Why We Need Submarines
In the five domains in which our military forces operate --- on land, in the air, on the sea, beneath the sea, and in space --- it is undersea operations that are the least visible. This makes these operations extraordinarily valuable. They offer the ultimate in stealth and surprise while influencing events in all five domains. Therefore, they can have the highest impact at the least risk. Unfortunately, because they are least visible and highly secretive in nature, these operations are least understood and most frequently under-valued. This short account summarizes why U.S. submarine operations are very highly valued and warrant more investment.
WHAT U.S. NUCLEAR SUBMARINES DO
U.S. nuclear submarines perform numerous critical missions – many in ways that submarines are uniquely able to perform. Many missions are classified; however, general mission areas include the following.
1. Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Submarines provide the nation with a crucial intelligence gathering capability that cannot be replicated by other means. Employing multiple sensors and operated with care and cunning, submarines can monitor any event in the air, surface, or subsurface littoral domain providing a complete picture of an event across the full spectrum of intelligence disciplines. They are also an intelligence "force-multiplier" by providing tip-offs of high interest events to other collection assets. Submarines are able to monitor undersea events and phenomena not detectable by any other sensor. Since they are able to conduct extended operations in areas inaccessible to other platforms or systems, submarines can intercept signals of critical importance for monitoring international developments and enable a wide array of military operations. Furthermore, the ability to dwell covertly for extended periods defeats efforts to evade collection or deceive satellites and other sensors. The unique look angle provided by a submarine operating in the littoral region enables it to intercept high interest signal formats that are inaccessible to reconnaissance satellites or other collection platforms. The intelligence gleaned from submarine operations ranges from highly technical details of military platforms, command and control infrastructure, weapons systems and sensors to unique intelligence of great importance to national policymakers on potential adversaries' strategic and operational intentions. Significantly, our submarines can provide real time alertment to National Command Authorities on indications of imminent hostilities. And unlike other intelligence collection systems such as satellites, submarines are also full-fledged warfighting platforms carrying militarily significant offensive firepower.
2. Mine Warfare. In both covert offensive mining and mine reconnaissance, submarines provide capabilities that no other platform can deliver. The submarine offensive mining capability allows national leaders to precisely place mines for maximum effect without enemy alertment and with minimal risk. Mine reconnaissance capability from submarine launched Unmanned Undersea Vehicles allows the submarine to covertly detect and report mine danger areas without risk to naval forces. As a result, potential adversaries have fewer clues indicating potential locations of American expeditionary operations and U.S. military planners are better able to exploit the element of surprise.
3. Landing Special Operations Forces. Submarines are an excellent means of clandestine insertion for special operations forces when operating in the littorals. The submarine’s inherent stealth and endurance, as well as sophisticated communications equipment, sensors and navigation suites, enable covert, precise insertion of Navy SEALs and other special operations forces close to their littoral objective, and provide a reliable means for their extraction once their tasks are accomplished.
4. Power Projection – Conventional Land Attack. An U.S. attack submarine can carry a 16 Tomahawk land attack missile salvo ready for submerged launch, with up to 12 additional Tomahawks that can be reloaded and fired while submerged. Typically, submarines provide about 20% of the Tomahawk firepower in a carrier battle group. Additionally, because of their stealth, these attack submarines can be positioned to operate alone in environments where the risks would prevent surface and air forces from operating without extensive protective cover.
Whatever an opponent's ability to deny access to, or preempt, US military presence, it can use these weapons in only limited ways against submarines. First, it cannot reliably detect their presence. Second, submarines are not threatened by many of the existing or projected access denial weapons. Coastal cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction pose little or no threat to a well-operated nuclear submarine. Submarines carry organic mine detection systems allowing them to avoid previously undetected minefields. A credible attack capability against our submarines could be developed only by substantial investment in an attack submarine force comparable to ours. Accordingly, so long as we maintain our investment advantage, submarines will remain one of the most credible, survivable and potent land attack missile platforms in our arsenal.
5. Control of the Seas. The United States is a maritime nation whose trade and military power projection capabilities depend upon assured use of the high seas. Ocean transport provides the vast majority--over 90% in most cases-- of our strategic lift requirements. Submarines are the quintessential sea control platforms, with proven anti-submarine and anti-surface capabilities. Several historical examples illustrate the power of submarines in naval warfare.
Two world wars have convincingly demonstrated that even limited performance submarines are a major threat to sea transport. American World War II submariners, comprising less than 2% of naval personnel, sank over five and a half million tons of Japanese shipping - more shipping than was sunk by all other means combined. Their campaign was a critical factor in the industrial collapse of the Japanese war effort. At the same time, German U-boats forced the Allies to commit disproportionately large forces to defend the Allied sea lines of communications.
During the 1982 Falkland’s War, a single unlocated Argentine submarine resulted in the expenditure of 203 British ASW weapons, with zero hits. One British SSN employed in the same war sank the Argentine cruiser BELGRANO resulting in the Argentine fleet’s hasty retreat to homeport for the war’s duration.
Had even limited performance submarines been used against the United States in the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf tanker escort or Desert Storm conflicts, the military costs and slowdown of force delivery could have been significant.
Modern U.S. submarines, armed with significantly improved sensors and weapons, are vastly superior to their historical ancestors. They possess unsurpassed abilities to hunt and kill submarines and surface ships on the high seas and in the littorals. U.S. nuclear submarines provide our only assured capability to wrest control of the sea from a determined enemy employing submarines in an area denial role. As a result, today’s United States Navy, employing a combined arms anti-submarine capability that includes nuclear submarines, is able to sail freely on the world’s oceans. And, as trade follows the flag, the merchant shipping of our nation, allies, and friends can conduct the trade on which our prosperity and security depend. Likewise, our power projection logistical military capability can be counted on to flow when and where needed.
6. A Survivable Strategic Deterrent. Because of the invulnerability of nuclear submarines operated in the vast ocean areas, they provide the nation's strategic deterrent more effectively and at less cost than other systems. Our TRIDENT submarines (SSBNs) now carry 54% of our nation's nuclear deterrent using less than 1.5% of naval personnel and 34% of our strategic budget. These Navy capital ships will form the backbone of the nation’s strategic nuclear force well into the 21st century.
Submarines excel at preparing and controlling the littoral battlespace for joint expeditionary forces. Based on numerous independent studies and intelligence assessments, 21st century regional powers are expected to have substantially improved capabilities to locate, target and engage non-stealthy platforms in the littorals. Submarines greatly enhance U.S. policymakers’ understanding of enemy and terrorist force dispositions and operational doctrine before the outbreak of hostilities. Likewise they allow us to decisively engage and destroy key threats at minimal risk. Before a full aircraft carrier battlegroup or amphibious ready group with nearly 10,000 Sailors has approached a high threat area, a submarine can have already detected, reported and destroyed major threats.
WHAT INVESTMENT IS REQUIRED TO SUSTAIN THE NATION’S SUBMARINE CAPABILITY
?The United States Needs to Build More Submarines
The 1996 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) based its force level recommendation of 50 submarines primarily on fiscal constraints. Submarine requirement studies, conducted by the Navy’s three operational fleet commanders, have substantiated requirements for a minimum force level of more than 70 attack submarines.
The QDR force structure will not be adequate to meet all our present or projected demands for national and theater intelligence missions, forward presence, and engagement. The planned force level of 50 SSNs just supports current Major Theater War plans and supports the small-scale contingencies that are envisioned over the next decade. The surprising fact is that in many mission areas (such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or ISR), there is greater demand for submarines today than at the height of the Cold War. Indeed, with the submarine force reduced by nearly 50% since 1989, the number of ISR missions has doubled, due to the national need for unique intelligence in many new trouble spots around the globe. Today, with force structure above QDR levels, the submarine force is over-tasked, leaving theater and fleet requirements unmet. Further force reductions will increasingly impair the Navy’s ability to perform critical missions and degrade the nation’s capacity to collect intelligence, prepare the battlefield, maintain peace and minimize battle casualties.
In the fall of 1998, the highly respected Defense Science Board published an independent study on the "Submarine of the Future". The report characterized submarines as the "crown jewel" of America’s defense establishment and recommended that long term construction rates of SSNs be reevaluated stating "we need more not fewer SSNs." The DSB contends that a force structure of 50 is inadequate to deal with long term trends in naval warfare favoring submarine stealth and firepower and fails to prepare for the rise of a peer competitor.
It is important to realize that 50 SSNs is the absolute floor for our Submarine Force structure. Sustaining this force level requires building more than 2 SSNs per year in the near term. SSN 688s and 688Is, built at rates of 3 to 4 per year in the 1970s and 1980s, are the backbone of today’s attack submarine force. They will begin to reach the end of their 30-year service lives in large numbers early in the next century- and will be inactivated at a rate of 2-4 each year. To maintain the minimum QDR force level of 50 SSNs, the Navy must build 2 per year, over the next two decades, to replace the retiring SSN 688s and 688Is. Conversely, if current rates of construction do not increase soon, the SSN force structure will drop significantly below the minimum of 50 SSNs and our nation will be left without adequate numbers of submarines to meet either wartime or peacetime requirements.
Sustained Funding of Submarine Technology is Necessary to Develop New Military Capabilities
Our need for increasingly capable submarines with their impervious stealth will grow as technologically sophisticated weapons, information, and detection systems proliferate. Future adversaries will have increasing access to relatively inexpensive, high technology weapons systems such as space based surveillance and targeting systems, quiet diesel submarines, low-cost mines, information warfare, tactical ballistic missiles, coastal cruise missiles, and weapons of mass destruction. Such asymmetric weapons systems will challenge U.S. power projection capabilities and will place a greater premium on submarine stealth and firepower. U.S. submarine development is focused on improving sensor, weapons and information systems to provide enhanced capabilities to defeat such challenges and to ensure our submarines are prepared to participate in the Navy’s emerging network centric warfare regime.
Our short-term innovation strategy is based upon a robust technology insertion program in VIRGINIA Class submarines and requires steady investment to succeed. The built-in flexibility of VIRGINIA, including use of modular design techniques, open architecture, and COTS components permits rapid, affordable technology insertion. Early, low rate production of VIRGINIA SSNs provides the opportunity to progressively insert and test advanced technologies in these submarines as they are built. Accordingly, when VIRGINIA Class production must ramp up, the Navy will have a design that includes state of the art technology and capabilities and still retains the flexibility for further upgrades and changes as needed.
Our long-term innovation strategy focuses on developing enhanced submarine payload capability to better support a broad array of missions and an improved sea-sub interface to expand the use of off-board vehicles. Such an interface would remove the limitations of the 21 inch tube which restricts our ability to design future payloads. Submarines will eventually need to incorporate electric drive technologies, both to improve acoustic stealth and also to provide greater electrical capacity to power the evolving technologies. Finally, we intend to continue advances in submarine design and construction methods such as modularity and open architecture systems. Such methods not only allow for rapid, less expensive modernization of submarines but also have substantially improved affordability.
Submarines are Cost Effective
Highly capable, multi-mission submarines are cost effective to operate over their service life, even considering initial acquisition costs.
The rigors of submerged operation demand extraordinary quality control measures and the technical demands of safe and reliable naval nuclear propulsion require materials, technology and fabrication of the highest quality.
Acquisition investments do pay dividends over the long term in operating savings:
 | Nuclear submarines have fuel for the life of the ship built into the
nuclear reactor core.
| Attack submarines make up about 30% of our major combatants but use only
9% of the people and 12% of the budget.
| Small, efficient crews man submarines. On a crew size per displacement
basis, submarines are among the most efficient ships in the Navy inventory.
| Submarines require no replenishment at sea logistics train and no
protective escorts. They provide pure offensive firepower at next to no cost
in logistics ships at sea or support infrastructure ashore in foreign
countries. | |
Nuclear submarines provide mission capabilities and operational efficiencies that offer American taxpayers a tremendous return on investment.
Submarines conduct missions no other platform can undertake. They provide critical intelligence to national decision-makers in peacetime and provide the necessary capabilities to fight and win in littoral warfare. Thanks to their stealth and sustainability, American submarines are arguably the most efficient ships in the Navy because they can operate alone and conduct essential tasks for the Battle Group while putting minimal U.S. lives at risk. Faced with declining numbers of surface ships escorting each carrier, our Battle Group commanders can confidently employ a single submarine to conduct a sensitive mission while maintaining the cohesiveness and striking power of the remainder of the Battle Group.
Able to operate covertly when necessary or overtly when desired, SSNs deliver multi-spectrum capability to our unified commanders. Such demonstrated capabilities have resulted in demands for submarines by CVBG commanders, theater CINCs, and the National Command Authority that exceeds the number of submarines existing today or projected for tomorrow.
The VIRGINIA Class SSN is designed to provide the requisite capability at a more affordable price.
Designed from the ground up with affordability in mind, the VIRGINIA class development, procurement and operating costs represent more than a 30% cost reduction from SEAWOLF1. Substantial cost avoidance is being achieved through the application of innovative design/build teams, computer aided design, system simplification, parts standardization and component elimination. VIRGINIA also leverages past investments in SEAWOLF component development and 688 class modernization programs. VIRGINIA will surpass SEAWOLF in stealth, mine warfare, special warfare, and battle group operations while maintaining a robust open ocean, "blue water" capability. The first major acquisition program to utilize Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) teams from inception, the VIRGINIA Program Office has twice won the David Packard Award for Acquisition Excellence.
The new VIRGINIA Class provides the best balance between capability and cost. It is the first major combatant designed to meet the post-Cold-War environment and will deliver overall greater warfighting capabilities than SEAWOLF at SSN 688-like cost2. It also meets all military requirements for advanced SSNs specified by the CJCS. VIRGINIA has at least SEAWOLF level acoustic stealth and betters SEAWOLF in non-acoustic stealth. It is quieter than any advanced SSN at sea or under construction and will maintain the margin of acoustic superiority because it has the flexibility to adopt future advanced technology rapidly and affordably. Reconfigurable spaces, modular design and construction and open architecture enable faster and cheaper upgrades in future ships while allowing configuration for specific mission tasking.
There are no realistic alternatives to building VIRGINIA class submarines
The Department of Defense and several independent studies have examined a variety of alternatives to building VIRGINIA class nuclear submarines. None of the alternatives are acceptable either fiscally or militarily. Here is why:
Non-nuclear submarines - wrong ships for the United States. America’s Navy operates, every day, in the far corners of the world’s oceans, often thousands of miles from homeport. Forward presence is one of the Navy’s key missions in this era of dynamic instability. However, we cannot count on basing our ships in foreign countries close to the deployment areas. Furthermore, force protection concerns make such basing in many cases unattractive, in the light of such tragedies as the Khobar Towers bombing. The Navy is an expeditionary force and must depend on its own endurance and agility to supply the deficit of forward bases. Non-nuclear submarines, even with the most advanced air-independent propulsion systems, simply do not have the necessary speed and endurance to get from homeport to the deployment areas in a reasonable, and militarily useful, period of time. Such submarines would have difficulty operating in support of highly mobile carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups. Finally, such submarines would have to be significantly larger, or accompanied by a tender, to match the ordnance load and logistics capability that each of our nuclear submarines brings to the theater commander. Such a non-nuclear submarine has never been built or even designed. It is instructive that when our French and British allies were forced to choose between their nuclear and diesel submarine fleets by budgetary realities, they both chose to retain their capable, flexible and robust nuclear submarine capability, despite a long tradition of diesel submarine success and an existing diesel submarine construction and maintenance infrastructure.
Building or retaining older classes of submarines does not meet US needs or save money. Several key points illustrate both the military and the fiscal fallacy of this approach.
| First, all of our legacy attack submarines, including the Improved LOS
ANGELES class (688I), have a limited margin of space and weight for future
improvements. A new submarine design is required for needed improvements in
payload and sensors3.
| Second, it is an axiom of submarine stealth that significant improvements
in stealth can only be accomplished by the design of a new submarine, so
complex and interdependent are the variables that govern stealth. Meeting
the technological pacing challenge of submarine building nations requires a
new class of submarines. | |
| Third, significant savings will not accrue from restarting 688-class production. If R&D and design costs are to be avoided, then original equipment must be used. Restarting production lines is an expensive proposition. In the process, we would forego considerable improvements in technologies that make our new submarines more reliable and less expensive to operate and maintain, in particular, modular construction and open architecture systems . Moreover, studies have shown that the cost of building a new 688I today would cost almost the same as a VIRGINIA class SSN, but would provide far less operational capability. |
| Fourth, refueling vice inactivating a number of older SSN 688 submarines would not reduce the required build rate for the VIRGINIA class since all refueled 688s would be retired by 2015. |
Building experimental submarines does not meet military requirements. Building one of a kind experimental submarines is expensive and slow. Such submarines could not be built in sufficient numbers to meet needed force levels. There are significant fiscal disadvantages to building a series of experimental submarines compared with the robust, continuous technology insertion program that is planned for VIRGINIA class submarines. These disadvantages include:
| Greater R&D, design and engineering costs.
| Higher production line startup costs.
| Inability to benefit from a construction learning curve.
| Inability to exploit economies of scale.
| Higher longer-term maintenance costs due to unique equipment. | |
If the value of submarines were still in doubt (as in the case of USS HOLLAND, America’s first submarine), or if serious questions existed on fundamental design points such as propulsion systems (as in the case of the interwar diesel submarines or the USS NAUTILUS – America’s first nuclear submarine), then building a series of prototype submarines would be intellectually defensible and fiscally prudent. This, however, is not the case. The value of submarines is clear and proven; their role in the Fleet is well understood and subject to a rigorous tactical development process; the basic design elements of modern U.S. submarines are well founded. America’s submarine force needs a means to insert new technologies while still providing combat power to theater commanders in a fiscally constrained environment. Building one-of-a-kind experimental submarines, which will have a short working life, may possess questionable combat value, and be ever more expensive to operate and maintain, is not a reasonable approach to the technology insertion challenge. On the other hand, the Congressionally approved strategy of robust technology insertion in VIRGINIA class submarines provides a sound approach to this important challenge.
The Way Ahead:
America requires a robust submarine force structure to gather critical intelligence, maintain strategic deterrence and to prepare the battlespace for joint forces in an increasingly dangerous world. VIRGINIA class SSNs embodies the best attributes our nation can place in an affordable submarine. The U.S. Navy, however, must make the requisite investment in submarine force structure and stable technological insertion on VIRGINIA to enable us to retain such a dominant "crown jewel" in military capability. Clearly, the stealth, survivability, firepower and cost effectiveness of nuclear submarines are a bargain for American taxpayers and provide a capability we can ill afford to lose.
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