1. Friday, July 22, was the last day in office of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Vernon Clark, the longest-serving CNO in more than 40 years. His stepping down and retiring led to some pithy media reporting on the continuing debate over how many submarines are enough for America’s “Incredible Shrinking Navy.” An unnamed “top Navy officer,” quoted in the Boston Globe that same day, made a claim about “the submariners’ view of the world” which demands rebuttal on the record (see below).

2. I spent this past weekend in Groton, CT, mingling and brainstorming as I often do with a number of submariners, plus visiting USS Dallas (in floating dry dock ARDM 4) and USS Virginia (at her pier) and talking to folks in their crews.

3. A Veteran, in an e-mail just yesterday, asked what I could tell him about American submarine capabilities to operate inside the very shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait, which separates the island-nation of Taiwan from the mainland People’s Republic of China -- a potential future flash-point for major war.

The question of China vs. Taiwan makes an interesting wrap-up “case study,” to help illustrate some of the key points that will be established earlier in this essay.

Littoral Combat Ships: “Littoral” waters mean those which are shallow or near shore. Here I’m making a bit of a play on words. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a new type of surface naval vessel optimized for power-projection and warfighting in the littorals. The LCS is one of Vern Clark’s great legacies to the United States Navy. But the fact of the matter is that every SSN (fast-attack sub), and the adaptations of four Ohio-class SSBN Trident missile subs to a new SSGN configuration (see “Steel Sharks, Giant Shadow”), are also littoral combat ships – with the “lcs” in lower case. Nothing could have made this more vividly clear than my back-to-back tours of Dallas and Virginia on Saturday, at the Naval Submarine Base New London. (I’d been on Dallas several times before, since the late 1990s, but my visit to Virginia was for me a breathtaking first.)

USS Dallas, one of the earliest Los Angeles class SSNs, is fitted with an external Dry Deck Shelter. The DDS holds specialized equipment for supporting SEALs who deploy to and from hostile littorals, and who sometimes cross the surf zone for covert or direct action ashore. As a result, Dallas’s operational tempo is high even by current grueling, over-stretched SSN standards. Yet her people are eager to get out of dry dock and back to business ASAP. The 140-man crew’s at-sea “lifestyle” and social structure have adapted admirably to typically carrying some 30 SEALs –- she could in a pinch hold as many as 60. That’s one heck of a crowd by any standard, with no physical or psychological privacy at all. But though your average SEAL and submariner might be quite different personalities, the two have a lot in common: They both know well the pressures and dangers of working underwater, while appreciating the “cover and concealment” that the ocean provides free of charge. And they both know where, when, why, and how to “shape” the littoral political and military environment, to best serve America’s vital interests abroad.

USS Virginia, first in the class of SSNs now under construction, was designed from the keel up to do, using state-of-the-art naval architecture and 21st-century submarine technology, what Dallas has been modified and retrofitted to do using a Cold War-era platform first commissioned 25 years ago. Aside from much better quieting and improved non-acoustic stealth, Virginia’s control room layout is revolutionary, permitting a whole new level of command-team situational awareness, along with pinpoint computer-autopilot control of ship’s position and depth in the most complex and constrained imaginable underwater battlespaces. Virginia’s torpedo room plus Tomahawk vertical launch system have a total weapons capacity nearly twice that of Dallas and other early LA-class boats. Yet Virginia’s torpedo room can, reportedly, be reconfigured from ordnance-holding to commando-accommodation space in barely one hour. She can carry 40 or 50 commandos and all their equipment easily, with an ASDS minisub or Dry Deck Shelter transported on her back. She also sports a first-of-its-kind 9-man special operations diver lock-in/lock-out chamber, a major advance from the cramped escape trunks most SEALs who stage from subs had to use up to now. (Virginia retains the standard two escape trunks, enhancing survivability in case of a mishap in the littorals.) In addition, Virginia’s four torpedo tubes have a diameter of 26.5 inches, contrasted to the standard 21-inch tubes for the Los Angeles class, permitting use of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) as off-board probes of a size and sophistication that the LA class simply can’t handle.

I have to label Dallas, Virginia, their sisters, the SSGNs, and USS Jimmy Carter (see “USS Jimmy Carter: SSN-23”) -– maybe even all the Seawolf boats -- as gen-u-ine littoral combat ships.

World views: On the face of it, submariners as a U.S. Navy “union” are probably the most aware, as a group, of the capabilities of other types of naval forces. For a “top Navy officer,” presumably not a submariner, to say that “the submariners’ view of the world” doesn’t give proper credit to other platforms being able to fulfill similar missions is, as a not-for-attribution quote to a journalist, perhaps not surprising. Nor is it necessarily in the slightest bit ill-intentioned. But it is, as justification for an inadequate SSN fleet, quite incorrect. Submariners have a much better view (in every sense of the word) of the Surface Warfare and Naval Aviation arms (“unions”) than vice versa. One reason for this is that submarines routinely operate in concert with carrier strike groups, Marine Corps amphibious warfare groups, cruiser-destroyer surface action groups, and other elements of the sea-going Navy. They do this in two complimentary manners: a) during live operations when all go in harm’s way together, with the SSNs acting as stealthy escorts while in frequent high-baud-rate contact with their surface and airborne companions, and b) during practice exercises when the escorting SSNs become instead the stealthy hunters. Both types of activities, escorting and hunting, are essential to the careers of all submariners, and are very educational as to the relative strengths and/or weaknesses of different platforms -– including their own SSNs. There are, for instance, many more photographs (and amusing “sea stories”) in the public domain showing American aircraft carriers taken through the periscopes of American subs that the carriers didn’t even know were there, than there are photos of American submarine periscopes taken from carriers.

I’ll go even further in arguing that the availability and flow of information and understanding about different platforms, by its nature, asymmetrically favors submariners:

Sonar technicians, and all on-board users of their interpreted data (which means most everybody in the control room and torpedo room), continually detect, classify, track, and target contacts of all sorts: surface, airborne, or submerged. This process is vital not just for accomplishing combat missions. It’s indispensable in peacetime on a daily basis to know “who’s where, out there” and thus avoid potentially fatal collisions. (Several recent tragedies have reminded every submariner how much a matter of life and death accurate, real-time, three-dimensional situational awareness truly is.) Electronic support measures (ESM) signals intercepts, for self-defense and for intelligence gathering, are other tasks practiced in earnest constantly by SSN crews. The correct analysis of where all these overheard signals are coming from, and what they might mean as targets or threats, is an endless chore for submarine crews and embarked CIA or NSA experts. The SSN’s command team and supporting enlisted technicians must be sharply attuned to the distinguishing signatures, including sonar mechanical transients, during all possible behaviors and evolutions of different friendly, neutral, and hostile platforms. The sub’s people need a keen grasp of the unique characteristics of each such platform: hull shape and depth at the keel, weaponry including embarked aircraft (fixed wing and helos), anti-submarine sensors (including dipping sonars and towed arrays), maximum speed, on-scene endurance, degree of low-observability or ease of detection, handling and habitability in severe sea states, aggregate skipper-and-crew competence of individual vessels, and beyond. If anything, submariners know a lot more about the rest of the Navy than the other way around -- because of the unique environment within which submariners operate, their stealth, their mission flexibility, their instinctive tendency to constantly spy on anything within range, the unusual regimens needed to establish adequate connectivity, and their vulnerability to collisions if people get careless. They also comprehend more about our own Navy, because of their ability to get amazingly close to vessels and harbors of other navies.

I’m not done yet. Joint and/or combined assignments, plus commingling with other U.S. Navy unions’ members during periodic shore duty including continuing education -- as required to move up toward master chief, or be promoted to flag rank -- assure that senior decision-makers in the Submarine Force have an excellent view of the world around them. (Some submariner officers, once they make O-6, go on to “major command” of a deep-draft surface vessel, and in effect become part of the surface Navy themselves –- achieving further enlightenment on how the other half lives.) And certainly, they are the leading authorities on the current and future capabilities of their own subs, and other countries’ subs. So when submariner admirals, both active-duty and retired, say publicly that 41 or fewer SSNs aren’t nearly enough to assure America’s superpower status and national security in coming decades, and the proper number is more like 54, we ought to give great weight to their concerns.

As to the parting shot sometimes heard nowadays, “Well, come on, military commanders of every ilk are always demanding more resources than they need,” allow me to rebut by paraphrasing one admiral who spoke for the record at the Naval War College’s June 2005 Current Strategy Forum: “Actual experience in major wars has shown repeatedly that resources of every type, ranging from bombs to landing craft to subs to planes, have always suffered from painfully inadequate supplies, not surpluses, during prolonged and bloody engagements against determined foes.” Mahan, Not Interrupted: Alfred Thayer Mahan, a naval officer affiliated with the Naval War College in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is considered by many to be America’s greatest thinker and writer on the subject of sea power, its purposes, and its applications in the real world. (See “Rear Adm. Mahan & Iraq” Part 1 and Part 2.) In recent years, he’s often been misunderstood or misquoted, and then his basic theses are blithely dismissed –- to our country’s detriment. I’ve even heard talks or read things claiming that the existence of submarines renders Mahan irrelevant, or, a sort of obverse, that Mahan’s teachings in a modern context make submarines irrelevant. I was unable to follow such logic, assuming there actually was any logic. Despite frequent misinterpretations to the contrary, Mahan’s central tenet never was to advocate some sort of abstract “main battle-fleet fight to the death,” where at the start of a war two enemy navies would steam toward each other in blue water and blast away until one side or the other got wiped out. What Mahan really did say was this:

1. The paramount purpose of sea power is to influence events on land.

2. A navy that will not risk casualties, i.e. won’t actively seek combat in order to destroy the enemy’s naval forces, is a war-loser, not a winner.

3. The best place to destroy an enemy’s navy is not on the high seas, nor near your homeland’s coast, but rather while the enemy fleet is still in or near its own ports and bases.

So, what Mahan was really getting at, 100 years ago, was that the way to win a war was through aggressive, proactive littoral-focused combat. A. T. Mahan was a pretty smart guy. His theories are as applicable as ever, and nuclear submarines are indeed rather relevant platforms to practice what he preached.

Subs in the Littorals -– Taiwan Strait Case Study: The above discussion hopefully creates context, dispels misnomers, and leads into the broad and fascinating topic of modern submarine operations in the littorals. The specific types of missions an SSN might be tasked with were overviewed in “Why Subs Matter Now.” What I will do next, here, for the first time in one of my Military.com essays, is provide an edited version of my e-mail response to the Veteran (non-submariner) who asked me if U.S. Navy submariners could operate in the Taiwan Strait. As I told him, I was cautious when formulating my response to avoid personal knowledge or inference that might touch upon classified matters. With that preamble, here’s what I said. Note the emphasis re ongoing Silent Service culture and training:

Firstly, 100 to 200 feet while relatively shallow is definitely within the operating envelope of U.S. Navy SSNs and has been for a long time. So-called "littoral" operations such as Indications and Warnings, SEAL deployment and recovery, minefield surveys, and Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance (ISR) go back a long way and have occurred in some very shallow places. Submariners practice this all the time, it does require very tricky navigation, skilled ship-control handling (ballast and trim), and judicious use of active mine-avoidance sonars mounted under the chin of the Los Angeles class and more modern SSNs. Constant rehearsals while in pre-deployment work-up training in American waters, and a long tradition of aggressive risk-taking and a warrior mentality while penetrating "enemy" waters, are key elements of the Silent Service culture. The Naval Submarine Base New London's Submarine School and related facilities utilize impressively detailed trainers for each SSN class ship-control station, in which missions to hostile littorals can be simulated so that relevant watchstanders get it right before the SSN even leaves her pier. These trainers resemble the cockpit simulators used to teach and test aircraft flight crews, including the ability to pose multiple emergencies during full 3-D motion of the "ship" with an up or down angle as extreme as 45 degrees! The dangers of broaching, or hitting the bottom, can be replicated realistically. I've been strapped into the helmsman's seat on the Seawolf trainer and let me tell you it was one wild ride!!!

Without giving away too much, "battlespace dominance" against an identified threat such as China invading Taiwan begins long before any shooting ever starts, by the key task for SSNs of "waterspace preparation." This involves missions of the types listed above, into extremely shallow waters for prolonged periods, to study in great detail hydrography, map seabed wrecks, measure local acoustic propagation characteristics (which includes background noise from sources such as oil drilling/pumping platforms, coastal industrial activity, even heavy freight train movements!), also to quantify water transparency, find spots likely to make good enemy minefield locations before mines are ever laid, and using all these different parameters note possible ideal lurking places for enemy diesel subs before those subs have a chance to deploy. Signals intercept antennas are raised for long periods while at periscope depth to monitor and map enemy coastal defense sites, learn the location and organizational structure of various hostile units and headquarters, quantify characteristics of radars so that they can be most effectively spoofed and jammed in time of war, and so on.

Historically, it's public info that SSNs operated in such shallow and semi-enclosed areas of the World Ocean as the White Sea next to Russia's Kola Peninsula, the Persian Gulf (parts of which are exceedingly shallow), the Sea of Okhotsk (famous undersea phone cable tapping against USSR Pacific Fleet), and also near North Korea and Vietnam. Another example of ongoing SSN ops which is public info includes the fact that many SSNs transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back via the shortest and most covert route, the Arctic, which involves negotiating the Chukchi Sea and Bering Sea. Those two seas are extremely shallow (some areas for 100+ miles have a maximum depth of 150 feet) and are also somewhat confined (by Alaska and Siberia) and yet our SSNs go through, even when there is the further constraint of the ice cap (both summer and winter) and the related danger of downward projecting ice keels (“bummocks”) that can create severe collision hazards. Again, practice and high skills at navigation, ship handling, teamwork, studied boldness, and use of obstacle warning sensors, is part of the daily life of an SSN crew.

Another tool for littoral warfare, introduced over the past few years, is the whole topic of remote-controlled off-board probes (unmanned undersea vehicles, or UUVs), which can be deployed and then recovered through torpedo tubes or SSGN modified missile tubes or Carter’s special Multi-Mission Platform added hull section’s ocean interface. These UUVs are designed with mission-reconfigurable passive and active sonar and imagery (photonics) sensor packages, for locating enemy mine hazards and other obstructions to safe passage. With these UUVs, an SSN can deploy expendable (i.e., unmanned) and super-stealthy mini-vehicles that can "scout" miles ahead of the parent sub, going anywhere short of grounding on a mud flat. This enhances the parent SSN’s ability to operate offensively in shallow waters. The ASDS minisub, BTW, at only 8 feet high on the outside, can penetrate remarkably close to any shoreline at high tide, and can serve as much more that merely a taxi for SEALs. The ASDS, though officially unarmed, could conceivably transport explosive ordnance other than commando ammunition, and/or could dwell under “hotel load” to run special intell-gathering or communications gear. The possibilities for these adjuvant vehicles are limited only by human imagination and audacity.

Putting all this together in the context of Taiwan, I think we may safely deduce that our SSNs already operate within the Strait, and its waters hold few remaining mysteries for our Submarine Sailors and their commanders. It is likely in the event of an emerging crisis that SSNs will be first on the scene and will be present to prosecute "sea denial" against amphibious invasion forces before those forces even marshal and leave their harbors. And remember that, aside from the superb Mark 48 Improved ADCAP torpedoes (which every submariner I’ve met says they’d choose over a 200-knot Shkval underwater rocket any day), SSNs are capable of launching Tomahawk missiles, which include (mostly in inventory, not deployed much last I knew) a very effective anti-ship version, with a range of 1000+ nautical miles. Thus SSNs can even "reach in" and destroy surface targets in the Taiwan Strait while remaining outside its confines, in a more stealthy (unpredictable) manner than surface platforms. And since the Strait itself is about 125 nautical miles wide at its narrowest (the distance Chinese landing craft would have to cover), and about 250 miles long (the length from north to south of Taiwan), this is a big play pen in which to operate. SSNs can plant ultra-smart mines, a so called "leave behind" weapon, to be armed if China really does try to invade.

Further, remember that our SSNs in time of war would be working directly or indirectly with support of land and sea-based surface and airborne or anti-air and anti-ship assets (American, Taiwanese, etc.), to deter or destroy Chinese ASW platforms (including subs) that might try to localize our SSNs and allied diesel subs in the Strait during any armed conflict. The "combined arms" element of undersea warfare, in the modern context of network-centric warfighting and advanced connectivity technologies, is a very important part of the bigger picture of the state of the art as practiced by the U.S. Navy. Is Taiwan a Red Herring? Personally, I think China does not intend to really invade Taiwan any time soon. They are mostly saber rattling, a favorite tactic going back to Mao's day, for political, economic, and diplomatic gain. The powers-that-be in Beijing are pragmatic enough to not want to reduce to rubble the valuable infrastructure and assets of Taiwan merely to claim the smoldering debris pile as definitively sovereign Chinese soil -- and they know that any invasion attempt would be a mutual bloodbath which would leave Taiwan's cities and towns in ruins. The Chinese leadership is much too shrewd and subtle for that.

More of a worry is their aim to have a global-reach blue water Navy by the 2020s, including hundreds of subs, at just around the time that America’s "Incredible Shrinking Navy" is likely to hit its nadir and bottom out irrecoverably. Then, they might take us on head-to-head, as Red China did in a different way in the latter part of the Korean War. Except now, China has hydrogen bombs and increasingly long-ranged ICBMs -– at a minimum, we’d be subjected to nuclear blackmail in every stage of any conventional conflict. Even if we eventually won, the price of such a victory appalls me. The much better answer, of course, is deterrence, and that means a) fixing the flaws in the Navy’s 2004 Force Structure Assessment, and then b) building a stronger, balanced American Navy -- sooner rather than later.

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