Uh, from your perspective on a big picture, what's the state of the submarine industrial base, the SIB, today?

[lip smack] So submarine industrial base, I, I, I always like to say there's a lot of good people out there doing a lot of great things for the submarine industrial base.

So I don't want to discount or paint a negative light on what industry and what all of the patriots a- and our citizens are, are doing to really keep our submarines, our surface ships, our plane to sea.

A lot of great work going on out there.

However, I, I think we have to, and, and I'm pretty sure I know we have to recognize that, you know, sometime after the Cold War, uh, we divested in defense manufacturing in our country, and because of that, we became very challenging in maintaining the rate of production of submarines, both in sustainment and new construction.

And when you really look at it, and you, you could trace it back maybe 10, 15 years ago when, when we did move away from the industrial base in our country, which then significantly impacted our ability to maintain that production rate, which now, as you mentioned, is the one plus two.

It's the one Columbia class, uh, and the two Virginia-class payload module submarines that we really need to be at to support our country's needs, uh, particularly with submarines.

Mm-hmm.