U.S. Navy pays Johns Hopkins to find its subs' weak spots

The U.S. Navy has hired the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to look for weaknesses that adversaries could exploit against American submarines and other assets used in subsea and seabed warfare, under a contract worth up to $47.7 million announced by the Department of War on Oct. 21. The laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will provide research and development support for the Navy’s Undersea Security Program, studying both present and future technological and operational vulnerabilities, with work running until October 2031. The contract went to the lab through full and open competition under a Broad Agency Announcement, and it is managed by the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Strategic Systems Programs in Washington, D.C., the office that runs the Trident II D5 missile carried by the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines. About 80 percent of the work will take place at the laboratory in Laurel and the rest in Washington, and the Navy obligated only $50,000 in fiscal 2026 research and development funds at the time of award, with the remaining money to come through future task funding. Keeping submarines hidden has been one of the core missions of the Applied Physics Laboratory for decades, since the Navy’s work on ballistic missile submarine security began with a 1968 Pentagon directive to investigate how vulnerable the boats were to detection. That effort grew into a long-running program that studies how a submarine could be found through sound, wakes, magnetic signatures, radar and infrared sensors, as well as through predictable patrol routines and lapses in operational security, and the laboratory has supported the Navy’s development of patrol tactics for its nuclear deterrent fleet. The new contract widens that focus to the seabed, where cables, pipelines, sensors and other infrastructure have become a growing concern for NATO navies. Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known as GUGI, operates specialized submarines and deep-diving vehicles able to work on the ocean floor, and Western officials have accused Russian vessels of mapping undersea cables in European waters, while several Baltic Sea cables were damaged in incidents blamed on ships dragging their anchors. The work also comes as the Navy prepares to replace its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines with the new Columbia class, the most expensive shipbuilding program in its history, and in November 2025 General Dynamics Electric Boat received a $2.28 billion contract modification for advance work on five more Columbia-class boats. The first Columbia-class submarine is now tracking for delivery in 2028, and the new boats are expected to carry the sea-based leg of the U.S. nuclear deterrent into the 2080s. The Applied Physics Laboratory is one of the Pentagon’s largest university-affiliated research centers, and its defense work has been expanding quickly, with DARPA awarding the lab a sole-source contract worth up to $499.8 million for engineering and research work just a week earlier. The Undersea Security Program contract combines cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-no-fee work, and the specific tasks the laboratory will carry out over the next five years will be set through individual funding actions by the Navy.