When I caught up with U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, the other day, he was excited, to say the least, about all the activity swirling around submarine production in southeastern Connecticut.

Significantly, we met for about 20 minutes to the side of a fall Job Fair sponsored by The Day at the Hilton Mystic, where more than 200 people filtered through looking for work. Here, much of the buzz revolved around a corner where General Dynamics was looking for a range of new employees, from shipyard workers to engineers to designers to support personnel.

According to Courtney, EB as of last month had hired about 3,900 new employees so far this year, but that is not enough. The company is aiming to have a total of 5,750 jobs filled by the end of the year, and that’s on top of the 3,700 new workers it added on last year.

“It’s an incredible success story,” Courtney said, especially in an area of the country that is dying for steady, high-paying jobs.

For years, EB was bleeding jobs, partly because of new technologies but mostly, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, because of a relative lack of investment in the submarine portion of the nuclear triad that also includes land-based missiles and heavy bombers.

There was the scary period, too, in 2005 when it appeared the U.S. Submarine Base in Groton (known as Sub Base New London) might be on the chopping block. The Base Realignment and Closure panel (dubbed BRAC) initially had Groton on the list, but after political intervention from the late John Markowitz and others, the base survived.

Back then, especially in the 1990s to early 2000s, the mantra locally became economic diversification, as people worried the area was becoming too defense-dependent.

But then President Joe Biden (the other Joe in this story) did an interesting thing: In December 2021, he issued an executive order under the Defense Production Act designating the submarine industrial base as essential to national security. The practical result was to boost federal support for building Virginia-class submarines, helping EB with workforce, supply chain and production issues.

“There’s no executive order for surface ships or aerospace,” Courtney told me in a follow-up phone interview Oct. 12. “It was a very unique statement.”

Now, with support from both political parties (and especially from Courtney), submarines are again in their heyday, as the older Ohio-class ships are being phased out in favor of the $9.2 billion Columbia-class subs, and the $4.3 billion Virginia-class ships are replacing the older Seawolf sub.

This has meant billions of dollars in contracts for the longtime submarine manufacturer, including a recent modification that now puts it in line to become the prime contractor and lead design yard for Virginia-class ships. The submarines are a joint project with the Newport News shipyard in Virginia.

The company, a division of General Dynamics, is also the lead design yard and prime contractor for all Columbia-class submarines capable of firing ballistic missiles. The Virginia-class boats are meant for hunting enemy submarines and surface ships.

“We’re in a much different moment right now from three years ago,” Courtney said. “It’s really quite extraordinary now, what’s happening in Groton.”

But, according to Courtney, the best for EB may be yet to come. And that’s not just because of all the volatility in the world today, with the Hamas attack on Israel this month only the latest example.

First, according to the CT Insider, EB’s parent company General Dynamics is currently working on the design for a smaller Virginia-class sub that would improve the Navy’s capability in “seabed warfare” when the military is called on to disrupt underwater communication methods or the launching of payloads. The first of these ships will reportedly cost $5.3 billion.

It’s also possible General Dynamics could get involved in plans for a fleet of unmanned “drone” submarines being contemplated by the Navy, though it seems unlikely they would be constructed locally.

What seems more likely, Courtney told me, is that a proposal to sell three to five Virginia-class subs (either new or used) to the Australian government will go through, deliverable sometime in the early 2030s. Australia, sensing danger from aggressive naval moves by China, currently is looking to invest $300 billion in a fleet of submarines, he said.

“No question,” Courtney said, if the sale of U.S. subs is approved, “EB will be seeing some of that money.” If Australia buys new, that could be in the $20 billion range.

This would require, of course, picking up the production pace at EB, a tall task given the huge hiring bump that will be required, not to mention some lingering post-COVID concerns with the supply chain.

But Courtney, in a “ABC News Australia” interview earlier this year, pointed out that EB during the height of the Cold War was pumping out four subs a year. He agreed, however, that while the shipyard has been building capacity, nearing completion on a new $700 million facility in Groton, some outsourcing of work beyond southeastern Connecticut will be required.

Courtney, co-chair of the congressional AUKUS Working Group that is trying to develop a bipartisan approach to selling subs to Australia and the United Kingdom, also acknowledged that there will be some concerns that need to be addressed regarding safeguarding American defense secrets. But he believes these issues can be overcome.

“China’s missile force is ... the real reason that’s driving this decision,” he added in the interview with the Australian public television network.

It’s possible too that New Zealand, which has been considering joining the AUKUS group, and Japan, which is doubling its defense budget, will want to collaborate with U.S. defense manufacturers as well, Courtney suggested. Submarines have become more militarily relevant after the Russian Navy’s debacle in the Black Sea, where its force of surface ships was decimated by Ukrainian missile attacks.

But EB still needs to find more workers to build more subs, and to that end the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board has been scaling up programs to encourage more high school students to learn manufacturing skills related to shipbuilding. The Youth Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative at Three Rivers, for instance, has been very successful, having placed more than 100 students in jobs over the course of just a few years.

“This thing is really going to percolate into the other high schools,” Courtney said. “They’ve got to make this generational. They’re going into the elementary and middle schools, too.”

Courtney pointed out that EB jobs are well-paying positions, and the announcement earlier this month that the Metal Trades Council, representing more than 3,400 workers there, had reached agreement with the company on a new five-year contract with a hefty 21.4% increase in wages over that time, no doubt has solidified the future of shipyard employment for years to come.

These are skilled tradespeople, including welders, electricians, machinists and pipefitters. And the contract includes a retention and sign-on bonus of up to $6,000 and a significant $2,500 contribution to current employees’ 401(k) retirement fund.

Courtney said the new contract will prove an attractive package for new workers as well as being great for retention of the current workforce.

“That was a really big deal for the whole goal of really expanding this enterprise,” he said. “Great work by everyone involved.”

Lee Howard is The Day’s business editor. To reach him, email l.howard@theday.com.