Navy renews call for missile sub funding plan

The Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) has been staring at Navy planners for years, waiting for a scheme to pay its $60 billion bill.

The first ship of a planned 12 submarines is to be funded and ordered in 2021, a schedule necessary to replace existing ballistic-missile submarines as they reach the end of their service lives starting in the late 2020s.

But the issue has been how to pay for the subs, which meet a national strategic requirement but are outside the Navy’s normal, general-purpose ship construction budgets.

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