Hello there Rainer.


Opps...sorry about that!

You and your aching tax dollar probably don't want to really know this but here it goes anyway! =)

The total overall program cost of the Seawolf submarines was estimated at $33.6 Billion dollars in 1991. And I am sure you know what happens to the cost of military projects, that's a big number and the third Seawolf boat isn't even finished yet!

The plan was to build 12 boats originally, the first two were built and the rest were cancelled. The third Seawolf basically got through because of the so called need to maintain a submarine building infastructure.

Not including design, testing, developement and computer simulations the actually cost of building the three Seawolf boats themselves comes out to an enormouse $13.1243 Billion dollars. Or roughly $4.4 Billion dollars per boat!
These figures come from the Deptment of Defense: Program Acquisition Cost Summary from March 31,1996

Those are the numbers BEFORE they decided to totaly rearrange the third Seawolf and turn it into a highly modified Special Operations Platform. That added hundreds of millions of dollars onto the price of that boat and it is astronomical to begin with.

Don't look for these numbers on the USN's site, you won't find them there.

If you haven't ever been there, there is a excellent site that covers U.S. military programs.

The site is www.fas.org
Go to www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/ssn-21.htm
That's the link for the Seawolf, lot's of information, pitures and links at the bottom to continue your quest for information on the ultimate submarine! =)

Hope this helps you...

Cheers...