Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

The premier ASW platform is and probably will remain another submarine. The reasons for this are defined by the basic advantage of the submarine over other antisubmarine platforms. Environmental factors define the sub's ability to hide. Water temperature, the location of thermocline layers, variations in salinity, and ambient noise sources all are part of the three-dimensional realm of the submarine. The sub lives in that environment and monitors it constantly. Surface ships and aircraft can use their instruments to take snapshots, but they cannot have the broad view that a submarine commander has. Just as ground-based surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns can impede but not deny aircraft the use of the sky, so can surface warships not control the depths of the sea. That's the job of the SSN.

Tactical Example — Stalking a Russian SSBN

They're still out there. They're called boomers in the U.S. Navy, bombers in the Royal Navy. They are the fleet ballistic missile submarines, really creatures of the past Cold War era, but they still sail, and their missiles must be aimed at something-what that something might be, their owners do not say. The Russian ones are probably aimed at the United States, and the American ones at Russia, rather in the manner of a "default" setting on a computer or washing machine. One Russian boomer captain was recently quoted as saying that the target packages on his boat's missiles had not changed, and in fact they might be aimed at some of the nations currently supplying aid to the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Until such time as these dinosaurs are relegated to the past, it is only prudent to keep an eye on them, and that is one mission of the SSN. When a Russian/CIS (formerly Soviet) SSBN departs its home port on the Kola Peninsula, waiting out at sea (possibly in a depression in the sea floor called a "tongue of the ocean") will be a NATO SSN. Probably. Almost certainly, in fact. The mission of the SSN and her crew will be to shadow the Russian SSBN.

The mission is not exactly a friendly one. Should a sudden crisis arise, the SSN's job is to close and destroy the missile boat before she can launch her birds. Short of that exigency, the SSN remains in trail, listening. There is much to learn. Probably the SSN's CO knows the name (or hull number) of the boat he's watching, and he observes the other CO's habits to add to what we already know. He'll listen to the boat, determining her unique mechanical characteristics so that other SSNs can identify her by her acoustic signature. Other observations will tell us much of the quality of the crew, changes in Russian operational doctrine, and from the boat's day-to-day routine, drills and readiness.

It's not quite that easy, of course. Soviet SSBNs are frequently accompanied by their own SSN guardians. Thus the Western submarine must track-and evade detection by-two adversaries who themselves have carefully thought-out routines for dealing with a potential shadower. This can be as simple as running the boomer at high speed toward her protecting SSN, forcing the trailing boat to move quickly herself and so make more noise than the U.S. skipper might wish. Noise is death in this business, and as important as the mechanical characteristics of the platform are, the commander with the most brains has the ultimate advantage.

The mission may be something from the past, but its immediacy hasn't changed. The warheads on those missile submarines are still real. Their aiming points are unknown, but so long as they exist, and so long as men can change their minds, they represent a danger to America and her allies. The smart move is to eliminate the warheads through diplomatic means. Until that happens, eliminating them in other ways will continue to be an option that our leaders will wish to have at their disposal.

So just how does one hunt such a beast? First you must learn its habits and characteristics, and like everything else in this world, the characteristics of the Russian boomer fleet are rapidly changing. With the drawdown in the CIS fleet, and the stipulations of the new START-II arms control treaty, the force of Russian boomers is becoming smaller. By the turn of the century they will probably have only fifteen to twenty missile boats altogether. The ones they keep are going to be the newest, most quiet boats in their fleet. This means that a Western SSN commander is likely to be hunting either a Delta IV or Typhoon-class boat. Both these types of submarine have the latest in quieting technology available to the CIS Navy. To the SSN commander hunting one, this means that even with his advantage in acoustic detection and tracking, which used to allow him to detect and track a target at ranges of tens of thousands of yards, now it's likely that solid contacts will be obtained at ranges of thousands of yards.

Another problem for potential hunters of Russian SSBNs results from the manner in which they are employed and deployed. One of the early goals of missile designers in the former Soviet Union was to make the ranges of their sub-launched missiles as long as possible. It is an acknowledged fact that CIS boomers can launch their missiles at targets in the continental United States from alongside piers at their Kola Peninsula bases. Consequently the only reason the Russian leadership has for moving them is to hide them against possible attack by aircraft or missiles. And like prized jewels, the CIS Navy tends to place them in the maritime equivalent of bank vaults: the "boomer bastions."

Bastions were originally created to place Soviet SSBNs beyond the reach of Western ASW forces. While the actual location and layout of a boomer bastion is a highly sensitive subject in both the Pentagon and the Kremlin, the basic concept is quite simple: an SSBN is placed in a patrol area that is highly defendable and as remote from Western operating areas as possible. The Barents Sea, the Kara Gulf, the Sea of Okhotsk, and even sites under the polar ice pack have been suggested as possible bastion areas. This may mean the SSBN is placed in an area with entrances that are easily defended, or it might be surrounded by a belt of ASW mines. In addition, it probably is aggressively defended by Russian attack submarines, maritime patrol aircraft, and, if available, surface ASW groups.

Clearly, a boomer bastion is not the kind of target a carrier battle group is going to take on. In fact, a modern SSN is the only platform that can even begin to think about penetrating the bastions and pursuing the Russian SSBNs contained therein. Back in the early 1980s the U.S. maritime strategy had NATO trying to actively pursue the Soviet boomers in their lairs. Today the task is made more difficult by the decreased size of the NATO SSN force and the greater stealth of the CIS SSBNs.

Let's assume that Western intelligence services manage to find a boomer bastion. The method is not particularly important-it might be a satellite photo of a missile boat breaking through the polar ice during a missile drill, or radio traffic from a supporting surface group. For our purposes, though, we will assume that the target is a Typhoon-class SSBN being protected by an Akula-class SSN. Their bastion area is a parcel of the Barents Sea that overlaps the polar ice pack in what is called the marginal ice zone. The interface between the polar pack and the marginal ice zone is an extremely complex acoustic environment. All the noise from the ice floes breaking apart and grinding together makes it very difficult to locate and track an opposing submarine. In addition the boomer, much like a rat in a warehouse, has a back door to run to under the ice. For this reason, only the most capable of American submarines, an Improved Los Angeles (688I), is suitable.

After a transit to the presumed bastion area, the 688I begins to listen. It maintains a low speed, probably around 5 knots, to optimize the performance of its towed arrays. As the 688I finally enters the target zone, the tracking team in the control room utilizes every sensor and capability of the BSY-1 system to locate and track the opposing boats. This is vital because of the background noises in the ocean (waves, fish, marine mammals, etc.), as well as the noise coming from the ice pack. The first contact is going to have to be a "direct path" contact, so the 688I searches, running in a series of expanding boxes until the first contact is achieved. This contact, which might be either the Typhoon or the Akula, is none too exact with regards to range, but bearing information is enough to continue the hunt. The hunt now becomes a task of patience. The boat will probably go to the quietest routine possible, as the closure to attack might take many hours.

While the American commander probably prefers to avoid the Akula by moving around the Typhoon and using it to mask the 688I's own noise signature, the extensive quieting on the Typhoon will probably preclude this. It simply would be too easy to miss the boomer and stumble into the Akula. Again, patience and stealth is the best tactic of the American boat. The goal at this point is to hold a sonar contact on the Typhoon while trying to avoid the Akula. The key moment comes when a firing solution is finally generated by the BSY-1, hopefully within the CO's designated firing range. Normally it would be helpful to take the time to establish a solid solution to the target to increase the chances of a hit on the first shot. But "polishing the cannonball" with such opponents as the Typhoon and the Akula could cost the chance to get the first shot in. With the tracking capabilities of the Mk 48 ADCAP torpedo, and the danger posed by the Akula, it is now in the best interests of the 688I to "shoot and scoot." As soon as the solution on Typhoon is good enough, the American commander probably orders the launching of a pair of Mk 48 ADCAPs. Each is likely to be launched about 12 degrees off the intercept course (left and right) to the target, so as to cover the entire front 180-degree sector of the 688I. The fish are probably launched in the BSY-1's Short Range Attack (SRA) mode at the high-speed setting, the guidance wires are cut, and the seeker mode is set to active pinging. If he knows the bearing to the Akula, the American commander may choose to fire his other two torpedoes in SRA mode down that bearing also.

With the torpedoes heading on their own toward the Typhoon, the American boat can now run for its own safety (called "clearing datum"). The captain of the 688I is probably going to kick up the speed as fast as possible (over 30 knots), launch some decoys or other countermeasures from the 3-inch signal ejector tubes, and go as deep as the local seabed and the capabilities of the boat will allow. If it's done right, the American boat should have a lead of several miles before one of the Russian boats can launch a torpedo in response. This they will do, though, and the American boat is sure to have one or more Russian torpedoes headed in its direction. But the CIS subs are also running for their lives, kicking out decoys and countermeasures and desperately trying to maneuver out of the way of the oncoming ADCAPs. But with a speed of 60-plus knots and a seeker head that can see targets almost 180 degrees around it, the simple fact is that no submarine afloat can outrun an ADCAP. The encounter now moves to the endgame.

The angling of the torpedoes from the 688I is designed to ensure that at least one of the Mk 48 ADCAPs will "acquire" the Typhoon, though in about two-thirds of the situations, both weapons should track. At this point the Russian boomer is going all out to evade the incoming weapons. It launches countermeasures, trying to jam the seeker heads of the torpedoes and outmaneuver them. This probably will not work. As the Mk 48s close on the target, the Typhoon crew will inevitably hear the pinging of the seeker heads on their own acoustic intercept receivers and know what is coming. At this point the Mk 48's electronic guidance package determines the optimum point for detonating the warhead of each ADCAP on or near the outer hull of the Typhoon and/or Akula. And the effects will be horrendous. If the Akula is hit, it is probably dead. Game over for the enemy SSN. The Russian boomer, on the other hand, will certainly suffer massive outer hull and shock damage. In some cases a breach of the inner hull may occur, causing flooding. Should both Mk 48s hit, they may sink the missile boat immediately. But most likely the massive construction of the Typhoon will allow it to survive the impact of even a pair of ADCAPs. The large space between the inner and outer pressure hulls, as well as the Typhoon's huge reserve of buoyancy (approximately 35 percent of her displacement) will likely allow the boat to survive. If the Russian boat has survived the initial shock and flooding, it may have enough reserve buoyancy to blow its ballast tanks and fight to the surface, assuming it is not under the ice. In any case, with the hull shredded, interior compartments possibly open to the sea, and massive shock damage to the weapons and control systems, it is no longer combat ready. If the boomer has survived, it is making a terrific amount of flow noise, as well as generating mechanical transients (rattling) from the shredded edges of the damaged hull plates beating against each other.

While the torpedo endgame is being conducted, the 688I resumes its quiet routine. In addition, the crew are reloading the torpedo and countermeasures tubes as well as doing anything noisy that they deferred during the approach. Assuming that the American boat has outrun any weapons that were counterfired, it slows and begins the listening game anew. At this point the American SSN commander is faced with a choice. If the missile boat has survived, it will be fighting for its life. And while it is probably incapable of firing its complement of SS-N-20 Seahawk missiles without a major overhaul, the American boat may try to finish the job just to be sure.

And thus the hunt begins again…

Tactical Example — Hunting a Nuclear Attack Submarine

This is a job that has become both easier and harder in recent years. Since 1988 the Russian Navy has voluntarily retired a whole generation of its submarines. Many, perhaps all of the Hotel, Echo, and November classes of SSNs are reported to have been deactivated-in some cases hauled out of the water to rot while Russian naval officers seek the advice of their American counterparts on the best way to dispose of their still "hot" reactor plants. Early Victor-class SSNs have reportedly been offered for sale to the West as ASW adversaries (the U.S. Army's National Training Center has a large supply of Soviet-made fighting vehicles, obtained through less conventional means). The Russian Navy appears to be reverting to its entirely legitimate role as its country's maritime defense force while that country's land forces continue to assume their place as that country's principal defense arm. That means a smaller Russian Navy, and one that remains closer to home.

But nuclear submarines are not necessarily creatures of one's home coast, and those Russian SSNs remaining in service are the best ever produced by that country. The Victor III is the mechanical equivalent of the American 637 (Sturgeon) class, and the Akula (the Russian word for shark, applied to that class by NATO after the West ran out of letter-code designators) is reportedly equivalent to an early 688 (Los Angeles) class. They are, in a word, close enough in performance to Western SSNs that the skill of the captain and crew becomes the deciding factor.

Tracking one of these submarines takes on the aspect of a one-on-one sporting event. And it is an event that has been played out many times since both sides acquired SSNs in the early 1960s. During this time, the Soviet forces were making preparations for a possible ground war against NATO in western Europe. And much as the German U-boat fleet did in World War II, the Soviet Navy was planning to support them with a massive surge of SSNs and SSGNs (Nuclear-Guided Missile Submarines) into the North Atlantic to stop convoys with reinforcements from reaching the NATO forces. Since proficiency in such skills takes practice, the Soviets began to have their SSNs make regular patrols into the Atlantic Ocean and near to the American coast. Usually these were conducted by newer boats such as Victor IIIs.

Part of the problem with staying ahead of the Soviets in those days was recognizing when they were using or doing something new. During the 1980s the Russians brought out a large number of new nuclear submarine classes, and early identification and classification was a top priority for the boats of the various NATO powers. Usually this was accomplished by a boat sitting at a "gatekeeper" station off Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok (in the Pacific), and off the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk and Severodvinsk. The job of the gatekeeper was to sit and watch. Anything that went in or came out was carefully noted and catalogued. Occasionally the sub would stick an ESM/Comint mast up and sniff the air for the electronic emissions that are part of every military base in the world.

There is a story, told in whispers and with guarded glances, about one of the greatest of the gatekeeper boats and her skipper. It is only a story, and neither the U.S. Navy or Royal Navy will officially state that it ever took place, but such are the stories that come from the silent service.

Sometime in the mid-1980s a gatekeeper boat was off the Kola Inlet, doing its job day after day. The sonar watch detected a submarine coming out of the barn from Severodvinsk. When the noise signature of the power plant and the other machinery on board did not match any known class of Russian boat, the captain of the U.S. boat decided to trail it and learn all he could about this new machine. Perhaps it was the first of the Sierra- or Oscar-class boats, or even the one-of-a-kind Mike-class boat with its titanium hull and liquid sodium reactor. Whatever it was, though, the U.S. commander was intent on getting to know everything possible about the new Soviet sub. The U.S. skipper carefully and quietly started stalking the Russian boat, probably from the rear, at a short distance.

In the chase that followed, the American sub listened and watched every move of the new boat. The sounds of the propellers and the all-important blade rate, which is used to calculate the speed of a ship or submarine. All of the machinery noise from the reactor (or reactors-many Russian boats have two), turbines, and pumps. They may even have heard some of the day-to-day living noises aboard the Soviet boat. The bilge tanks being pumped out, the TDU dumping garbage, and maybe even the sounds of hatches closing and pots and pans clanging in the galley. And through it all, the American boat and her crew remained undetected by the Russian boat and any supporting vessels that might have accompanied her.

After a period of time-and here the story begins to take on the air of unreality that is a hallmark of the true submarine stories-the Soviet sub came to the surface and slowed down. As the American sonar crews observed the Russians going to the surface, the American skipper apparently decided to try for the grand slam of submarine intelligence-gathering coups, getting some hull shots of the new Russian boat (video pictures of the hull, propellers, and control devices beneath the surface).

Such an operation is done by running underneath the target boat, raising the periscope equipped with a low-light video camera, and running a pattern around the hull to collect the video pictures. This is so difficult and dangerous that captains of U.S. submarines are almost never ordered to try it, as bumping a target can be non-career enhancing. On the other hand, successfully gathering hull shots is a sure sign that the boat's skipper has the right stuff and is worthy of promotion to higher command. And with only a few O-6 (captain) command slots available for boomers, tenders, and squadrons, the competition is fierce among the various attack boat skippers.

What happened next was a marvel of seamanship. The American boat was able to make at least one (several tellers of the story say more) pass around the Russian sub's undersides, and not once get noticed! Up and down the sides of the Soviet boat, the American skipper drove his periscope, obtaining the broadest possible coverage of the target. The coverage apparently included the control surfaces, propellers, and several sonar arrays. The quality of the video pictures was excellent, adding much to NATO's understanding of the new Russian boat. And maybe most impressive of all, she was able to back away, continue the chase, and eventually resume her gatekeeper position off the Kola Inlet.

The achievement was so impressive in its day, so the story goes, that the skipper was awarded a "black" Distinguished Service Cross (i.e., the recipient is unable to wear it, but the decoration appears in his service file folder or "jacket"). While such peacetime decorations are not unprecedented, they are extremely unusual, and the award of such a thing would be an indication of how important the U.S. high command considered the action.

This is the way the game of hide-and-seek went for almost forty years between the nuclear boats of the United States and the Soviet Union. And the game continues today. Only recently, there was a very public airing of a minor collision between the USS Baton Rouge (SSN- 689) and a Russian Sierra I north of the Kola Inlet. There were some bent hull plates, some exchanges of diplomatic messages, and minor apologies between the United States and the Russians. But have no doubt, the day-and-night stalking still continues as this book goes to press.

Tactical Example — Escorting a Boomer

In World War II the U.S. 8th Air Force found out the hard way about the price of running bombing raids into Germany without fighter escort. The big, heavy bombers were no match for the quick, heavily armed fighters of General Adolf Galland's Luftwaffe fighter command. Thus it was no surprise that as soon as they could be obtained, the 8th Air Force started to deploy fighters to escort the bombers against the danger the Luftwaffe fighters posed. These fighters not only reduced bomber losses but also tore out the heart of the Luftwaffe fighter command, making the invasion of Europe possible and victory that much easier.

Today, lessons such as these have not been lost on the operators of the boomer force in the U.S. Navy. The Ohio-class SSBNs are the largest and most capable FBM boats ever deployed by the United States, and also the most valuable. The Navy is proud of saying that no U.S. SSBN has ever been tracked while on patrol. But what about when it is headed out to patrol? With so many of America's strategic "eggs" in just a few Ohio-class hulls, they clearly are crown jewels needing protection. And when the boomers come out of Kings Bay or Bangor, they are extremely easy to see, whether by satellite or just a set of human eyes watching as they steam up the channel. Once they are at sea they fade away into the depths, but while departing and arriving at the base, they are vulnerable.

While the U.S. Navy has never made a big deal about such things-and with the end of the Cold War it is unlikely that they ever will-such vulnerability is a concern when you have only a few of the big Ohios to carry over 50 percent of America's total nuclear weapons load. All it would take is some easy cueing from a source ashore to tell an enemy submarine just when a boomer might be headed to sea. Thus it makes good sense to have the big FBM boat escorted out to sea by attack submarines, much as a fighter might escort a bomber on a bombing raid. It should be emphasized that a hostile boat would probably not try to get a shot in, though in wartime conditions this is always a possibility. More likely the threat boat would try to get on the tail of the Ohio and track it for as long as it could.

Let's suppose someone wanted to try tracking an Ohio as it came out of the channel at Kings Bay, Georgia. The continental shelf near Kings Bay is somewhat longer and flatter than at Bangor (the seabed drops right to the continental slope at the mouth of Puget Sound), giving a potential enemy submarine a somewhat easier time finding the Ohio as she comes out. Some time before the boomer is scheduled to leave port, one of our SSNs, probably a Los Angeles-class boat, will be stationed off the mouth of the channel to sit and watch for any signs of foreign submarines. The U.S. boat's mission will be to sanitize the area, making sure no other submarines have covertly entered American territorial waters to lie in wait for the SSBN. It will be a long, boring process, with many of the same kinds of problems described in the previous hunting scenarios. They will slowly patrol the area and listen, looking for any sign of something unusual or man-made.

If they find another submarine at this time, it will be reported quickly, and action will be decided upon by higher authority. More likely, though, is the scenario in which a hostile submarine is waiting just outside the twelve-mile limit of American territorial waters. In this case the Los Angeles will probably try to sit astride the planned route of the Ohio and wait for any sign of activity. If such contact occurs, the action that follows might go something like this:

As the Ohio comes out (escorted by support and security vessels to keep, if nothing else, the Greenpeace protesters at a safe distance) and prepares to dive, the Los Angeles continues its job of sanitizing the ocean ahead of the boomer. Much like a sheepdog herding a flock, its job is to interpose itself between the SSBN and any threat until the boomer can slip quietly into the deep waters off the Carolina/Georgia coast. Once an Ohio is free of the continental shelf, even the latest 688I-class SSN would find it almost impossible to track.

The Los Angeles continues ahead of the boomer, until it gets the first "sniff" of a hostile sub. Then the engagement takes on all the aspects of a game of chicken with tractor-trailer trucks. The Los Angeles closes with the threat boat, trying to get it away from the Ohio with everything short of actually ramming it or firing weapons. The SSN initiates maneuvers conforming to the rules of the road, which require the hostile boat to evade. The American SSN might launch noisemakers and other countermeasures in an attempt to make so much noise that the Ohio will be lost in the background. Another technique has the Los Angeles masking the Ohio by standing along the path between it and the hostile sub, and blasting away with its spherical sonar array as a jammer.

If the threat sub proves to be particularly obnoxious, the American skipper might even engage in a maneuver to force the hostile boat's skipper either to take evasive action or suffer the possible damage and embarrassment of an underwater fender bender. Whatever maneuvers the attack boat chooses, the desired result is that by now the Ohio has slipped into the deep waters off the continental shelf and is silently on the way to her designated patrol area. Once this is accomplished, the Los Angeles probably breaks off the chase and heads for home.

Thus begins another in the more than 3,000 FBM patrols that the United States has run over the last three decades. The SSN will have helped make it a successful one, that is, one in which the boomer returns to base with all twenty-four of its missile tubes still loaded, missiles unfired. Some might claim that the above scenario is only the wildest speculation and conjecture, and perhaps this is true. But just what was that Victor III that surfaced off the Carolina coast in 1983 doing there? Just remember that the submarine bases at Charleston, South Carolina, and Kings Bay, Georgia, are right in that neighborhood. Do you think the Victor was there just to photograph the resort at Hilton Head? Hardly.

Tactical Example — Hunting a Diesel Submarine

One of the few growth industries in the defense world today is the diesel-electric submarine market. Since the end of the Cold War, more and more small- to mid-size navies have seen these compact, cost-effective craft as a way to make up for whatever protection they may have enjoyed from whichever side they allied themselves with during the Cold War. Unfortunately, because of cutbacks in the defense industry worldwide, some of the nations that produce such boats have sold their wares to nations that the rest of the world might consider somewhat less than responsible. China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Algeria are just a few of the countries that have decided to invest heavily in diesel boats.

Surely the Volkswagen of the current generation of diesel boats is the Kilo-class boat produced by the CIS/Russia. This trim little boat is compact, has a good combat system, adequate weapons and sensors, and is very quiet. This makes it an excellent candidate for operations in straits and other choke points. In addition, a well-handled Kilo is almost impossible to detect passively when she is running on her batteries. And so our little story begins.

Let us suppose that the Islamic fundamentalist movement takes a serious hold in Algeria, along the coast of North Africa. And let us again suppose that the local ayatollah decides the merchant traffic passing along his coast should have to pay some duty for the privilege. It might then be possible that the Algerian Navy, the recent recipient of several Kilo-class boats, will be ordered to give the western merchants a demonstration of what might happen if they do not comply with the wishes of the new Islamic government.

An ideal way would be to seal the nearest choke point, then try to collect reparations to refrain from doing it again. For a cash-starved country like Algeria, this toll might be considered an excellent way to generate capital. The likely place for this demonstration would be the Straits of Gibraltar. Not only is it an ideal place for a diesel boat to operate, but the symbolism of doing it under the nose of the British Empire would be tough to resist.

The first notice of what was happening would probably be the "flaming datum" of an exploding merchant ship. Most modern torpedoes are designed to explode under the keel of the target ship, snapping it in two. If this were done to a tanker, for example, there would likely be a massive oil spill and fire, as well as wreckage that might float as a hazard to navigation for some time. This, combined with the inevitable declaration from the Algerian government, would undoubtedly cause a reaction from the Western powers. For hundreds of years Great Britain has held control of the seas around Gibraltar, and any mischief in the area would probably make them want to deal with it themselves. The likely candidate for this ASW extermination job would be a Trafalgar-class nuclear boat, because of its ability to deploy rapidly to the area threatened by the Algerian Kilo. Most folks do not realize that a diesel boat is actually just a mobile minefield. It simply does not have the strategic mobility or sustained speed of a nuclear boat, a simple fact that is lost on critics of nuclear submarines.

The deploying T-boat is likely to have some help in the form of RAF Nimrod ASW aircraft. In addition, it is a safe bet that the British have seeded the straits with a variety of acoustic sensors, and the area is about as wired as a pinball machine. The problem for the British hunters is the adverse noise conditions in the straits. There are several thermal layers, which make passive sonar almost useless. In addition several currents, overlapping and opposed in direction, generate a lot of flow noise. All in all, the Straits of Gibraltar is a miserable place for passive ASW hunting.

Fortunately, though, the nuclear submarine has another advantage over the diesel boat besides sheer mobility. That advantage is the huge active sonar array positioned in the bulbous bow of the boat, which is able to send out pulses of sound and bounce them off a target submarine. A special operating mode makes it even more effective: in areas with relatively flat, hard bottoms, a technique called "bottom bounce" can be used. Much like skipping a stone across the water, an active sonar can bounce sound waves off the bottom to contact another submarine. Using this technique, a nuclear submarine might contact an almost-silent diesel boat at ranges beyond 10,000 yards. And as an added benefit, because of all the reverberations from the sound waves bouncing off the seabed, the target submarine probably will not be able to tell what direction the active signal is coming from.

The Trafalgar enters the straits from the Atlantic side. The British may try to use their other assets, the Nimrods in particular, to help drive the Kilo into the hunting Trafalgar. The Nimrods may be tasked to drop active sonobuoys. These, combined with active sonars from ASW helicopters, might just make the Kilo captain move deeper into the straits, right into the waiting T-boat. The aircraft, however, will not be allowed to drop any ASW ordnance on it. With many submarines of various nations traveling through the straits, and the closeness of one of their own nuclear boats, the possibilities for a "blue-on-blue" or friendly fire confrontation are simply too high. The Trafalgar is like a surgeon's scalpel compared to the bludgeons of the aircraft.

Once the British think the T-boat is within range of a bottom bounce detection, the Trafalgar would probably use her 2020 active sonar to scan for the Kilo. This will be extremely disconcerting for the Kilo captain, with the buoys and active sonars of the aircraft and helos driving him from the Mediterranean side, and the blasting from the active sonar of the Trafalgar. He may choose to find a shallow spot and bottom his boat in an attempt to wait the British forces out. This will not work. With the on-station loiter time granted by its nuclear power plant, the Kilo will be out of battery power and supplies to run her environmental control systems long before the beer runs out in the wardrooms of the T-boat.

Inevitably the Kilo will have to make a run for it, and that's the time for the kill. The advantage of active sonar is that range and bearing to the target are known with a fair degree of accuracy. An added bonus with this powerful generation of active sonars is that the acoustic intercept receiver on the Kilo will be so swamped with noise (like a stereo system with the volume too high-you cannot make out any discrete sound), they will not hear anything but the sound of the British 2020 sonar blasting away. Once the T-boat has closed to the desired range (probably over 10,000 yards), it is time to prosecute the Kilo. The Trafalgar may launch a pair of Spearfish torpedoes in high-speed mode, active pinging, with the wires acting as data links to the weapons.

The Kilo is likely to hear nothing of this. Only when the seeker heads of the Spearfish have acquired the Kilo will the active sonar of the T-boat be secured, and then the crew of the Kilo will hear over their acoustic intercept receiver the pinging of two Spearfish torpedoes already commencing their endgames. Unlike the previous scenarios, in which the nuclear boats could sometimes run from torpedoes and possibly outmaneuver them, the Kilo just does not have that option. Its relatively slow speed makes it something of a sitting duck, and the end will come quickly. This time there will be no doubt, for when the first torpedo hits, it will kill the little diesel boat and all its crew. In all likelihood, all that will be left is scrap metal and fish food.

And that's the way to deal with modern Barbary Pirates.

Tactical Example — Battle Group Escort

The big gun of the fleet is still the aircraft carrier battle group (CVBG), which for that very reason is itself a target. The carrier remains the best platform for projecting power from sea to land, and the best for establishing presence, a term that means just what it says. A carrier and her battle group can appear on the horizon and just be there. As a police car can calm a neighborhood merely by cruising down the street, so can a powerful air/surface force let people on land know that someone cares what is happening.

The most likely threat to a carrier is a submarine armed with antiship cruise missiles (SSMs). Though unlikely to cause fatal damage to a supercarrier, a few well-placed SSMs can force her to leave the scene of action for repairs. The range of modern cruise missiles (up to 300 miles) makes the task of protecting the carrier far more complex than it was only two decades ago. Another problem is the decreasing number of ASW escorts available to the commanders of CVBGs. In just the last couple of years the U.S. Navy has retired dozens of cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. Since the submarine remains the primary threat, another submarine must be one of the protectors.

The most formidable dedicated cruise-missile submarine (SSGN) is the Russian Oscar class (nicknamed "Mongo" by some NATO submariners because of its awesome size). The Oscar-class SSGN is, in some ways, the Russians' first modern submarine. It is large and relatively quiet (much like a Sierra-class SSN) and is equipped to stream a large towed-array sonar. This boat, designed specifically to be a carrier hunter, is equipped with twenty-four SS-N-19 Shipwreck SSMs as well as a full array of torpedoes. It is the single most powerful attack submarine in the world, and thus must be hunted by the best boats we have, the 688Is.

Currently each CVBG usually has a pair of SSNs assigned to provide long-range ASW protection. Unlike the surface escorts, which have to stay within a few dozen miles of each other, the subs may be hundreds of miles from the main group. They will likely operate in clearly defined ASW kill zones, into which only they are allowed to operate and shoot. This is designed to minimize the chances of a "blue-on-blue" ASW encounter.

Hunting SSGNs is a most interesting game, different from other ASW tasks. Unlike SSBNs, which run silent and deep, the CVBG relies on mobility for its defense. And when the carrier moves swiftly, so must the hunting SSGN. Speed reveals any submarine's vulnerability. Speed creates noise and degrades sensor performance. The SSNs tasked to defend the carrier know both where and how fast the battle group is going, and can position themselves in ambush for whatever missile-carrying hunter may be listening. In addition, the American force may have the edge of a Surveillance Towed Array System (Surtass) ship supporting the CVBG. Using an advanced towed array, the Surtass ships are like mobile SOSUS listening posts, and the data collected can be forwarded to the CVBG commander and the hunting SSNs.

The pattern of this hunt will be sprint-and-drift. The hunters on both sides alternately race forward, then slow down to listen. As in all undersea encounters, the side that can hear first and farthest away has the biggest advantage. Knowing where and when an SSGN would have to approach, the U.S. sub has the ability to stay quiet and wait for the Oscar to come to it. Because of its need to obtain targeting data from the Russian RORSAT, the Oscar has to come shallow periodically to raise its satellite data link masts. This causes hull popping and mast flow noises. Thus it is entirely likely that the 688I can be guided by targeting updates via the ELF/VLF radio circuits to a point where it will be able to obtain a direct path passive sonar contact to the Oscar. This will probably occur at a distance of 10,000 to 16,000 yards.

As in the hunt for the Typhoon, the 688I must go to an extremely quiet operating routine, to remain undetected by the towed array of the Oscar. But unlike the hunt for the boomer, here time is of the essence. Potentially, the Oscar can fire its missiles once it is within range of the CVBG. This means it must be eliminated quickly and effectively. The U.S. skipper is likely to try maneuvering to a position behind the Oscar, so that any torpedo hit will strike near the propeller shafts. This is likely to pop the shaft seals, flooding the engine room of the Russian boat and hopefully sinking it. All the while the fire control technicians operating the BSY-1 system will be "polishing the cannonball" on the firing solution to the Oscar. At 6,000 to 8,000 yards, assuming the Oscar has not yet heard them, the U.S. skipper may launch a pair of wire-guided Mk 48 ADCAPs. These are fired initially in the slow-speed setting, using the wires to guide the weapons and provide data back to the U.S. boats. The fire control technicians may even try to "swim" the weapons under a thermal layer to mask their noise signature from the sensors of the Oscar.

Inevitably though, the Oscar hears the two Mk 48s and begins to react. It counterfires torpedoes down the bearing of the attacking Mk 48s, forcing the 688I skipper to cut the guidance wires and run for cover. Its distance lead over the Russian fish, as well as efficient maneuvering of decoys, should allow the American boat to survive. The same may not be true of the Oscar. The captain of the Russian boat tries the same evasion tactics as his American opponent, but they are probably not as effective.

As in the Typhoon example, at least one and possibly both ADCAPs are likely to hit their target. And if the desired shaft hits have occurred, then the Oscar is dead in the water. Even if only a single hit has been made, the 688I has accomplished its mission. The Oscar is badly hurt, and likely suffering from severe shock damage. It may even have to surface. In any case, it will be making horrendous amounts of flow noise and mechanical transients. The U.S. skipper may reattack and finish off the Oscar, or he may also call the carrier to give it the coordinates of the damaged missile boat. Within a very short time the carrier group could have a flock of S-3B Viking ASW aircraft and SH-60 ASW helos over the damaged Russian boat to finish it off. Much like a wounded bear being stung to death by a swarm of bees, it would die. And the American boat can now head out on another mission.

The nineteenth-century Frenchman Jeune Ecole first codified the idea that a navy isn't the real target of maritime warfare-the real target is what navies were designed to safeguard, merchant shipping. The sea is, before all things, a highway over which nations trade. And navies were invented to protect that, first from pirates who were little more than thieves at sea, and then from foreign navies whose thievery was on a somewhat grander scale. One might say that the real role for the submarine grew from this doctrine. The first submarines were too slow to be really effective at hunting other warships but quite fast enough to seek out and kill the slower and more fragile merchant tubs that carried the things nations need: food, raw materials, manufactured goods. Since the global economy has made all countries into island nations surrounded by water, the vulnerability of international maritime trade is made greater still by the fewer, slower, larger, and massively expensive merchant vessels of today. The environmental consequences from even minor damage to a single large crude oil carrier represent yet another way in which the world as a whole can be at risk. Navies exist to protect the trade and the traders, and a threat to either is a threat to both.

Tactical Example — Holding a Choke Point (Interdiction of a Surface Action Group)

The simplest example of a choke point is a highway intersection, a relatively small area through which people from distant places must pass on their separate journeys. Just as the intersection is a convenience for merchants who build shopping centers and people who establish maritime trading centers, so it creates highly rewarding hunting grounds. In World War II, the first Japanese task group to be detected was preparing for the invasion of the Kra Peninsula and the subsequent descent on Singapore, which guards the Strait of Malacca. England spent a great deal of its history seizing and building upon such places as these, even before Alfred Thayer Mahan published his thoughts on their importance. The Falkland Islands became British property because they are conveniently close to the Straits of Magellan. Ascension Island is in the middle of the Atlantic Narrows. Malta lies close to the Straits of Sicily. Gibraltar sits on the entrance to the Mediterranean. Such was the vision of the English in the days of sail.

Ships move faster now, but the choke points remain. In these places that people must pass through, arrival time and engagement range are predictable quantities.

A lucky submarine will hug a shallow bottom. Shallow water, not uncommon in straits, generally makes life easier for a submarine, though SSNs usually like at least 600 feet/200 meters of water to operate. Given time, the submarine will sniff around, learning currents and environmental factors. The mouth of the Mediterranean is known for the treacherous mixture of warm currents and cold, making for confused sonar conditions. In other places such conditions might mitigate against a sub, but long-range detection is of less importance when you are already astride the place where others must pass.

The other side knows this, too, of course. The mere possibility that someone might be there to threaten your battle group or your crude carrier forces you to take this threat seriously. Willie Sutton robbed banks because, he said, "That's where the money is." Choke points are where the targets are. You can bank on it.

Let us consider the most famous submarine action in recent history: the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands War. Before the British task force entered hostile waters the Royal Navy deployed a trio of nuclear submarines along the most likely approach routes to the islands. Because of his limited air power and surface-to-surface missile capabilities, Admiral "Sandy" Woodward was counting on this trio of boats to be the flank guards against any type of counterattack by the Argentine Navy. As it turned out, they were the only units of the Royal Navy to engage the major surface units of Argentina during the war.

In the last few days of April 1982 the Argentinean surface fleet was split into three task groups. Their plan appears to have been based on a three-pronged pincers movement against the British task force from the north, south, and west. The northern group was composed of their aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo (Twenty-fifth of May) with a small air wing of A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft, and several guided missile destroyers carrying Exocet SSMs. The western group was composed of several Exocet-armed frigates. The southern group was potentially the most dangerous force of all, composed of the cruiser General Belgrano (the former USS Phoenix) armed with 6-inch guns, Exocet SSMs, and Seacat SAMs, accompanied by two Exocet-armed destroyers of World War II vintage.

It is likely that national intelligence sources of the United Kingdom and their allies noticed the planned movement even before the ships raised anchor and left their harbors. And once they had sortied, it must have been fairly straightforward for the Royal Navy operations center (known as HMS Warrior) at Northwood, England, to feed the updates to the subs via their satellite communications. The three British boats were placed along the three surface groups' lines of advance, and were left in waiting while the British naval and civilian leaders decided whether to shoot.

The key question here was whether or not the Argentine forces would attempt to penetrate the 200-mile-radius total exclusion zone (TEZ) from Port Stanley in the Falklands. Clearly if they tried to penetrate it, there would be no question but to attack with the nuclear boats. But the ships did not come on directly and seemed to rally just outside the zone, though quite close enough to dash in at a moment's notice. The northern group was trying to find some wind to launch her strike of A-4s at the British task group, though (amazingly for the weather in the South Atlantic) it was calm and windless.

The choke point in that area was, ironically, not a strait but the extremely shallow water. The Argentinean southern group was operating over a shallow rise in the ocean called the Burdwood Bank, which made difficult operating conditions for HMS Conqueror (S-48), the southern boat in the British barrier. This hydrographic choke point was a major problem for the British SSN, and became a factor in the decision coming from 10 Downing Street. Already the Conqueror and another boat were tracking their assigned target groups, and a decision was needed from on high.

Late on May 2, 1982, the message was sent from Northwood authorizing the sinking of the Belgrano, and any of her escorts that attempted to intervene. Even though it was still some distance outside the TEZ, the Conqueror was the first to strike. Her captain, Commander Christopher Wreford-Brown, set up a classic Perisher approach on the General Belgrano. Loaded in his five torpedo tubes were three World War II-vintage Mark 8 torpedoes and a pair of Tigerfish Mod 1s. The plan was to use the Mk 8s first because of their larger warheads (800 lb/363 kg versus 200 lb/91 kg for the Tigerfish), and save the Tigerfish for a second shot if required. If the Mk 8s worked on the first try, the Tigerfish would be available for a shot or two at the escorting destroyers if necessary.

In the plotting area of Conqueror, Lieutenant John T. Powis, the boat's navigator, carefully plotted the intercept from ranges and bearings called by the commander on the periscope, and inputs from the sound room. It was a totally normal approach, which later would be judged considerably easier than most of the approaches made during a Perisher course. Wreford-Brown maneuvered the Conqueror just 1,200 yards off the projected track of the General Belgrano and patiently waited. The Argentine ships continued blindly along their track, completely oblivious of the coming danger. And then it was time.

Just before 1600 hours on May 2, 1982, the only combat torpedo shots ever fired by a nuclear submarine were launched from Conqueror. The three Mk 8s were angled in a way designed to ensure that at least two of them would hit the General Belgrano. And that is exactly what happened. The first Mk 8 hit forward near the bow, tearing it from the ship. The second one struck in the engineering spaces, causing a complete loss of power and massive flooding. The General Belgrano immediately took on a heavy list to port, and within minutes it was sinking. Her captain had no choice but to abandon ship and have his crew take to the life rafts. (Ironically, the exact same type of hits in the same places had sunk her sister ship, the USS Helena, during the Battle of Kula Gulf in 1943.) Some 400 of the Belgrano's crew of over 1,000 perished in the sinking and while waiting to be rescued.

In addition to the two hits on the cruiser, the third Mk 8 appears to have hit one of the escorting destroyers, though it failed to detonate. Unfortunately for the crew of the General Belgrano, the escorting destroyers did not even know what had happened until they looked and noticed that the cruiser was no longer in formation. It would be almost forty-eight hours until all the survivors of the sunken cruiser were finally rescued.

Aboard the Conqueror, there was the satisfaction of hearing the sounds of two solid hits and the breaking-up noises from the cruiser. In addition, the sub reported the dropping of a few depth charges, though this has never been confirmed by the Argentines. Since the escorting destroyers had just continued blindly on, there had been no opportunity to immediately follow up the first attack. And when they moved away from the TEZ, it is likely that the prevailing rules of engagement prevented further action. The Conqueror continued on station, as assigned.

As for the Argentine Navy, the effects were rapid and enormous. One story, told at the bars where submarine officers go after hours, says that as soon as the carrier group to the north of the Falklands got word on the sinking, they immediately reversed course and headed back to port. The story goes on to say that apparently this spoiled the opportunity of another Royal Navy submarine commander, who allegedly was watching the oncoming carrier group through his periscope. Royal Navy gossip has it that he watched the carrier and her escorts turn for home less than thirty minutes before he himself would have gotten in his shots at the Veinticinco de Mayo. The Argentine surface forces never again ventured out of port during the war, and the British had, in essence, reduced the conflict to a set-piece battle against the air and land forces of Argentina. All for the expenditure of three World War II-vintage torpedoes, perhaps the most cost-effective naval victory in history.

Tactical Example — Maritime Interdiction (Attack of a Convoy/Amphibious Group)

This is a high-risk situation for everyone. A convoy by definition is a large group of valuable ships protected by a force of warships. If your enemy has a convoy, he is transporting something important to his war effort, something that you don't want to let arrive. An amphibious warfare group is a little different; in this case the cargo is the most precious of all for the enemy and the most dangerous of all for you: fully equipped combat troops who have a job to do. You've got to try to stop the enemy in either case, while he must guard a moving asset. In fact, that asset will be moving as rapidly as possible to minimize the risk-the faster they move, the less time you have to attack. But unlike a carrier group, in which every ship has the ability to defend itself, most of the flock in a convoy is relatively helpless. For the amphibious group, there is one other difficulty. While a convoy probably wants to go from one friendly port to another, the amphibs by definition are heading into harm's way-they want to go where you and your allies live. That means the submarines will have to hunt their enemy on the enemy's ground.

Let's suppose that the government of the Ukraine has decided to support some of their former allies in the Balkans, the Serbians perhaps, with an amphibious expedition from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. It might be composed of some six to eight ex-Soviet Ropucha- or Polnocny-class landing ships with a regiment of landing troops aboard. The landing ships probably have an escort of four to six frigates (like Krivaks or Grishas) and/or corvettes (like Pauks or Tarantuls), though nothing like the kind of escort that the old Soviet Navy used to be able to put together. In any case, this is the very kind of intervention that the UN is desperately trying to avoid in a festering part of the world. While NATO air and surface forces could certainly deal with such a group, it would be messy. And there would be repercussions: further confrontations between east and west might develop. Or, someone could just deal with it. Someone who has something that can just make things disappear.

Word of the expedition would not be difficult to find out. States like the Ukraine are filled with opposition groups, and the national intelligence assets of the United States clearly notice the gathering of the ships and the movements of the troops and vehicles to the port. Thus the United States would have several days to coordinate the necessary assets and move a 688I into the Aegean or Adriatic to intercept the amphibious group.

When it comes out, the amphib group has the landing ships (say eight of them) in two columns, with a circle of ASW escorts (say four of these) surrounding them at the flanks. The key problem for the U.S. skipper is to do enough damage to stop the group but not necessarily kill all the troops on the landing ships. One way to do this is to destroy the escorts in plain sight of the landing ships, so that they will realize how naked and vulnerable they are, and go back home. And this is exactly what the American boat decides to do.

The one constraint is that the U.S. skipper must make sure that the weapons used are not unique. This is to say, a torpedo is a torpedo, a Harpoon missile is a Harpoon missile. Many nations have these things. Using these weapons would not leave a "smoking gun" pointing at the United States. "Credible deniability," they call it. But using a unique weapon like a Tomahawk antiship missile would point the finger directly at the United States, so these powerful weapons simply will not do.

The most favorable angle of fire is directly down the amphibious group's line of advance. Since the best ASW ships in the escort will probably be out front, these will be the first targets. The favored weapons would be two pairs of Mk 48 ADCAPs, each pair being controlled by a fire control technician at the BSY-1 consoles in the control room. In this way, the only thing the oncoming escorts will hear is the high-speed sound of torpedoes. There will be no way to know who manufactured them, or who fired.

The approach may be aided by targeting assets like a P-3 Orion patrol aircraft or other over-the-horizon targeting systems. Every now and again the 688I pokes its communications mast above the water for a short time, takes in the latest tracking data on the amphibious group, and then goes back to the job of positioning itself along the group's line of advance. Eventually the BSY-1 system begins to pick up indications of the oncoming vessels. The first contacts may be "convergence zone" (CZ) contacts, which occur at regular intervals of about thirty miles from the target. In this way a submarine can hear a surface vessel at something like ninety miles, or the third CZ. But most likely the noisy diesel engines of the landing ships will allow the U.S. boat to hear them coming from over a hundred miles away.

By now the boat is at its most quiet routine, so that the oncoming escort vessels, as well as any ASW aircraft, will not be tipped to the presence of the intruder. Now the game becomes one of patience, staying quiet while the Ukrainian force bears down. Finally the last of the CZ contacts die out, and the first direct path contacts begin to be heard. The captain of the U.S. boat now tries to place the boat right down the middle of the group's course track and waits for them to close. When the range gets down to about 15,000 or 20,000 yards, the time for action has arrived. The four ADCAPs are launched in the slow-speed mode and guided under any thermal layer that might be present, so their passage to the two leading escorts will be as covert as possible.

Even when the torpedoes get closer to their targets, it is unlikely that the escorts will finally hear them and react. Now is the time to move the Mk 48s up to high speed (60-plus knots) and run them right into their targets. There will be little for the targets to do. With a top speed of around 30 knots, the escorts won't be able to outrun the fish anyway, and with the wires still guiding them (each ADCAP has ten miles of the stuff, remember), it should be an easy matter to guide the torpedoes under their targets and detonate them. The effects will be incredible. A single Mk 48 detonated under the keel of a frigate will, at the minimum, snap it in two.

At this point the next move is up to the senior Ukrainian officer present. If he is smart, he will turn around and run for port. If he is stupid, he will attempt to charge his remaining escorts into the area, call for some air support if any is available, and try to find the intruding boat. By this time the American skipper has reloaded his tubes and is setting up shots on the two remaining escorts. This will likely lead to the destruction of those ships as well. Should this happen, the captains of the landing ships will undoubtedly have the sense to run for home. The Ukrainian adventure is over. If the Ukrainian government is smart, they will not even bring up the fact that the incident took place.

As for the American skipper and his boat, their only problem is slipping quietly and discreetly away. And this they will do…

Into a world that is moving away from major war and toward a long-hoped-for global peace comes a new and intermediate hazard: low-intensity warfare. Actually, this is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called banditry, brigandage, or other desultory names by professional soldiers-when a soldier dies in such a conflict, he's just as dead as one killed on Normandy Beach. As a former commandant of the Marine Corps put it, "If they're shooting at me, it's a high-intensity conflict." That said, however, the rules are a little different. Today one must be more circumspect.

The new reality of warfare is a modification of the old. What was once reconnaissance becomes covert operations, putting small teams of exquisitely trained specialists into a place where they ought not to be, allowing them to do their job, whatever it may be, and then getting them out. If the job is done right, nobody will ever know who did it; and in many cases, nobody will ever know what was done at all.

Accomplishing something like that means stealth, and stealth is the submarine's stock in trade.

Tactical Example — Special Operations Insertion and Extraction

The quintessential special ops mission: pictures that need to be taken, an asset (human or electronic) that needs to be recovered, a bridge that needs to be rearranged. Whatever the particulars, it is essential that the mission be carried out. Such things are, by definition, outside the scope of normal national intelligence assets and may be considered to be acts of desperation. Thus they must be undertaken by personnel who have no desperation in their souls-in short, submariners and SEALs.

The nice thing about coastlines is that they are difficult to guard. There is no such thing as a straight piece of coast; winds and tides see to that. A 1,000-mile trawl for a ship can be double or triple that distance for a force of soldiers on dry land. The covert entry team need only select a piece that is unguarded and then get ashore. It's not as easy as it sounds, though-it's dangerous work. The submarine noses as close to the beach as it can. The first thing above the water is the search periscope with an ESM receiver, sniffing for electronic signals-radar first of all, then radio communications. If these are identified, the submarine skipper gets moving to avoid both.

The SEALs-the Navy's elite and exclusive SEa-Air-Land commando teams-will probably exit the submarine from underwater using one of the escape trunks. As the SEALs are approaching land with the utmost caution, the submarine captain tries to find a convenient place to wait, perhaps hugging the bottom, probably poking a radio mast up at preset intervals, waiting to recover the returning SEALs when their mission is done.

When the SEALs have completed this mission it's time to return to the sub. Despite what the movies would have you believe, usually the egress phase is quite calm and goes according to plan. If they have committed violence, there will be confusion. If all they have done is to look around and take pictures, then the victims will probably never know they have been had. Once the SEALs are on board, the submarine's skipper quietly leaves the area. Another special operation has been completed, and the joint SEAL/submarine team within the Navy has grown just a little bit closer. And each group of men feels both kinship and distant admiration for the other: the submariners because they have no desire whatsoever to go onto the beach-if they wanted to be Marines, they would have asked for it. The SEALs, on the other hand, shudder at the thought of being inside a steel pipe for weeks at a stretch. It takes all kinds to do the job.

Tactical Example — Special Information Gathering

It was called Ivy Bells. Once upon a time the U.S. Navy learned, never mind how, that there was a telephone cable on the floor of the Sea of Okhotsk that ran from Vladivostok to Petropavlovsk. Both cities were the sites of major Soviet naval bases, and someone, never mind who, wondered if it might be worthwhile to tap that telephone line. And so, an American SSN entered the area.

The Russians claim the Sea of Okhotsk as territorial waters. The United States does not recognize that claim. It's a fine legal point, over what closure rule you think is appropriate. In either case, it's relatively shallow water, a little too shallow for a submarine commander to be completely comfortable, all the more so since the Russians regard it as home waters, hold exercises there, and probably have it thoroughly wired for sound.

But at some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s, a U.S. SSN (perhaps USS Skate) made a call and located that phone line. Swimmers went out the escape trunk and made the tap. Then they attached a recording device, probably using an extremely long cassette tape. For the next several years, perhaps extending into the 1980s, a submarine periodically (every month or so) had to reenter the Sea of Okhotsk to download the data on the tape cassette for "processing."

Sure enough, the phone line was used by the Soviet Navy, and so secure did they believe the phone line to be that the data on the line was not encrypted. Everything the Russians knew and did at sea came across that telephone line, and after a brief handling delay, all of that data reached the U.S. Navy's intelligence headquarters at Suitland, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., not far from the Smithsonian Institution's Silver Hill Annex.

Of all the intelligence operations conducted by the United States since World War II-at least, all those that have come to the light of day-this is probably one of the most productive, and certainly the most elegant. Which is not to say it was easy. On at least one occasion when a U.S. sub was trying to retrieve the data on the cassette, a Soviet live-fire exercise was underway overhead, and the American crew had no option other than to hug the bottom and hope the Soviet weapons were working properly, because to move away would have presented their counterparts with a target upon which they might have fired live weapons. It became dicier still later. A spy by the name of Ronald Pelton, an employee of the National Security Agency, revealed Ivy Bells to the KGB-for which he was paid the princely fee of perhaps $15,000; the KGB was never generous to its spies-and the tap was discovered. At this writing, Mr. Pelton lives in the basement level of the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois.

What happened when the next submarine went in to download the monthly "take"? That's an untold part of the story. Suffice it to say that Mr. Pelton, in addition to denying his country a hugely valuable source of information, placed over a hundred men at the gravest risk. Was the data worth the risk? Yes. Can submarines still do things like that? What do you think?

As was shown in Desert Storm, a submarine can do many things. Let's say there is a building you don't like. The other guy has lots of radar around it, and maybe the F-117A stealth fighters can't get there. (One needs to remember that the so-called black jet is invisible on radar, but the aerial tankers it refuels from are not.) And you want to do this job with minimum notice to the other side.

A submarine approaches the coast-not all that close, actually-probably at night, and launches a UGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM). For the first few seconds of flight the bird rises rapidly on its rocket booster. Then the wings and tail deploy, the intake for the turbofan engine opens, and the Tomahawk settles down, easily to within a hundred feet or so of the surface. It's a small missile, difficult to detect, especially with the new stealth features added to the Block III missiles now in production. The missile, knowing exactly where it launched from because of GPS satellite fixes (another Block III innovation), then follows a path defined by its inherently accurate terrain-following navigation systems. How accurate will it be? On a good day, a Tomahawk can fly into the door of a two-car garage at a distance of several hundred miles. And that can ruin your whole day.

Tactical Example — Execution of a TLAM-C Strike on an Enemy Airfield

It is not often remembered that the majority of attack aircraft employed by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pearl Harbor attack were tasked to counter air missions so that the remainder could attack the U.S. Navy in relative peace. Enemy aircraft are always the most enticing of targets, especially when they are sitting still. But your aircraft also have flight crews, and their lives are precious. That makes them targets also. I will, for once, blow my own horn. I was the first, I think, to consider this possibility in the open media when I included it (as Operation Doolittle) in my second novel, Red Storm Rising. (A more professional version was run in The Submarine Review, with my permission.) I'd decided that I wanted to do something that was seemingly outrageous but well within the realm of technical capability. So, why not use submarines launching cruise missiles to take out aircraft? This was, according to reports, a mission the Navy lobbied for in Desert Storm, but which the Air Force denied. Thus a few RAF Tornado aircraft were probably lost as a result of the fact that even the USAF wasn't fully aware of what Tomahawk could do.

The only hard part of the operation is timing. You want all the missiles to arrive within a very short time of one another. The accuracy of Tomahawk means that it can fly right down the center not just of runways but also of taxiways, sprinkling cluster munitions (in the case of the TLAM-D version) as it goes, to attack the world's most delicate artifacts-high-performance aircraft. The truly adventurous can aim the TLAM-C versions (with 1,000-lb high-explosive warheads) right at the doors of aircraft shelters. But if you've planned this right, those doors will be open anyway, and many of the aircraft will be in the open, because the whole idea of this sort of mission is to catch the other fellow unaware. There have even been reports of "special warhead" variants of the Tomahawk, including one that fires rocket-propelled conducting filaments over high-tension power lines to short out an enemy's power grid. You see, the U.S. Navy learned its lesson at Pearl Harbor. It's better to give than to receive.

So who might have aircraft that we might not like? Well, consider those perennial western favorites, the Iranians. Since the end of Desert Storm (with its unexpected windfall of Iraqi warplanes), the Iranians have been conducting a truly huge arms buildup. One report even has them trying to buy a regiment of ex-Soviet Backfire bombers complete with heavy antiship missiles. More mundane, but probably a bit more useful (and affordable) are the large number of Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft they have acquired from Iraqi defectors and the Russians. These medium bombers have excellent range and radar, and can be equipped with a variety of air-to-ground ordnance and antishipping missiles such as the Kh-35 (roughly equivalent to the U.S. Harpoon missile). And considering that the Russians will sell almost anything for hard currency these days, you can bet that the Iranians can buy even the latest in CIS missile technology at bargain prices.

Just suppose that the Iranians, having initiated one of their periodic misunderstandings with their Persian Gulf neighbors, begin to hint that they might initiate another tanker war the way they did in the 1980s. And let's just suppose that the Iranians follow habit and decide to hold a live-fire demonstration for television of their new-found capability. They seem to believe that such demonstrations will cause others to bow to their will. More likely, though, it will result in the signing of a presidential finding authorizing the use of force to preemptively remove the Iranian Su-24 threat to shipping in the region.

The question now is just what kind of force to use. A carrier airstrike, long a favorite of presidents, risks the possible loss of aircraft and the death and/or capture of the aircrews. Use of F-117As, so successful and invulnerable during Desert Storm, requires the cooperation of a friendly government in the region to provide basing. And use of long-range B-2As flying directly from a U.S. base, such as Diego Garcia, would place at risk the crown jewels of the Air Force's Air Combat Command. All for taking out a couple dozen fighter-bombers whose net worth would not pay for a single lost B-2A. Surface vessels could launch a TLAM strike but would be sitting there visible after the strike. Clearly what is needed is something discreet and safe for the American attackers. That something may well be a submarine-launched TLAM strike.

To render the airfield useless and destroy the Su-24 Fencers and Kh-35s will probably take between twenty-four and thirty-six TLAMs. Thus a pair of VLS-equipped Los Angeles-class boats will be needed to deliver the missiles. If submarines with the necessary numbers and types of missiles are not already in place, the missiles can be delivered to the boats at a forward base or tender. In addition to the missiles, the submarines will take delivery of the computerized mission plans developed at one of the Theater Mission Planning Centers (TMPCs). This plan, which can be used as is or updated via a satellite link, will have been designed to put the maximum number of TLAMs over the target airfield in the shortest duration possible. It should be noted that not one TLAM will be aimed at the runways. This is because, as Desert Storm proved, it makes little sense to attack concrete, which is quite easy to repair. Destroy an airplane, it is gone forever. And that is the goal of the planned strike.

The run-in to the target probably can be on the coast of the Indian Ocean, though USS Topeka (SSN-754) recently operated inside the Persian Gulf itself. The 688Is stand off the coast at a range of 50 to 100 miles and await the firing orders from Washington. Once these come, the firing times and time-on-target of the missiles will be coordinated between the two boats. The mission can be run at almost any time of the day or night, as long as the visibility over the target is relatively clear. For our purposes, though, we can assume that the attack will be mounted in the early morning hours, prior to sunrise. This will have the effect of catching the personnel at the airbase in their beds, reducing collateral casualties as well as the effectiveness of the base defenses.

Each submarine probably loads three torpedo tubes with TLAMs, and only one tube is loaded with an Mk 48 ADCAP "just in case." The three missiles in the tubes will be fired first, followed by the twelve in the VLS tubes. Approximately every 30 seconds another TLAM is ejected from its firing tube and headed on its way. While this is being done, each boat's torpedo room crew quickly reloads the empty tubes with three additional TLAMs, so these can also be launched on their way to the target. This makes a total of thirty-six TLAMs headed for the target airfield. Once this is done, the submarines just slip quietly away, leaving no sign of ever having been there.

Once its engine has ignited and the wings have deployed, each missile skims the ocean and maneuvers to what is known as the prelandfall waypoint. This a spot in the ocean that leads to the first land-fall navigation point. From here, each missile navigates via a combination of GPS fixes and Tercom updates. The idea is for all thirty-six missiles to arrive over the target at precisely the right time and in order. The first few missiles, say four to six of the 1,000-lb high-explosive (HE) warhead TLAMs, are dedicated to reducing the radar and SAM defenses of the airfield. The missiles have been programmed either to dive into a radar and explode, or to fly over the radar vans and destroy them by overpressures created by the high-explosive warheads.

With the way now clear for the remaining missiles, the actual attack on the airfield develops. It will probably be over in just a matter of several minutes. Several of the TLAMs armed with the CEM submunitions will run down the ready ramps, scattering bomblets over any aircraft waiting there. Once each of the missiles has expended its load of submunitions, it will probably be programmed to dive into one of the smaller buildings (such as the aircrew quarters) on the airfield, adding its remaining fuel to the destruction. In addition, each of the large hangars has probably been allocated a pair of HE-warhead TLAMs to destroy any aircraft being serviced there. The fuel storage areas and weapons bunkers also receive the attention of their own TLAMs. The last item for the TLAMs is any revetments or hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) that might possibly contain some of the Su-24s.

Before the base personnel have even had a chance to react, the attack will be over. Most if not all the offending fighter-bombers will be either destroyed or severely damaged. In addition, the antishipping missiles are probably blowing up in their bunkers, and the jet fuel will be blazing in its tanks. And with this, the threat of these aircraft and missiles preying on the tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf will be at an end. All of this has been accomplished without a single American life being placed in harm's way.

Nobody really listens at keyholes anymore, mainly because keys are smaller than they used to be. But electronics have made the doors rather wide, and they also allow things to leak out more readily than before. The majority of the world's major cities are near the water-they started off as ports and trading centers-and thus are within the reach of submarines and their sensors. Those sensors and their associated analysis equipment help give the United States and her allies an edge in figuring out the policies of foreign governments, and their potential to cause mischief in the New World Order.

Tactical Example — Reconnoitering an Enemy Harbor

It helps to be invisible. That means you can get in close, and when you do that, you can learn things. The prime intelligence-gathering mission for a submarine is electronic surveillance. A simple-looking reedlike mast can gather all manner of electronic signals. You might want to learn about the other guy's radar systems, and he'll be careful with these so as not to let you know exactly what your aircraft will be up against. Therefore he won't use them much when unknown aircraft are about-but he has to use them some of the time in order that his own people can practice using them. And so what you do is sneak a boat into his coastal operations zone, run up your ESM mast, and wait. You can also listen in to short-range radio traffic, the FM stuff that stops at the horizon. Such radios are normally not encrypted, and it's amazing what people will say when they don't think anyone is listening.

In short order, you can monitor the other fellow's whole electronic spectrum, and over a period of time, to boot. This allows operating patterns and procedures to be explored. And you can learn a lot from that. You can do combined operations, with submarines and aircraft working together to see what is really on the other fellow's mind, and you can get away with it because he can see only one element of the operation. Or you can try something really crazy-take a close look for yourself. What is he up to inside his main naval bases? If the water's deep enough, if the sub is quiet enough, you might be able to go in and snap a few pictures through the periscope. Maybe even a few hull shots. Do SSNs ever really do this kind of thing? It's much too dangerous, isn't it?

Question: How many mines does it take to make a minefield? Answer: None; you only need a press release. General Norman Schwarzkopf said it all during Desert Storm with one question to an obtuse reporter: "Have you ever been in a minefield?" Imagine what it's like. Every step you take might place you on the trigger of an explosive device. Every single step. You have to get where you want to go. But the simple act of going there may kill you. You don't know when you're entering the minefield, and you probably won't know when you're finally out of it. Sound like fun?

And so it is for ships. A ship, remember, is a steel bubble designed to keep air in and water out. And any ship can be a minesweeper. Once. Mines can be large or small, but in either case they blast holes in ships. Improving technology has made them more deadly. No longer the spherical steel containers with acid-filled horns (though these still exist and still work), modern mines can lie on the bottom, be activated weeks after being laid, and can include special triggering devices so that one might go off when the first ship passes over, and its neighbor when the eleventh does. Mines, therefore, have a severe psychological impact, and in the natural dread of such things comes panic, concern, and an inordinate degree of effort to get rid of the damned things, a task both time-consuming and very, very iffy. How do you know when you have swept them all? You don't. You can't.

Tactical Example — Quarantining (Mining) an Enemy Port

It only takes a press release, but a single explosion will put a little emphasis on it. Mines are relatively small and compact, and a submarine can carry a goodly number of them, trading off roughly one torpedo for every two mines. And the submarine can deliver a wide variety of them: Mark 57 moored mines with sophisticated sensor and triggering systems. Then there are the Mk 67 mobile mines. These are obsolete Mk 37 torpedoes that have been rebuilt into bottom mines. A submarine can fire them into a shallow channel (which itself might be mined) up to a distance of 5 to 7 miles. The Mk 67 then lies on the bottom, waiting for a ship to pass over it before detonating. Finally, for real impact, there are the Mk 6 °Captor mines. These are encapsulated Mark 46 torpedoes programmed to wait for the right kind of noise (in this case enemy submarines), at which point the torpedo swims clear and attacks. For example, you could program them to listen for a certain type of submarine (like a Kilo), which isn't exactly cricket. Mines that shoot first? Just the things for closing a port down.

Let us say that there is a country, North Korea for example, with a nasty habit of exporting military hardware, which offends the sensibilities of the rest of the world. Let's say their nuclear weapons program has finally yielded results. Being strapped for capital, perhaps they might choose to sell off a few to the highest bidder. Somehow (perhaps through some of their contacts in the Swiss banking industry), the American intelligence services get word of the transaction. This starts the ball rolling on a confrontation between the United States with her allies, and the North Koreans. It's the kind of confrontation that the United States could go to the UN with, and make a point to the world about arms proliferation, or suffer a major foreign policy debacle. Not so long ago, the United States expended huge resources tracking a ship loaded with a cargo of North Korean-manufactured missiles on its way to Iran. At the last minute the CENTCOM maritime surveillance forces lost track of the ship, and the cargo was delivered despite the protests of the rest of the world. Would it not have been more effective to just bottle up the port in North Korea with mines and never let the ship out in the first place? That way, wouldn't the UN have a chance to inspect the cargo and make sure it did not contain the offending weapons? You bet! It is a "must win" kind of situation that requires a delicate and discreet touch.

So how does one deploy the mines to close the port in question? The problem here is that the North Koreans have a proven track record of hostility toward U.S. surface vessels and aircraft operating anywhere near their borders. (Remember the capture of the USS Pueblo and the EC-121 shootdown in 1968?) Thus it is imperative that any such action be handled carefully. Just the kind of job submarines are best suited for.

The mines are quietly delivered to a 688I at a tender at Guam or some other forward base. The 688I probably off-loads all her missiles (except perhaps for Tomahawk antiship missiles in the VLS tubes), and most of her Mk 48 torpedoes. Other than the mines, her only weapons are likely for self-defense. In addition, a SEAL team might be embarked to assist in any on-the-spot surveys required to support the mission. The mining plan has probably been carefully worked out, with appropriate consideration given to such things as the activation times, tidal and seabed conditions, types of mines, and appropriate warnings to the other interested parties involved. Of critical importance is knowledge of the exact placement of each mine, as we would probably have to sweep them (as we did in North Vietnam in 1973) after the incident is closed.

The operation begins with the 688I reconnoitering the areas surrounding the port. Part of this is to establish the operating patterns of North Korean patrols, but also to check for irregularities in the charts and seabed surveys that might affect the mining plan. Here, the Navstar GPS system is critical, as it allows for precise navigation of the boat in the confines of the North Korean coastal waters, and placement of the mines. Once the survey is finished, the job of mine deployment begins.

First out of the tubes probably are the Mk 57 moored mines, to be placed in the outer mouth of the port. The 688I goes in slowly using every sensor of the BSY-1 system to look for trouble. Every few minutes, another mine package is ejected from her torpedo tubes, their activation clocks ticking away to a prearranged time (probably one to two days later). As each mine is released, its position is carefully noted for future sweeping. It will not take many of these, as ship captains are creatures of habit who follow their charts and rarely deviate into less traveled channels. Once this is done, the submarine's commander may fire some of the Mk 67 mobile mines up into the shallow channel leading to the inner harbor, say six to eight of these for each side of the channel, to sit on the bottom. Now the 688I carefully moves out of the area. Just to keep things fair in the coming crisis, the boat might move to one of the nearby naval bases that handles their fleet of diesel submarines and patrol boats. Here it could lay a few more Mk 67s in the channel, and possibly a belt of Mk 6 °Captors to keep the North Korean Navy, particularly their force of diesel submarines, bottled up during the coming confrontation. You don't even have to do it to all of their bases. Just do it to one, and say that you have done it to all of them. Who is to know, right?

You now have a foreign policy fait accompli. And don't forget the press release…

It is an acknowledged fact that duty on submarines is more hazardous than other forms of military service. And unfortunately, these extra hazards can translate into the loss of a submarine and its crew. This is the part of submarine duty that is almost never spoken of, even between members of the sub force and their families: if a boat is posted as missing and presumed lost, it probably has been lost with all hands at sea. This was certainly true of submarine losses during the world wars, when very few individuals survived submarine sinkings. And in both of the nuclear submarine losses suffered by the United States during the Cold War (the Thresher and the Scorpion), this precedent held true, with all hands being lost.

Nevertheless, history also tells us that sometimes men do survive submarine sinkings. When the submarine USS Squalus sank because of a faulty induction valve off the New England coast in the 1930s, prompt action by the rescue forces of the U.S. Navy saved about half her crew. And when USS Tang was sunk by a circular-running torpedo in 1944, a small number of her crew were able to escape and survive until being picked up and taken prisoner by the Japanese. The point here is that circumstances sometimes do allow the crew of a damaged or sunken submarine to survive. And if a navy failed to provide those survivors a chance to live and be rescued, morale in that force would plummet.

So those navies that operate large forces of submarines have invested considerable funds into providing their submariners with equipment and skills to allow for their rescue if they survive whatever initial calamity befalls them. Some of these, like the Steinke hoods and Mark 8 survival suits issued by the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy, are designed for use by the men themselves. But certainly the most visible signs of commitment to the mission of submarine rescue are the Deep-Submergence Rescue Vehicles (DSRVs) operated and maintained by the United States and England. In the wake of the loss of Thresher in 1960, the United States built two of these miniature submarines, and the United Kingdom built one. These small submarines, operated from a mother ship or another submarine, can off-load the crew from a sunken or damaged submarine and return them to safety.

Example — Rescue of a Downed Submarine

It's a funny thing: most submariners feel that the time of their greatest hazard is during the transits to and from their home bases. This is because of the simple fact that submarines are, by design, hard to see and find. This is especially true when the boats are on the surface, in the transit lanes leading into and out of their lairs. Their low silhouettes and relatively low radar signature make them tough to see. And if a merchant ship crew becomes sloppy or lax, it is quite easy to get run over. The British lost a boat in the Thames estuary in the 1950s, and the French a large cruiser submarine in World War II, to just such accidents. And with the sloppy handling of supertankers that has been so evident over the last few years, it is not hard to imagine an event like this taking place.

So let us suppose that the worst comes to pass, and a merchant vessel, running in heavy fog, collides with a British nuclear attack submarine during a transit back into base at Plymouth. We will suppose that the hit occurs while the sub is running on the surface, striking the after portion of the boat, rupturing the after ballast tanks and destroying the propulsion train. The boat will probably begin to settle from the stern, and there is a good chance of flooding back in the engineering spaces through tears in the hull and the shaft packing seals. With the inrush of water aft, the boat will be headed down to the bottom. During this time, the crew are trying to secure the flooding and seal hatches. The automatic safety systems will "scram" the reactor, making it safe. If there is time, the captain will order the radio room to get off a distress call to the operations center at Plymouth. If not, the crew deploys a buoy, which will transmit its own distress signal to attract attention.

Because of the long continental shelf around the British Isles, there is a good chance that the damaged boat will bottom out in water something less than 1,000 feet deep. Since this is less than the rated crush depth of a British SSN, there is a good chance that some or all of the crew will escape any flooded compartments. At this point, their goal is to survive and wait for rescue if possible. If there is continued flooding, the crew will move to the forward escape trunk, don their Mk 8 escape suits, and free-ascend to the surface. But if the surviving compartments are dry, they will probably try to stay put, hoping for rescue by forces from Plymouth.

Once the Plymouth Operations Center gets the word that something has gone wrong, they set in motion a series of preplanned activities to rescue the downed sub's survivors. One of the first is a call to the U.S. Navy to get the loan of one of the DSRV rescue submarines from SUB-DEVGRU 1 at Ballast Point in San Diego, California. As quickly as it can be arranged, a C-5 Galaxy or C-141 Starlifter will arrive at NAS North Island to pick up the DSRV, its crew, and the necessary fittings and equipment to conduct the operation. The idea is that SUBDEVGRU 1 can deliver a DSRV to any point on earth within twenty-four hours, and rescue any crew within forty-eight hours. In this case, the delivery point will be the point closest to one of the "R" class SSBNs, which are equipped to carry and operate the U.S. DSRVs for the Royal Navy. When the transport aircraft arrives, the DSRV and her support equipment are trucked to the port, to be loaded onto a special rack on the back of the British SSBN.

While all this is going on, the crew of the downed submarine are doing their best to do absolutely nothing but stay alive. To purify the air in the surviving compartments, the captain will order the lighting of special candles which, when they burn, release oxygen. Everyone will be ordered to stay quiet, sleep if possible, and just wait calmly. By this time, the Royal Navy has probably assembled a rescue force, which will try to make contact with the survivors and help organize the rescue effort. The first vessel at the site of the sinking may well be another submarine, because of their rapid mobility and their ability to stay on station, whatever the weather and sea conditions. (When the USS Squalus was lost in the 1930s, it was a sister boat, the USS Sculpin, that made first contact with survivors of that downed boat.)

With luck, the "R" class SSBN will able to reach the sinking site near Plymouth within twenty-four to thirty-six hours of the sinking. And at this point, things begin to happen rather quickly. Once the site of the sinking has been established and the attitude of the sunken sub ascertained, the SSBN will submerge and loiter near the downed boat. The crew of the DSRV will enter their boat via the after escape trunk of the SSBN, seal their bottom hatch, and lift off. Since the after part of the sunken sub is flooded, all the survivors will have to exit through the forward escape trunk, and the captain will have to organize the survivors into groups of twenty-four, the maximum the DSRVs are capable of carrying on one trip. At this point the operation begins to look more like two spacecraft docking in orbit. The DSRV maneuvers over the hatch of the downed sub's forward escape trunk and carefully maneuvers down to dock. Once secure, the DSRV's crew blow the water out of the docking collar and bang on the hatch of the escape trunk to tell the crew of the sub that it is time to start the transfer. If the survivors require any medical attention, the DSRV will probably transfer a medical team for the injured. At this point, the first load of survivors enter the two spheres of the DSRV, seal the hatches, and lift off to return to the SSBN. Once there, the DSRV docks with the boomer and discharges the first load of survivors, then repeats the process as many times as required. If the entire crew of the downed sub has survived, it will take four to five trips to offload them all. At this point, any survivors who are seriously injured are MedEvacked via helicopter to a shore hospital.

With the successful rescue of the downed sub's crew, the next job will be to begin salvage of the downed boat. And have no doubt that this will be done, both for the obvious political reasons, and hopefully to put her back into service. And before you doubt the possibility of such a thing, remember that after the USS Squalus was sunk in the 1930s, she was raised and renamed USS Sailfish. She would go on, reborn with a new name and crew, to an outstanding combat record, including the sinking of the first Japanese aircraft carrier by a U.S. submarine. Sometimes from the depths of disaster come the tools of victory.