A Threat To Unique Culture Of Submariners

Since 01-08-05

Excerpted from NSL UPDATE 12-22-04

By James H. Patton, Jr., New London Day, 12 Dec 04

There are rumors from the cognoscenti that the Submarine Base could be at real risk in the next round of base closings and realignments. The number of attack submarines has dropped from almost 100 to 50ish, and may drop even further - fewer than half of which could be in the Atlantic - if the "two-a-year build rate" of Virginia-class submarines continues to slip out in time.

The prospect of these kinds of force levels is making the need for more than one East Coast home port arguable. In fact, some of the more pessimistic see a ripple effect that would subsequently threaten Electric Boat in Groton, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport and 400 Connecticut subcontractors to the General Dynamics shipyard, making the impact statewide vs. just regional.

If in the course of deliberations the BRAC commission comes to the "one-base" conclusion, it is possible that it would just ask the Navy to pick which one it wanted. The easy but wrong answer, and the one that would be given in the absence of senior Submarine Force leadership strongly arguing to the contrary, would be Norfolk, Va.

Then the whole happy Atlantic Fleet family could nicely sit down at the same table (and incidentally have all of its conventional strike forces at risk of containment behind one-ship channel).

The bad news is that the unique submarine culture that has underwritten a century's worth of success could rapidly dissipate if subjected to a "total immersion" in the Norfolk Big Navy environment. It has been shown that to maintain their "edge," U.S. Special Forces should not be assimilated with regular Armed Forces for training, tactical development and administrative purposes (even though they work closely with them when deployed), but have been given their own "fiefdom" in Tampa, Fla.

The Submarine Force, the naval equivalent of Special Forces and an equally important element for successfully conducting the global "small ball" fight against widely-distributed cadres and cells of bad guys, similarly needs a dedicated enclave within which to conceive of and perfect not only the arts and sciences of independent operations, but also how best to directly support larger naval groupings when so assigned.

Recently, senior Navy leadership indicated that the Navy should not give up pier space, should keep training facilities near to where the ships and sailors are, and should have a shipyard close to homeports. The Groton Submarine Base meets all those requirements in spades. On Dec. 8, 1976,

Pensacola Naval Air Station, founded in 1914 and the nation's first permanent naval air station, was awarded status as a "National Historic Landmark". As such, it and 55 structures on 82 acres received a significant degree of Federal protection. What is now the Submarine Base became a Navy base in 1872 and was designated as the nation's first submarine base on Oct. 13, 1915, when four subs and a tender were stationed there. Subase New London, in Groton, is every bit as much a cultural and operational Mecca for submariners and submarining as Pensacola, Fla. is for naval aviators and carrier-based aviation.

Its national importance far transcends the negotiable aspects of this area's local desires as opposed to those of some other neighborhood. During the deliberations of the nine-person BRAC Commission, to be named in March and which will, it is hoped, include a nominated member from southeastern Connecticut, there is also be more "evidence in mitigation" to consider against the base closing.

For example, there is the indicated regional (or statewide) economic disruption. Base facilities are employed for training of Navy and Army reservists (and probably soon the National Guard). There would also be a disruption of services to a large local community of retired military personnel. And, a potentially costly hazardous materials "cleanup" of the grounds after years of storing submarine lead-acid batteries, handling millions of gallons of diesel fuel and other industrial uses of the land and facilities before the land could be conveyed to other entities. In fact, cost estimates for cleanup of sites closed or to be closed nationwide range from $16 billion to 20 billion dollars.

However, many of these "traditional" arguments also apply to other bases nationwide that are fighting for survival. Unique rationales must be articulated if the Submarine Base is to differentiate itself from other "at-risk" bases.

Some of the best of these are likely to be qualitative versus quantitative, and would defy the assigning of a monetary value. A powerful such argument is the well-documented and undisputed positive synergism for submarine technologies and tactics that exists due to the close proximity of the Submarine Base, Submarine School, the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

These entities have historically fed off one another, and the result has been largely responsible for the Submarine Force's unique culture and frequently demonstrated ability to transform itself and rapidly adapt to emergent roles and missions. The task then for the Subase Realignment Coalition and its chairman,

John Markowicz, is not so much to convince the BRAC commission, or the Navy to keep the Groton Submarine Base open, but to convince Adm. Kirkland H. Donald, director of the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, Vice Adm. Charles L. Munns, commander Submarine Force Atlantic Fleet, and Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan, commanader of Submarine Force Pacific, to strongly argue that Groton is the proper choice for what could be, potentially, the Atlantic's only attack submarine base. James H. Patton Jr. is president of Submarine Tactics and Technology in North Stonington, a consulting firm. He is a retired Navy captain and submarine commander.