US Navy Defends Boomer Submarine Replacement Plans

A top U.S. Navy official is defending the service's plans to replace its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine fleet, saying the Navy has the right design and boat numbers to execute the mission for decades to come.

"We conducted a detailed analysis of many force structure options," says Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, Navy undersea warfare director, in a recent blog. "A force of 12 Ohio Replacement nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) with 16 missile tubes satisfies national strategic deterrent requirements at the most affordable cost. Twelve Ohio Replacement SSBNs meet at-sea strategic patrol requirements and sustain this requirement while some of the SSBNs are unavailable due to planned maintenance."

Bruner says, "Reduced-force options [that] we considered failed to meet the current at-sea and nuclear employment requirements, increased risk for force survivability, and limited the flexibility in response to an uncertain strategic future. A 12-ship, 16-missile-tube SSBN force has sufficient, not excessive, flexibility and capacity."

He acknowledges that because ship construction of the Ohio Replacement shifted to 2021 from 2019, there will be fewer than 12 SSBNs from 2029 to 2042 as the Ohio-class retires and Ohio replacement ships join the fleet.

Addressing recent critics of the shortfalls, he says, "During this time frame no major SSBN overhauls are planned, and a force of 10 SSBNs will support current at-sea presence requirements."

However, he says, "This provides a low margin to compensate for unforeseen issues that may result in reduced SSBN availability. The reduced SSBN availability during this time frame reinforces the importance of remaining on schedule with the Ohio Replacement program to meet future strategic commitments. As the Ohio Replacement ships begin their mid-life overhauls in 2049, 12 SSBNs will be required to offset ships conducting planned maintenance."

He also says the Navy and Pentagon are keeping a lid on proposed costs. "The Department of Defense set an aggressive cost goal of $4.9 billion per hull (calendar year 2010) as an average cost for hulls 2-12. To date, the Navy has reduced costs by reducing specifications to the minimum necessary to meet national strategic deterrent requirements, implementing modular construction design, reusing the Trident II D5 Strategic Weapons System, and reusing Virginia- and Ohio-class components where feasible. The Virginia-class construction program, through aggressive management and collaboration between government and industry, has developed into a model ship building program, continually coming in under budget and ahead of schedule. Ohio Replacement design and construction will build on this success."

Credit: U.S. Navy

U.S. Navy Rethinks The Silent Service

The U.S. Navy is rethinking how it will use its submarines in a future Pacific War. The problem is that a campaign against Chinese shipping is unlikely, in part because of what actually happened during the last great anti-shipping campaign, which occurred during World War II (1939-45). After the war, the U.S. analyzed its operations against Japanese shipping and found that submarines were important, but not the only weapon effective against shipping. Some 8.9 million tons of Japanese shipping was sunk or so seriously damaged (disabled) at the end of the war. Submarines accounted for 54.7 percent of this. But 16.3 percent was attributable to carrier-based aircraft, 14.5 percent to land- based planes and 9.3 percent to mines (most dropped by B-29s). Less than one percent was due to surface gunfire, and the balance of 4 percent was caused by accidents.

Because of their ability to operate in enemy-controlled (mainly by land-based aircraft) waters, submarines accounted for about 60 percent of the damage until the final months of the war. Then, during late 1944, carrier task forces went deep into enemy controlled areas, defending themselves against land-based warplanes and sinking a large numbers of ships. After April, 1945 Japanese shipping was restricted to the Korean and Manchurian runs and to shallow coastal waters. At this point the naval mines dropped by B-29s in Japanese harbors and inland waterways accounted for 50 percent of all ships sunk or damaged. That was then, but sixty years later the United States is able to monitor large ocean areas and has aircraft that are able to hit anything that's spotted. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. has adopted a new approach to any potential war with China. The U.S. Department of Defense has been told that, for the foreseeable future, there will be no more large-scale land campaigns. The air force, navy, and marines responded with a plan (AirSea Battle) that has been in the work for years. The new strategy is designed to cope with the rising power of China in the Pacific. AirSea Battle involves tighter planning and coordination of navy, marine, and navy forces, plus the development of some new weapons and tactics and cooperation with allies.

AirSea Battle has been widely accepted, as China continues to make all its neighbors nervous. That's because the Chinese name for China translates as "middle kingdom" as in "China is the middle of the world." The Chinese government, a communist dictatorship by any other name, is using nationalism to keep its pro-democracy opposition off balance. China has border disputes, expressed or implied, with all its neighbors. This has made the neighbors uneasy, especially as Chinese military forces have been modernized and more aggressive over the last decade.

While Air-Sea Battle was developed to keep the United States out of extensive land combat (the navy still has commandos and marines for brief operations ashore), those kinds of wars tend to show up when you least expect, want, or are prepared for them. For the moment, U.S. military planners believe they can avoid a large land war.

The U.S. Navy has been studying (and wargaming) the situation and that included an examination of American submarine use since World War II. After the 1960s, the U.S. shifted to using only nuclear propelled submarines. During the Cold War (1948-91), American subs were meant for use in defeating the growing Soviet (Russian) fleet. That force disappeared in the 1990s. At that point the Chinese fleet got larger and modernized, but is still nowhere near the size of the Soviet Navy. But this time the U.S. was facing a major trading nation. Unlike Russia, which was largely self-sufficient (or could get what it needed overland from neighbors), China requires thousands of ships a year to handle exports and imports. Like Japan during World War II, China is vulnerable here.

AirSea battle concentrates on military operations. But these will be heavily influenced by economic factors. For example, during World War II the United States was a largely self-sufficient "continental power." We exported much (more than any other nation on the planet), but did not have to import much. That has changed. Now the U.S. has to import a lot of its oil, special raw materials (like "rare earths" from China) and a lot of manufactured goods. The U.S. is now like much of the rest of the world, China included. If there were a maritime blockade of China, the U.S. and many other Chinese trading partners would suffer severe economic disruptions. There would be massive unemployment for all concerned and that would happen despite energetic efforts by everyone to find alternative sources to goods no longer available because of the disruption of the China trade.

Then there is the risk of nuclear war. Since the first nuclear weapons were used in 1945, there has been the longest period of peace between major powers in human history. These days a "major power" is one that has nuclear weapons and can deliver them against other nuclear armed nations. Thus any maritime blockade of China will be a very risky undertaking. That said, it can be done without submarines. Simply order the Western maritime insurance companies to withdraw insurance for ships or cargoes entering or leaving China. That will have immediate effect. China can scramble to try and replace the insurance covering, but along with the "insurance bomb" comes the U.S. declaration that the coastal waters of China are now under blockade and any ship ignoring that is subject to attack. It goes downhill from there, until compromise and moderation replace the war fever.

Meanwhile, the nuclear submarine community has done the math and found that their greatest contribution these days is not attacking enemy warships, but land bombardment with cruise missiles and intelligence collecting. Since the first nuclear subs showed up in the 1950s, only one, a British boat, has used a torpedo to sink a hostile warship. But hundreds of cruise missiles have been launched at land targets and uncounted (because they are highly classified) intelligence missions have been, and continue to be, carried out. All that is the recent past for subs, and is likely to be the future as well. World War II in the Pacific is not likely to be rerun. The U.S. Navy still expects its subs to go after enemy warships, and its surface and air forces to battle enemy subs. But a major war on shipping is much less likely.

60 Years Of Stuff We Can't Talk About

June 25, 2012: This year marks the 60th anniversary of the construction of the first nuclear powered sub, the USS Nautilus. Completed in 1955, the Nautilus served until 1980, at which point it became a museum ship. Since the Nautilus over 400 nuclear subs have been built, most of them (254) Russian. As was their custom, the Russians went for quantity rather than quality. As a result of this, some 80 percent of those Russian boats have since been retired. Not only did Russian subs wear out quickly, but they were not able to get to sea as often as their Western counterparts. When they did get to sea they had more problems with radiation and reactor reliability.

Thus the peak year for Russian nuclear sub patrols was 1984, when they had 230 patrols. That number rapidly declined until, in 2002, there were none. Since the late 1990s, the Russian navy has been hustling to try and reverse this decline. But the navy budget, despite recent increases, is not large enough to build new ships to replace the current Cold War era fleet that is falling apart. The rapid decline of Russia's nuclear submarine fleet needed international help to safely decommission over a hundred obsolete, worn out, defective or broken down nuclear subs. This effort has been going on for nearly a decade, and was driven by the Russian threat to just sink their older nuclear subs in the Arctic Ocean. That might work with conventional ships, but there was an international uproar over what would happen with all those nuclear reactors sitting on the ocean floor forever. Russia generously offered to accept donations to fund a dismantling program that included safe disposal (of the nuclear reactors).

While Western nuclear subs can last for about thirty years, Russian models rarely get past twenty. That means two new SSN or SSGN type subs has to be put into service each year to maintain a Russian force of forty boats. Unless the sub construction budget get billions more dollars a year, that is not going to happen. Right now, the priority is on producing a new class of SSBNs (11 more Boreis are planned or under construction). These Boreis are critical, because they carry SLBM (Sea Launched Ballistic Missiles) that provide a critical (they are much harder to destroy in a first strike than land based missiles) portion of the nuclear deterrent. The rest of the Russian armed forces, like most of the navy, is in sad shape, and unable to resist a major invasion. Only the ICBMs and SLBMs guarantee the safety of the state. So the way things are going now, in a decade or two, Russia will end up with a force consisting of a dozen SSNs and a dozen SSBNs.

The current Russian fleet of nuclear subs is tiny, and the Russians would rather keep them tied up at dock most of the time. The crews can do a lot of training at dockside, and only go to sea a few times a year, to check on their state of training. Given the number of accidents their subs have had in the past decade, the training the crews are getting now is not sufficient.

Only the U.S. and Britain were able to build nuclear subs that could stay at sea regularly and for long periods. French nukes were nearly as reliable, but the Chinese built nuclear boats have, so far, been of lower quality than three decade old Russian designs. India is also in the midst of getting its first generation nuclear subs operational and it has been rough going.

While nuclear subs are a much feared weapon, they have gone sixty years with only one instance of combat. That was in 1982, when a British SSN sunk an Argentinian cruiser (the former World War II era USS Phoenix). Nuclear subs have been much more active in espionage work. While not as flashy as sinking other ships, it is dangerous, demanding and rewarding work. Most of these efforts during the Cold War are still secret.

US Navy Silent Service

April 5th - On This Date - RN Submarine Service

1943	Viking	Submarine HMS Viking launched
1943	Thor	Submarine HMS Thor laid down
1944	Saga	Submarine HMS Saga laid down
1946	Teredo	Submarine HMS Teredo completed
1917	HMS C7	C7 torpedoed and sank UC-68 off Schowen, Holland.
1918	HMS C-35	C35 was scuttled as part of the Baltic Flotilla in Helsingfors Bay
1918	HMS C27	C27 was scuttled in the Baltic (Helsingfors Bay) to avoid capture
1942	HMS Una	HMS Una torpedoes and sinks the Italian merchant Ninetto G. about 12 nautical miles south of Capo dell'Armi.
1944	HMS Ultimatum	HMS Ultimatum sinks a German sailing vessel with gunfire off Suda Bay, Crete, Greece.
1945	HMS Statesman	HMS Statesman sinks seven small Japanese landing craft with gunfire and demolition charges in the Strait of Malacca.
1982	Falklands War	The first ships of the Royal Navy task force sailed for the South Atlantic, only three days after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands

SAB