The Navy said it must perform additional inspections on its three newest submarines — including the newly commissioned USS John Warner – because of an issue with steam pipe elbows supplied by a vendor.
Besides the Warner, the USS Minnesota and the USS North Dakota are affected, according to a statement from Naval Sea Systems Command.
Defense News, which first reported the development, reported that the Navy has placed all three submarines in restricted operations while it looks into the matter.
The nuclear-powered submarines are made under arrangement between General Dynamics’ Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., and Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.
NAVSEA said Electric Boat determined that three steam pipe elbows supplied by the vendor “required additional testing and repair due to unauthorized and undocumented weld repairs having been performed on these elbows.” The discovery was “part of an ongoing investigation into a quality control issue,” NAVSEA said.
Further, NAVSEA said both Electric Boat and Newport News “are performing additional inspections to bound the issue.”
