And then once that's approved, we can go sell the bonds and then start the project and start acquiring facilities, start acquiring equipment, and get going. And that's why we could get going. This is a six-month program. So if they start now in early 2023, we'll have bond money available to buy equipment to use in temporary facilities to start doing production work early while we build the permanent facilities. So that's kind of the timing.

Step one is this preliminary planning. Everything, as you know, in the Navy, you've got to plan everything. You've got to have specifications. You've got to know exactly what you want, because when you're talking about something with big dollars around it, everybody has to know exactly what they're going to get and what it's going to cost. So I've been around the block quite a few times with this. So has my team.

You know, I've got retired admirals on my team, a couple of retired captains, retired shipyard executives, retired NR people. We know what we're doing here. But we need to work with the Navy to define exactly what they want. So if all goes well, it sounds like your timeline envisions roughly a 2024-2025 execution on module work to prove the concept then, if the 2023 is when the bond money becomes available. Would you say that's – go ahead. Yeah, it'll be about two years to get the facilities up to full speed. You know, we'll start building, for instance, a transit carrier right away because once we start building the modules, then we're transporting them by the seaway.

So all of it falls in and it'll all be planned out in the six months. So a start to actual work in 23, a completion of the facilities, maybe the end of 24, but we'll be ramping up in terms of volume of throughput by then. And then somewhere along the line, the Navy can decide that they want the shipyard part, the dry docks part or not. they can make that choice. And we'll go from there. But clearly, I mean, if you listen to the congressional hearings, the last few weeks, the Navy admits that number one, submarines are their first priority. And number two, we need more industrial capacity and throughput. And the only way you're going to get that is you got to build out the infrastructure. For the listeners, I want to hone in on that timeline. So even in this scenario where we have someone such as yourself

with a vested personal interest in sub-repair in the general state of the Navy, we're looking at a timeline really where you're getting ramped up on a partial version of this vision only two to three years before that Davidson window in 2027. So when folks in Congress, when folks in industry, when folks in the Navy talk about solving this capacity issue, there's no more time to wait. There's no more divest to invest. It's time to start investing to invest right now. There's no more time to fool around. Right. The types of projects that we envision, your timeline is one in which a significant amount of the foundation has been laid, and now it's on everybody else to draft like they do in

NASCAR right behind. Not only do we have to worry about the Davidson window, which you could also say is the Richard window, which also you could say is Mary Kissel's window. She was in Mary Kissel, former State Department leader, same sort of thing. We've got to worry about China. But the other problem we've got is the Columbia class. The Ohio's are going to time out. Now, Admiral Papano the other day, in a talk that came out, said he was thinking about extending five of the ohio's that may be required just because it's going to take that long to get the columbia built but these are already at 42 years that's a record time for a submarine you're going to extend them another year or two that's a really big deal that's engineering challenge the bottom line is

we're past the time of fooling around you know when i started this three years ago is when we should have really gotten serious about it unfortunately it's taken this long to get where we're at we're talking a lot about the navy capital t capital n a lot of us deck plate guys right i just came out of my department head tour our encounters with the program offices are are often minimal so when you say the navy who is it that engages with you i know it's going to be an eye chart if you describe the entire thing but if you could give us a little insight into the kinds of organizations that you have to coordinate with to get this project up and running? The principal point of interest is the program executive office for both attack submarines and

for strategic submarines, POSSN, POSSPN. Admiral Goggins on the attack side, Admiral Pupano on the strategic side. And then because of nuclear power and because NR is NR, we have to deal with Naval reactor nr is nr is a very important organization within the navy and it's a source of great success for submarines and aircraft carriers so not a negative statement at all i mean i've been dealing with naval reactors since you know i taught at nuclear power school i mean my whole life my whole career i don't think you need a caveat i think they know i don't think they're coming to get you no they know i've been around the block with them a few times so there's naval reactors there's peos but we've also been dealing with the asn level and we've been dealing with

secretary's office as well it's right up and down the chain a major component of your business plan is the statement collaboration not competition some folks out there are saying hey listen the shipyards that we have now they have more capacity they can execute the navy's not talking right with industry other folks are saying some folks in industry are looking to maintain some of that monopoly what are some of the barriers there and maybe discuss that collaboration not competition phrase well we've been talking to for instance portsmouth naval shipyard is the partner we want to have because they're going to be closest to us and that they folk they feature and work on primarily attack submarines uh of the four naval shipyards they're the closest to what we want to

be uh and we we look to be smaller than they are we've talked to both electric quota newport news the two commercial shipyards and they're both looking to outsource significant manufacturing support and they're both interested in us working with them to help them build attack submarines columbia missile submarines and newport news guy even said hey could you build some carrier stuff that would be our third priority for us but we do whatever the navy wants us to do um yes there are some in the naval shipyards that feel like uh we're going to try to replace them not at all. The Navy's own analysis, our analysis, the GAO's analysis, Congressional Budget Office did analysis. We first started talking to Dr. Eric Labs over at the Congressional Budget Office.

I've known him for years. He's their Navy analyst. And I called him up about a year ago and said, I'd like to brief you on this plan as we started to roll it out more publicly. And we showed it to him and he says, geez, we're working on a study on this. Can we reference your stuff, I said, well, it's not quite ready to be released publicly. But the long, the short, he issued a report in March of 2021, which in summary came to the same conclusions we did with regard to what the manpower shortage is in the naval shipyards versus what we came to the conclusion, same conclusion. So we are working with the naval shipyards. We are working with EVN Newport News. We're not trying to put anybody out of business.

You know, think of it this way. In the 80s, when I was out there, we were buying five submarines a year. In the 90s, when I was designing Virginia at Seawolf and then Virginia, we ordered three new submarines in an entire decade. In the 2000s, we ordered one submarine a year. and since 2011 we've been ordering two submarines a year and haven't been able to deliver them and we haven't been able to maintain the ships that are in the fleet and now we got to put columbia on top of that plus the submarines we're going to build going forward have got this extra 84 foot and four extra missile tubes in them or even more complicated they're the so-called vpm virginia payload module submarine all objective evidence clearly points to the fact that we need to expand the industrial base and we're late to get to it so barriers we discussed the upcoming barriers but we've just as we've run into barriers with folks accepting that there is a crisis in our

battle force numbers that there is a crisis in our uh in our industrial base folks insisting that things are all right i'm sure there are also barriers as there are all those other topics to your project, since your project is rooted in the realization of a number of these factors? What have you found to be the biggest barriers? And let's throw out there the greatest enablers so far to the Lordstown Lorraine Project? There are some that believe that we should not be growing the military right now. If you look at the administration's budget submittals last year then this year uh they've basically been a small growth but not as much as inflation so actually a net reduction in size of military spending and our proposal results in new facilities

for the industrial base for submarine force but then again at the same time they say they want to grow the submarine so you know a must equal b kind of thing so there are some folks that don't understand philosophically and defense is not the top priority of this administration i'll just put it that way they have other things that are their key priorities that they were elected on so those are kind of getting people's attention issues with regard to support uh our our great partners and our great team and the fact that the local environment here the mayors of both facility, Village of Lordstown, City of Lorain have been very supportive. AFL-CIO has been very supportive. The local politicians, local and congressional representatives and senators

have been very, very supportive. It's just getting down to the point now where reality is struck. And, you know, if not us, okay, what's the answer? You need more infrastructure. This is the lowest cost way to do it and the fastest way to bring it online because of all of our advanced work so if you don't like us what are you going to do simple as that what i like about your concept is that it really it makes sense from a bipartisan standpoint right it's not just military growth but focusing on maritime infrastructure uh you're looking at public private partnerships right that's that's probably a conservative talking point. Build USA is very much of both sides, bipartisan talking point. You're looking at union growth and skill sets and education, stuff for red, stuff for blue

inside there. But focusing on the infrastructure side, I think is the winning goal, as well as if it wasn't for the fact that Northern Ohio is such an excellent environment for these facilities, But the fact that the Erie Coast from, you know, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, that's a number of congressional delegations that could have their populations re-benefit and also have an interest in naval growth. So there's political benefits to the Navy. There's benefits to local population, benefits economically. So it's really a win-win across the board. This is not red and blue. This is blue and gold. bingo true man not red and blue it's haze gray haze gray all the way or in subs place mostly black and don't come back submarine well i come back big and black and you're gone a long time

perfect well captain bartlett we are hitting that 30 minute mark here i i appreciate you coming on talking about the lordstown lorraine project as both a naval officer and a son of the great state of Ohio, it makes me very excited. But before we close out, leave an open floor to you. Is there anything that you, we haven't talked about that you'd like to pass to the audience? I'd just like to say that I appreciate your interest. And I will tell you that there are a lot of mid-grade officers like yourself that have actually contacted us independently, both submarine people, as well as folks like yourself that have contacted us to express support. In fact, somebody in the engineering duty community that I've interfaced with on this project just contacted me this afternoon.

We're getting a lot of encouragement up and down the chain, including at the four-star level. This needs to happen. We're looking forward to getting it done, and we certainly appreciate your interest and your support. And we appreciate your interest and support as well, sir. So this has been the Sea Control Podcast coming to you live virtually from Northern Ohio and San Diego. Captain Bartlett, thank you. And if the audience is interested, where can they go to learn more about the Lordstown Lorraine Project other than the AFL-CIO website where if you Google Lordstown Lorraine, your business plan PDF shows up. So that's another hookup to the audience.

It's an easy way to find out a lot of really detailed programmatic information about this project. We have our website is BartlettMaritime.com. Our other website is AmericanNaval.com. It takes you to the same place. And for anybody who's interested in our progress, we have a subscribe button at the bottom, where if you fill that out, all of our press releases and blog posts, you'll get copies of it sent to you. So I anticipate that once this podcast comes out, we're going to send it out to everybody on our subscription list. A lot of support.

Looking forward to doing this, and I look forward to meeting you in person. Yes, sir. © transcript Emily Beynon I need help, people. I'm put in the alley. Put it on the shimbo now.