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at the Frontlines.]
How many cold wars? A cherished belief for many is that there was and ever will be a single Cold War, the one we fought and won against the USSR. Allegedly, this victory, to which American submarines and submariners made a big contribution, has ironically rendered those undersea warships irrelevant. Some writers have put it more starkly, even appearing to me to be announcing that nuclear submarines are an endangered species, soon to be rightly extinct.
Let's leave aside the fact that the new Virginia-class fast-attack subs were conceived of, designed, put into production, and the first one already commissioned entirely during the post-Cold War period -- and the Virginias, as I discussed last week, are by no stretch of the informed imagination in the least bit irrelevant to the 21st century. Let's also ignore for now the USS Jimmy Carter modifications, the Ohio-class SSGN conversions, and the continuing need for strategic deterrent nuclear-powered "boomer" subs while weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems proliferate.
Personally I think a better answer to the question of "how many cold wars ever possible" is: three. Yes. Not one, not two, but three. How come?
I've said this before and I'll say it again, and I'm hardly the only pundit who's said the same thing: The Russian Federation wants to regain superpower status, and has the proven natural gas and oil reserves to finance doing so. A Second Cold War with Russia might already be on, but some of us won't admit it. Journalist's interviews with senior Russian naval commanders and submarine design bureau chiefs indicate they have the talent, confidence, and will to reestablish a major presence on, and especially under, what they like to call the "World Ocean."
China, already alluded to, also has the means and the desire to invest in a blue-water navy. This effort will probably advance in fits and starts, as China's economy, ever more capitalist, experiences the boom-and-bust cycles common to every capitalist state. China intends for subs to form the backbone of this new navy. They're building or buying more and more such vessels, while forging friendships in far-reaching places where the U.S. is now unpopular. A Cold War might be coming on that front, too, even a shooting war. (Don't be fooled by the recent accidents aboard two Ming-class diesel boats -- those Foxtrots are old hunks of junk, in no way representative of China's emerging "New Fleet.")
If submarines do win cold wars, then we definitely still need submarines -- plus adequate, dispersed bases and yards to support and service both them and their crews. Endangered species, my you-know-what! The only driving factor within the U.S. that could extinct our nuclear subs is the self-fulfilling prophecy, and delusional circular reasoning, that announcing a foreseen requirement for very few of these vessels will somehow, as if by magic, make that paper requirement come true in the actual world. Pacifist/isolationist types, and misguided spreadsheeting bean-counters, gotta love this anti-submarine drivel. God save us from the consequences if we as a nation fall for it. It takes five to eight years to build a nuclear sub -- much too long to recover in a crisis once we've ceded initiative and waterspace dominance to our adversaries.
If I haven't got your blood boiling yet, please read on.
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Future submarine combat losses: Speaking of hidden assumptions, behind the more stingy among several proposed U.S. Navy submarine acquisition schemes appears to be the presumption that every such ship constructed will live out its normal hull life of some thirty or forty years. At least in the unclassified literature, no allowance has been made for potential losses in future combat -- which if shooting does start, against whomever in a decade or two, might be unavoidable and significant.
Remember, we did win World War II, but one-fifth of our submarine fleet (and our submariners) was lost in action.
Nuclear versus diesel power: This is a big topic unto itself, which I plan to address further in my next essay. For now I'll just say a few things -- and again I'm not the first person to say them. The UK until fairly recently maintained a fleet of both nuclear-powered and diesel-powered attack subs (SSNs and SSKs). Tight budget constraints demanded cutbacks. When given the choice, the Royal Navy took one SSN over four SSKs. The reasons for this were twofold: If rapid, stealthy global reach is required, nuclear powered submarines hold all the advantages over even the most modern diesel subs with air-independent propulsion (AIP). And once at the scene of battle, whether on the high seas or in the enemy's littorals, a properly handled SSN will usually prevail against opponent SSKs.
This ties in to something else, speaking of half-told stories in certain media. It's true that during 2002, in exercises in the Pacific against diesel subs from friendly countries, the U.S. Navy's experiences "often proved humbling." Diesel subs were able to "kill" Los Angeles-class SSNs more than once. Other diesels "sank" American aircraft carriers.
But the other half of the story, as stated publicly by senior U.S. submariners shortly thereafter, was that the American SSN skippers quickly realized their mistakes. They were using tactical doctrine more suited to an SSN-versus-SSN duel, which emphasized acting quickly and aggressively. If instead they adopted a strategy of patience, they found that they could out-wait the SSK, detect it, and reliably "destroy" it. Why?
Seems that a lurking SSN, with its nuclear reactor running in low-power silent mode, can stealthily keep electronics cooled and the crew atmosphere refreshed basically forever. The diesels, with a different arrangement of power sources and internal systems, were always eventually forced to run machinery that made noise -- to keep their computers and consoles from overheating, and their crews from starting to suffocate.
So much for the old idea that diesels running on batteries are quieter. There's a lot more to it in undersea warfighting that simply spinning one's propulsion shaft with low decibels for a short while. It's also quite a misnomer to label all diesel subs as physically "small." Forget about whether smaller is better (maybe it is), and whether current U.S. nuclear sub designs are somehow "too big" (maybe they are). The vaunted Improved Kilo diesel sub, built in Russia and being sold to China in numbers, is fully as wide (about 32 feet) as our Los Angeles-class and Virginia-class SSNs, and is fully two-thirds as long as these ships, which are longer than a football field.
Mock-hostile diesels penetrating a carrier strike group's defenses and scoring hits doesn't surprise me -- American submariners call surface ships "targets." And if anything, it's another reason in favor of having numerous sophisticated SSNs -- to help guard our carriers and convoys against enemy SSNs and diesels that are underway on the high seas, while simultaneously trailing and interdicting those trying to sortie from port, or hiding in shallows. Such multi-layered defenses must be in place before conflict breaks out, or consequences will be deadly.
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