Making Waves

n January, Naval Special Warfare boat crew members squeezed in among mainframe computers, pipes, valves and bundles of wire running across the walls and ceiling of a ballistic missile submarine. The two three-member crews stood out in their camouflage fatigues and war paint among dozens of submariners clad in blue overalls. The special boat operators paced, waited and reviewed plans for their nighttime mission. At the submarine captain's order, they would climb out a narrow hatch to the USS Florida's hull, inflate rubber Zodiac rafts, toss them about 15 feet overboard, dive into the Atlantic Ocean, clamber onto the rafts, rev up their outboard motors and roar off to a small Bahamian island three miles away.

On the beach, the boat crews planned to pick up a handful of Navy SEALs. The commandos had been sent ashore in the same boats a few days earlier from the Florida to confirm intelligence and surveillance reports that a chemical weapons plant was operating on the island. The SEALs were to bring back soil samples to be tested for chemicals in the Florida's makeshift laboratory. If the soil tested positive and the SEALs confirmed the earlier intelligence reports, then the Florida's next mission would come from the president. The submarine would be ordered to unleash its Tomahawk cruise missiles on the factory.

No Tomahawks were launched, nor were any chemical weapons facilities spotted in the Bahamas last winter. The Florida's mission was part of a Navy experiment called Operation Giant Shadow. The operation tested new ways to use a Cold War weapon, the ballistic missile submarine, by linking it with unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles and special operations forces, to fight the new threats of the 21st century. Terrorists are "a different kind of enemy. They don't just stand there and fight. They scatter like cockroaches. If they know we're onto them, they're gone," says Navy Capt. William Toti, outlining one of the reasons for the two-week Giant Shadow experiment, which he oversaw.

Like all the military services, the Navy is transforming to fight in the post-Cold War world. In the 20th century, the Navy was a force of big ships-including now-extinct battleships and aging aircraft carriers still in use-designed for deep-sea, or blue-water, battles, such as those fought on the open ocean during World War II. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Navy lost its only remaining blue-water opponent. Since then, the Navy's 315-ship fleet increasingly has found itself supporting ground operations by launching Tomahawk missile strikes or sending fighter jets and helicopters roaring off carriers into regions where aircraft cannot be based.

For more than 10 years, the Navy has been testing strategy, tactics and technologies to better match the unconventional engagements U.S. forces now face. Instead of planning for blue-water battles, admirals now prepare for "brown-water" fights in shallow waters close to shore. These operations will be fought by swarms of high-speed, small boats, not the behemoths that now dominate the Navy. The service also has been studying network-centric warfare-the art of tying together ships, aircraft and other equipment using communication links, sensors and information systems. Recently, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark outlined a new strategy, known as Sea Power 21, which calls on naval forces to expand and fully integrate their role in joint operations around the globe by employing the technologies and warfighting methods the Navy has been honing for a decade.

"The 21st century sets the stage for tremendous increases in naval precision, reach and connectivity, ushering in a new era of joint operations effectiveness," Clark wrote in "Sea Power 21: Projecting Decisive Joint Capabilities" in the October 2002 issue of the Naval Institute's Proceedings. Clark wrote of a future in which naval operations will use "revolutionary information superiority and dispersed, networked force capabilities" to provide unprecedented offensive firepower known as "sea strike"; offer defense for both sea and land forces, known as "sea shield"; and give commanders the added independence of housing troops on ships, known as "sea basing." Clark says the Navy will refine the new concepts and technologies in sea trials. That's why Navy SEALS were packed in with submariners on the Florida searching for traces of chemicals in the middle of the Bahamian winter.

NEW MISSIONS

Just off the port side passageway on the second of the Florida's four decks is a narrow doorway that's always closed. A visitor might not even notice the door if not for a sign that warns unauthorized personnel to keep out. It might as well say, "Welcome to Missile Control," for it opens into the room where nuclear Armageddon could have been launched. Like the Navy's 17 other Ohio-class submarines, the Florida was designed to carry 24 Trident nuclear missiles. It takes four keys to launch just one missile and no single person on the ship, not even the captain, has access to all four.

Inside the missile control center, three battered leather chairs sit in front of two large 1960s-era computer control panels. Behind the chairs are four rows of tan mainframe computers, slightly smaller than refrigerators. Red and green lights on the right-hand panel track the temperature in each of the 24 missiles, alert the crew to possible leaks and signal whether the missile silos are locked. On the left is the fire control panel, whose knobs and dials must be turned before firing a missile. Just above the panel is a small safe, containing a fire-engine red trigger that permits launch of the 130,000-pound warheads.

None of the Navy's 18 ballistic missile submarines ever has unleashed its payload, nor did the Soviets ever detect any of the stealthy vessels as they slipped through the oceans at depths of 800 feet or more. As the threat of nuclear war waned, a series of strategic nuclear reviews revealed that the Pentagon no longer needed four of the $1.3 billion ballistic missile submarines, each one longer than the Washington Monument is tall. The Florida was the first of the four to lose its nukes and have its 40-foot long missile silos filled with seawater. The next stop would have been the scrap heap had Congress not stepped in.

Lawmakers instead opted to spend $3.9 billion to convert the four strategic missile subs into attack ships with Tomahawk nonnuclear guided missiles. Not only will the move provide the Navy a better return on the initial investment in the 20-year-old submarines-each of which has at least 20 more years of useful life-but it expands the service's capabilities.

The submarines' silos will be retrofitted to launch up to 154 Tomahawk missiles (about half as many as were used in the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War). Bedding, planning and storage areas will be expanded to accommodate as many as 66 Navy SEALs for up to 90 days. The subs also will receive upgrades that eventually could allow them to deploy unmanned aerial and sea vehicles and mini-submarines through their torpedo and missile tubes.

"From a special operations perspective, we are very excited because [the converted submarine] gives us several things we don't have," says Navy Capt. Randall Goodman, commodore of Navy Special Warfare Group 4, which includes the Navy SEALs aboard the Florida. In the past, Goodman says, commandos often have been confined to smaller attack submarines where space is so tight that they must sleep next to torpedoes and have no place to hang wet suits to dry after a mission. "We are evolving from a single-shot revolver to a machine gun," he says.

Rear Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, director of warfare integration and special assessment for the chief of naval operations, says submarine conversion shows that naval transformation is not solely a matter of buying new weapons. It also involves coming up with new ways to use existing resources. Other examples include using aircraft carriers as bases for ground forces, as the Navy did during the war in Afghanistan, or using multiple crews that travel to meet ships in ports around the world, allowing them to stay at sea for longer periods.

TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Still, Cosgriff says, buying and developing new technologies is vital if the Navy is to play an active and effective role in 21st century warfare and counterterrorism. In fiscal 2004, the Navy will spend a total of $14 billion for programs it considers transformational, including:

• $224 million to develop unmanned aerial vehicles for both attack and reconnaissance missions.
• $1.2 billion for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN-21 that will be built beginning in 2007.
• $1.1 billion for a family of surface combatants, including destroyers and cruisers.
• $2.2 billion for Joint Striker Fighters that will begin rolling off the production lines in 2006.

The craft likely will range from less than 100 feet to 250 feet in length. They will carry a broad array of sensors and thus fewer crew members than today's ships. The Navy has told contractors that the littoral ships should cost no more than $220 million each. The service expects to buy as many as 60 of them. Cosgriff says the move toward an LCS fleet is bringing opposition from Navy traditionalists. "People are howling when they see the designs," he says. But that's to be expected. Buying small ships represents not only a technological shift, but also a cultural change for the Navy, Cosgriff adds.

Ronald O'Rourke, a Congressional Research Service analyst, says the Navy is developing a number of truly transformational technologies, including proposed unmanned vehicles in the air, on the oceans' surface, underwater and on the ground; as well as revolutionary concepts such as network-centric warfare and new ship deployment cycles. But the Navy has not done as good a job as the other services in selling lawmakers on what transformation entails, O'Rourke says. For example, Sea Power 21 is so broadly defined it could cover almost any concept or technology, he says. Lawmakers are less likely to spend money on ill-defined programs. "It's not just a marketing issue, a clear message is a way of keeping your eyes on the most important things you want to accomplish," O'Rourke says.

Robert Chapman, a private consultant who has worked for the Pentagon and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on undersea warfare projects, says the Navy has made little headway in transforming its force. He sees the proposed ballistic missile submarine conversion as little more than a thinly veiled attempt to hang on to aging weapons systems. "How can a submarine with a 40-foot hull operate in shallow waters?" says Chapman. He adds that the Navy probably could buy five smaller attack subs with brown-water capability for the nearly $1 billion it costs to convert a single ballistic missile sub.

But Robert Martinage, a senior analyst for the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessment, a defense think tank in Washington, contends that submarine conversion may be the best example of naval transformation because it makes a Cold War weapon useful in the 21st century and provides the unprecedented ability to launch cruise missiles from beneath the sea. "The ability to strike without warning is key," he says. At the same time, Martinage concedes that the Navy has not been as aggressive as the other services in moving toward a new era of warfare. "There hasn't been a wake-up call or a problem that's forced the Navy to think differently," he says.

Back on the Florida, transformation has run into rough seas.

"Captain to the bridge," shouts a submariner. Quickly, Lt. Cmdr. David Duryea reaches for the first of 37 rungs on the ladder he'll climb in almost total darkness from the control room straight up the sail to the bridge of the submarine. The thin, mustachioed skipper pushes open a hatch cover and pulls himself onto the submarine's top perch about 35 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.Duryea glances at the horizon, but it's not what lies ahead or above that receives his closest scrutiny. Duryea is worried about activity below him, specifically, the whitecaps crashing over the ship's hull.

Someday the Navy expects to launch and retrieve SEALs in mini-submarines, but for now, those small vehicles remain on the drawing table and Zodiac rafts will have to do. As a result, choppy seas can make or break a mission. Duryea takes a last look and then heads back down to the control room. He grabs a radio handset and announces on the intercom that he's calling off tonight's launch because of the rough water. "Since this is a peacetime evolution, there's no need to risk somebody's life," he says.

Transformation will wait another day.