Heavy Traffic Seen In New Submarine Operating Areas

Since 07-20-04

From NSL UPDATE 06-21-2004

Heavy Traffic Seen In New Submarine Operating Areas
By Robert A. Hamilton, Day Staff Writer, June 13, 2004 Used with permission

Alexandria, Va. - Undersea warfare was a lot simpler in the Cold War days, when submarines operated far from shore looking for Soviet warships, and the ship contacts were measured in the dozens per day. On its just-ended deployment, however, the Hawaii-based USS Honolulu operated in a busy shipping area and tracked 8,007 ships during a 40-day period, just over 200 per day, said Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan, commander of the Pacific submarine force. In fact, during one four-hour work shift, the sonar crew tracked more than 300 contacts, Sullivan told members of the Naval Submarine League during the group's annual symposium at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center.

Maneuvering through those crowded waters raises the risk of detection at best, and collision at worst, he said. "In the last four to five years, we have made significant progress in our ability to operate in this very difficult environment," Sullivan said. "Our commanding officers are doing so well, they make it look easy, but let me tell you, it isn't easy. The evidence of his confidence in his skippers was his presence at the symposium, Sullivan joked: "If I wasn't comfortable, I wouldn't be 5,000 miles from my command center as I am today."

The Navy's two submarine force commanders said despite a rash of skippers relieved of command, including three at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton during a recent two-year period, they have confidence that the selection and training process are adequate. Vice Adm. Kirkland H. Donald, commander of the Atlantic submarine force, said there have been few common factors between the incidents that would require changes in the way captains are picked. Submariners have had to devote more time to joint military jobs and to getting graduate degrees as they come up through the ranks, he acknowledged, but the submarine force has responded by making sure they get the time they need to build their undersea warfare skills. "They are all gut-wrenching events," Donald said of the decision to relieve commanding officers. "You always walk away from them wondering, Why did this have to happen?" But he continued: "I don't see anything systemically wrong with the way we are doing business. And I've been thinking about it a lot."

Sullivan, commander of the Pacific submarine force, agreed, and noted, "Some people are consumed by command, and others thrive. It is a crucial moment in a naval officer's career." He said he knows every one of his submarine commanders personally, and advises them all that their goal should be to leave their ship better than they found it. "But it's a complicated machine, and a complicated business, and no everyone is going to succeed," Sullivan said.

At the height of the Cold War the Navy employed more than 4,000 people in 11 offices around the world to track potential submarine threats. Today, that force has shrunk to 1,000 people in three Navy Ocean Processing Facility sites. But Master Chief Petty Officer Rob Danielson, a former chief of the boat on the Norfolk, Va.-based USS Oklahoma City, now assigned to the Undersea Surveillance office, said that should not be construed to mean the Navy takes the task any less seriously. Better sensors, faster computing equipment, and light-speed communications mean that the coverage is better than in the days when the Navy had a dedicated network of undersea sensors up and down the coast. "We're gotten better and better at what we do," Danielson said, "and we require fewer and fewer people to do the same job."

Cmdr. Michel T. Poirier, who recently finished a 29-month tour as commanding officer of the Groton-based USS Toledo, said submarines are quietly contributing to the war on terror by dusting off some tactics that date to World War II and earlier. Facing the threat that terrorists may take over a commercial ship and use it to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction into a busy U.S. port, submarines have become adept at monitoring shipping and identifying vessels that are acting in a suspicious fashion. When a ship is spotted, the submarine goes deep, sprints out into its path, then surfaces and observes it undetected as it passes. If it spots something out of the ordinary, it notifies surface vessels to stop it and check the cargo. As the war on terror progresses, the United States is building a database of ship characteristics that will make it easy to determine when something is amiss, he said. The submarine force is also fighting the war on terror in many ways that he cannot discuss, Poirier said - during Toledo's 2002 deployment, it conducted four classified missions that ate up most of the six months it was gone, he said. But as terrorists are denied havens such as Afghanistan, he said, the threat is likely to become more diffuse, and covert surveillance methods are likely to become much more important. As work continues on a new use for an old submarine - using ballistic missile boats to fire huge numbers of conventional weapons - the Navy is working on the rules that will govern how they operate.

Cmdr. Brian A. McIlvane, who just finished a tour as captain of the USS Ohio, which will be converted, said the four so-called SSGNs will be split between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Current plans are for the ships to provide 503 days of coverage in the Central Command area, primarily southeast Asia, and 259 days of service a year in the Pacific Command area. Another 204 days of coverage will be concentrated in European Command waters. McIlvane, a former executive officer of the Groton-based USS Connecticut, said before bringing it into the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington in November 2002 he took it on a nonstop, 17,800-nautical mile trip around the world as proof of its endurance, and there were various exercises to demonstrate it will be able to deploy as intended. "The SSGN is real, today," McIlvane said. Ohio is expected to be back in the water by the end of this year, on sea trials next year, and reach its initial operational capability in 2007.

Donald, commander of Naval Submarine Forces, said a draft concept of operations for SSGN has been developed that addresses how they will be operated, including a provision to swap out crews without returning to the United States - the crews will be brought to the boat, rather than the boat to the crew, providing more operational days in theater - and work has begun to address how they will be used in combat. "We're pretty satisfied, pretty confident," Donald said. "But I would offer to you that there is more to be done."