For Four Subs, It's Goodbye Ballistic Missiles, Hello SEALs

Since 01-09-05

Norfolk Virginian-Pilot December 18, 2004

For Four Subs, It's Goodbye Ballistic Missiles, Hello SEALs

By Allison Connolly, The Virginian-Pilot NORFOLK

The punching bag hanging from the ceiling of the second deck of the submarine Georgia is one sign that this sub is going through some changes. The bag was hung by a SEAL team that was aboard this summer for exercises.

SEALs are not new to submarines, but the boat will carry almost twice as many as it once did when it leaves Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth three years from now for duty. The Georgia and three other Ohio-class subs are being converted from a Cold War-era vessel with 24 ballistic missiles to a more modern one that can carry 102 special forces troops and 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles to a coast too dangerous for ships and other services to tread.

And so amenities - ranging from the punching bag to a mini-submarine attached to the sub's topside - will be added with SEALs and Special Forces in mind. The canisters that once held ballistic missiles will be used to launch not only Tomahawks but also unmanned mini-subs and unmanned aerial drones. The Navy developed a capsule for the tubes that can release just about anything it wants, even an Army missile, said Lt. Cmdr. Scott Seal, Georgia's executive officer. "We're only limited by imagination at this point," he said.

The four subs were destined to be mothballed to comply with a U.S.-Russian treaty to reduce their cache of ballistic missiles. But the Navy decided the subs could be saved, with help from defense contractors. General Dynamics Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., is the prime contractor for the $3.8 billion program to convert the four subs - two at the Portsmouth yard and two at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington. The sub Georgia is the last in line, and will enter the Portsmouth shipyard in January to begin a refueling.

It is scheduled to begin conversion in October 2005 and be delivered to the Navy in October 2007. The contract to convert the Georgia is potentially worth $847 million if all options are exercised. It will take two years and cost almost $1 billion to convert each boat.

By comparison, General Dynamics is building the newest attack subs, the Virginia class, with Northrop Grumman Newport News at an average pace of a boat a year for $1.68 billion each, according to the contract signed in January for five subs between fiscal years 2004 and 2008 for $8.4 billion. Each Ohio-class boat gets a new nuclear core, which will give them another 20 years without refueling.

Then General Dynamics begins the conversion. General Dynamics opened an office at the shipyard to coordinate the 225 employees working on conversions there during the five-year contract. The company will preserve the 24 ballistic missile tubes, which line up in pairs down the middle of the boat and go through all four floors. However, the first pair of tubes will be used by SEALs to access the mini-submarine. The top compartment will be the lockout chamber for as many as nine SEALs; the second will have showers; the third will have lockers for wet suits; and the fourth will be used for storing ammunition.

A Battle Management Center will be established in the middle of the boat where a Joint Task Force Commander can coordinate action on a battlefield. This marks not only a physical change for the submarine, but a philosophical one for its crew.

Until now, such decisions were made at the Pentagon or at a battlefield command or on a carrier in a strike group. But now, with the threat of biological weapons, the government realizes that a sub may be the safest place for planning. So Georgia crew members are learning new skills, such as launching an unmanned aerial vehicle and collecting intelligence from it, Seal said.

To test this new concept, the Georgia crew led an exercise called Silent Hammer in which a one-star general from either the Army, Navy or Marines - the Navy declined to disclose which service - coordinated maneuvers on the beach, in the air and under the water line of San Clemente from the Georgia's Battle Management Center. Seal said the operation exceeded their expectations.

The only problem was the sub crew and special operations members sometimes had a tough time understanding each other because they had their own acronyms. When either party spoke in their own code in front of the other, they had to do 20 pushups, Seal said. "We're going to have to learn to speak a different language for all the things were going to be doing," he said.