Navy Bids Farewell to Minneapolis-St. Paul:
After more than 23 years of service, the Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine USS Minneapolis-St. Paul (SSN 708) inactivated in a ceremony June 22 at Pier 3 at Naval Station Norfolk.
Concerns remain that our shrinking fleet is going to leave us with our pants down at some point, and that our anti-sub warfare capabilities (or, rather, our lack thereof) could leave serious gaps waiting to be exploited. Two world wars showed that submarine fleets were able to have a drastic effect on the wider military and economic efforts of the combatants.
While no one is going to challenge our supremacy in the realm of carrier-centered naval power, even just the threat of submarines could potentially keep those carriers from operating when and where we need them to. We’ve seen anti-mine capabilities whither over time. Are ASW capabilities going to suffer the same fate?
The attack sub fleet is part of the ASW effort, and when you couple the shrinking hunter fleet with the retirement of the S-3 Vikings, the delays in the P-3 Orion’s follow-on (the P-8A Poseidon MMA), and questions about the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, I suspect that we’ve got reason to be concerned about our ability to combat enemy submarines that could threaten our surface forces and logistics fleet, let alone commercial ships.
The USS Hawaii (SSN 776) was just commissioned last month, so it’s not like the fleet just shrank the other day. USS North Carolina (SSN 777) will join the fleet next year. But the long-term plan is to reduce the number of attack boats in the fleet by a significant number. Not every boat retired in the coming years will be replaced by a new one. We currently have 53 operational attack subs in the fleet.
A 2005 study by the Navy itself said that 48 is the “minimum number of attack submarines needed to maintain an acceptable level of risk at an acceptable cost.” But the current plan to acquire Virginia-class subs like the Hawaii and North Carolina will put us under the 48-boat level for sixteen of the twenty-seven years between 2007 and 2034, bottoming out at 40 boats in 2028 and 2029. For more, see the Heritage Foundation articles The Navy Needs to Close the Projected Gap in the Attack Submarine Fleet and Congress Should Accelerate Submarine Procurement.
–Murdoc
one would suppose that significant progress has been made in underwater, robot forces…unmanned, to take up the slack?
to many quiet boats out there, especially Far East Pacific waters.….
Good Morning Guys,
Although I agree that an attack submarine fleet of 48 boats is way to small, 72–84 attack boats seems to be a more reasonable number baised on current and the projected future world wide profileration of threat, but the Los Angeles Class simply must go.
Although the problems with the L.A. Class are many starting with a under powered reactor that hasn’t changed in 40 years, the inability to lay under sea mines or to operate under the Polar Ice cap, where Russian Boomer will run in any time of crisis the big item is money. There Turkies are comming up for refueling at a cost of about $1.5 Billion a pop, thats about 60% of the cost of the far more capable Virginia Class that most likely won’t need refueling during the projected 30–40 service life of each boat.
The American pople have to be told and made aware that to maintain and adequate defense structure to maintain our way of life will cost a few bucks. A half trillion defense budget is simply to small buy a factor of 100%.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
If we were to suddenly lose all our carriers in some future war, we would still possess these excellent underwater stealth boats to defend the nation, and take the war to the enemy.
Though not a perfect substitute for surface warships, in a future war involving the new precision bombs and cruise missiles, the attack sub may be our last hope for victory.
(former surface squid) I can scarcely believe that the Navy is retiring a perfectly good submarine after only 23 years of service. The only way to replace it is to spend probably twice as much or more for another one. How stupid is that? Why not extend the service life of the older subs and just not build new ones as fast if you want to save money? It reminds me of the folly of spending $2,000 every year for a brand new PC just so that you can have all the latest bells and whistles when the old one was working just fine, even if it might have needed a little updating.
Er, what enemy subs, exactly, are you worrying about? The Russian fleet is a disaster, the Chinese fleet is a primitive joke, the Iranian fleet is worse… are you concerned that the Royal Navy is going to try to burn Washington again or something?
@ Davids, Diesel subs are just mines with the potential for human collateral damage. We don’t do choke point control, we go through them.
@ Max, By the time you put in a new crappy S6G reactor core, upgrade the sonar, install a VLS system to make the thing useful, and etc. you might as well just buy a new one. 23 years is actually a pretty long time for these things. I did three years on one that was 30 years old and had been through a major overhaul only three years earlier; you wouldn’t believe how much stuff broke (and how spectacularly).
Good Morning Folks,
In response to sgrover,everything you mention is true these and along with numerious unmentioned defects (such as not enought bunks for all the enlisted crewmen to have their own rack to sleep in) in the Los Angeles Class boats, were know in 1979 and nothing has changed in nearly fourty years, doesn’t this tell you something, like maybe nobody really cares that we were putting inferior submarines to sea?
Even a man as pasionate about submarines as former CNO Adm. James “…there are submarines and everything else is a target.” Watkins can’t keep the for more profit American Defense Industry from putting out a shoddy product for Americans to go to war in.
The recent example of the current shortage of avable sumbarines is the recent surfacing of a Chinese diseal sub, for a Kodak Moment and to make some postcards to send to Bejing, with in the Kitty Hawk Battle Group in the Pacific. Although the Group was on a training exercise prior to deployment the fact that it appears that there was no U.S. Attack submarine in the neighborhood is very telling about the current scaracerty of submarines in the U.S. fleet. I have no doubt that Rogue nations or even goups who as considering add submarines to there menu of terrorists weapons took note.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Ever seen the sub orbat of most SE Asian countries -
lots of DE subs!
we clearly need a certain minimum number of open ocean (read: nuclear powered) attack boats. Every carrier group should have at least 2 at all times.
this implies 24 ssn’s just for carrier duty. 6* 2* 50% time on station.
we also could really use some smaller litoral subs.
but one of the problems is mission creep where the navy is trying to give everything a bazillion missions. in this case they are also supposed to deliver swimmers, and carry a dozen land attack missiles and carry enough torps to take out the whole chinese navy.
what we need is a new generation of attack boats that are as small, and quiet as possible, and have around 8 torpedoes, possibly in external launch tubes (one shot only no reload). that are fast and have good sensors. and a crew of 20–30 and that are litoral capable.
If the result was a non nuclear boat, then by all means lets still have a seperate open ocean force also.
Museumize this sub (minus reactor) for Tourisim.
Major PR for Navy & Sub Forcesalone.
Nice.
Too few subs to tour anyway.
Big draw anyplace.
(remove cypher equip, comm, nuke plant).
For Long Beach Harbor,CA.
In the Beach City is such fearfulness, I am owning many Archlord money in my pocket.
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I’ve been a sub builder all my life, so understand how difficult this question is for me. How will more of the things help our current conflict challenges ?