1. How many subs does the U.S. require in the world of today and tomorrow? (Projected needs have ranged as high as 75 -- and that was before 9/11/01 -- while projected building and decommissioning schedules might leave us with less than half that number in being by 2030.)

2. What’s the ideal force structure of these subs, in terms of the tradeoff between total numbers and individual ship capabilities on the one hand, and overall costs on the other?

These vexed questions, difficult to answer properly under the best of circumstances, seem to have recently become so politicized that I can’t help labeling the current debate as a “silly season” -- a professional high-stakes blood sport of the type we’re all used to watching unfold around major election campaigns. Indeed, a Two-Party System prevails: Among the activists engaged, one’s either in favor of a large and powerful U.S. Navy submarine component, or one’s not. (It’s the “not” folks who put the “anti” in “anti-submarine,” a bit of word play for which I accept full blame.)

Much as with the tone of the 2004 presidential race, hidden or biased assumptions, rhetoric instead of rationality, ignoring nuances or telling only half of a story, oversimplifications, myths, self-contradictions, and occasional errors abound and are (in my opinion) obscuring the path to choosing an ideal balance in the naval context. No segment of our various information-age outlets holds a monopoly on the fog of elucidation and confusion. Reports by committees and pronouncements by members of government, newspaper and magazine articles, blog and discussion board postings, books, even a controversial paid ad contribute to and subtract from clarity over the most essential task: somehow figuring out what our submarine fleet should look like.

If that isn’t bad enough, further muddling things is that different timeframes apply at once. For instance, some commentators think our country might need to confront China’s growing People’s Liberation Army Navy in a new Cold War (or Hot War) at sea around 2020. Yet equally important is selecting the right answers in a big matter with a deadline looming as close as this September: The BRAC decision on whether to close the Naval Submarine Base New London and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Don’t get me wrong: Nobody’s perfect, everyone means well in their own way, and an entirely thorough exposition of every angle and argument would fill an encyclopedia. Few folks have time or the attention span for that, and no media venue (except maybe for an encyclopedia publisher) has the word-count room. What can be achieved with relative speed, and economy of ink and pixels, is to give examples of this raging “homeland anti-submarine warfare campaign,” in which there’s an equally vocal pro-submarine side.

I’m the first to admit I hold strong opinions -- but I do try to be objective. I won’t name names, or cite citations, because none of this is personal and Military.com essays don’t use footnotes. My previous Military Opinion piece, “Why Subs Matter Now,” was partly meant to set up this discussion. You may want to skim through it, since there I address and rebut some anti-submarine blather such as “Satellites and drones can do all the surveillance missions a sub can do,” and the thinly veiled insinuation (with obvious implications) to the effect that “The secrecy which prevents confirming submarine special operations missions is a cover that such missions don’t really exist.”

With preliminaries out of the way -- and pun intended -- let’s dive right in.

Risk management paradigm: Given an unstable world and uncertain future, it’s important to start with proper analytical tools. Bear with me for a minute as I show you what I mean.

In strategic planning, for any endeavor, the natural instinct under pressure is to pick whichever environment you believe to be most likely, conducting your affairs as if that particular outcome is essentially guaranteed. But this isn’t the right approach. Modern best practices for risk management, alas, require more work. “Pathwise immunization” is a technique employed by many risk analysts today, ranging from Wall Street trading-desk hedgers, to corporate executives, to think tank fellows studying foreign relations. Pathwise immunization involves developing a spectrum of scenarios which aren’t merely the most probable, but which also extends to the broader envelope of the “not implausible.” Then, these scenarios receive equal examination in seeing which ones could do the greatest damage. Lastly, policy is drawn up, and resources are allocated, to mitigate (immunize against) whichever scenario paths appear most dangerous. It’s like buying insurance against catastrophes you hope never occur, but which you realize might occur.

Yes, this perspective can give you a headache. It requires thinking the unthinkable, and preparing for the worst. But it’s a healthy mind-expanding exercise, and it’s necessary. In the context of national defense, deciding on a single type of armed conflict (scenario) as the only one the U.S. will ever have to face (i.e., deeming it most probable, or even certain) violates the principles of risk management best practices. The point is that we don’t know what type of conflict(s) we’ll have to fight during the next generation or so. Counter-terror, counter-insurgency, cold wars, hot wars, quasi-wars, drug wars, nuclear wars, and then some, they’re all on the table and none are “not implausible.”

Tremendous flexibility in American military force structure is therefore required, not fixation on what’s optimal for a single type of contest or disaster. Hitting power and staying power are as crucial as agility. Yet you’d never know it if you look at what’s being said in some quarters both inside and outside the Beltway.

How many cold wars? A cherished belief for many is that there was and ever will be a single Cold War, the one we fought and won against the USSR. Allegedly, this victory, to which American submarines and submariners made a big contribution, has ironically rendered those undersea warships irrelevant. Some writers have put it more starkly, even appearing to me to be announcing that nuclear submarines are an endangered species, soon to be rightly extinct.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the new Virginia-class fast-attack subs were conceived of, designed, put into production, and the first one already commissioned entirely during the post-Cold War period -- and the Virginias, as I discussed last week, are by no stretch of the informed imagination in the least bit irrelevant to the 21st century. Let’s also ignore for now the USS Jimmy Carter modifications, the Ohio-class SSGN conversions, and the continuing need for strategic deterrent nuclear-powered “boomer” subs while weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems proliferate.

Personally I think a better answer to the question of “how many cold wars ever possible” is: three. Yes. Not one, not two, but three. How come?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, and I’m hardly the only pundit who’s said the same thing: The Russian Federation wants to regain superpower status, and has the proven natural gas and oil reserves to finance doing so. A Second Cold War with Russia might already be on, but some of us won’t admit it. Journalist’s interviews with senior Russian naval commanders and submarine design bureau chiefs indicate they have the talent, confidence, and will to reestablish a major presence on, and especially under, what they like to call the “World Ocean.”

China, already alluded to, also has the means and the desire to invest in a blue-water navy. This effort will probably advance in fits and starts, as China’s economy, ever more capitalist, experiences the boom-and-bust cycles common to every capitalist state. China intends for subs to form the backbone of this new navy. They’re building or buying more and more such vessels, while forging friendships in far-reaching places where the U.S. is now unpopular. A Cold War might be coming on that front, too, even a shooting war. (Don’t be fooled by the recent accidents aboard two Ming-class diesel boats -- those Foxtrots are old hunks of junk, in no way representative of China’s emerging “New Fleet.”)

If submarines do win cold wars, then we definitely still need submarines -- plus adequate, dispersed bases and yards to support and service both them and their crews. Endangered species, my you-know-what! The only driving factor within the U.S. that could extinct our nuclear subs is the self-fulfilling prophecy, and delusional circular reasoning, that announcing a foreseen requirement for very few of these vessels will somehow, as if by magic, make that paper requirement come true in the actual world. Pacifist/isolationist types, and misguided spreadsheeting bean-counters, gotta love this anti-submarine drivel. God save us from the consequences if we as a nation fall for it. It takes five to eight years to build a nuclear sub -- much too long to recover in a crisis once we’ve ceded initiative and waterspace dominance to our adversaries.

If I haven’t got your blood boiling yet, please read on.

Future submarine combat losses: Speaking of hidden assumptions, behind the more stingy among several proposed U.S. Navy submarine acquisition schemes appears to be the presumption that every such ship constructed will live out its normal hull life of some thirty or forty years. At least in the unclassified literature, no allowance has been made for potential losses in future combat -- which if shooting does start, against whomever in a decade or two, might be unavoidable and significant.

Remember, we did win World War II, but one-fifth of our submarine fleet (and our submariners) was lost in action.

Nuclear versus diesel power: This is a big topic unto itself, which I plan to address further in my next essay. For now I’ll just say a few things -- and again I’m not the first person to say them. The UK until fairly recently maintained a fleet of both nuclear-powered and diesel-powered attack subs (SSNs and SSKs). Tight budget constraints demanded cutbacks. When given the choice, the Royal Navy took one SSN over four SSKs. The reasons for this were twofold: If rapid, stealthy global reach is required, nuclear powered submarines hold all the advantages over even the most modern diesel subs with air-independent propulsion (AIP). And once at the scene of battle, whether on the high seas or in the enemy’s littorals, a properly handled SSN will usually prevail against opponent SSKs.

This ties in to something else, speaking of half-told stories in certain media. It’s true that during 2002, in exercises in the Pacific against diesel subs from friendly countries, the U.S. Navy’s experiences “often proved humbling.” Diesel subs were able to “kill” Los Angeles-class SSNs more than once. Other diesels “sank” American aircraft carriers.

But the other half of the story, as stated publicly by senior U.S. submariners shortly thereafter, was that the American SSN skippers quickly realized their mistakes. They were using tactical doctrine more suited to an SSN-versus-SSN duel, which emphasized acting quickly and aggressively. If instead they adopted a strategy of patience, they found that they could out-wait the SSK, detect it, and reliably “destroy” it. Why?

Seems that a lurking SSN, with its nuclear reactor running in low-power silent mode, can stealthily keep electronics cooled and the crew atmosphere refreshed basically forever. The diesels, with a different arrangement of power sources and internal systems, were always eventually forced to run machinery that made noise -- to keep their computers and consoles from overheating, and their crews from starting to suffocate.

So much for the old idea that diesels running on batteries are quieter. There’s a lot more to it in undersea warfighting that simply spinning one’s propulsion shaft with low decibels for a short while. It’s also quite a misnomer to label all diesel subs as physically “small.” Forget about whether smaller is better (maybe it is), and whether current U.S. nuclear sub designs are somehow “too big” (maybe they are). The vaunted Improved Kilo diesel sub, built in Russia and being sold to China in numbers, is fully as wide (about 32 feet) as our Los Angeles-class and Virginia-class SSNs, and is fully two-thirds as long as these ships, which are longer than a football field.

Mock-hostile diesels penetrating a carrier strike group’s defenses and scoring hits doesn’t surprise me -- American submariners call surface ships “targets.” And if anything, it’s another reason in favor of having numerous sophisticated SSNs -- to help guard our carriers and convoys against enemy SSNs and diesels that are underway on the high seas, while simultaneously trailing and interdicting those trying to sortie from port, or hiding in shallows. Such multi-layered defenses must be in place before conflict breaks out, or consequences will be deadly.

Cost or capability? Another anti-submarine argument is being made on the grounds that nuclear subs are so expensive. But for the U.S. Navy to start buying diesel subs just to save money, to me at least, isn’t wise. Beginning to operate SSNs and SSKs at the same time would call for two separate but concurrent crew training programs, maintenance infrastructures, and logistical support pipelines. This alone has got to be a humongous “hidden expense.” That Russia and China both still have mixed SSN/SSK fleets doesn’t by itself validate the same idea for us. They do what they do in part because of asymmetric nautical geography with differing statesmanship goals, in part because they still lack the industrial strength to build large purely SSN fleets, and in part because their acquisition systems are plagued -- much like Nazi Germany’s was -- by excessive internecine competition, absurd duplication, and staggering waste. (In comparison, they make the U.S. military-industrial complex look hyper-efficient!)

One defense expert was quoted as saying that, ton for ton, a supercarrier costs less than an SSN. Well, duh. It’s a fundamental aspect of naval architecture that the price per ton of a ship as a whole declines as the size of the ship increases. Considering that, roundly speaking, a carrier weighs ten-plus times as much as one of our biggest fast-attack subs, this per-ton comparison shouldn’t be news. In the whole defense budget contest, it’s a red herring.

Another thing carped on by the anti-SSN “party” is that the Virginia-class subs -- the latest design, now gradually in production -- ran badly overbudget compared to original cost estimates. To that, I ask what major and revolutionary weapon system ever introduced in modern times didn’t run badly overbudget? Again, it’s just a red herring, i.e., not in and of itself a valid rationale to diss or ditch the Silent Service.

Which high/low mix? Some knowledgeable people have made the case that the U.S. Navy -- and the country -- needs a high/low mix of submarines, rather than the exclusive concentration we now have on the high end. With this, I humbly and enthusiastically agree. However, I disagree that the proper high/low mix is to field a blend of SSNs and diesel boats.

We already have a superb high/low mix in existence or in the development and acquisition process: an SSN parent host sub, deploying different types of smaller “adjuvant vehicles.” These run from manned SEAL minisubs to unmanned or autonomous undersea probes and airborne drones, some for reconn only and some armed. My advice here is to stick with what we already have planned. A nuclear submarine, with its reactor, turbogenerators, and seawater electrolysis plant, can stealthily, while forward-deployed, recharge or refuel its adjuvant vehicles ad infinitum. Diesel/AIP subs can’t make that crucial claim.

Supercavitating weapons: The Russians have a series of underwater rockets, the Shkvals, fired from submerged submarines. These weapons, as they accelerate, create a vacuum bubble around their bodies (supercavitation), which cuts down water resistance to the point that their rocket engines can propel Shkvals at 200 or 300 knots. In comparison, American torpedoes have a maximum speed somewhere around 70 knots. Certain persons have used this to claim that our SSNs are obsolete because we have no defense against the Shkvals. Ho hum. Once again it’s a case of getting different things mixed up.

The older, and most common, variants of the Shkval are “straight runners.” Like most World War II torpedo designs, they lack any homing sensors. The sub launching such a Shkval needs a perfect firing solution, or it only wastes ammo. (Granted, the tremendous speed of the Shkval does make this aiming problem easier to solve.) That is, unless -- and here’s a vital point indeed -- the Shkval is equipped with a nuclear warhead, which given the large kill radius of an underwater nuclear bomb (10 miles for a 1 megaton warhead) means it doesn’t need huge accuracy. And that was precisely how early Shkvals worked -- as delivery platforms for H-bombs or A-bombs. Thus, while this isn’t exactly a “defense” against them, the fact that using such weapons crosses the nuclear threshold would presumably give a state-level adversary (like China or Russia) considerable pause. Were that barrier ever actually crossed, American subs could retaliate with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, smashing inbound Shkvals at what (one hopes) would be a safe stand-off distance. An even better answer to this threat, in extremis, might be to reintroduce the SUBROC -- a missile launched from a torpedo tube that flies very fast through the air but then drops a small torpedo or depth change, which could be tactical nuclear.

Now, there is a newer version, the Shkval-E, which has on-board target homing sensors and a high-explosive warhead. It’s even available for export (think China again). There are just two problems with this. One is that the Shkval-E is a huge device, much too big to fit through the torpedo or missile tubes of any sub other than Russian nuclear classes that aren’t sold on the world arms market. The other is that the Shkval-E, to pursue an evading target (think American SSN), needs to repeatedly slow down to reacquire its intended victim’s signature -- the reason is that the rocket motors are utterly deafening to the rocket. When that Shkval reduces speed to listen for its prey with the usual passive and active sonars, it in turn becomes vulnerable to spoofing and decoying by conventional SSN countermeasures.

Commentators have said that a Shkval moves so fast that it doesn’t even need a warhead -- the weapon body alone can punch right through a carrier’s hull. This problem doesn’t apply to our SSNs, though, because a weakness of the Shkval is that it advertises its presence to the whole neighborhood the moment it’s fired, and an SSN can maneuver in three dimensions quickly enough to avoid direct impact. (It’s also another reason why American submariners like to call aircraft carriers targets.)

And in case you’re wondering, yes, the U.S. Navy has for some time investigated supercavitating weapons. So far, a preferred approach is to keep improving the Improved Mark 48 ADCAP heavyweight long-range torpedo. The latest mod, I’m told, has such good on-board sonars and software, and such a wide-angle sensor search cone, that the old bugaboo about having the guidance wire broken isn’t tactically important anymore.

Confusing today and tomorrow: A more insidious element of the anti-submarine rhetoric afoot is to make comparisons that muddle timeframes. An example is any discussion of why U.S. nuclear subs are or should be on the endangered-species list, which pits a hypothetical adversary’s capabilities not due to be operational for ten or twenty-five years against American capabilities of today. I’ve heard such illogic used to argue that an affordable (read small) sub force is a loser, hence worthless, so we’re better off having none -- a peculiar take on unilateral disarmament. This barely holds water even if the most radical ASW Party member’s wildest fantasy came true: that U.S. Navy submarine technology development were immediately and forever frozen, with all pending acquisitions canceled at once.

But even the most miserly and skeptical senior leadership inside U.S. borders supports building further nuclear subs, plus adding more and increasingly potent adjuvant vehicles, working out ever-smarter battlefield tactics for all sorts of wars, and planning a superb next-generation SSN for beyond the Virginias. So don’t compare China or Russia in 2025 with our own Silent Service in 2005 and think this tells you something meaningful -- other than that we can’t afford not to spend more money on subs.

Conclusion: A large and capable nuclear submarine fleet, with adequately sized and strategically dispersed supporting base/yard infrastructure, will in the future remain as vital as it ever was to preserving freedom and America’s way of life.

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