All this, along with the improved processing and display technology of the BSY-2 combat system, makes Seawolf a truly revolutionary design—and just think, we’ve not even touched on the weapons load yet! That, too, is a major improvement over that of the older 688Is.
As we continue with our “hull walk,” you’ll probably notice a large hatch directly aft of the sail structure. This is the oddly shaped weapons shipping hatch and is used in the slow, monotonous process of loading torpedoes, weapons, and other stores inside the boat. One by one, each of the torpedoes (up to a maximum load of fifty) and other weapons must be brought down into the sub and laid in the torpedo room for storage in the event of combat. The weapons load of the Seawolf, twice that of the Flight I Los Angeles-class boats, was mandated by the desire to have enough warshots to sustain multiple engagements during prolonged wartime operations. To get these weapons off the boat quickly, Seawolf is equipped with eight 26.5-inch /673mm torpedo tubes, the biggest ever fitted to an American submarine. Utilizing a new air turbine pump system to expel the weapons more quietly than earlier water-ram methods, the new tubes are also capable of launching unmanned surveillance vehicles and even divers, should that be necessary. One thing the 688Is had that has been deleted from the Seawolf is the bank of Vertical Launch System (VLS) missile launchers in the bow. With her huge internal weapons stowage and eight torpedo tubes, the Seawolf was considered well enough armed to eliminate the VLS tubes.
As with every other element of submarine technology, ten years makes a big difference in weapons. Since the early 1990s, there have been significant changes and improvements to the weapons carried by the Seawolf-class boats. First off, all of the UGM-84 sub-Harpoon antiship missiles have now been withdrawn from service in the U.S. submarine fleet. This is mostly due to the fact that each Harpoon takes up space that might be used to hold a more frequently used torpedo or Tomahawk cruise missile, something that has made the sub-launched version of these formidable weapons go the way of the dodo bird.
While not completely making up for the mid-range surface ship attack capability afforded by the Harpoon, the Navy has been hard at work improving their supply of Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes. These newest modifications to the already advanced torpedo are known as the ADCAP Mods 5 and 6. The Mod 5 changes include a guidance and control modification that improves the acoustic receiver, adds memory to the internal computer, and allows the torpedo to handle increased software demands. The second modification, known as Mod 6, includes the TPU or Torpedo Propulsion Unit upgrade and will provide the ADCAP with greater speed, range, and depth. These improvements to the Mk 48s will enable the weapon to better conduct operations in the coastal zones where the Seawolf-class boats will be lurking and working.
A sailor aboard the Seawolf operates the fire control tracking system, which uses the latest in rugged touch screen controls. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO
As mentioned earlier, one of the major missions of SSNs in the 1990s has been that of launching BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles against enemy targets. The preferred version, known as Block III, has a GPS-based guidance system as well as a new warhead and satellite telemetry system. The problem is that many of the Tomahawks modified to the Block III standard were fired during the 1990s in places like the Balkans and Southwest Asia, and earlier variants lack the easy mission-planning capabilities of the newer missiles. Several plans were put forth to modify more of the early model missiles to a so-called Block IV configuration, but would have cost too much (over $700,000 per missile).
To provide both surface ships and submarines with enough of the precious Tomahawks into the twenty-first century, a brand-new version, known as Tactical Tomahawk (TACTOM), is being developed by Raytheon. TACTOM will incorporate a number of new features, including a new injection molded plastic airframe, satellite data link, and turbojet engine, to reduce costs. At around $500,000 a copy, the new missiles will be a bargain compared with reworking older air-frames. However, the Block IIIs will be the primary variant until the middle of the decade, when TACTOMs should begin to arrive in serious quantities out in the fleet.
If you duck down inside the hatch aft of the sail, at first you will feel just like you have stepped into any other advanced submarine. However, moving forward into the control room, you rapidly can see the differences between Seawolf and the Los Angeles-class boats. Where older boats still have a lot of conventional dials, gauges, and other readouts, most of the critical control positions on Seawolf have been equipped with red plasma computer displays with touch screens. These allow a much wider range of controls and graphics to be fed to operators in the control room and other parts of the boat, and stand up quite well to errant elbows and spilled coffee!
Otherwise, the basic layout of Seawolf is very similar to that of Miami, with perhaps a bit more elbow room than the older boat. Nevertheless, Seawolf still does not have all the creature comforts you might expect on a submarine with over 25 percent more internal volume than a 688I. The problem is that while there is more room inside of Seawolf, there also is more “stuff” inside her hull. The S6W reactor, while the same basic unit as the one on the 688Is, now feeds two steam turbines putting out an additional 10,000 horsepower. This provides a total of 40,000 shaft horsepower, giving Seawolf a top speed of around 35 knots, if you believe reports from the initial sea trials.
The dining area on the Seawolf during chow call. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO
These engines in turn have more quieting mounts and equipment than those on the Los Angeles-class boats, all of which take up lots of space. Virtually every other piece of machinery on Seawolf has similar quieting gear, which eats up a lot of volume. The result is that a number of the junior enlisted personnel still have to “hot bunk,” due to a shortage of berthing space. This is a shortcoming, which will probably have a downside in the long run, in terms of habitability and personnel retention. However, it is the price that must be paid to make Seawolf the quietest, most deadly submarine in the world.
The rest of Seawolf is much like that of Miami, though put together very differently. Electric Boat, the prime Seawolf contractor, designed her to be built with a modular construction technique, much like that of Newport News in Virginia and Litton-Ingalls in Mississippi. 16 This means that more of the boat can be “stuffed” and finished before the hull is welded and floated into the water. It would have been interesting to see what this would have done to production costs if even a second flight of three SSN-21s had been ordered by Congress, instead of proceeding to the Virginia (SSN-774) class boats directly. As it is, the sailors assigned to the Seawolf and Connecticut consider themselves very lucky sailors indeed. Both are in the water and assigned to the Atlantic fleet, starting to make patrols and being tested in exercises.
A comparison of the USS Seawolf (SSN-21) (top) and the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) (bottom ). The roughly 100 foot/30.5 meter greater length of the Jimmy Carter will accommodate a “plug” to conduct “Special Projects” and “Research” missions. RUBICON, INC., BY LAURA DENINNO
The Jimmy Carter—the third and final Seawolf—will, however, be something very different: a true “Special Projects” boat from the keel up. The basic Seawolf hull is having an approximately 100-foot/30.5-meter “plug” added aft of her sail, with all kinds of room for berthing of extra personnel, stowage of special equipment and sensors, as well as a large lock-out chamber. This will be big enough to allow the launching of the new generation of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) being developed for use by the fleet. The plan is to have her in the water by 2004, when she will join Parche (herself scheduled for retirement in 2006) at the Trident-missile submarine base in Bangor, Washington. Jimmy Carter will be the ultimate expression of American submarine intelligence gathering, though just what that will mean in the twenty-first century is still unknown. However, given what the Navy’s small force of special projects boats did during the Cold War, the Jimmy Carter will be doing things that will someday be a subject for novelists.
The Virginia (SSN-774)
Class Boats: The New Generation
In the mid-1990s, when only the three Seawolf-class boats were authorized for construction, the Navy realized it clearly had a problem on its hands. How was the submarine service to meet its quantitative requirements for keeping approximately fifty submarines in the fleet? At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy had a goal of 100 SSNs (excluding the strategic missile boat force) as part of a 600-ship Navy. While neither of these goals was ever reached, by the late 1980s the submarine force was very, very close to achieving its force structure goals. In 1987, for example, the U.S. Navy attack submarine force consisted of ninety-nine nuclear attack boats.
All this changed in 1993 when DoD released the results of the Bottom-up Review (BUR), which, attempting to alter the military to a post-Cold War force, cut a little too close to the bone for the comfort of those in the submarine community. Calling for new submarine-force levels as low as forty-five submarines, the BUR drastically changed the goal of the Navy’s submarine force away from acquisition and force enhancement toward drastic cuts and getting rid of old boats. The resulting dearth of submarine construction in the mid-1990s meant that only a handful of new boats were finished. However, 2004 promises to be the best year in a long while for the U.S. submarine force. That will be the year the first Virginia-class SSNs enter the Navy and the year the Jimmy Carter is commissioned. However, it has taken a very rough dozen years even to see the promise of 2004 for the submarine community.
The curtailing of Seawolf production to just three units meant that the Navy would inevitably have to develop a smaller, more cost-effective design that would better fit the roles and missions set out in From the Sea. Fortunately, a series of design studies was already underway at the time, the most promising known as Centurion. From the beginning, Centurion, whose name was changed several times before she was officially named the Virginia (SSN-774) class, was an easier sell than was the Seawolf. The concept behind the Virginia was to build a submarine as good as the Seawolf in the blue-water environment, yet able to conduct operations in the littoral regions of the world. Additionally, Virginia needed to counter the biggest drawbacks of Seawolf—its costliness to produce and the fact that it was built by a single yard. The monopoly on construction of the Seawolf class by Electric Boat rankled the folks at Newport News Shipbuilding, and also their powerful congressional delegation.
The interior and exterior layouts of the USS Virginia (SSN-774) RUBICON, INC. BY LAURA DENINNO
Costs drove Virginia’s design to a far greater degree than any submarine designed for the U.S. Navy. While it possessed roughly the same capabilities and quieting as Seawolf in a more affordable and multimission configuration, initial plans called for the class to be built at an optimistic rate of two or three per year. Original cost projections aimed for a boat displacing roughly 6,000 tons, costing around one-half that of Seawolf.
The hope was—and still is—that this design will do for submarines what the relatively moderately priced, multirole F/A-18 Hornets did for naval aviation. Current plans call for the Virginia class to consist of thirty units, which will be constructed at varying rates for staggered delivery. The first of the class, Virginia (SSN-774), will enter service around 2004; the second, named USS Texas (SSN-775), will follow a year later. After a one-year break, the current schedule calls for USS Hawaii (SSN-776) to join the fleet in 2007, followed by USS North Carolina (SSN-777) in 2008. While plans inevitably fall by the wayside and are continuously altered, this seems to be a great start.
At first, the idea was that the Navy would buy the Virginias to complement rather than succeed the Seawolfs. The resulting budget cuts and cost overruns on the SSN-21 program turned out to be so severe, however, that the Navy saw no choice but to move ahead with Virginia after Seawolf production ended. The DoD directed in 1992 that the Navy should hold the costs of the new submarine design to a maximum of $1 billion per boat. The DoD also charged the Navy with examining alternatives to this entirely new class of warship. These started off with a baseline (for comparison purposes) of continued SSN-21 production at a rate of one per year. The alternatives included:• A lower cost variant of the Seawolf.
• Further improved versions of the Los Angeles (688I) class.
• The possible procurement of non-nuclear (i.e., conventional) submarines into the fleet.
Hyman Rickover must have been turning over in his grave at such thoughts, but then he never lived to see the post-Cold War world of the 1990s! In the end, the Navy stayed committed to the Centurion design, though not without a lot of pressure from critics and Congress.
In 1993, the name Centurion was officially changed to “New Attack Submarine” and given the abbreviation NAS, which was later changed to NSSN (for New SSN). The following year, the Navy began to provide the first real cost estimates on the class. These indicated that the lead submarine, which would be authorized in the FY98 budget, would cost $3.4 billion, including nonrecurring research and design costs. This was as much as Seawolf herself, and some people wondered if the Navy should have built more of the SSN-21s instead. However, the Navy study indicated that additional NSSN-class boats, starting with number five, would cost around $1.54 billion in FY98 dollars. While this was still slightly higher than the projected goal, it was far below the $2.8 billion for a production Seawolf, had such a thing ever been built. With the planned production costs now under control, it appeared as if NSSN might actually become a reality.
As with any multibillion-dollar decision, the construction issues of the Virginia class were now beginning to point away from the operational side and toward the financial and political ones. Shipbuilding, especially submarine manufacturing (and particularly that of nuclear submarines), is a field that is especially difficult for a nation to master. Several generations of American shipbuilders have been toiling on nuclear submarines since work began on the program under the leadership of Admiral Hyman Rickover. If production were to suddenly end or shrink to less than one boat per year, one of the two American submarine manufacturers, Electric Boat or Newport News Shipbuilding, would inevitably be forced to leave the business. With their powerful political supporters, both contractors began a spirited competition for the right to produce the NSSN boats.
Long ago, Congress had determined that it was in our nation’s interest to maintain a minimum of two shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines. This industrial-base-preservation argument was an important key to keeping Seawolf alive for three boats and became equally important to the idea of a “teaming” arrangement between the two American submarine manufacturers. As a result of the 1993 BUR, DoD concluded that it would be ill-advised to consolidate all submarine construction at just one shipyard. This was probably a good decision for the Navy because it preserved at least a semblance of competition between Electric Boat and NNS. Additionally, because nuclear submarine design and production is so complicated, it is extremely manpower-intensive. Therefore, any loss of production or a strike at a yard meant inevitable layoffs of highly skilled workers at subcontractors. A shipyard might even be forced to close its doors forever if production levels continued to drop. This has happened dozens of times to some of the biggest shipyards in the nation. One only need remember the demise of great names like Todd and Kaiser on the West Coast to realize that American shipbuilding hangs by a slender thread these days.
How then, was the Navy to keep both submarine yards alive with so few submarines to build? Not surprisingly, the Navy didn’t have to look too far for help. It came directly from the two shipbuilders themselves—Electric Boat and Newport News. These two companies knew that it was in the nation’s interests—and their own—to solve this dilemma. Which is exactly what they did in December of 1996 when Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding offered the Navy a deal. How would the government like it if the two companies “teamed up” and produced the Virginia class together?
It was a remarkable offer and one that the Navy could not refuse. Both shipbuilders would take advantage of the Digi
tal Design Database Electric Boat had used in constructing the Seawolf class, to help keep down costs and keep quality up. Additionally, each yard would build specific parts or sections of the boats, while each company would build and “stuff” their own reactor plant modules. The bow, stern, and sail sections of all the new subs would be built by NNS, along with the habitability and machinery spaces and the torpedo room. Electric Boat, as the prime contractor, would, in turn, construct nearly all remaining portions, including the engine room and control spaces. Finally, Electric Boat would assemble the first and third boats while NNS would handle the second and fourth.
The current plan calls for teaming on only the first four boats. The Navy, Congress, and the two remaining submarine builders will eventually have to examine where they go from there. Such construction decisions are momentous indeed. Especially when you look at how large a role the Virginias will play in the American submarine force of the twenty-first century.
USS Virginia (SSN-774): A Virtual Tour
Now that you have seen the future production plans for this new class of SSN, let’s take a look at what new things they will be capable of accomplishing. We have to do this in a virtual fashion, as the Virginias are still mostly “paper” submarines. The official “keel laying” of Virginia (SSN-774) only occurred on September 2, 1999, and she will not be delivered to the fleet until 2004. Officially, though, the Pentagon has provided us with a great starting point in its new public campaign of openness about submarine operations and weapons. Gone forever are the days when the “Silent Service” was truly mute to the world outside of their pressure hulls.