A few days ago I noted in a posting that America faced a
dilemma – how to build and maintain a military adequate to protect our national
interests and the interests of our allies around the world without bankrupting
the nation. I suggested among other things that perhaps we needed to rethink our military force
structure.
In that regard, consider the US navy’s love of nuclear submarines.
We currently operate 66 submarines, all nuclear powered. This force is
comprised of 18 Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, 3 Seawolf class attack
submarines (we stopped building more when the Cold War ended), 34 older Los
Angeles class attack submarines (which we are retiring; we have already retired
another 26 of them), and 11 new Virginia class attack submarines (with 5 more
under construction, to replace the older Los Angeles class as they are
decommissioned). And the navy is already designing the Columbia class
submarines as the replacement for the Ohio class ballistic missile submarines as
are they are retired.
As I have noted in previous posts, it takes 3-4 ships in the
inventory for each ship kept on station somewhere around the world. The other
ships are in transit to or from station, in training or in maintenance.
Submarines take a lot of maintenance, and sub crews require constant training
and practice because a modern sub is exceedingly complex. So it takes all this
inventory to keep about 6 missile subs and about 20 attack subs on station at
all times.
Now US nuclear submarines are impressive. With their nuclear
reactor power they can cruise around the world at high speed (for a submarine) and
stay underwater for years at a time. In fact it is the stamina and the food
supply for the crew that limits their deployment time. But they are wickedly
expensive to build, crew and maintain. The Block III Virginia class submarines
we are currently building cost about $2.7 billion each to build and about $21
million a year to run throughout their 30 year lifespan. And they are
exceedingly quiet and hard to detect, which is the name of the game in submarine
warfare.
BUT in 2005 a small Swedish Gotland class diesel-electric submarine
with an air-independent propulsion system participated in war games with the US
and repeatedly “sank” (virtually) the new $6.2 billion aircraft carrier USS
Ronald Reagan and a number of the supporting US attack submarines and
destroyers without ever being detected by the armada of anti-submarines forces
around the carrier. The US navy actually “rented“ this Swedish boat and crew
for two years after that to use in war games to try to figure out how to defeat
it, and though the navy obviously won’t talk about the results, word is that they
never solved the problem. The problem is that even our quietest nuclear subs
require pumps running constantly to cool the reactor, and those pumps produce
some detectable noise. The Gotland class subs don’t require such pumps and are
even quieter. In fact, most modern diesel-electric subs, even those without
air-independent propulsion, are exceedingly
hard to detect.
AND the real kicker is that the Gotland class submarines
cost Sweden about $100 million each to build, so we could buy/build about 27 of
them for the price of one Virginia class US sub. Yes, it wouldn’t go as fast or
as deep as a US nuclear sub, nor can it stay underwater nor be deployed as
long. But fitted with vertical launch tubes, intercontinental missiles and/or
sub-launched anti-ship cruise missiles each one would be almost as deadly, and
there could be SO MANY of them.
Fortunately Sweden is a NATO ally, so we don’t need to worry
too much about their subs, but unfortunately China and Russia are also building
subs like this, the Song class for China and the Lada class for Russia, and many other nations
around the world are following. But not
the US navy – we are apparently wedded to nuclear subs exclusively despite
their enormous costs. That is the sort of institutional inertia – not only in
the navy but in all the armed forces and in Pentagon thinking – that we need to
overcome if we are to find an affordable way to maintain an adequate military.
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