(CNO) announced that Seawolf construction would be cut from the planned three subs a year to a more modest one per year. However, even this plan was modified once the realities of post-Cold War finances and technology began to make themselves known in the 1990s.
The first of the problems for the new class were technical, as might be imagined for such a state-of-the-art weapons system. High-strength HY-80 steel had been used in nearly all previous American nuclear submarine designs since the Skipjack (SSN-585) class of the 1950s. Nevertheless, for the deep-diving Seawolf, stronger metal would be needed. Initial plans looked at material as strong as HY-130 steel, but this was eventually shelved in favor of HY-100. The HY-130 was just too hard to work and weld, and production problems with it looked inevitable. Therefore, the Navy and Electric Boat thought HY- 100 would be a good compromise between ease of manufacture and greater diving depth. Unfortunately, even the HY-100 steel had its problems when Electric Boat got working. In midsummer 1991, the Navy announced that massive weld failures had been uncovered on Seawolf's hull as it underwent construction. These welding cracks, which might very well have been deadly had they not been discovered and repaired, meant that all welding done to date needed replacement. This caused production of Seawolf to be delayed an additional year and added more than $100 million to the already high price of the new boat.
Then further bad news arrived. In 1992, after concluding an agonizing analysis of the situation, the DoD (under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney) decided to cut funding for all of the planned SSN-21-class submarines except for the Seawolf herself, which was already under construction. As might have been predicted, with the 1992 presidential election looming, the Seawolf program would become a hotly contested political issue.
Running in a tight Democratic primary, a young governor from Arkansas named William Jefferson Clinton announced in 1992 that if elected president, he would save the Seawolf program and continue production past the first unit. Though criticized by some Democrats as supporting a weapons program even the Republicans wanted to cancel, Clinton's gambit paid off. When he won the White House in 1992, he took with him Connecticut's electoral votes, something that might have been impossible without the support of one of that state's biggest employers and its workers-General Dynamics Electric Boat Division-the Seawolf submarine's prime contractor. It is interesting to note that the second submarine of the class was appropriately named USS Connecticut (SSN-22).
The year 1992 also marked the beginning of a changing strategy for U.S. Navy forces. It was during this year that the Navy and Marine Corps released their seminal document that was to serve as a guide for planning the Navy and Marine Corps of the twenty-first century. Entitled From the Sea: Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century, the document spelled out the biggest change in U.S. naval strategy and policy since the end of the Second World War. Declaring boldly that the Navy's current command of the seas allowed it to concentrate on areas of more likely future conflicts, namely the 'littoral' or coastal zones of the earth, the Navy would dramatically alter the planned environment in which they were preparing to fight. In essence, From the Sea declared that the ability of the Navy and Marine Corps team to project power from the water and impact events on land would be of dramatically greater importance to future naval planning-more so even than the deep ocean operations of the Cold War. Gone were the days when the so-called blue-water navy took top priority while brown-water units (riverine, mine-hunting, and amphibious forces, among others) languished as a result of a lack of training, funding, and attention from the senior leadership. Impacting events on land was something the U.S. Marine Corps and SEALs community had done for decades, but it was something the majority of U.S. Navy officers and sailors had to learn quickly if the Navy was to have a seat at the table when new conflicts erupted.
While this confident new plan was essential to the Navy's future, it was not good news for the Seawolf program. Seawolf had been designed to fight in the ocean depths and to hunt Soviet submarines. To this end, it was the quietest, deepest-diving attack submarine America had ever planned. The problems facing warships in the shallow, murky 'brown' water of the coastal regions were entirely different from those encountered in the open ocean. This was especially true for submarines, which relied on deep diving depths and sensitive passive sonars to maintain their stealth-both of which would be of limited use in the brown-water combat environment.
As if this was not bad enough, the new Seawolf-class boats were also extremely expensive. Practically every part of the Seawolf's design was controversial. While this was largely due to the high cost of incorporating advanced systems into a revolutionary design, there seemed to be problems all along the way, which some of the world's best experts were put to work solving. The result was a truly amazing piece of machinery, which has run taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion per unit of the class. While this may sound like a lot, take into consideration that the Air Force paid $2 billion for each of twentyone B-2A Spirit stealth bombers.
Fortunately, plans for a new submarine that would incorporate the technology of the Seawolf into a boat the size and cost of the Los Angeles class were already in the works. Faced with these fiscal and strategic realities, the Navy put new emphasis on a submarine they were calling Centurion-today known as the Virginia (SSN-774) class. It thus came as no surprise when, in October 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin released the results of the Bottom-up Review (BUR) in which it was explained that Seawolf production would end after only three boats, holdovers from Clinton's election '92 promise, had been constructed.
Seawolf (SSN-21): A Guided Tour
Once you get over the sticker-price shock (something Congress never seemed to do!), you can discover exactly how revolutionary Seawolf actually is, and it's something of which every American can be justly proud. Let's start out by discussing the design of this big, beautiful boat. Prior to Seawolf's design, every class of U.S. submarine since the Skipjack (SSN-585) class of the 1950s had been an 'iterative' design. That is to say, the basic design of submarines was modified so that each new class was based on the solid design of an older ship, incorporating a mix of old and new technology.
Thus the classes between the Skipjack and Los Angeles were all modified designs of the same original boat. This all changed with the Seawolf design. Seawolf was the first submarine design in over thirty years to be planned totally new from top to bottom.
USS Seawolf (SSN-21) interior layout. RUBICON, INC., BY LAURA DENINNO Everything about the Seawolf (SSN-21) and her sister boats, Connecticut (SSN-22) and the not-yet-in-service Jimmy Carter (SSN-23), is new and improved. She is big, displacing an impressive 9,137 tons submerged. Starting from the stern, we begin our look with what many people would mistakenly think is one of the simplest parts of a submarine: its screw. Known as a propeller to those outside the Navy, the screw is actually one of the most complicated parts of a submarine, and its construction is a closely guarded national secret. The construction of the Seawolf's screw has been essential to her requirement for quiet running at high speeds.
As mentioned earlier, the British built their Trafalgar-class SSNs with a shroud covering the propeller, which had the benefit of quieting excess noise generated by the sub's screw out into the water. A similar design is used in the U.S. Navy's Mk 48 torpedo, albeit on a smaller scale. Known as a 'pumpjet propulsion system,' the design works well. According to one report, running at 25 knots, Seawolf is quieter than a 688I that is just sitting at the pier! Other stories indicate that Seawolf is able to run quietly at twice the speed of any previous American attack submarine. Other sources are more direct and attribute to Seawolf a virtually 'silent speed' of 20 knots. While numerous elements go into these quieting secrets, you can bet that the Seawolf's pumpjet propulsor plays a key role. Hidden inside the covering shroud of the propulsor is a single propeller shaft similar to those that have been used by U.S. attack submarines since the advent of nuclear propulsion.
If you were to look at a photograph of a Seawolf under construction or in dry dock, you would be able to see many of the sub's sensors as you glance at the sides of its hull. In particular, the boat is designed with a unique
