Navy and Newport News Shipbuilding poised to honor John Warner

Aug. 31--Newport News Shipbuilding will christen the Navy's newest submarine Saturday in a ceremony that will more than mark a construction milestone. It will celebrate the legacy of retired U.S. Sen. John Warner, one of Virginia's most venerated leaders.

Warner insists that others are more deserving of having a warship named in their honor. He said as much when President George W. Bush called to deliver the big news more than five years ago.

When the phone rang that day, Virginia's senior senator had just climbed out of a swimming pool. He was in Florida with his wife, Jeanne, visiting his son and daughter-in-law, counting down the final days of a 30-year legislative career that put his fingerprints on everything from Soviet negotiations to climate change.

When Jeanne called him inside because the president was on the phone, he wasn't buying it.

"I thought she was trying to get me to hurry," he said in an interview with the Daily Press at his home in Alexandria.

The call turned out to be genuine, and when Warner said he didn't deserve the honor, Bush politely pointed out that presidents decide these things, not retiring senators, and thus ended the conversation.

As the big day approaches, the 87-year-old Warner said he still doesn't want the day to be about him.

"We're not celebrating the name," he said. "We're celebrating what America can do, and is doing, to maintain peace in the world, and that's to create this magnificent, highly technical platform."

The John Warner will be the 12th submarine of the Virginia class and the sixth delivered to the Navy by Newport News, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds the nuclear-powered vessels in partnership with General Dynamics Electric Boat of Groton, Conn. It represents the work of 4,000 Newport News shipbuilders who constructed the bow and stern sections, plus other areas.

Until now, all Virginia-class submarines have been named for states. And since the 1970s, the Navy has named only 13 ships for living people, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Warner joins a group that includes Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, entertainer Bob Hope, astronaut John Glenn, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Hyman G. Rickover, the admiral known as the father of the nuclear Navy.

In short, while the Navy and shipyard will christen a submarine, there is no escaping the homage to the dean of Virginia's political class.

Military ally

Warner served in the Senate from 1979 to 2009. He is remembered for his leadership on the Armed Services Committee and an independent streak that sometimes confounded members of his own Republican Party.

When it comes to submarines, shipyard officials recall Warner's key support for legislation that led to the unique alliance between Newport News and Electric Boat, where each yard builds components of a submarine and takes turns delivering them to the Navy.

The two yards didn't exactly start out as partners.

For years, Electric Boat and Newport News battled over submarine construction jobs, and both vied for the chance to build the new Virginia-class submarine in the 1990s. At the time, submarine construction was dropping, and that concerned Tom Schievelbein, a top executive at then-Northrop Grumman Newport News.

Would the drop in construction sustain a robust competition between the two yards? Hundreds of jobs in Hampton Roads depended on that answer, and Newport News wanted a piece of the business.

"Clearly, from a Newport News perspective, since that was a third to 40 percent of our workforce, we thought we should at least participate in that," Schievelbein said. "So that became known as the great submarine wars."

The two rivals eventually declared a truce, and agreed to work together. The Navy signed onto that idea, and then it became a matter of selling Congress. That's where Warner came in.

"He grabbed it as the best approach," Schievelbein said.

Warner liked the idea of keeping two yards open because it maintained the base of skilled workers and intellectual capital that sustained the U.S. submarine industry

"There were a lot of naysayers," Warner said. "We had to get antitrust waivers, which is big business, trying to get a waiver on that. Congress, rightly so, is always trying to drive for competition and efficiency."

But Schievelbein said the idea of long-term competition between the two yards wasn't practical. After the first contract award, the loser would be at a huge disadvantage, unable to keep its submarine workforce together.

Today, the Navy and Newport News praise the teaming arrangement as a model for the defense industry, one that delivers submarines ahead of schedule and under budget. In April, the Navy awarded the largest shipbuilding contract in terms of dollars in its history to the two yards. The $17.6 billion award is for 10 additional Virginia-class boats.

"You've got some of the smartest people in the world at both shipyards," Schievelbein said. "Once they understand what the running rules are, they roll up their sleeves and get to work."

Not without controversy

Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author who has written extensively about submarines, is critical of the teaming arrangement.

He said the original plan called for Electric Boat and Newport News to build submarines independently. That would keep the industrial base intact, and one shipyard could continue working if another was hit by an accident, storm or an attack.

"They did not build submarines in two yards," he said. "They built pieces of submarines in two yards and glued them together. That's more expensive than building them in one yard because of transportation costs. I wish I could get the interest on the insurance of moving those submarine chunks back and forth."

A February 1997 press release from General Dynamics announcing the teaming agreement indicated that the previous year's Defense Authorization Act directed independent submarine construction by the two yards, and that the new alliance required changing the law.

As late as 2006, news reports noted frustrations with the teaming deal because of rising costs, but recent history is more positive. In 2006, the cost of a Virginia-class submarine was reported to be $2.4 billion. The John Warner will cost about $2 billion. The first Virginia-class submarine took 94 months to build. The current schedule is around 60 months.

Polmar favors a hybrid arrangement where each shipyard would be given a submarine to build, then compete for contracts in alternate years. That way, the Navy keeps the industrial base, and if one shipyard becomes inoperative, the U.S. can continue to build submarines at the other yard.

But by 2006, the Navy closed the door on returning to independent yards because workers at Electric Boat and Newport News had each developed specialized skills for the components they built.

Polmar also doesn't favor naming a submarine for John Warner, but it's nothing personal.

The Navy has routinely departed from its submarine naming conventions. Older Los Angeles-class submarines have been named for cities, but that changed when SSN-705 was named for Hyman Rickover. Three Seawolf-class submarines each carried different names -- the lead Seawolf, the Connecticut and the Jimmy Carter.

Now comes the Virginia class, named for states -- until Warner came along.

So should there be a USS John Warner?

Absolutely, Polmar said. He suggested an aircraft carrier, destroyer or a new class of cruiser. Having worked with Warner as an adviser and consultant, Polmar says the former senator has earned it -- just not with a submarine.

"John has a good analytical mind," Polmar said. "When he looks at a problem, he doesn't have a knee-jerk reaction. He was impressive as hell as a senator."

Bipartisan bent

Warner not only survived as moderate Republican in the conservative South, he flourished. He coasted to victory in three of his five terms even as he sometimes confounded the more conservative wing of his party.

He supported the Brady Bill, a gun-control law, and in 2004 voted to include sexual orientation as a hate crime. His first serious re-election challenge came in 1996 when he faced Democrat Mark R. Warner, who is no relation. A high-tech executive from Northern Virginia with deep pockets, Mark outspent John -- in part on bumper stickers that read "Mark not John" -- but John got 52 percent of the vote.

A couple of years later, Mark Warner recalled visiting the senator in his Washington office.

"He couldn't have been more of a gentleman," he recalled. "He showed me around, and at that point, we just started a friendship."

When Virginians elected Mark Warner governor in 2001, John Warner twice came to the Democrat's aid. The first was in 2002, when he supported a set of tax-raising referendums on transportation. Voters rejected those, but John Warner was back again in 2004 to support a Mark Warner-crafted budget deal that included tax increases and needed support from moderate Republicans in the General Assembly. That one passed.

Today, Mark Warner is the senior senator from Virginia running for re-election. John Warner has endorsed him.

"He has a sense of history and a sense of civility," Mark Warner said. "And he's done a lot of things outside the military and foreign affairs."

He also had a pragmatic, nonideological streak that paid dividends with Virginia voters, said Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University.

"The reason people like John Warner was that he wasn't too ideological," Kidd said. "His decisions weren't derived by party preferences or party positions more than they needed to be. That's a stronger place to be, rather than to be on either ideological extreme and always having to rely on your base to win re-election."

The Warner coalition included moderate Republicans, independents and probably some Democrats, Kidd said.

"I would call him a progressive Republican. He saw a place for government to do things. He was not afraid of what government could do for the good of the people."

And he was not shy about battling for issues -- like shipbuilding -- that endeared him to the state.

Then again, John Warner knew, from an early age, how to get along in a crowd.

In January 1945 with World War II at its peak, young Warner enlisted in the Navy. By spring of that year, he found himself in Chicago, training in electronics.

On the day the Allies announced victory in Europe, Warner ended up on shore patrol to help control the celebration in Chicago's downtown loop. His main qualification, he said, was that he didn't drink.

"This should be interesting," he recalled thinking. "I'm an electronics geek."

The bars soon ran dry, but the celebration continued. It was a happy crowd, very orderly, and Shore Patrolman Warner fit right in.

"The first woman that kissed me, I gave her my hat," he said. "The second my arm band. The third my whistle."

Did he at least keep his billy club?

"No. I lost that, too."

Lessig can be reached by phone at 757-247-7821.

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