Hello there Rainer

The 3 Billion + price tag that you see quoted all the time for the Seawolf submarine is misleading. That 3 Billion is the cost of building each individual submarine, not the overall cost of the program though.

Seawolf was in development for a long time, the entire project and development and testing cost somewhere in the area of 33-34 Billion dollars. With a large procurment of boats the cost drops considerably per boat. But with the class stopped at only three boats the cost of each individual boat is staggering!

Three boats divided into 33+ Billion dollars equates out to over 11 Billion dollars per boat. These three boats have to absorbe the entire cost of the development program as the technology developed in it will be exclusive to the Seawolf boats.

Future USN boats will not use the BSY-2 Sonar Suite but will instead use a newly developed on on "cots" called the BQQ-10. Most of the systems used on the Seawolf from electronics to Nuke power plant are exclusive to it and will not be used in future boats.

Because of that, if you think they were expensive to build, you should wait until you find out how expensive they will be to maintain!