Just as with a person, an organization's fiftieth birthday is a time for both celebration and reflection.

I was very privileged to be a guest speaker at the 2004 Annual Convention, in Saratoga Springs, NY, of the United States Submarine Veterans, Inc. (USSVI, or SubVets), at a luncheon marking the nuclear Silent Service diamond jubilee. The rest of this essay will try to summarize, for a more general readership, the gist of my remarks. (A few of these points were also covered to some degree, in their own words, by two other convention speakers, senior submariners on active duty. The following discussion, however, I want to emphasize is based solely on my own point of view, and does not represent an official position of the U.S. Navy, the USSVI, nor of any of their officers.)

To begin with, it's important to understand that although she was a test-bed for revolutionary technology, Nautilus from the get-go was intended as a working warship. At the back of the boat, of course, were her reactor and propulsion plant. But near the bow were six fully functional standard 21" torpedo tubes, plus a torpedo room rivaling any other built up to that date. Amidships was an attack center with the very latest in fire-control computers, tied in to sonars as good as they came in those days. (Nautilus is now preserved and open to the public as a museum ship, in Groton, CT; see www.ussnautilus.org.)

2004 is another crucial milestone, linked very intimately -- historically and symbolically -- to the 50th birthday of Nautilus. The first in a whole new class of SSNs, USS Virginia, completed her Bravo (beta testing) sea trials with flying colors, and is slated to be commissioned into the Navy later this year. The Virginia class is America's first nuclear submarine design to be conceived, funded, and laid down entirely since the end of the Cold War. Virginia and her sisters set a new milestone for undersea stealth, and a whole new benchmark for 21st century peacekeeping and combat adaptability. The Virginias are modular in both initial construction and ongoing duty employment, virtually from stem to stern, regarding almost every aspect of naval architecture. Their weaponry, their combat systems and sensors, their computer hardware and every byte of software (even inside their torpedoes), plus accommodation for SEALs or other commandos with their weapons, ammo, and gear -- all involve components that can be added or removed quickly and safely with truly astonishing turnaround time, to update and customize the whole ship for any specific mission profile. USS Virginia and her sisters are, genuinely, "plug and fight" nuclear subs. The first few are under construction already, the money for ten has been authorized so far, and some thirty in total are planned, physically embodying an evolving state of the art out to 2025 or 2030 -- with useful hull lives way past that.

Comparing Nautilus and Virginia, a submariner of any age can say, validly and with considerable pride, that our nuclear submarine fleet is "fifty years young."

But there's a downside.

Even with the scheduled pace of launching more Virginias, is America building enough SSNs (and don't forget future SSBNs) to meet all foreseeable needs? It's hard to know how many American submarines are exactly enough. It's not so hard to figure how many really aren't enough.

Because of the retirement of many older SSNs since the early '90s, the size of our fast-attack fleet has dropped by almost half, to barely fifty. Submariners have said publicly that this number just won't suffice. At any one moment, of sheer necessity, a large fraction of existing subs are in post-deployment overhaul, or pre-deployment workup, or busy steaming to or from their scene of forward ops overseas. So the number actually available to do useful work on a given day -- even when "surging" in a national emergency -- is noticeably less than the total in commission. Some tasking requests are going unfulfilled. This isn't good.

Let's look at it another way: At the height of the struggle against the Soviet Union, the U.S. Navy was commissioning six new Los Angeles-class subs a year. In stark contrast, USS Virginia's commissioning will be the first such festive ceremonial occasion in six years. (The second in the truncated Seawolf class, USS Connecticut, was commissioned in 1998, and the last of the three Seawolfs, USS Jimmy Carter, isn't quite finished yet with special modifications and testing.) This disturbing "drought" in SSN construction is one lingering effect of the illusory peace dividend from an isolationist, pacifist -- and painfully short-lived -- era in our country's view of the outside world and our sole-superpower place in it, between the fall of the Berlin Wall, and spreading WMDs and 9/11/01 and its aftermath.

Why should we care so much about submarines? Because their ability to dwell right on station, long-term, silent, submerged -- using sensors and probes to gather amazingly revealing signals intercepts and other intell on a potential enemy -- means they vastly outperform the best spy satellite constellation or swarms of recon drones. Airborne platforms can't sneak peaks very far into the ocean well, nor can they eavesdrop as effectively on transmitter antenna side-lobes that always leak out and naturally duct along the earth's and ocean's surface. What's more, due to their invisibility, SSNs can launch torpedoes or cruise missiles with total surprise, even while lurking far inside an adversary's home waters. Surface ships and aircraft have trouble making similar claims -- and in war, surprise and stealth are vital to force-protection and victory.

In a different context, subs working with a supercarrier (CVN) strike group, staying in constant touch via breakthrough connectivity methods, represents an impressively mobile and almost unassailable bastion from which to project armed power for hundreds or thousands of miles and in three dimensions. The compactness of the CVN's nuclear propulsion plant, with its lack of appetite for external fuel, gives the carrier immense tankage space from which to replenish conventionally powered escorts, and allows gigantic ordnance storage capacity to sustain an overwhelming offensive and defensive strike-group op tempo.

But I see compelling reasons why the recent SSN "drought," and a low projected future building rate, could hurt the Silent Service and the U.S. Navy at large:

1. There's a long lead time required to build one additional nuclear submarine -- five or seven years from start to finish.

2. There's a long lead time required to train in the basics, drill incessantly, and harden for battle, the captain, other officers, the chiefs, and other enlisted men, all needed to flesh out a modern SSN's 120+ man crew.

3. There's a short lag time beyond which many vital perishable skills, in construction techniques and in operational tactics, will grow rusty and then be irretrievably lost.

4. There's a short lag time after which the role models and personal word-of-mouth, for the inspiring traditions and practical wisdom of seasoned submariners, will go stale and eventually wither beyond recall.

These four points are especially important because some Pentagon officials, and private-sector commentators (including me) believe it's almost inevitable that the U.S. and our Allies will be forced to fight another big shooting war sometime in the next twenty or thirty years -- which if you think about it, is the same timeline as the career of young people who enter the military today.

It's worth exploring a little further the needs and benefits that nuclear subs fulfill for our national interests. I wrote some formal prepared remarks on this topic for the SubVets luncheon. Let me close by reproducing that same brief text here.

"Ongoing geopolitical events continue to remind us of vital old lessons: The world is a volatile, dangerous place. Major combat or controversial insurgencies in one arena can heighten tension and instability everywhere, worldwide. Power vacuums thus created will surely be exploited by heartless terrorists and ambitious dictators, triggering more armed strife. International coalitions ebb and flow unpredictably, while the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction raises the stakes of diplomacy to a frightening degree. Permanent changes are taking place in the threats to America and other countries. These perilous trends require decisive action. Yet solutions are impossible without well-trained personnel, proper equipment, and flexible, forward-looking warfighting doctrine.

"Since their inception, in every era, submarines rank among the most sophisticated weapons systems, and the most impressive benchmarks of technology and engineering, achieved by the human race. Stunning feats of courage by their crews, of sacrifice and endurance, loom large on the pages of history.

"The world's oceans are the world's highways for the transport of goods and the conduct of commerce. The oceans are also barriers to wholesale invasion by enemy troops, while providing us efficient routes of access to spy on those enemies and aid our friends. But those same open waters might also permit hostile infiltration of our homeland by cells of evil-doers bent on havoc here. Mastery of undersea warfare is therefore essential, for whoever controls the ocean's depths controls its surface, and thus protects much of the world. Seapower, strongly employed, is key to upholding peaceful societies everywhere. But right now, do we take our free passage through international waters too much for granted? Advanced submarine technology is proliferating among countries who have not always been our friends.

"Complacency, and too narrow a focus on obvious, current perils, could prove to be fatal weaknesses long-term. For glaring questions about the broad future of national defense, valid answers will be critical to preserve democracy and freedom: Which gaps in our security posture, or blind spots in our thinking, could be exploited in the years to come by a shrewd, aggressive emerging Evil Empire or Axis of Conspiracy? From what unexpected quarter might the next bloody surprise attack fall? What sacrifices and feats of courage will America and our Allies need to prevail in the almost inevitable, eventual Next Big War? Perhaps the only certainty is that heroic submariners will play an indispensable part in deterring that war, or in winning it."

Happy Fiftieth Birthday, and many more, U.S. Nuclear Navy!

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com