Virginia Class

1

"You're aware, of course, Commander, that I am completely opposed to this… this tax-dollar-guzzling hole in the water?"

Tom Garrett glanced at the man beside him, wondering if Blakeslee was deliberately trying to push his buttons, or if it simply was the man's acid attitude. How, he wondered, could such an unpleasant man be a successful politician? Damn this asinine babysitting duty, anyway. There were better uses of a boat captain's time.

The two of them were walking through the mammoth assembly building above the New Groton ways, Garrett in his blue uniform with its three bright gold stripes like rings at the ends of his jacket's cuffs, Congressman Blakeslee in a conservative gray suit. Both men, however, as per shipyard regulations, wore bright yellow construction helmets against the possibility of tools or other deadly objects dropping from overhead. Above them, like a huge tapered cigar, the pressure hull of the submarine yard's premier construction project hung suspended from overhead cranes.

"Oh, yes, Congressman," he replied with as easy a smile as he could muster. He had to speak loudly to be heard above the whine of machinery, the sharp clang and clatter of metal on metal. "I've been well briefed."

"I damn well imagine you have." John Blakeslee, the honorable representative of the twenty-third District of his state, placed his hands on his hips and stared up at the smooth and gently rounded cliff of metal hanging above them. The flare of an arc welder dazzled and sparked just above the shroud masking the eight-bladed screw at the cigar shape's aft tip. "The Cold War is over," he said after a moment more. "We don't need these monsters any longer. The tax dollars are better spent elsewhere."

It must be tough, Garrett thought with a suppressed smile, to be a member of both the House Armed Services and Appropriations Committee and the Congressional Military Appropriations Oversight Committee. Blakeslee's double-barreled quals made him an extraordinarily powerful figure within the government but must also leave him a bit scattered in his job focus at times.

"With respect, sir," Garrett said carefully, "that's not an opinion shared by everyone on your appropriations committee." And thank God for that, he added, keeping the thought well concealed.

"What are you talking about, Captain? The Cold War was over when the Berlin Wall came down."

"I didn't mean that, sir," Garrett replied. "I meant about not needing these beasts or the money being better used elsewhere. The Virginia is going to pull her own weight, believe me."

"Oh, really? And I say it's about time we found that peace dividend everyone's been talking about for the past sixteen years! Submarines are damned expensive toys, Captain, and they're toys we can now do without."

Garrett had heard the sentiment before, had argued against it more than once.

"Congressman, the peace dividend wasn't leftover money in the national budget. It was forty-some years of peace."

"Indeed?" Blakeslee snorted. "Our veterans of Vietnam, Korea, and the Gulf Wars would be most interested in that sentiment."

The man, Garrett decided, was definitely testing him, pushing him to get a reaction. No man could be that obtuse, even if he was a politician.

"Peace between us and the other superpowers, Congressman. Somehow we made it through the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties… and not once did either side in the Cold War fire a nuclear missile. Not once was an American — or Russian — city incinerated. We fought wars, yes, sir — Korea, Vietnam — but we were never in a shooting war with the Russians or the Chinese. And part of the reason, a damned big part of the reason, I'll add, was the technology we put into military programs, including submarines. Technology is expensive, but the payoff was that we managed to balance things in such a way that we didn't turn our planet into a radioactive desert."

"Obviously we stand on different sides of the issue," Blakeslee said. "There are different ways of looking at history, you know. Different interpretations. But… even granting that you're right, my point is that we don't need attack submarines like this one any longer. The Navy can and should make do with the Los Angeles-class subs, gradually phasing them out as they reach the end of their operational service. We should never have built even one Seawolf … and certainly not the Virginia."

"Sir, did you ever hear the expression penny-wise, pound-foolish?"

The corners of Blakeslee's mouth twitched, and Garrett couldn't tell if it was a frown or a suppressed smile. "Don't overstep yourself, Commander. You do not want me as an enemy, believe me."

"The last time I checked, Congressman, you and I were on the same side. We both care for the peace and security of this country. And for the health of the armed forces."

"You're right, Commander, of course." He sighed. "Forgive me. Perhaps it was I who overstepped the bounds of propriety. But the tangle of budget and military appropriations is something of a Gordian knot… a very frustrating one. If there's a sword with which to cut the puppy, I have not yet been able to find it." He stopped suddenly and pointed. "What the hell is that?"

"The command center module," Garrett said, following Blakeslee's gaze. Amid a flurry of activity on the scaffolding, something like a huge, squat tin can was being lowered into place within the pressure hull. "Most of Virginia's compartments are being assembled separately, each in one piece. Then we lower them in — or 'snap them on,' as we say — to cushioned mounting points on board. The system is called MIDS, for 'modular isolated deck structures.' With each compartment riding its own set of cushioned mounts, it helps make for a very quiet boat."

"A very expensive boat, Captain. Who's going to hear you out there? The Iranians? The Lithuanians?"

"The Chinese are a possibility, sir. And a very real threat."

Blakeslee snorted again. That snort, Garrett decided, was a standard-issue part of Blakeslee's debating armamentarium.

"Your part in the Taiwan incident two years ago has not been forgotten," Blakeslee said. "If anything, I should think you, of all people, would understand that the Chinese are no longer a credible naval threat."

"Who suggested that, Congressman? Beijing has no interest in becoming a global naval power, but with eight thousand and some miles of convoluted coastline, they're very interested in becoming the regional power to be reckoned with. They remember the Battle of the Taiwan Strait as well as we do, sir, and they have a long memory."

In May of 2003, Garrett had been in command of the SSN Seawolf, the first-in-her-class demo model of a whole range of new submarine technologies. Tensions had heated sharply, as they did, periodically, over the island of Taiwan and its independence — as the Republic of China — from the Communist mainland, the People's Republic of China. An attempt by the People's Republic to cow Taiwan into accepting Beijing's rule had escalated. Taiwan had been bombarded — not for the first time — by missiles fired from the mainland, and the PRC's fleet of submarines had moved to block the Formosa Strait.

The naval action that followed between the People's

Republic forces and the U.S. Seventh Fleet had ended with the sinking of all but three of Beijing's attack submarines, including a deadly, nuclear-powered, Russian-built Akula and the sinking of a Luda-class destroyer. Referred to now as the Battle of the Taiwan Strait, the conflict had been played down by both Washington and Beijing. The PRC had its own reasons for minimizing its loss of face over the undeclared miniwar, and Washington, still involved in both Afghanistan and the Gulf, hadn't wanted to encourage the idea either at home or abroad that America was a bully, picking on rogue regimes around the world.

Garrett had often thought that he would have done it differently; letting the whole world know that the United States had stopped the Chinese threat with a single carrier battlegroup and the USS Seawolf ought to make hostile governments from Havana to Tripoli to Pyongyang think twice about testing American resolve or capabilities.

But Garrett was a sub driver, not a maker of foreign or military policy. His opinion didn't count, nor was it permitted a public airing.

"China is no threat to us," Blakeslee told him, "or to our interests abroad. They learned their lesson two years ago, and it's in our best interests to treat them as a prospective ally and business partner. Sinking someone else's submarines is not recommended if you wish to do business with them."

Garrett thought it politic not to point out that the PRC had fired first with its bombardment of an American ally or to mention that the U.S. had lost a ship of its own in that conflict, the USS Jarrett.

"Governments change, Congressman. Foreign policies change. In my experience, it's best to be ready."

"I quite agree, Commander. But this boondoggle's contribution to American readiness is completely unproven, even speculative. It's simply the Navy's way of getting around the fact that Congress curtailed the Seawolf program. Not on my watch, sir!"

Garrett's jaw and fists clenched as he bit off a reply. Damn it, what did Blakeslee want with him, anyway? Admiral Logan had ordered him to accompany Blakeslee on his tour of the Electric Boat yards — a simple enough request, given that various Washington bureaucrats frequently came up here for tours of one sort or another, and someone needed to guide them around. Garrett was beginning to wonder what he'd done to warrant a punishment detail.

Blakeslee was right in one way, of course. The Virginia was an ongoing set of compromises in a long and ugly war over the Navy's dwindling budget.

The Navy's planners had foreseen the need for a fleet of 80 attack submarines, beginning with 39 original Los Angeles-class subs and 23 improved L.A. boats. These 62 SSNs had a planned operational life of thirty-three years; the lead boat, the Los Angeles, had been launched in 1974, and unless her service life was extended, she would be pulled from the fleet in another two years. Eleven of the older, "straight" L.A. boats had been decommissioned in the nineties for various reasons. One more, the Memphis, had been turned into a research platform, bringing the total down to fifty.

Worse, those fifty attack subs represented aging technology… and in the superscience world of undersea combat, technology did not age well. The transfer of the Memphis to Navy R&D had been prompted by congressional criticism that the Navy was not pursuing advanced technology for its submarine forces, and the improved L.A. submarines were a partial answer… but not a complete one. When the Walker spy-family scandal had broken in the eighties, the Navy realized that the Soviets would very soon possess submarines as stealthy and as deadly as even the improved L.A. boats.

So the Seawolf project had been born, emerging from design studies in the midseventies, but refined and given shape under the impetus of the Soviet submarine threat of the eighties. Originally planned as the Navy's "submarine of the twenty-first century," Sea-wolf would be far quieter than the Los Angeles attack boats. Faster, stealthier in every way, and carrying a mammoth arsenal of torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles, Seawolf had been intended to counter high-tech Soviet submarines — especially the sleek and deadly Akula, the so-called Walker-class boat designed using the secrets sold to Moscow by the Walkers. Thirty Seawolf-class attack subs were planned.

Then, with astonishing suddenness, the Soviet empire had collapsed, and much of Moscow's vaunted military was revealed to be a rotting shell. Somehow, the need for an eighty-boat fleet hadn't seemed quite so urgent, especially in light of the fast-rising price tag for the Seawolf. Already incredibly expensive when she was originally designed — in the seventies, cost estimates had run to about $1.3 billion per unit — cost overruns and redesigns swiftly sent that estimate soaring. At $4 billion per sub, the Seawolf was indeed a "golden fish."

And so, in August of 1990, after a four-month review, Seawolf procurement was reduced to twelve units. A new attack submarine — then called Centurion, because now it would be the "submarine of the new century" — was proposed as a complement for the twelve-boat Seawolf fleet, aiming for a total submarine force of fifty-five boats. The Defense Acquisition Board had ordered that the new boat cost less than a billion dollars per unit.

By that time, Seawolf was at ground zero in a raging controversy between the Defense Department, Congress, and the White House. In January of 1992, the Department of Defense had announced that only one Seawolf would be built. In a backhanded twist of politics, President Clinton — usually no friend of the military — had promised to raise the number from one to three as a bit of political palm-greasing to the state of Connecticut, where the Seawolfs would be constructed. More than one observer had noted the irony of a Democratic president resurrecting a military project a Republican president had wanted cancelled.

And so the Seawolf project would end with three units — the Seawolf herself, launched in 1995, followed by the Connecticut in 1997 and the Jimmy Carter in 2003. The Navy had long since shifted its full attention to Centurion, which was now referred to as the NSSN, or "New SSN" project. By 1998, the NSSN had been named Virginia, yet another bit of political baksheesh. Connecticut was the location of one submarine builder, the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, but Virginia was the other, with the yards at Newport News.

But political gestures or no, the budgets battles were continuing. By 2000, the NSSN program had been cut to twelve funded units, with one to be launched per year beginning in 2004. By 2005, the number had been cut to four, with the lead boat scheduled for launching in 2006. The Navy ultimately still wanted thirty Virginia-class subs, but the way things had been going with Congress and the military budget-snippers lately, that number seemed most unlikely.

"You know, Congressman," Garrett said carefully, "the Navy has done its share of budget-busting, I admit, but it seems to me that the Navy Department and Congress are too often sabotaging each other. Remember the about-face you guys pulled on us over Newport News?"

Originally, the Virginia was supposed to have been assembled entirely at Electric Boat here at New London in Connecticut, a decision that would have closed the submarine yards at Newport News, Virginia. That move, it was estimated, would have trimmed quite a bit from the Navy's appropriations budget and helped meet congressional demands to cut costs and close bases. Congress, however, had stepped in and ordered the Navy to use both Electric Boat and Newport News. Shipyard workers in the sovereign state of Virginia voted, and they would vote for the congressmen who kept them employed.

"Well, son, yes, I do. But it worked out okay, didn't it?"

"After a fashion, Congressman. After a lopsided and very expensive fashion."

Eventually, the Navy had encouraged both yards to participate in the building of all Virginia-class boats. Newport News built the bow, stern, sail, crew compartments, auxiliary machinery, and weapons handling spaces of each boat; Electric Boat built the pressure hull, command and control compartments, engine room, and the main propulsion unit raft. Both yards would construct the nuclear reactors. They would then be pieced together, two at Electric Boat, two at Newport News.

At least, that was what the gouge was this week.

"You know and I know, Captain," Blakeslee went on, "that this whole process has been politicized to an incredible extent. And you're right. It's not efficient, and we do get in each other's way. I'm here, though, because I can't help but wonder if we can't just cut across the whole mess… Alexander's solution to the Gordian knot, right?" He made a chopping motion with his hand. " Ffft! Done."

"And put all the shipyard workers out of business?"

"They would keep working on the Los Angeles SSNs. Damn it, Commander, every one of the fancy electronic doodads on both the Seawolf and the Virginia could have been retrofitted into the L.A. boats, and for a fraction of the cost!

"If someone could just justify to me why we need this damned thing," Blakeslee said, gesturing at the Virginia's hull overhead. "You know and I know, America's biggest concern today is the goddamn al Qaeda. Terrorists don't have submarines and they don't have merchant fleets. They don't even have a navy. There is no power in the world today to match our surface navy. We are the undisputed masters of the world's sea lanes. Why, I ask you, do we need the Virginia program?"

Garrett gave Blakeslee a sidelong look. Was it possible the man was trying to goad him into opening up?

He took a deep breath. "Congressman, I'm sure you've seen more briefings and papers on the Virginia than I have. Virginia is the answer to Congress's original demands — that the Navy build a submarine utilizing the latest technology, capable of extended littoral operations, with the ability both to conduct missile bombardment of inland targets and to support special operations force insertions along any coast.

"Virginia possesses twelve vertical launch tubes for Tomahawk TLAM cruise missiles, letting her hit targets 1,600 miles from the ocean, and that means something like 80 to 90 percent of the world's land surface is within her reach. She has four torpedo tubes that can handle Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes, with a range of seven miles, or Harpoon antiship missiles with a range of eighty miles or better. She has facilities on board for SEALs or Marine Recon personnel, which she can put ashore anywhere in the world through a nine-man lockout trunk. She is as quiet as the Seawolf, which means she's ten times quieter than an improved L.A. boat… and that's in spite of being considerably smaller than Seawolf. Standard engineering doctrine holds that the larger you build the submarine, the easier it is to make it quiet.

"Why do we need submarines as opposed to the surface navy? Well, sometimes you want to show the flag, to let the other guy see you and think about how much firepower you have off his coast… and when that happens you send in a carrier battle group. But sometimes you don't want him to see you. You want to lurk off his coast or even slip inside his harbors to see what he's up to or tap into his submarine communications cables or drop off a team of SEALs, and for that you need a submersible, a very quiet submersible.

"As for who our enemies are going to be twenty years from now… or even next month, how the hell do we know? Iran was our bosom buddy in the seventies until their revolution turned them from ally to enemy. Five years later we were covertly helping out Saddam Hussein because Iraq was fighting Iran, and eight years after that we were at war with Iraq. The political situation throughout the world is always changing, and between global terrorism, high-seas piracy, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the Navy might find itself going into harm's way anywhere, at any time. A nuke or a bioterror warhead in the hands of a nation like… what country did you say a while ago? Lithuania. A nuke in Lithuania is just as dangerous, just as destabilizing, just as threatening as the same warhead in China.

"And, damn it, sir, to expect our fleet of L.A. boats to continue operations into the 2020s is like expecting today's Navy to continue employing World War II diesel boats. It's dangerous, it's ineffective, it's shortsighted, and it's stupid. We need the Virginia, and we need the boats that will follow her."

"But the Los Angeles-class subs will function quite well for the next ten years or so, Commander. And by then, we'll have even better technology. The Virginia and her sister units will be as obsolete as the Los Angeles, and the Navy will be looking to build still another high-tech and high-cost submarine! Am I right? Why not wait until then?"

Garrett waved an arm at a group of workers on the scaffolding overhead. "They're the reason why, at least in part.

"You know, Congressman, they say we're farther away, right now, today, from putting another man on the moon, than we were back in 1960 when Kennedy challenged us to a manned landing within the decade. The reason is that after the Apollo program was cancelled in the seventies, the team of engineers and technicians and trained construction workers who worked on Apollo had been scattered to the four winds.

"Well, sir, just like with Apollo, it takes years of work to design a new submarine, and years more of construction before the lead boat of a class is launched. That construction requires a small army of highly skilled and experienced workers. Without an ongoing series coming off the ways, that work force will be broken up and lost, wasted. We can't build a new submarine class from a standing start overnight. As it is, the Virginia here is doing pretty well. The original NSSN-Centurion studies were done in 1990. Fifteen years from initial cost and feasibility studies to commissioning is pretty damned good in anybody's book."

They continued to walk through the cavernous expanse of the assembly building. Blakeslee was quiet for a long time.

"Excellent speech, Commander," he said. "I wonder if I could lure you into a new career as my speech-writer."

"I'm happy as a sub driver, sir."

"Just kidding. I do appreciate your candor. You, my friend, face danger every time you set sail in one of those sealed coffins. I face danger of a different sort. One of the worst is that everyone tells me what they think I'd like to hear… not what I need to hear. Right now, the U.S. submarine program is in such an unholy tangle of turf wars and budget battles… I don't think anyone in Washington is seeing more than his or her tiny patch of ground. And you know as well as I do… the Navy's procurement office is as politically oriented as we are up on the Hill."

"Yes, sir. It leaves us working stiffs kind of caught in the middle sometimes."

"I can well imagine. What I'm interested in here today, Commander, is how you 'working stiffs,' as you put it, feel about the Virginia. Do you see her as a boondoggle? Politics as usual? Or is she a useful addition to the fleet?" He held up a cautioning hand. "I don't want the Navy's party line, Commander. What do you think?"

Garrett thought about that one for a moment. "Sir, I see her as a necessary, as a damned vital addition to the fleet. I do believe she's already the product of too many compromises, and I think those compromises will come back to haunt us. But the Los Angeles boats are aging, and we'll be striking a few of them every year from now on. We have three Seawolf SSNs… and the Carter was being modified as a deep-ocean research, search, and recovery special-mission submarine to replace the Parche before she was even launched. That leaves us with just two full-time Seawolf boats. Right now, the Virginia is all we have." He thought for a moment. "Congressman, we might not know who our future enemies are going to be, but we do know that the Navy's future battleground is going to be the third world littorals, shallow and hemmed-in waters in places like the Yellow Sea, the Arabian Gulf, and the Eastern Med. Places that sane submarine skippers dread like rush hour on the Washington Beltway. Yes, sir, we need the Virginia, and at least thirty more like her."

Blakeslee chuckled. "Well, I can't promise the thirty more, Commander. In fact, I can just about guarantee that you're not going to get them. The question before my panel now is whether to fund more than the first four and, if so, how many." The tune of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" keened from the congressman's jacket pocket. He reached in and pulled out his cell phone. "Excuse me, Commander. Duty calls."

Garrett stepped away to give the congressman privacy. Jesus… was all that storm and bluster just his way to probe Garrett's heart and mind, to find out what he really thought? Scary notion, that such a powerful congressman could be that cynical, that untrusting of what others told him.

Blakeslee rejoined him a moment later, pocketing the phone. "I'm afraid the tour has to be curtailed for the moment, Commander. That was my aide, back at the visitors' center. Something's come up."

"I'll walk you back over there, sir."

"Thank you. And… thank you for your insight, Commander. It's given me something to think about."

"You're aware, aren't you, sir, that we call the Appropriations Committee 'Santa Claus'?"

"I wasn't aware, but it seems appropriate, somehow."

Garrett's mouth quirked. "Well, yes, Santa Claus, there is a Virginia. And we need those other boats. Desperately."

Blakeslee laughed. "I'll see what I can do, Commander. You'll need a damned big stocking for that many submarines, though. Tell me… are you looking forward to your new command?"

Garrett looked up at the sleek, unfinished hull suspended overhead. "Yes, sir. More than I've looked forward to anything in my life."

"Even if she's a compromise?"

"Even if she's a compromise. Because in the long run, it's not the weapons load or the sonar suite or the technology that makes a sub work. It's the caliber of the men who sail on her, her crew. And we have the best in the world."

"I'm with you there, Commander. And I wish you the very best of luck with your new command."

Funny. The way Blakeslee said the words, it was as though he'd added "because you'll need it" at the end.