But output on production lines remains hampered by supply chain challenges, leaving the Navy with too few of the longest-range and most lethal weapons it would want in a fight. Large defense contractors say they’ve done their part in recent years to expand their production facilities, hire and train workers, and modernize their processes. But until key suppliers can deliver critical components faster, including rocket motors and electronics, the overall munitions production rate can’t increase. The Navy included $380 million in its FY24 budget plans to address some of these supply chain bottlenecks, and it kicked off four multiyear procurement contracts to provide stable funding. But industry executives say it will simply take time for troubled suppliers to speed up production. Certain electronics, for instance, are slowing torpedo production, according to Steve Rigdon, SAIC’s vice president for undersea weapons.

The Navy stopped building torpedoes after the Cold War. Service officials, facing tighter post-war budgets, decided they had a sufficient inventory for a fleet without a real threat. Missile programs continued, as the Navy upgraded to newer and more capable systems over time — but missile procurement plans often faced outsized cuts during tight budget years, including in the mid-2010s. Later in the decade, however, when the Defense Department recognized China as a top adversary that would drive the armed services’ planning and spending, the Navy restarted torpedo production. Increased missile orders followed. For example, the Navy in FY20 projected it would buy 48 LRASMs each year for the foreseeable future. The FY24 budget, in contrast, calls for buying 91, with an increase up to 149 a year by FY28. But industry struggled to respond.

Vendors on the heavyweight torpedo program needed three years to rework the 1990s-era torpedo design, which was riddled with parts that were no longer available, before they could start production. Missiles manufacturers found they needed faster processes and more testing capacity to keep up with demand. Frustration among Navy officials grew. Despite increased spending, the service didn’t have more weapons to hang on fighter jet wings and load into ship launchers. “All this stuff about COVID this, parts, supply chain this — I just don’t really care,” U.S. Fleet Forces Command chief Adm. Daryl Caudle told a crowd of Navy and industry representatives at the Surface Navy Association conference a year ago. “I need [Standard Missile]-6s delivered on time. I need more [torpedoes] delivered on time.”

...

Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, the director of surface warfare on the chief of naval operations’ staff, said the Navy bought many of these weapons at a minimum sustaining rate for years but is now committed to maxing out production lines this year and into the future, which means addressing weak points in the supply chain. “As we look at the global threat — what we see from China, what we see from Russia, and then the actions being taken in Ukraine — we saw the need to make sure that we get our munition stocks [and] inventories increased,” Pyle told Defense News in a Dec. 7 interview at the Pentagon.

...

... ultimately “the bottleneck is rocket motors” because so few companies are qualified to build them for the United States, Okano explained. ... Navy leaders expected restarting torpedo production after more than two decades to be a challenge. Still, “we underestimated the complexity of going back into production,” Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, the program executive officer for undersea warfare systems, said in a Dec. 11 interview.

...

“Before, coming out of the Cold War, the expectation [was] that wars would be short and regional, so you didn’t need a large magazine because … the major conflict period would not last very long,” said Cancian, a senior adviser at the CSIS think tank’s International Security Program. Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has proved that may not be the case. “We’ve now come to recognize the next war might be great power war, and it could be long,” Cancian said. “Those use up a lot of munitions.”

During the Cold War, submarines were meant to hunt and destroy Soviet submarines. In the think tank’s China-Taiwan wargame, the subs were shooting their torpedoes at amphibious ships, destroyers and more. “If you’re in the Taiwan Strait with 200 Chinese vessels there, you’re going to use everything,” Cancian said. Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute think tank, said the Navy has about 1,300 MK 48 torpedoes and counting as production continues. The submarine fleet would quickly go through hundreds in a fight against China, he noted. Clark said Chinese ships have sophisticated air defense systems — meaning it would take multiple anti-ship missiles to sink a given Chinese vessel — and the U.S. Navy would rapidly go through its best anti-ship missiles in the opening days of a fight.

Cancian said the Navy and the Air Force have about 150 LRASMs today but would need between 2,000 and 3,000 for a healthy stockpile, according to his research. Acknowledging the high expenditure rate of munitions in the Russia-Ukraine war, Weeks said “those same trends are going to play out in the undersea — there’s no doubt in my mind — and I think we’re coming to grips with that.” “If we’ve learned anything from stopping production for 20 years, we realized that we don’t want to ever do that again,” Weeks added. “So we will stay in production.”