Originally Posted by
rattman
Anyone would think making subs is hard
Not only is it hard, but for many countries you have a lack of continuity, leading to skills and knowledge loss. something the UK is trying to solve with Astute > Dreadnought > SSN(R). The benefit for the US is continuous production, allowing EB to maintain their skills.
Designing and building a new submarine every 25 years makes a hard job much more difficult.
I think this is one of the issues why the French have reacted so badly - they now see a large gap where their sub design team is not active.