A former partner in a top-10 global management consulting firm, Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional writer on national security and defense preparedness. Two of his non-fiction articles received annual literary awards from the Naval Submarine League. He is also a national bestselling author of tales of near-future warfare featuring nuclear submariners and special operations forces in action at their bravest and best. Joe holds a master's degree in math from MIT, earned under a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He worked as an intern at the Argonne National Laboratory. Previously a qualified actuary for twenty years, with extensive experience at interpreting policy implications of dire "what if" scenarios, he is now a member of the Society for Risk Analysis, a non-partisan international scholarly body headquartered in McLean, VA.
Joe's father was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951, and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the North Atlantic convoys late in World War II, before being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. Joe is a Life Member of the following Navy-related organizations: U.S. Naval Institute, the Navy League of the United States, the Fellows of the Naval War College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation, and the Naval Submarine League. During 2004, after having been a guest luncheon speaker at their Annual National Convention, Joe became a sponsored Life Associate Member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans, Inc. He was recently made an Honorary Life Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans of America, partly in recognition of his pro bono work for Operation Seabees Knowledge.
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4. Ship infrastructure reduction. At present, different auxiliary sub-systems in an SSN are powered by electricity, hydraulics, compressed air, or other sources of energy. The result is a multitude of hardware throughout the internal compartments which calls for several distinct sets of maintenance skills, different stocks of spare parts, and different problems (and solutions) in case of a failure or a mishap. All-electric systems could greatly simplify this profusion of cables, pipes, valves, and operating machinery. The result could be a major saving in space (always at a premium in any submarine design), and in cost. However, traditionalists or conservative engineers and seasoned submariners might (rightly?) feel that using a single system to power every device aboard abandons redundancy and puts too many eggs in one basket.
5. Crew size reduction. From the Los Angeles class to the Seawolfs to the Virginias, crew size has dropped only slightly, remaining at well over one hundred men. There's a type of Catch-22 here, since the larger the crew, the more design weight, space, and cost must be allocated toward habitability. If automation could be significantly increased, crew size might substantially shrink -- and along with it, the size and cost of the ship. There's also a possible double-whammy benefit, as a smaller crew means not only a smaller, cheaper ship (provided automation is achieved at moderate unit expense), it means much lower lifetime charges for the entire fitted-out vessel as an integrated weapon system. This is because personnel themselves cost money, not only to train and nurture as they strive to earn their Dolphins and then climb their chosen career ladders, but also in terms of payroll, health benefits, dependent allowances, pension expenses, and so forth. A devil's advocate warning I've often heard from submariners is that over-automation could become an SSN's Achilles' heel. Scuttlebutt has it that newer data displays are non-ergonomic to the point of sometimes being distracting or overwhelming, as it is. When automation extends into the realm of artificial intelligence and expert systems for the control room, we're entering some pretty serious terra incognita. And when physical things break, it takes human experience, improvisation, and often brute strength to repair them. The human body itself is frail (think USS San Francisco again), so crew injuries are another deleterious factor that can't be ignored. If an SSN is too mechanized, and available manpower too small, that SSN may look like a terrific bargain on paper, but prove to be a dreadful flop at sea when it goes in harm's way. Between fixing damage, manually compensating for whatever things have been damaged until they're fixed, and treating wounded guys with healthy guys who can't do two things at once, there won't be adequate people to go around. Mission failures could result, presenting unacceptable threats to national security.
Nobody said TANGO BRAVO would be easy. This discussion can barely scratch the surface of a topic that will be worked on by some of our country's finest minds, and finest contractors and think tanks, for a long time to come. Hopefully readers have gained a sense of what TANGO BRAVO is so far, what it isn't, what it might be eventually, and what it can never be. By my own estimate, the first TANGO BRAVO submarine won't be built, shaken down, tuned up back in dry dock, and ready for battle before about 2022.
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The one thing we do know, with the highest certainty, is that the TANGO BRAVO feasibility study has such a long-range payoff, in terms of practical undersea platforms in the water and passing stress tests, that the problem of the one-per-year Virginia build rate will haunt us constantly. Unless, that is, we wise up and allocate more money to build two Virginias per annum when Congress first has the option to do so for fiscal year 2007, rather than putting things off to FY 2012 or forever. In a report to Congress dated June 24, 2005, a TANGO BRAVO fast-attack was already being discussed as costing 75 percent as much as a Virginia. That's a heck of a lot of price creep from the 50 percent referred to barely six months earlier! How much further will this creeping go? When the day is done, will TANGO BRAVO cost savings turn out to be completely illusive, with all emphasis placed on the tech benefits, not the money?
Sea power is the key to global dominance, and to peace-enforcement on favorable terms. Undersea warfare is the key to modern sea power, especially when unmanned vehicles (submerged and airborne) enter the picture. There's a major backlog in SSN construction compared to even minimum national requirements -- our fast-attack fleet is too small and getting smaller, but the worst shortfall won't be manifest until 2015 or later, enabling dangerous complacency right now. If that backlog is allowed to grow, instead of being redressed with immediate urgency, America -- if only by default -- will take a big step toward becoming the latest former superpower.
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