Amid Navy’s demand for nuclear subs, recruitment efforts for shipbuilders begins in schools

Groton, Connecticut — At Charles Barnum Elementary School in Groton, Connecticut, a group of fifth graders are learning about submarines.

It’s the beginning of a recruitment effort by General Dynamics Electric Boat, Groton’s biggest employer, and the Navy’s biggest submarine builder. The Navy has an order in with Electric Boat for 29 submarines to be delivered over the next 17 years.

“People are sometimes like, ‘Why are you in the elementary schools?’ In 2033, the people we’re hiring, some of them are in the fifth grade right now,” said Courtney Murphy, director of talent management for Electric Boat. 

Murphy says trade workers, welders and machinists are currently in demand. And that training is well underway at nearby Ella Grasso Technical High School, where students work with the same state-of-art equipment in use at the shipyard. 

The students learn to work in hot, cramped spaces similar to submarines.

“It makes me focus,” said Xiamir Fletcher, a senior, about why he was drawn to welding. “Once you start welding, that’s it, dead set on the welding.”

It’s all part of a national effort by shipyards and the Navy to bring on 100,000 skilled workers over the next 10 years. They’re urgently needed to build a new fleet of nuclear missile submarines and smaller fast-attack subs.

To achieve that, Electric Boat needs to more than double its production.

“It is the Navy’s No. 1 construction priority,” said Adm. William Houston, director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. “That’s how important it is.”

Houston says submarines are critical to the Navy’s goals.

“They can go anywhere, any time, and hold an adversary at risk,” Houston explains. “They can just watch what you’re doing, and you don’t even know they’re there.”

The problem, however, is that the Navy doesn’t have enough of them. Electric Boat is ramping up to meet that national security challenge, a challenge Adam Chioccola and Emma Isbell are happy to take on, who joined the company as new welders 18 months ago. 

“It’s a lot of stress, but the more you do it, the easier and more natural it gets,” Chioccola said.

“There’s not a lot of people in the world that can say that they build nuclear submarines,” Isbell adds. “Like, it’s pretty cool.”

And as far as the Navy is concerned, there aren’t enough people who can say they build nuclear submarines. The future of the fleet is riding on it.

Charlie D’Agata

Charlie D’Agata is CBS News’ senior national security correspondent. He was previously a senior foreign correspondent and has spent more than two decades covering international news for CBS.