Sub Force Competing for Shrinking Dollars

The U.S. Navy's submarine force has long prided itself on operating out of sight, as the military's self-described "Silent Service." But in the face of shrinking defense budgets, the Navy's submariners may need to learn how to make more noise in order to get noticed among the many competing priorities inside the Pentagon.

The submarine force, like much of the military, mostly still uses ships and equipment originally designed to fight the Cold War. The missions of that era -- hunting for Soviet ballistic-missile submarines and their world-ending cargoes of nuclear weapons -- today have given way to a broader array of different, but no less important tasks, the Navy's top sub commanders say.

Vice Adm. John Richardson, commander of the Navy's submarine force, told a conference of the Naval Submarine League outside Washington last week that his ships and crews are in a "fourth phase" of undersea warfare. It demands that sailors keep all their traditional submarine expertise, plus train to operate in shallow water, conduct surveillance; work closely with special operators; and be prepared to attack targets inland on a moment's notice. The submarines of tomorrow also will begin to use more of the unmanned vehicles that already have revolutionized war in the air.

Richardson and other Navy presenters gave the example of this year's Libya operation. Three nuclear submarines were part of the international naval presence off Libya's coast, and one of them, the guided missile sub USS Florida, fired the most Tomahawk cruise missiles of any warship: 93 weapons with 93 hits.

The Florida is a former ballistic missile submarine converted to serve in Richardson's "fourth phase;" instead of carrying 24 nuclear missiles as part of the U.S. strategic deterrent, the ship can accommodate more than 150 Tomahawks and has ample room for SEAL special operators. It had been away from the U.S. for some 15 months when it got the assignment to join the armada off Libya, Navy officials said -- proof, they said, of submarines' enduring versatility.

The long-term problem, another top commander said, is that the Navy's submarines are in such high demand the fleet cannot keep up. That would a challenge in the best of times, but Vice Adm. Bill Burke, the service's top logistics boss, said the prospects were even drearier given DoD's reduced budget growth.

"We are likely to make significant changes to our force structure -- likely in the negative direction," he said. That means that by the 2020s, the Navy may not have enough submarines to meet the demand that today's brass forecasts for tomorrow's commanders.

President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders agreed earlier this year to reduce DoD's budget by about $450 billion over the next decade as part of their deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. But that was only the first stage of a two-stage agreement: If a special "super committee" of lawmakers can't agree on a plan to reduce the U.S. debt by about $1.2 trillion that can pass Congress by Christmas, the second stage of the deal goes off, and DoD loses another $500 billion.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and congressional defense advocates have said the consequences of the so-called "sequestration" would be unthinkable for the Pentagon, and that would trickle all the way down to the submarine force. If the Navy can't keep building its Virginia-class attack submarines at the rate of two per year, its projected "submarine gap" could get even worse, Burke and other officials warned.

As it stands, Richardson's submarine force is trying to do the best it can with what it has. Crews are beginning to plan for deployments lasting seven months, up from the current six, so that fewer submarines will be available for more time to take commanders' missions. And as all the strategy and budget dynamics play out, the submarine force also has to absorb two major changes to its culture: The introduction of women into submarine crews and an outright ban on smoking while underway.