Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

British navies would like, of course. From a Cold War high of almost 100 and 20, respectively, the totals have dropped to around half that. Today, the Americans plan on maintaining a force of around fifty SSNs, while the British are hard-pressed to keep ten to twelve in service. This represents a very small number of platforms to accomplish a large range of missions. We are thankfully without an active naval conflict to fight, and this number will have to do.

^{The progressively lower noise levels emitted by various U.S., Soviet, and Russian submarine classes. As can be seen, the Soviet/Russian boats have gotten much closer to the stealth of U.S. boats over the years. OFFICAL U.S. NAVY GRAPHIC}

The Seawolf (SSN-21) Class: The Ultimate Cold War Attack Boat

Without a doubt, the most advanced submarine ever to enter service did so at a grand commissioning ceremony on July 19, 1997 in Groton, Connecticut. The USS Seawolf (given the hull number SSN-21) was to be the touchstone of the U.S. Navy's submarine forces' transition into the twenty-first century.[15] Certainly Seawolf is an impressive foreshadowing of technological advances to come, though this is achieved at an almost unacceptable cost. Also, as impressive as Seawolf is, she is not without her share of disputes and detractors. In fact, Seawolf has often been referred to as the most controversial submarine in American history, and there is a lot of truth to this claim.

Authorized to the defense budget in fiscal year 1989 (FY89), Seawolf was originally intended to be the lead unit of a class of almost thirty boats. This revolutionary sub was designed to succeed the Improved Los Angeles (688I) class attack submarines. As such, she falls into the same class of weapons as the F-22A Raptor fighter and B-2A Spirit bomber: unlimited Cold War designs put into production with little concern for cost at their time of conception. In this regard she is a success, as Seawolf is reported to be an improvement over the Los Angeles-class boats in nearly every aspect. The biggest pure attack submarine ever built, Seawolf also was the last SSN to bear the imprint of the father of America's nuclear navy, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. In particular, the Seawolf's S6W reactor was the last whose development he supervised, the crowning achievement of his career in many ways. Perhaps the most important improvements over the 688Is were in the areas of machinery quieting, sensors and electronics, and weapons load- out and handling. All of this will be covered later, but first let's examine the post-Cold War environment to get a better idea of why the Seawolf became such a hotly debated design.

^{USS Seawolf (SSN-21) layout. RUBICON, INC., BY LAURA DENINNO}

Seawolf (SSN-21) Design Concepts and History

Every weapons system has a core concept behind it, and Seawolf is no exception. Back in 1989, the Soviet Union was still considered a major threat to the United States, though much less of one than it had been during the previous decades. The last year of the 1980s was one of the most dramatic in world history and included the fall of the Berlin Wall and withdrawal of the last Soviet troops from Afghanistan. However, as President George H. W. Bush was entering the White House, the U.S. government was justifiably cautious and unsure of how permanent the changes inside the Soviet Union really were. The Department of Defense (DoD) even continued publishing a famous annual document assessing the Soviet military threat, though with a minor subtitle- Soviet Military Power: Prospects for Change-recognizing a possible thawing of the Cold War. The next few years, though, were a very confusing time for the military planners at DoD.

^{USS Seawolf (SSN-21) conducts her first at-sea trials on July 3, 1996. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

Perhaps the biggest problem DoD faced in the changing global climate was that while the end of the Cold War finally appeared to be a possibility, the American military still needed to prepare for the worst. The Soviet Navy still outnumbered the United States Navy in many ship categories, including the all-important area of submarines. New classes of Soviet submarines seemed to be continually entering service in the 1980s, and the United States simply could not rest on the hope that the Los Angeles-class would forever remain the best boats in the world. It was this environment in which the USS Seawolf was conceived.

From a naval combat point of view, it was clearly understood (in fact it was official U.S. Navy policy) that antisubmarine warfare (ASW) was to be the U.S. Navy's top war-fighting priority. The Soviet Union and their Warsaw Pact allies could deploy more submarines than the Americans and NATO, and many of their attack and cruise missile submarines were designed with two dangerously important purposes in mind- antishipping and anticarrier operations. The first of these missions dealt with destroying European-bound shipping, along with escorting warships that provided the vital lifeline of the Atlantic-which the United States would have to cross to reinforce and supply its NATO allies in the event of World War III.

The second role of Soviet attack submarines was the so-called anticarrier role, designed to destroy American and NATO aircraft-carrier battle groups, the alliance's most powerful and mobile strike weapon at sea. The Soviets and the Americans both knew that while a carrier's aircraft and escorts might detect and intercept enemy bombers at great distances, the nature of the submarine threat meant that they would not be able to defend against Soviet boats with the same level of efficiency. The role of carrier-hunting submarines, like the missile-armed Project 670/Charlie I/II and Project 949/Oscar I/II SSGNs, was to sneak into range of an American battle group and attack the prey before they were ever detected. This was a very real threat during the Cold War, and it was for this reason that ASW was so vitally important.

One of the best ways to kill a submarine is with another submarine. Continued improvements to the Los Angeles class of submarines were extremely effective and significantly increased the 688I's ability to conduct many types of missions. However, as much as the budget cutters hate to admit it, there comes a time when even the most advanced weapons designs begin to reach their technological limits. In the early 1980s, just as the Navy was ordering the first 688Is, thinking began in earnest about the follow-on to the Los Angeles-class boats.

In the past, much of the silent East-West submarine battle had been fought in the deep ocean depths, far from view of the nearest land. This was to have been the Seawolf's true home. She would be faster, deeper diving, and quieter than any attack submarine the world had ever produced. With ASW already acknowledged as the U.S. Navy's top mission, Seawolf would become the tool for meeting this essential priority. As might be imagined, the project was going to cost some money-lots of money! Initial FY89 cost estimates for the submarine ran in the neighborhood of $39 billion for the full class of thirty boats, which made them the most expensive such vessels in American history. Initial plans called for building three subs per year, which would allow the U.S. Navy to maintain a sufficient force of boats to conduct the required operations in the event the Cold War ever turned hot. It was a good plan, except for the fact that the war it had been designed to fight disappeared within a little over two years.

That type of money-$39 billion-was hard enough to come by during the height of the Cold War and became impossible once it ended. As an uneasy friendship between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union began to grow, so did pressure to trim the American defense budget, which had been slowly declining since the end of the Reagan years. As U.S. politicians clamored for their share of the so-called Peace Dividend, the Defense Department and the Navy began to reexamine exactly what role Seawolf might play in twenty-first-century submarine-force structure. One of the primary lessons learned from the Persian Gulf War was that while submarines were designed to operate in the depths of the blue ocean, there was also an all too frequently ignored requirement for them to support operations on land. Quickly, the Navy began to see the writing on the wall concerning spending on this very expensive weapons program. Several months after the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the chief of naval operations