When tracing the roots of the modern submarine, one is usually faced with a number of different places to start. Legend has it that Alexander the Great descended into the ocean in 332 B.C. near the city of Tyre, in a primitive diving bell. The great mind of Leonardo da Vinci is said to have created a primitive submersible boat of wooden frame design covered in goatskins, with oars providing propulsion through waterproof sweeps. A British contribution to early submarine concepts came in the late 1500s from William Bourne, a carpenter and gunmaker. It included the concept of double hull construction, as well as ballast and trim systems. The first concept for a military submarine came from a Dutch physicist, Cornelius van Drebbel. In addition to actually building and demonstrating a primitive submersible, he proposed a design specifically created to destroy other ships.

It was the United States (albeit still colonies in rebellion) that created the first workable military submarine design. In 1776, a Yale University student named David Bushnell designed the appropriately named Turtle. The Turtle was an egg-shaped submersible boat that had the ability to sneak up on a ship, submerge under the intended victim, bore a drill bit with a waterproof time bomb attached into the bottom of the hull, and escape before the bomb was detonated by a clockwork fuse. It was propelled by a hand-cranked screw, and had room for one overworked crewman.

On the night of September 6, 1776, Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Continental Army took the Turtle to attack HMS Eagle of the British squadron blockading Boston. But when he maneuvered underneath, he was unable to attach his bomb. During his escape, he was followed by British soldiers in a rowboat. Frantic, he released the bomb, which 2 exploded literally in the faces of his pursuers. Though all parties escaped unhurt, it was a promising start to the modern military submarine.

A more substantive advance was the Nautilus, designed by the American Robert Fulton, who would go on to design the first steam-boat. The Nautilus was a distinct improvement over the Turtle in that it cruised under the intended victim, towing the explosive bomb or torpedo, as it was then called, until the bomb contacted the target and detonated with a contact fuse. The design was an exceptional success, destroying a number of target vessels in test runs. The French, who were sufficiently impressed to award Fulton a contract, actually considered for a time using it in the planned invasion of Britain. By 1804 Fulton was demonstrating the boat to the British, who despised the idea for its underhanded nature and, more importantly, its potential to sweep British ships from coastal zones. In the end, Fulton returned to America to begin work on his steamboats.

It remained for the Americans to create a submarine that would actually sink an enemy vessel in wartime. In 1863 a submersible boat was designed by Confederate army officer Horace Hunley. His boat, the CSS H. L. Hunley, was propelled by eight men turning a hand-cranked propeller. For armament, an explosive mine or torpedo was secured to a long spar protruding out in front of the Hunley. The idea was for the Hunley to ram the spar torpedo into the side of a target ship, where it would be detonated.

Unfortunately the Hunley was difficult to handle, and several crews, along with her designer, were killed during test dives. Nevertheless on October 17, 1864, the Hunley attacked the Union steam corvette Housatonic in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. In the ensuing attack the Hunley sank the Housatonic, although she herself was also sunk. A submarine had finally drawn blood in combat.

Over the next four decades a number of different submarine designs evolved in various European countries. In the 1880s a really practical design was built in America by an Irish immigrant, John Holland. Originally backed by the Fenian Society (an early North American free Ireland society), it was designed to allow Irish separatists to attack units of the British fleet. In 1900 Holland won a submarine design competition held by the U.S. Navy. From this contract came the USS Holland (SS-1), the first practical combat submarine. The Holland included such innovative features as self-propelled torpedoes fired from a reloadable tube, a battery-powered electric motor for submerged operations, and an advanced hull shape to allow it to move efficiently through the seas. The design was so successful that the U.S. Navy eventually bought a total of seven Holland-designed boats. Ironically, the British even bought some of the Holland boats for the Royal Navy. Holland's company, the Electric Boat Company, continues to build submarines as part of General Dynamics Corporation.

The period before World War I saw a number of innovations in military submarines. This included the development of diesel engines, improved periscopes and torpedoes, and the development of wireless technology, which allowed them to be directed from shore bases. Within a month of the outbreak of World War I, the German Unterseeboot fleet, or U-boats as they came to be called, were sinking British naval units in the North Sea. In one well-known incident the elderly U-9 sank three British armored cruisers, causing over 1,400 casualties. Throughout the war, both the Allies and the Central Powers took a toll of each other's warships, especially in the Gallipoli Campaign in the Dardanelles.

During World War I the Germans consistently led the world in the production of new U-boats. But the international rules concerning attacks on merchant ships kept the Germans from fully utilizing their potential. Germany feared that unrestricted submarine warfare, with the practice of not warning the victim, might bring the United States into the war. By 1915 the need to isolate Britain from her sources of war supplies caused Kaiser Wilhelm to declare unrestricted submarine warfare an active policy. Soon German submarines were taking a huge toll of merchant shipping and threatening to win the war against Britain all on their own. But after the ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by U-20 in 1915, the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies. It would take two more years for the Allies to win the war and beat back the U-boat threat.

So important was the submarine in World War I that a whole new form of naval conflict, antisubmarine warfare (ASW), was born. From it came techniques such as the convoy and the Q-ship (armed merchant decoy), as well as weapons and sensors such as the antisubmarine detector (ASDIC/sonar), and the depth charge. And so deadly had the U-boats been that Germany was specifically banned from having them under the Treaty of Versailles. The victors of World War I split up the remaining U-boats for examination and testing. That might have been the end of military submarines except that the seeds of World War II were contained in the Treaty of Versailles, and the military submarine would continue to develop.

During the period between the world wars, submarine development continued at a steady pace. In the United States and Britain efforts were concentrated on the creation of long-range "fleet" submarines designed to support the battle fleets, while nations such as Japan, Russia, and Italy developed submarines more for coastal defense. Once Adolf Hitler had risen to power, Germany secretly began to rebuild its dreaded fleet of U-boats, in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. By the beginning of World War II, a number of improvements were made to the submarines themselves, such as torpedoes with magnetic fuses and sonars, and even small radar sets. And in Germany, the United States, and England, naval leaders had evolved very specific plans on how to best use these improvements.

By the outbreak of war in 1939, Germany had deployed her small fleet of U-boats at sea. Within hours, the U-30 sank the ocean liner Athena, signaling another round of unrestricted submarine warfare. Within a few weeks of the opening of hostilities, the U-boats had sunk a number of British warships and merchant vessels. The British responded with a series of patrols by their own fleet of submarines, damaging several German cruisers and sinking several U-boats. In addition, mindful of the damage inflicted upon merchant shipping in World War I, the British immediately instituted a system of transatlantic convoys and began to build up their ASW forces. But German fortunes soared with the capture of France and Norway in 1940, and once these prizes had been won, U-boats could be based much closer to the convoy lanes supplying Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic was on and would not be completely decided until the end of the war in 1945.

The Battle of the Atlantic was a battle of statistics: tonnage and numbers of ships sunk versus numbers of U-boats available and sunk. For Admiral Karl Donitz, the German U-boat commander, it was a battle to get the greatest number of U-boats possible out onto the convoy routes. To do this he implemented what were called wolf pack tactics, setting a large number (ten to fifteen) of U-boats onto a convoy all at the same time. For a while, particularly during 1941 and 1942, the tac-tics worked. No less a figure than Sir Winston Churchill was reported to have said, "The only thing that truly worried me was the U-boat menace." He had much to be worried about, for Admiral Donitz's U-boat force almost won the war by starving Great Britain into submission.

The British fought back though, using advanced tactics and equipment such as radar, escort corvettes, and frigates, and developing the small escort carrier.

In addition, the British had the ultimate secret weapon, Ultra. Ultra was the British program to penetrate German command communications, protected by the Enigma cipher system. Early in the war, with valuable contributions from the Poles and the French, England began to read an ever-growing flow of German messages. By 1941, through a combination of incredible technical analysis and outright theft of German cipher key books and captured Enigma equipment, the British were able to read virtually every message sent and received by the U-boats. Ultra allowed the British to route their convoys around known wolf packs and to start aggressively hunting the U-boats with aircraft and so-called hunter-killer groups. By 1943 the balance had turned decisively in favor of the Allies. Despite a number of German innovations such as the snorkel, homing torpedoes, and antisonar coatings, the battle was eventually won by the Allies.

In the Pacific, submarines actually won a major campaign against merchant shipping. In December 1941 Imperial Japan initiated a war of conquest against the Allies. At the start, things went very poorly for the United States. With most of their battleship force sunk or out of action after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the only way the Americans could strike back was with their well-developed force of fleet submarines. It took a while to get rolling, especially when eighteen months were needed to repair a series of faults with the American Mark 14 torpedo and its magnetic fuse, but by late 1943 the American subs were beginning to make a real difference in the amount of material getting to Japan's war industries. Under the command of Admiral Charles Lockwood, the American boats were starting to starve Japan into submission. In addition, they were taking an increasing toll of Japanese warships.

By the end of the war in 1945, American fleet subs had sunk about a third of all the Japanese warships destroyed, and over half of the merchant ships. These successes did not come without cost. Over fifty U.S. boats had their epitaph written in the words "overdue and presumed lost." Along with the boats went some of the very best of the U.S. skippers, men like "Mush" Morton of USS Wahoo, "Sam" Dealey of USS Harder, and Howard C. Gilmore of USS Growler. Overall the U.S. submarine forces had the highest percentage of losses of any branch of the U.S. Navy. The American sub forces quietly paid in blood and boats for their victory, and earned for themselves a nickname that would stick: the silent service.

Almost as soon as the Allies won their victory over the Axis powers, another conflict, more sinister in character, started up between the Soviet Union and its former allies in the west. During the war the Russians had built the world's largest force of submarines. With the coming of what came to be known as the Cold War, they continued to build even further. For the next forty-five years the western allies, formed into NATO, lived in deathly fear that the USSR would flood its force of over three hundred submarines into the sea lanes. This threat-that the Russians could repeat or even better the performance of the Germans during the world wars-generated the main Cold War naval mission of the NATO forces, antisubmarine warfare.

The first decade of the effort was accomplished primarily by force of numbers. Despite the hopes that a decisive submarine technology would be found, none was. Improvements in submarine and ASW technology would evolve slowly. The major bottleneck was in the area of propulsion. Simply put, none of the different propulsion technologies-diesel, hydrogen peroxide, or gasoline-had ever provided the sustained high underwater speeds needed. The answer to this problem, though, was about to be found in the United States.

The American propulsion breakthrough came from an unlikely source, a diminutive U.S. Navy captain named Hyman G. Rickover. Assigned after the war to the Navy's engineering branch, he was among the first to recognize the possibilities of creating small nuclear power plants that might be installed in submarines and surface ships. With these reactors, ships might steam tens of thousands of miles without refueling. For submarines in particular, it would mean freedom from having to come to the surface to obtain air for the diesel engines. In Rickover, and his newly created office of Director, Naval Reactors (DNR), the Navy had found the perfect blend of engineer, political insider, and bureaucrat to bring the first nuclear ships to fruition.

Submarines were Rickover's first priority, and a contract was let in the early 1950s for construction of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics. Utilizing a pressurized water reactor to produce steam for turbines, the design was successful beyond the wildest dreams of now-Admiral Rickover and the Navy. Considering that she was only a proof-of-concept vessel or prototype (the U.S. Navy has always considered its submarine prototypes fleet units, not research vessels), albeit armed with a full suite of weapons and sensors, the achievements of Nautilus and her crew were staggering. They dominated virtually every NATO exercise they participated in. In addition, in 1957 Nautilus became the first ship to transit the Arctic from the Pacific to the Atlantic, opening a whole new area for submarine operations.

Following the Nautilus came a second prototype, the USS Seawolf (SSN-575), powered by a liquid sodium reactor. Designed to achieve higher power output within a smaller volume, the reactor proved troublesome and was eventually replaced with one of the pressurized water type. In addition, the United States undertook production of a small class of nuclear boats (six) based on the design of the Nautilus. Named for the first unit of the class, the USS Skate (SSN-578), they provided a vast base of experience for operating nuclear submarines, as well as being extremely useful fleet units.

Skate herself made history by being the first submarine to surface at the geographic North Pole. Other prototypes such as the USS Halibut (SSN-587) and the USS Triton (SSN-586) explored the possibilities of using nuclear submarines to launch cruise missiles, and operating as a radar picket (to extend radar coverage for aircraft carrier groups). In 1960 Triton made history by becoming the first submarine to circumnavigate the globe submerged. Under the command of one of the U.S. Navy's best-known submariners, Commander Edward Beach (best known for writing the naval classic Run Silent, Run Deep), Triton duplicated the course of navigator Ferdinand Magellan some four centuries earlier.

The early U.S. nuclear boats were limited to a top speed of about 20 knots, submerged or surfaced.[1] These early boats had been built around conventional hull forms and were thus limited by the horse-powerof their reactor plants and the drag from their hulls. By this time the United States had experimented with a teardrop-shaped prototype diesel-electric submarine, the USS Albacore, which was able to reach submerged speeds of over 30 knots.[2] Combining the hull of the Albacore with Rickover 's nuclear power plant, a new class of undersea hunter was born. USS Skipjack (SSN-585), the lead of a six-boat class, went to sea as the fastest submarine in the world. By 1960 the U.S. Navy had a fleet of nuclear submarines and a huge lead on the USSR and Great Britain, which had started their nuclear submarine programs later.

Along with the Skipjacks, another prototype boat was discreetly constructed to explore the possibility of a quiet SSN designed specifically to hunt other submarines. Named the USS Tullibee (SSN-597), she was the first SSN to have a large spherical sonar array in the bow, torpedo tubes amidships, and a quiet turboelectric drive system. And though she would have a history of engineering problems throughout her career (she was derisively known in Groton as Building 597), she introduced features that would be on every other class of SSN the United States has built.

Ever since the development of the first atomic weapons, the U.S. Navy had sought to develop a weapon system that would allow it to have a role in America's nuclear deterrence mission. Initially the Navy used carrier aircraft that could deliver the early nuclear weapons on one-way missions to their targets. What the Navy really wanted was to merge the new technologies of ballistic missiles, smaller thermonuclear weapons, inertial guidance systems, and nuclear submarines into a single weapon system. The program was called Polaris, and it became the top U.S. naval weapons development program of the 1950s. Pushed aggressively by Admiral Arleigh Burke, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and managed by an authentic programmatic genius in Rear Admiral "Red" Rayborne, the program moved forward at an amazing pace. By the late 1950s a small, reliable missile known as the Polaris A1 was ready to have a platform built for it. The problem was that submarine construction takes time, and the United States wanted to deploy the Polaris by 1960.

To accomplish this, Admiral Rickover had Electric Boat split one of the Skipjacks under construction (she was the original USS Scorpion) just aft of the sail and insert a plug containing sixteen Polaris launch tubes as well as all the missile launch controls and maintenance equipment. Christened the USS George Washington (SSBN-598), she would be the first of a five-boat class of fleet ballistic missile (FBM) submarines that would become the most powerful deterrence force in history. When the George Washington successfully test-fired two of the Polaris A1 missiles on July 20, 1960, off Cape Canaveral, Florida, the system became operational. Later that year she left on the first of what has become over three thousand FBM deterrence patrols, each lasting roughly sixty to seventy days. After each patrol, the onboard crew switches with a second crew, alternately known as "blue" and "gold," so that the high operational tempoes (time on patrol) can be maintained. So successful has the fleet ballistic missile program been that it is reported no U.S. FBM boat has ever been tracked for any duration. Thus the silent service entered a new era and added to their already formidable reputation. Within a year, a second batch of five missile boats, led by the USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608), was on order.

Following the Skipjack and George Washington-class boats, the United States embarked upon a new direction in nuclear submarine development. It was decided, after an analysis of early Soviet nuclear boat characteristics, that high speed (over 30 knots) was not necessarily desirable. Submarines traveling at high speed make a great deal of noise, which can be heard by other submarines and surface vessels. Thus diving depth and quietness rather than speed would become the qualities that characterized the American submarine designs of the 1960s.

The first of the new deep-diving/quiet boats was to be the USS Thresher (SSN-593). Unfortunately, during rectification trials off Nantucket in 1963, the Thresher was lost with her entire crew as well as several civilian and U.S. Navy "riders." In the investigation that followed, it was determined that a brazed piping joint in the engineering spaces may have weakened during the shock trials and burst, causing massive flooding that prevented the boat from surfacing. The Subsafe program was later instituted by the U.S. Navy, which developed the deep-submergence rescue vehicle (DSRV) to rescue the crew of a sunken submarine. The class was continued, named after the next boat in line, USS Permit (SSN-594).

As the 1960s drew on, the U.S. Navy began a vast expansion of its nuclear submarine program. The plan was to build an additional thirty-one SSBNs as well as a new class of attack submarines. The ballistic missile boats would be armed with a new generation of ballistic missile, the Polaris A3, with a 2,500-mile range. In addition the SSNs were to be armed with the SUBROC, a submarine-launched rocket with a fifty-mile range and a nuclear depth charge capable of destroying enemy submarines. All this was part of the military buildup originally proposed by President John F. Kennedy and carried out by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. First on the list were the new FBM boats, or "boomers," as they were being called.

Starting with the basic plan of the USS George Washington, the designers sought to install all the quieting technology that had been incorporated into the Permit-class boats. In addition they made the missile section large enough to accommodate not only the new Polaris A3 missile but a new missile that would have superior range and multiple warheads, the Poseidon C3. Named for the lead boat in the class, USS Lafayette (SSBN-616), these boats were most impressive for their numbers built-thirty-one in all-and their stealth. And with the ability to upgrade their missile battery to the Poseidon C3 when it came on line in the 1970s and the Trident C4 in the 1980s, these boats were going to have a long service life. (As this book goes to press, about a third of the Lafayette-class boats are still in service.)

After the Lafayette program was underway, the Navy turned its attentions to the problem of an improved attack boat. Again, analysis of the submarines being produced by the USSR showed that deep-diving quiet boats were best. The lead boat of the new class was USS Sturgeon (SSN-637). Much like the Lafayette-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), this class was characterized by a relatively large production run-thirty-seven units-and reduced noise signature. This improvement did not come without cost though, as the top speed of the Sturgeon-class boats was down to around 25 knots.[3] Nevertheless they proved to be superb boats with excellent capabilities and were, along with the Permit-class and Skipjack-class boats, the backbone of the U.S. attack submarine force.

In the midst of all this growth and success in the submarine force came a tragedy. In 1968 one of the Skipjack-class boats, the USS Scorpion (SSN-589), went missing while returning from a regular patrol in the Mediterranean. For the first time in modern U.S. submarine operations the words "overdue and presumed lost" were used to inform the world of a possible SSN loss during normal patrol operations.

^{USS Los Angeles (SSN-688). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

While the exact method of location is still not openly known, it appears that the U.S. seabed-based sound listening (SOSUS) network heard an explosion from Scorpion. Later that year a survey expedition, utilizing the bathyscaphe Trieste, located the wreck near the Azores, relatively intact on the seabed. It was concluded her loss may have been due to an internal explosion, though the exact cause has never officially been announced.[4]

On a more positive note, the Navy built several new prototype submarines to explore new propulsion technologies. The USS Glenard P. Lipscomb (SSN-685) was designed to look again into the feasibility of using a turbine-electric drive, while the Narwhal (SSN-671) carried a prototype reactor using natural circulation rather than pumps, which can be very noisy, to move coolant through the reactor system. While they did provide useful data for future submarine designs, neither boat was considered to be particularly successful. With this lack of a propulsion breakthrough, the stage was set for the fight over the design of the next generation of nuclear submarines.

^{Nuclear-propelled strategic missile submarine USS Ohio (SSBN-726), during sea trials. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY WILLIAM GARLINGHOUSE}

In the late 1960s, the U.S. intelligence community began to receive disturbing indications that the nuclear submarines of the Soviet Union had much higher performance capabilities than previously thought. A debate broke out between Admiral Rickover at the Naval Reactors Branch and the Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) over the direction of the next generation of attack submarines. Rickover felt that what was needed was a quiet, high-speed (over 35 knots) attack submarine able to support the carrier battle groups deployed by the U.S. Navy. Navsea was supportive of a design called Conform, utilizing a natural circulation reactor, which would recover the speed loss of the Permits and Sturgeons (down from 30 knots to 25 knots) and improve the radiated noise levels.[5] Eventually Rickover won out, and a twelveship class, its lead boat to be named USS Los Angeles (SSN-688), was planned, with Electric Boat as the prime contractor.

The Los Angeles-class boats delivered their promise of high speed as well as being the quietest attack submarines ever created up to that time. The price they paid for that speed was that their hulls were thinned; they could dive only to about three-fourths the depth of the Sturgeon and Permit classes (approximately 950 feet/300 meters).[6] In addition habitability suffered, with a greater percentage of the crew having to rotate bunks (called "hot bunking"). Finally, the Navy and Electric Boat had significant financial and program management problems, along with a desire to expand the class more quickly, leading to a second-source contract for construction to Newport News-Tenneco. In spite of this, the first Los Angeles-class boats came on line in the late 1970s and immediately set new standards for quiet operations and speed. Some sixty-two Los Angeles-class boats would eventually be contracted, making it easily the largest class of nuclear submarines ever built.

In addition a whole new series of submarine weapons came on line in the late 1970s and 1980s, including the new Mod 4 and ADCAP versions of the Mark (Mk) 48 torpedo; the UGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile; and three separate versions of the R/B/UGM-109 Tomahawk missile for nuclear land attack, antiship use, and conventional land attack. All of these new weapons, combined with the addition of a vertical launch system and stowage for twelve Tomahawk missiles on the Los Angeles-class boats, suddenly made U.S. SSNs capable of a whole range of missions that Admiral Rickover had not dreamed of when he first pushed through the proposal for Nautilus in the 1950s.

The new class of boomer was somewhat clearer to design: the primary criterion was stealth. When the first boat of the new class, the USS Ohio (SSBN-724), appeared, she was reported to radiate less noise than the surrounding ocean and surface traffic, making the Ohios the quietest submarines ever to take to sea. Another major improvement was the number of missiles carried. All previous SSBNs produced by the United States had sixteen missile tubes. The Ohio class has twenty-four missile tubes, with a diameter large enough to accommodate not only the Trident C4 missile (the replacement for the Poseidon C3), but also the Trident D5 missile. The Trident D5 had significant improvements in both range and accuracy, making it the most powerful component in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Under the terms of the START-II treaty signed in 1991, the bulk of the U.S. strategic nuclear strike power will be carried on the Ohios.

With the coming of a new series of arms limitation treaties (the START series), the United States does not have any plans to build a new class of SSBNs. In fact, the Ohios were built with enough growth potential in their design that service lives of thirty-five to forty years are entirely possible, and if replacements are required, they won't be needed until around the year 2015.

Attack boats are another thing entirely. A follow-on to the Los Angeles class has been planned for some time, and the lead boat of the new class, USS Seawolf (SSN-21), is due to come on line in the late 1990s. The Seawolf design makes good virtually all the shortcomings of the Los Angeles-class boats, particularly in the areas of depth (back to approximately 1,300 feet/400 meters), habitability (improved crew comfort), and weapons load (a combination of fifty weapons).[7] Such things come at a severe cost though, both in money and size. Seawolf is huge, over 9,100 tons displacement, making it the largest attack submarine in the world other than the Russian Oscar-class guided missile boats. And with a cost at this writing of over $2 billion per copy, the Seawolf production run is currently limited to only two units.

As production of the Los Angeles and Ohio classes winds down, and with the Seawolf program being terminated early, the future of the U.S. nuclear submarine force is in doubt for the first time in forty-five years. What has been the premier weapons system of the Cold War now seems to be a system in search of a mission and an audience. We will explore the future later on, but first let's look at the present, and what the taxpayers have bought for themselves and their silent warriors.

It sounds so simple: building the boat. Yet this is a process that starts years before the submarine enters the fleet. Remember, in 1969 the U.S. Navy was considering the design of the Los Angeles-class submarines, which began to enter the fleet some seven years later. Even today, if you could order one (the line is being shut down to produce the Seawolf-class boats), it takes six years from contract signing by the Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) in Arlington, Virginia, until the completed boat is commissioned into the force. This process starts in the steel mills of the eastern United States and the computers of the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics. It also starts in the cities and towns of America, where the raw materials for the crews are born, raised, and educated. Let us take a quick look at how it is all done.

It's hard to separate the steel and electronics of the boat from the flesh and blood of the men who will serve as her crew. In a manner of speaking, the crew is a part of that machine headed to sea. I suppose if robots could do the job of men, they would have taken over the submarine force by now. But the day when a robot can survive the shock of an explosion, the rush of flooding water, and have the cunning of a man is still years away. And until that day comes, men will go into the sea in the steel cylinders called submarines.

Where the crew come from is, quite simply, everywhere. From every town and village, from the largest inner city, the suburbs, and the rural countryside. What motivates each of them is probably a little different. For Admiral Chester Nimitz, the World War II Commander in Chief of the Pacific and himself an early submariner, it was the desire to see a body of water larger than the mud puddles of west Texas. For some who want submarines, it is the desire to work on one of the most powerful and sophisticated pieces of machinery ever built. Others see the Navy and the submarine service as a way out of the poverty and despair of whatever situation they may have been born into. Whatever the reasons, they have all come to the Navy to find something to build their lives around.

Let's say that a young man who has graduated from high school wishes to join the Navy and "see the world" from the voyages of a submarine. That young man (sorry, ladies-men only on subs at the time this book is being written) would probably apply at his local recruiting office. From here he is transported to the local personnel recruiting depot for basic training. Some weeks later, he moves on to his specialty-electronics, sonar, machinery, etc.-or "A" school, which gives him the skills necessary for his job when he joins the boat. If he has decided to select nuclear power as his specialty, he goes to six months of nuclear power school (NPS) in Orlando, Florida, followed by six months of training on one of the nuclear reactor prototypes. Assuming that he has selected submarines as his service, the young recruit is next headed to the home of the submarine, the U.S. Navy Submarine Base in Groton, Connecticut, to attend Submarine School. Sub school teaches the recruit the basics of what he needs to know about life aboard submarines. From here he moves onto the crew of a boat for his first tour, which will probably last a couple of years.

One of the advantages the submarine service has in attracting the cream of the Navy's new recruits is money. Ordinarily a new sailor who selects nuclear power as his specialty would be given the rank of seaman apprentice, but the submarine service immediately makes a new recruit a petty officer. This is important because of the pay differential. While it might not look like much of a difference, it can be enough to let a young man get married so that he can start and support a family. The submarine service asks much of the young men who drive their boats, and the need for every sailor to have a home and someone in it is a cornerstone of their tradition.

Once aboard his first boat, the new crew member's first major career task will be to qualify for his "dolphins," which certifies him as a submariner. From there, he is expected to take his qualification boards and move up the promotion ladder. After this first tour, if he chooses to reenlist (and many do) he will probably be given the opportunity to move to one of the various schools as an instructor. This might be at one of the reactor prototypes or the firefighting school in New London. Wherever it is, he will be asked to put back into the new recruits some of the knowledge and experience he has gained. And this is the cycle that he will follow for most of his career.

Qualify and earn promotion, that is the key. Eventually the submariner might be given the chance to become a warrant officer, or perhaps go to college to become an officer, or "mustang," as they are known in the Navy. For those choosing to remain as enlisted men, the ultimate honor is to make the rank of master chief, who is usually given the title Chief of the Boat, or COB, on a submarine. This position is considered the equivalent of the executive officer (XO), in charge of the enlisted men on a boat. These are frequently well-educated men with graduate degrees. And to say that the commanding officers (COs) of submarines respect their opinions is something of an understatement. If anything set our service apart from that of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, it was the cohesion or "glue" that our noncommissioned officers provided the Navy. They are the keepers of what corporate America might call corporate memory or tribal knowledge, or what in the Navy they just call tradition.

The route of an officer is somewhat different from that of the enlisted men. For starters, the Navy is rather particular about who gets to drive their nuclear boats. So while the Navy might be satisfied with a psychology or history major driving an F-14 Tomcat or Aegis cruiser around the block, for their nuclear officers they want engineers. Or, more correctly, university graduates with hard science degrees. There are several ways for a young man to get into this career path. Certainly the most conventional route is the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. There also is the Reserve Officers Training Program (ROTC) in place at many U.S. college campuses. This four-year program helps provide tuition, books, and a small monthly stipend to help support the young man, who is commissioned an ensign when he graduates. The final way for college graduates is just to volunteer through the Officers Candidate School (OCS) program. In this case they will be put through a three-month training program, hence their nickname of "ninety-day wonders," after which they are also commissioned as ensigns.

The first step on the road to becoming a U.S. Navy submarine officer starts with selection by the Director, Naval Reactors (DNR-NAVSEA Code-082E). This involves a series of personal interviews with the DNR (a four-star admiral no less) to assess the candidate's technical knowledge and ability to handle stress. When Admiral Rickover used to handle these interviews, the questions took on a sometimes bizarre and personal nature, but as people in the submarine community will tell you, it seems to have produced a very capable corps of submarine officers. At this point the new submarine officer heads off to a year at NPS and the reactor prototype schools.

Once this is completed, he will be sent to the Submarine Officers Basic Course (SOBC) at Groton, Connecticut. SOBC takes three months and is roughly equivalent to the enlisted men's Submarine School course. Upon completion of the SOBC, he finally is assigned to his first boat, where he will probably spend the next two to three years. Much like his enlisted counterparts, he will spend much of his time standing watches and qualifying for his "dolphins." He will also be assessed in his ability to handle and lead the men assigned to his division and watches. Even at this stage of a young officer's career, he is being tested for his ability to command a boat in the future. During his first sub tour he will take the engineer's exam, again supervised by personnel from DNR. This is a critical exam because it is the first major stay/leave criterion, allowing him to stay in submarines or pointing him to some other part of the Navy. Success means that the officer is now qualified to be assigned as chief engineer of a boat. From here he will probably do a shore tour on staff at a sub squadron or as an instructor at one of the schools. He also will probably have been promoted to lieutenant by now.

After the shore tour the officer, now not so young, returns to the submarine school at Groton for another six-month training course. This one, known as the Submarine Officers Advanced Course (SOAC), is designed to prepare and qualify the officer as a department head-engineering, navigation/operations, weapons, etc.-on a boat. It is also one of the required steps on the road to command of a boat. Now the officer heads back to a boat for his three-year department head tour. By now a senior lieutenant, he is ready to screen for the big step on the road to command of his own boat, becoming an Executive Officer (XO). After he has screened for XO, his next training course is the three-month Prospective Executive Officers (PXOs) course, which qualifies the officer for his tour as Executive Officer of an SSN or SSBN. If he successfully completes his XO tour, he will probably head for a shore tour, possibly in one of the many joint billets that are considered so important to the career of American military officers. From here he is selected for the rank of commander, screens for command, and heads to the Prospective Commanding Officers (PCO) course and, finally, to command of his own boat.

This last step, the PCO course, should not be thought of lightly. Much has been made of the U.S. Navy's fixation with nuclear reactor safety when selecting skippers. A good record with power plants is certainly one of the major selection criteria for command. The Navy feels, probably with good reason, that they must have a perfect operating record for the American public to allow them to continue operating ships and submarines with nuclear power. With this said, though, it is the PCO course that actually qualifies a man to command one of the U.S. Navy's boats and not the scores on his engineering exams.

The PCO course was created in 1946 by James Forrestal, then Secretary of the Navy and later Secretary of Defense. It allows the submarine service to have total autonomy in the selection and training of its submarine skippers. Certainly, advanced training programs like Top Gun-for U.S. Navy and Marine fighter pilots-Red Flag-for U.S. Air Force aircrews-and the National Training Center-for U.S. Army units-are better known to the public, but the submarine PCO course is easily the equal of any of these. Successful completion of the PCO course is mandatory if a man is ever to command a U.S. nuclear submarine. Another aspect of the PCO course that is not generally known is exactly what the curriculum consists of. For the record, each course, which is approximately six months long and enrolls between ten and twelve officers, teaches them the tactical and operational intricacies of commanding a U.S. nuclear submarine.

During the ensuing six months, the prospective CO will practice approaches and fire something like five to seven "live" (exercise) weapons (Mk 48s, Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles) under a variety of conditions. The course curriculum is both wide and varied, with improvements and changes being made after each and every course. The challenge for the instructors of the PCO course is that in just a dozen years, they have gone from a course with only one primary weapon (torpedoes) and mission (ASW), to having the broadest range of missions-ASW, antishipping, mining, strike warfare, intelligence gathering, etc.-and weapons-torpedoes, missiles, and mines-in the entire U.S. Navy. And as in the submarine qualification courses of other countries, especially the Royal Navy's Perisher course, any miscue or mistake can be reason enough for an officer to be disqualified.

At the end of the six months, if he has completed all aspects of the course, and if the instructor feels he is both qualified and ready, the PCO student graduates. At this moment he will have achieved the goal of every submarine officer, command of his own boat.

Let me try to give you the condensed version of how an Improved Los Angeles (688I) is built.

The first step in the process is for the Navy to decide that they want to build a boat. This decision is made in the Undersea Warfare Office of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV). Until recently this office was known as OP-02 and was headed by Vice Admiral Roger F. Bacon, USN. In November 1992, through an OPNAV reorganization, this office was renamed N-87 and is now headed by Rear Admiral Thomas D. Ryan, USN (Director, Undersea Warfare Division). It is here that the requirements for such boats are established and the request for proposal is developed. This is usually done in batches or "flights" of boats to a particular shipyard. For our purposes, we will assume that the builder is the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation. Their yard at Groton, Connecticut, would submit a bid to Code 92 (attack submarines) at Navsea, and after a series of negotiations, the contract to build the boat would be awarded. From here the funding for the boat would have to be submitted in the president's defense budget, approved by Congress, and the money allocated in the federal budget.

Once the boat has been approved, the actual process of construction begins. The first step in the process is to order items with long lead times, like the nuclear reactor, and heavy machinery, like reduction gears and turbines. The reactor, in this case a General Electric S6G, is ordered and supplied as a piece of government-furnished equipment by Code-082E at Navsea, the Office of the Director of Naval Reactors (DNR).

A year or two later, when these items begin to show up at Electric Boat-known simply in the Navy as "EB"-the actual construction of the boat begins. The first step is the construction of the pressure hull. EB manufactures its own pressure hull barrel sections in a special facility at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, which takes three-inch-thick hardened steel plates and works them into the curved sections. The sections are carefully welded together to make up the barrel sections, which are barged to the EB yard at Groton. The work now proceeds to the huge building shed at EB. Here the hull sections are welded together into a single long cylinder to form the pressure hull. It is miserable work, with the metal of the barrel sections having to be heated to 140degF/64degC just to prepare for welding. Each section is then hand-welded to the next by men often on the verge of heat prostration, exhaustion, and dehydration. Men must do this work because no machine can do the job to the standards of Navsea and DNR, and even this work must be checked by Navy inspectors armed with mirrors and X-ray machines. The individual sections of the hull are packed with items that are too big to install later, such as the reactor, torpedo and vertical launch system (VLS) tubes, and the turbines.

Once the cylinder of the pressure hull is finished, it is moved down the production way to have the machinery mounts, trim tanks, and internal deck structure installed. Now more and more components of the boat are delivered to the yard. Also during this time the first elements of the precommissioning unit (ships and submarines are known as "PCUs" before they are commissioned as "USS") crew begin to arrive at EB. These are the Navy personnel who will first take the new boat to sea. Usually the initial cadre is composed of a few officers, including the commissioning CO, and a number of chiefs. Their job will be to oversee the final fitting out of the boat, as well as being the Navy's representatives to EB for the commissioning. Eventually the ends of the hull are sealed with end caps, and the superstructure is installed.

When the last of the heavy structures like the conning tower/ fairwater are installed, and the hull is declared water-tight, it is time to roll the boat out of the building shed and launch it. By this time, the PCU crew has been completely assigned, working day to day with the EB personnel. Once the boat is launched, it is towed to a dock where the rest of the sub's equipment will be installed and tested. This can take between six and eight months, and it is made more difficult by the poor access to the interior of the boat at this time. Since the design of the 688Is makes no allowance for hard patches-points on the hull designed to be cut open-everything has to fit down the hatches leading into the interior of the sub.

From the Navy's point of view, the new boat really comes to life when the reactor is powered up, or made "critical," for the first time. Prior to this, the reactor fuel elements have been loaded and a series of mechanical and electrical tests made. Before the reactor is allowed to go critical, every element of the propulsion system will have been tested under real-world conditions for a substantial period of time. During a final test (known as a Reactor Safeguard Examination), which is supervised by personnel from DNR and certified personally by the DNR himself, the crew is tested to affirm that they meet the standards set down over forty years ago by Admiral Rickover when the Nautilus first made ready to go to sea. And for the rest of the boat's service life, a DNR team will periodically be sent down to the boat for a continuing series of Operational Reactor Safeguard Examinations (ORSEs).

By this time the precommissioning crew has grown to the point that they can take the boat out for her initial sea, or Alfa, trials, in which a mixed Navy/EB crew will take the boat out into the Atlantic for a series of test runs. These tests are always carefully monitored and escorted, and throughout the history of the nuclear propulsion program, the three DNRs (Admiral Rickover, Admiral McKee, and Admiral DeMars) have each embarked on every new nuclear submarine to personally supervise the first sea period of the Alfa trials themselves. This personal accountability and responsibility on the part of all three DNRs, as well as their perfect safety record, has gone a long way in building confidence with the public, the Congress, and the administration in the U.S. Navy's ability to safely and successfully utilize nuclear power at sea.

When EB has finished building the boat to the contract specifications, it is time to finish training the crew and turning the boat into a warship. This process takes several more months. It includes weapons and tactical training, emergency procedures drills, navigation training, and actual weapons firings at the Atlantic undersea test and evaluation center (AUTEC) range down in the Bahamas. Located in the waters off Andros Island, this is an instrumented range where submarines and their crews can practice the process of operating their boat and learning to "fight" it. Somewhere during this process, the boat and her crew pass the point where they become one great war machine.

Almost six years after the contract was first signed, the final step in the process takes place. Once the Navy has determined that the boat is in all ways ready to enter the fleet, a commissioning date is scheduled, with the ceremony to be held either in Groton or Norfolk.

On this day the boat's name becomes official, the crew of "plank owners" (the original crew at the time of commissioning) is set, and the PCU submarine becomes a U.S. Navy submarine. Usually, high-ranking Navy and political figures give speeches, the commissioning captain gets to speak a few words about what this day means to him and the crew, and then, at a special moment in the ceremony, the commissioning pennant is broken out and the crew, adorned in their best Navy whites, rushes aboard and mans the boat for the first time in her official Navy career.

At this point the boat actually enters service with the fleet. But if the crew think they have seen the last of the builder's yard, they are mistaken. After the boat goes on its initial shakedown cruise, it is sent back to the yard for what is known as the Post Shakedown Availability (PSA) period. This involves taking the boat back to the yard and fitting all of the new equipment modifications that have evolved since the initial contract was signed. In addition, any warranty repairs that have become necessary will be done at this time. Following the PSA period, it will be time to head out to her new home port and the first real missions for the fleet. There probably will be only one or two of these before the CO gets word his relief is being sent. And when the commissioning captain leaves the boat, she really does belong to the fleet and the string of men who will command and sail her.

Once a boat has been commissioned into the fleet, it will be assigned to duty at one of the submarine bases scattered throughout the United States. These bases have the job of providing administrative and maintenance support to a boat, as well as providing housing and sustenance to her crew. Their facilities range from the ultramodern Trident facilities at Bangor, Washington, and Kings Bay, Georgia, to the turn-of-the-century New England charms of Groton, Connecticut. For the crews of the boats, these places mean home and family. Let's look at them.

Out in the Pacific are a number of bases supporting nuclear submarine operations. These include Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Ballast Point in San Diego, California; and Bangor, Washington. The most modern of these is the huge base at Bangor, designed to support operations of the Ohio-class SSBNs and their Trident missiles. It is located on Washington's Puget Sound, nestled into the trees of Kitsap Peninsula. Built in the 1970s specifically to support Trident operations, this is a huge facility with room to support a squadron of eight Ohio-class submarines. Currently this is Submarine Squadron (SUBRON) 17. Those who have had the pleasure to serve at Bangor have often called it one of the most comfortable and modern duty stations in the entire U.S. Navy. Also located at Bangor is Submarine Group (SUBGRU) 9. It supervises all of the submarine activities in the Pacific Northwest, including the permanent facilities for basing, overhaul, and rework at Bremerton, Washington. Technically, SUBRON 17 at Bangor is also subordinate to SUBGRU 9.

Down in San Diego is the sub base at Ballast Point. While the permanent facilities at this location are not as developed as other bases (it is literally carved into the side of Point Loma), it is located adjacent to the immense naval facilities in San Diego, and considered by the sub crews and their families a great place to be based.

Though the permanent facilities at Ballast Point are not as well developed as Bangor and some of the other bases, it has an amazing array of submarine tenders, floating drydocks, and other support ships to provide infrastructure for the many boats and submersibles based there. The major submarine organization located at Ballast Point is SUBGRU 5, which has a number of subordinate units in addition to several attached SSNs and a tender. The first is Submarine Development Group (SUBDEVGRU) 1, which is equipped with several tenders and a rescue ship, as well as two research submersibles and the two DSRV rescue submarines. Also subordinate to SUBGRU 5 are SUBRON 3, with nine SSNs and a tender, as well as SUBRON 11, with seven SSNs and a tender.

Farther out in the Pacific is the submarine base at Pearl Harbor. Most of the facilities at Pearl Harbor date back to World War II, when the Pacific submarine force underwent a huge expansion to support the offensive operations against Japan. Today the base is still vital to submarine operations in the Pacific. The headquarters organization for the Pacific fleet, Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC) is based here with a tender forward deployed at Guam. Subordinate to COMSUBPAC at Pearl Harbor are SUBRON 1 with eight SSNs and SUBRON 7 with ten SSNs. This large concentration of subs is designed to support U.S. Navy operations in the western Pacific, and boats from Pearl Harbor will frequently be assigned to support carrier groups as they rotate through the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

The deepest roots of the U.S. submarine forces are back in the Atlantic. Here is where the boats are built and tested, and where most of the institutional infrastructure exists. This is also where the deepest cuts have occurred, and will probably continue to be made in the months and years to come. The winning of the Cold War has not been kind to the submarine force in the Atlantic fleet, and already one major base at Holy Loch, Scotland, with its assigned SUBRON 14 (nine SSBNs and a tender) has been completely closed down. As the submarine force continues to draw down, it is sometimes ironic to think that the Atlantic SSN/SSBN force, which did so much to keep the peace and win the Cold War, will be decimated by the victory they were so helpful in forging.

The headquarters for Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet (COMSUBLANT) is located at the sprawling U.S. naval facility in Norfolk, Virginia. From here COMSUBLANT controls the largest force of SSNs and SSBNs in the U.S. Navy, at a number of different facilities. Farthest from home are SUBGRU 8 and SUBRON 22 (one submarine tender) based at La Maddalena, Sardinia. Though they do not have any submarines directly attached, these two units directly support the very active U.S. submarine operations in the Mediterranean Sea.

Closer to home, the Atlantic SSBN force is controlled by SUBGRU 10 at Kings Bay, Georgia. This includes SUBRON 16 with the last of the Trident I/C4-equipped Lafayette-class boats. Also under SUBGRU 10 at Kings Bay is SUBRON 20, with a force of five or six Ohio-class SSBNs and their Trident missiles. Essentially duplicating the facilities at Bangor, Washington, Kings Bay is another of the new generation of sub bases developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While the permanent facilities are quite nice, saying that Kings Bay is a pork barrel base is something of an understatement. Called the "Jimmy Carter memorial submarine base" by many people in the submarine force, it is something of a concession to the power of the State of Georgia, especially to Senator Sam Nunn and former president Jimmy Carter.

The other major facility on the Atlantic coast is the sub base at Groton, Connecticut. Let's go there now and get to know more about "the home of the dolphins."

If you drive or take a train northeast from New York City, you will come eventually to the quiet seacoast town of Groton, Connecticut. Here in this little New England seaport you will find the institutional womb of the U.S. submarine force, the U.S. Submarine Base. Within a few miles of this base is the EB building yard, as well as the schools and facilities where virtually every U.S. submariner will, at some time or another, spend time. The most important organization based here is SUBGRU 2. Based in a handsome turn-of-the-century building on the waterfront, it is the command organization for all attack submarines on the Atlantic coast. Currently it is commanded by Rear Admiral David M. Gobel, USN. This includes SUBRON 2 with ten SSNs, two support ships, and the nuclear-powered research submarine NR-1; SUBRON 10 with five SSNs and a support vessel; and SUBDEVRON 12 with six SSNs. In addition to the Groton-based units, SUBRON 2 also controls SUBRON 4 in Charleston, South Carolina (ten SSNs and a tender), as well as SUBRON 6 (seven SSNs and a tender) and SUBRON 8 (ten SSNs and a tender) in Norfolk, Virginia.

As you stroll along the Groton waterfront-and I recommend that you have an escort-you will see almost the full range of SSNs in the U.S. Navy, from the old Permit-class boats currently undergoing decommissioning, to the newest 688I-class boats like the USS Miami (SSN-755). At times it is a place of bizarre contrasts, as the beauty of the New England coastline merges with the low, dark, ominous shapes of the boats. Of particular interest is the dock leading to the boats of SUBDEVRON 12. This is the unit tasked with evaluating new equipment and tactics that will be utilized by the rest of the submarine force. For example, USS Memphis (SSN-691) is currently evaluating the first of the nonpenetrating mast periscope systems that will probably become standard on all new submarines built by the United States.

If you walk up the hill you come to the part of the base that houses the various facilities of the Submarine School. As the primary training pipeline for virtually every U.S. submariner, it is held in special reverence by the men of the U.S. submarine force. In the sprawl of dormitory-style housing, classrooms, and other buildings are some of the most sophisticated training devices ever designed. Not only do these facilities support the Submarine School with its new officer and enlisted recruits, they also provide periodic refresher training for submarine crews when they are in port. Many of the skills taught in these trainers are called brittle or perishable, since they may be forgotten if not practiced regularly.

One whole building is devoted to ship control trainers, where officers and men can learn how to control every type of submarine in the U.S. inventory. The trainers can teach you everything from how to do "angles and dangles"-maneuvering the helmsman and planesman control consoles-to the ever-popular "emergency blow." The trainers resemble those used to teach fighter pilots, and are exact replicas of the control rooms of the subs they represent.

Another trainer that will stun the untrained observer is the "buttercup," or flooding trainer. This is essentially a huge swimming pool with a replica of a submarine machinery room inside. From a control room in the side of the trainer, instructors can teach a group of men in real-world conditions how to control flooding casualties ranging from pinpoint leaks in pipes to a huge leak, over 1,000 gallons/3,375 liters per minute, in a main seawater flange connection. The idea is to control a series of leaks around the trainer that can fill it in just a matter of minutes. The training scenarios assume the feeling of a frantic fight for survival, and the crews that take the course love it for the confidence it builds and hate it for the discomfort it generates. If they do it right, the water will be roughly up to their waists if, and when, they finally control the flooding. I should say that the water for this trainer comes from a 20,000-gallon storage tank and is very cold.

Of all the trainers at Groton, none is more impressive than the firefighting trainer in the new facility at Street Hall. This new facility is a positive response to the firefighting casualties incurred on the USS Bonefish (SS-582) and the USS Stark (FFG-31) during the 1980s. Where previously firefighting training was conducted inside a large sewer conduit filled with blazing diesel fuel, it is now conducted in a state-of-the-art trainer that can simulate virtually every fire situation and condition that a submarine sailor might encounter. The trainer replicates, much like the flooding trainer, an engine room on an SSN. Placed strategically around the trainer are a series of propane burners designed to simulate hydraulic oil, fuel oil, electrical, and insulation (called lagging) fires.

After the crews don Nomex jumpsuits and select breathing gear-either a hose-fed compressed air mask from the Emergency Air Breathing (EAB) system or a walkaround breathing system called an Oxygen Breathing Apparatus (OBA), which uses a chemical cartridge to generate oxygen for the user-the drills begin. With all the burners lit, the temperature climbs rapidly toward the training maximum of 145degF/67degC, and there is a decided howl from the fire.

Training instructors are constantly supervising the trainees to make sure their equipment is functioning properly and they are breathing regularly, for above 130degF/58degC, the part of the brain that makes a human breathe automatically shuts down, forcing the trainees to breathe consciously on their own. In addition, the instructors add chemically generated smoke, which can reduce visibility down to about 6 inches. It is like something out of Dante's Inferno, and while it is exciting to watch, even the knowledge that it is a drill cannot prevent feelings of terror.

To fight the simulated fires, the trainees are equipped with a variety of fire extinguishers, fire hoses, and a new thermal imaging device called NIFTI (Navy Infrared Thermal Imager-pronounced "nifty"). This British-built device allows a sailor to "see" a fire through the smoke by the heat signature of the fire. So sensitive is the NIFTI that a human body can be located by looking for the heat of human metabolism. The fire extinguishers are designed to fight a variety of different fires. The new AFFF extinguishers, which throw a soapy slurry, are the most popular. Finally, there are a number of fire hoses that can be used to fight the simulated fires.

All in all, the Street Hall facility is a model of high-fidelity training, and similar facilities are being built at other naval bases around the United States.

All of these trainers are very expensive to build, operate, and maintain; in a time of declining funding, they are naturally the targets of those who would cut the defense budget. Nevertheless, I would contend that it is better to decommission an SSN or two rather than give up the valuable training that these facilities provide to the force. For while it is tough to get the money to operate and maintain an asset like a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine, the sub is just a mass of metal without the men qualified to operate and fight her. The facilities at Groton and other bases are a tribute to the old saying that goes, "If you think training is expensive, try ignorance!"

For our guided tour of a 688I, we will profile the USS Miami (SSN-755), the third U.S. Navy vessel to bear the name. The previous Miamis included a double-ended gunboat that fought during the Civil War, and a Cleveland-class light cruiser during World War II. The cruiser Miami (CL-89) earned six battle stars during her service in the Pacific during World War II, and fought in such actions as the Marianas, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The current Miami was built at the Electric Boat Division yard of General Dynamics at Groton. She was launched November 12, 1988, and was commissioned June 30, 1990. She is assigned to SUBDEVRON 12 based at New London. She is some 362 feet long and 33 feet in diameter and has a crew of 13 officers and 120 enlisted men.

Her captain at the time of this writing is Commander Houston K. Jones, USN. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (class of 1974), and this is his first afloat command. He is generally considered to be one of the top U.S. skippers in the sub force today, not only by his fellow officers but by the captains of the boats of the Royal Navy and other NATO nations that he has mixed it up with during various exercises. His executive officer is Lieutenant Commander Mark Wootten, USN. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (class of 1978), and is on the track to obtain a submarine command himself.

Miami is fortunate in that she is the first of the 688Is to be fitted with a complete BSY-1 combat system and all the other goodies planned for the class. The other boats of the group, starting with the USS San Juan (SSN-751), have less capable preproduction versions of the system and thus will have to await refits to move up to the full 688I standard. In addition, Miami is reported to have done 37 knots out on trials with her high-output reactor core. She is a fast, smart-looking boat with an excellent record thus far on exercises and patrols. Let's go aboard and take a look for ourselves.

As you walk across the gangplank onto the boat the first thing that strikes you is the straight and level nature of the hull. Several things account for this. First and foremost is the fact that for most of its length, the Los Angeles-class boat is a perfect 33-foot-diameter tube of steel. This is a function of her high speed requirement. Long, narrow hulls have less drag than the teardrop-shaped hulls that can be seen on earlier U.S. or British boats. And while this does make for a faster boat, it has some adverse effects on handling during operations. In addition, it is easy to tell that Miami is equipped with the Mk 32 VLS system, since it is sitting level in the water. The earlier Flight I boats, because they are not equipped with the VLS, always have a pronounced "nose up" attitude when they ride on the surface.

Another thing that you immediately notice is the long shroud running down the starboard side of the hull. This is the housing for the various parts of the TB-16 passive towed array sonar. Along the shroud runs a track that allows personnel on deck to secure themselves to the hull, if surface operations are required. As you step onto the hull, you immediately notice that it seems to be made up of a series of tiles or bricks. And when you step on them, they seem to "give," much like the padding under a carpet. This is the anechoic/decoupling coating designed to defeat active sonars as well as reduce the noise emitted by the boat's internal machinery. It covers the entire hull except for the hatches, control surfaces, and sonar dome/windows.

Forward toward the bow are the twelve hatches for the VLS missile launch tubes. The outer doors or caps for the four torpedo tubes are located, two to a side, below the waterline. Along the top of the casing, aligned along the center axis of the boat, are three hatches. The one just forward of the fairwater is the weapons loading hatch. Here, using a special set of loading gear, the various weapons fired from the torpedo room are loaded. Two more hatches aft of the fairwater are set aside for the more mundane job of personnel access. Both are equipped to act as airlocks in the event that a rescue submarine needs to lock on, or as a way for swimmers to leave the boat. The aft hatch leads into the machinery spaces aft of the reactor compartment. Entry into this area is strictly controlled. The other hatch, just aft of the fairwater, is the main entry point in the forward part of the boat.

The hull is composed of a series of rings or barrel sections, welded together at the building yard. The 33-foot-diameter hull is itself approximately 3 inches thick and composed of HY-80 high-tensile steel. At each end of the 360-foot-long hull is a hemispheric end cap, which is welded onto the cylinder formed by the barrel sections. The main ballast tanks are at the forward and aft ends of the hull, with the sonar dome mounted forward and the propulsion section and its control surfaces mounted aft. In addition, smaller variable ballast tanks, which are used to maintain the trim of the boat, are located inside the hull.

One final thing that comes to the viewer's eye is the detail work done by the designers to minimize any type of flow noise from the hull. All of the fittings, called capstans, used to secure the boat to the pier forward of the fairwater are mounted along the centerline, so that they are already in disturbed water and will not cause any other noise on their own. No expense is spared to make the hull clean of anything that might disturb the water flow and create noise. Even the huge seven-bladed propeller, made of a special bronze alloy, is specifically designed to prevent and delay the onset of cavitation.

If we were to move to the top of the fairwater, we could just squeeze into the tiny bridge area. It is extremely cramped and has only the most basic of navigational aids to support getting in and out of harbor. In the past, submarine captains actually used to fight their submarines from this position. But with the advent of nuclear-powered subs, which spend most of their time underwater-Miami is, in fact, more stable and faster submerged than surfaced-this position has become less important.

Just behind the bridge position are the masts containing the various sensors for the boat. These include the attack and search periscopes as well as the ESM, radar, and communications masts. Some of these masts actually penetrate the hull and provide the boat with its eyes and electronic ears to the world topside. In addition, a floating antenna is reeled out from a point on the after part of the fairwater to provide Miami with access to the Very Low Frequency (VLF) and Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) communications channels. It trails out several thousand feet behind the boat once she has dived and stabilized. In the floor of the bridge position is a small hatch leading down some three stories into the control room. As you finally drop into the hull, you are in the port side passageway, just forward of the control room.

Walking the few feet aft into the control room you are immediately struck by the fact that the air is clean and fresh and the room is brightly lit. And while the room is full of busy people and packed with gear, it is not really confining. One popular misconception is that if you are claustrophobic, you will not be able to live and work on a submarine-on the contrary, the very fact that over a hundred men are working, eating, and living in this confined metal tube can be reassuring.

In the middle of the control room is a raised platform with the periscopes in the middle of it. The forward part is the watch station for the officer of the deck (OOD). Here he has full view of all of Miami's various status boards ahead of him, access to the periscopes behind, as well as fire control to his right and ship control to his left. These are the weapons control consoles for the BSY-1 combat system, which is the heart of the Miami's fighting power. The ship control area is in the forward corner on the port side.

The navigation and plotting areas are at the rear of the compartment. Down the port side of the control room are the various navigational systems, including the new Nav-star global positioning system (GPS) receiver. It is most noticeable by the gap that it sits in. Where before there was a rack of navigational equipment that took up 4 to 6 cubic feet of volume, the GPS system, which gives a three-dimensional navigational fix accurate to within 9 feet/3 meters, is a wonder taking up only about 60 cubic inches. It derives its accuracy from a series of twenty-four satellites operating in low earth orbit. The readouts show the exact latitude and longitude, as well as a number of different useful functions. So accurate is the GPS system that some U.S. Navy ship captains have been able to make blind approaches to piers in heavy fog using only GPS as a reference. The only limitation to GPS is that the Miami must raise a mast, such as the search periscope, to obtain a. fix. To make up for this, Miami also has a ship's inertial navigational system (SINS) that keeps constant track of the sub's position through an advanced three-dimensional gyroscope system that senses relative motion from a known starting point. Proper use of SINS with periodic GPS updates helps keep the Miami within a few hundred feet of its planned track at all times.

The plotting area, aft of the periscopes, has a pair of automated plotting tables, though most of the movements are plotted by hand. Despite what one might think, most of the plotting of Miami's movements is done manually by a junior officer or enlisted man, on tracing paper over a standard navigational chart. Scattered throughout the passageways are a series of upright steel boxes secured to the bulkheads. They contain several complete sets of charts which cover the entire world, as well as detailed charts for specific areas to which the Miami might be tasked. In addition to the navigational instruments and plots, there are a number of instruments associated with the Miami's ability to work under the Arctic icepack. These include devices to obtain vertical traces of the bottom and ice floes, as well as various instruments to measure temperature and water depth.

The periscopes are mounted side by side, with the Type 2 attack scope to port and the Mk 18 search scope to the starboard. The Type 2 is a basic optical periscope with no advanced optics and only a simple daylight optical capability. The majority of the periscope work is done through the Type 18. It is the most advanced periscope currently fitted to a U.S. sub. In addition to its straight optical capability it has a low-light operating mode, which can be projected onto a number of television monitors around the boat. It is also equipped with a 70mm camera for taking periscope photos, as well as the readouts for the Electronic Support Measures (ESM) receiver mounted on top of the Type 18 mast. It also has an antenna for the GPS receiver mounted on it. This is a truly great scope, capable of almost any activity that might be asked of a periscope. The masts for the two scopes go up through the fairwater; they may be coated with a radar-absorbing material (known as RAM) to keep their radar signature down.

The ship control area, located in the forward portside corner, has three bucket seats-with seat belts-as well as room for another person to stand. Normally it is manned by two enlisted personnel who operate the diving planes and rudder (called the planesman and helmsman), and the diving officer and the chief of the watch controlling the ballast and trim. The planesman and helmsman are faced with aircraft-style control wheels, and sit facing a bank of control readouts and instruments. There is no view of the surrounding sea and even if there were, it would do little good. At depths over a few hundred feet very little light penetrates, and the sea becomes, as Jacques-Yves Cousteau calls it, "a dark and silent world."

Just behind the ship control area stands the diving officer, who is actually ordering the planesman and helmsman what to do and when. To his left is the position where the COB may sit, though others will frequently draw duty there. This is where the controls for the multitude of valves, tanks, and other equipment required to dive and surface the boat are located. Each man controls either the rudder and bow planes, or the horizontal stabilizer. Two-man control has been a hallmark of U.S. design philosophy for generations, and Miami is no different. For every primary system there is a backup, usually with a manual operating mode. Most noticeable of these are a pair of mushroom-shaped handles located at the top of the ballast control panel. These are the manual valves to conduct what is known as an emergency blow. In the event the boat needed to get "on the roof" in a hurry, the person at the ballast control panel would activate these two handles. These valves, which require no power of any kind, send high-pressure air directly from the air banks into the ballast tanks-when that happens, you're headed up fast. Early American SSNs did not have this feature, and this lack was felt to be a contributing cause of the loss of the Thresher in 1963.

Diving the boat is not the crash dive of 1950s submarine movies. In fact, it is a carefully controlled and balanced procedure that resembles a ballet danced by an elephant. First, the captain orders any personnel down from the bridge, and the closing of all hatches. Once that is done, the diving officer looks over the status board to the left of the ship handling stations to verify that all hatches and vents are sealed, and that the air banks have an appropriate reserve of air pressure. This done, the diving officer opens the vents atop each ballast tank to allow a measured amount of water into the tanks. This is just enough to make the boat slightly heavier than the surrounding water (called negatively buoyant). As this is happening, the diving officer orders the planesmen to put 10 to 15 degrees of down angle on the boat, using the bow and stern diving planes. At this stage the boat begins to settle. All told, this process normally can take from five to eight minutes.

Initially the dive will be held up when a depth of 60 feet (periscope depth) has been reached. At this point the depth will be maintained with the dive planes and the forward motion of the boat. During this time the diving officer will have the chief of the watch pump water in and out of the trim tanks to make the boat neutrally buoyant and balanced. In addition, the captain will probably order a series of checks on all of the compartments of the boat for watertight integrity, and do a check to see if any machinery is making abnormal noises, or if any objects are loose or improperly stowed. Next the captain will probably order a series of extreme diving exercises called angles and dangles, which are designed to discover if anything is still improperly stowed. The old hands take a perverse pride in being able to walk and keep a cup of coffee from spilling during high-angle dives. Now the Miami can get down to cruising.

Maneuvering a 6,900-ton submarine is something that is done with subtlety and a minimum of rapid action. A slow and delicate touch on the planes and rudders is required to prevent unwanted noise. If you desire to change speed, you rotate a knob called an Engine Order Telegraph, which sends an instruction back to the engine room to either increase or decrease the power to the propeller shaft. The lack of precision might surprise some people, as there are only Forward and Reverse, with choices for All Stop, One Third, Two Thirds, Full, and Flank. In spite of this, the precision that you can maneuver the boat with is amazing. In fact, the OOD can order the precise number of propeller revolutions or "turns" required to maintain any speed required.

The one problem with driving a 688I is that it tends to be slightly unstable at some depths and speed settings. This is partly a product of the 688I's hull shape, which is optimized for speed, and partly from the forward placement of the fairwater. Normally only light corrections will be necessary to keep tracking but one must be ready for any situation, including combat maneuvers, which can become downright violent.

Running underwater is, if nothing else, probably the smoothest ride that you will ever know. Once the boat is trimmed and level, there is little or no sensation of motion, and you feel as if you're walking through the basement of a building. There is, in fact, a feeling of being on very solid ground. Very reassuring, and very quiet. In fact, quiet is the name of the game in this business. When the sub is running underwater, nobody raises their voice, slams a hatch, or even drops the toilet seat hard. After a time, you become hushed and silent. So much the better.

Surfacing the boat is an exercise in itself, as there is no more vulnerable time for a submarine. Part of this is because a surfacing boat makes lots of noise: the rush of compressed air from the air flasks into the ballast tanks; the noise of the hull expanding from the decreased water pressure, called hull popping. All this noise makes the boat partially deaf and blind, so special precautions are taken. The first thing the diving officer does is to have the planesmen at the ship control stations bring her to periscope depth. At this point the search periscope will be raised to do a visual check for any surface vessels, as well as sonar listening for any surface or subsurface contacts. Once the captain is confident that all is clear topside, he will order the diving officer to blow compressed air from the air flasks into the ballast tanks to give the boat a slightly upward, or positive, buoyancy. Within several minutes the boat will surface, and the captain will establish a bridge watch up on the fairwater.

Once on the surface, you immediately notice the rolling of the boat in the surface swells. It is an ironic truth that the same hull design that provides such a smooth ride in the depths of the ocean rolls rather drunkenly in a mild surface swell. While it is not particularly uncomfortable, when compared to the amazing stability of the boat at depth, the difference seems enormous. While running on the surface, it is essential that the bridge watch maintain a constant lookout for any surface vessels. Since a submarine is as hard to see as it is, submariners are always concerned about being run over by a rogue supertanker or liner, and are cautious to avoid fishing vessels, especially those using drift nets.

The communications shack is located forward of the control room along the port side passageway, and is notable for the security warnings posted on the door. It is incredibly vital to the operations of Miami. Packed into that tiny space is all of the radio transmission and cryptographic gear that is required to send and receive messages, ranging from operational combat orders to personal "familygrams."

The radio equipment covers a broad spectrum of frequency ranges from ultra-high frequency (UHF), high frequency (HF), very low frequency (VLF), and extremely low frequency (ELF). In addition, there is equipment designed to allow the Miami to contact communications satellites, as well as underwater telephone equipment commonly known as Gertrude. Most of the radio equipment is tied to sophisticated encryption gear (called crypto) designed to make it impossible for anyone but an American to read the message traffic.

This particular point has not always been so secure, as the discovery of the Walker family spy ring showed in 1985. For over fifteen years, a Navy petty officer, along with his family members and a friend, helped the Soviet Union acquire the keys to the various crypto systems used by the United States. This meant that the Soviets had access to virtually all our major crypto systems from 1969 to 1985, when the ring was finally apprehended. Since that time the National Security Agency, which is charged with the design and security of crypto systems, has apparently rebuilt the U.S. family of encryption systems and allegedly changed the procedures that allowed John Walker and his family to put so much of our national security at risk.

The most interesting of these systems are the ELF and VLF systems, which are mainly used as command and control systems for submarines. Their special property is that the signals from ELF and VLF systems can penetrate the water to be picked up by the antenna trailed from the port side of the fairwater. More often than not, because of their relatively low rate of transmission (ELF works at about one letter character every fifteen to thirty seconds; VLF is fast enough for teletype communications), they are used to cue submerged submarines to come to periscope depth, and poke one of their communications masts up to get a signal from a satellite or UHF channel.

It is standard on submarines to minimize any actual transmission from their radio systems. Always looming over the submarine force are the memories of what the Allied ASW forces were able to do to the U-boats in World War II, because of their knowledge of the German Enigma cipher system. The penetrations of U.S. systems by the Walker spy ring have only reinforced the belief that transmitting with a radio is an invitation to a funeral. Thus it is only occasionally when they are close to a potential enemy that they will send messages. To a submariner, only silence is a friend. Any noise, acoustic or electronic, is an enemy.

Another method of communicating with the outside world is for the boat to eject a SLOT (Submarine-Launched One-Way Transmitter) buoy from its forward 3-inch signal ejector launcher. Located in a small compartment forward that doubles as the ship's pharmacy, it resembles a tiny torpedo tube. The first step is to record a message, such as a contact report, on the buoy's recorder. The buoy is then fired into the water, where it waits a period of time, say thirty minutes to a couple of hours, then sends out a high-speed burst transmission that can be picked up on a special satellite communications channel.

In addition to launching SLOT buoys, the 3-inch ejector can be used to launch bathythermographs to monitor thermal layers in the water, as well as several types of decoys such as noisemakers and bubble generators. A second 3-inch ejector is aft in the engineering spaces, and both units can be controlled and fired from a panel in the control room.

Keeping track of the electronic noises an SSN encounters is the job of Miami's Electronic Support Measures (ESM) suite. Technically the suite is made up of a radar and electronic signal receiver known as WLR-8 (V). This is used to monitor the radar and radio emissions in operational areas. In addition, the Miami is equipped with a BPS-15 surface search radar to assist in ship handling and navigation. All these systems have their antennas mounted on retractable masts, which can be raised while the boat is at periscope depth.

At the very heart of the Miami's combat power is the new BSY-1 (pronounced "busy one") submarine combat system. All the sensor, fire control, and weapons systems of the Flight I and II Los Angeles-class boats, as well as a few new items, are tied together into a single system controlled by a battery of UYK-series computers running almost 1.1 million lines of Ada (the defense department's systems programming language) computer code. Developed by IBM, with Hughes, Raytheon, and Rockwell as subcontractors, BSY-1 represents the first use of what is known as distributed processor architecture. All of it is tied together by a data highway known as a data bus, which is becoming something of a standard on weapons systems such as the F-18 Hornet fighter/ bomber and the Patriot surface-to-missile system.

This means that instead of having one large computer running all the sensor and combat functions, a central computer hands out processing assignments to other computers running code designed to handle a specific job like acoustic processing or cruise missile mission planning. In this way the distributed system actually runs faster than a larger single computer would. It also makes the BSY-1 system easier to upgrade and better able to operate in a degraded or damaged condition.

Other than the racks of UYK-7, UYK-43, and UYK-44 computers buried in the computer compartments, the most visible signs of the BSY-1 system are the consoles in the sonar room, forward of the control room, along the starboard passageway. Here four manned sonar consoles provide the Miami with her ears to the underwater world. Into these consoles the BSY-1 system feeds information from the various sonar systems. The Miami's main sonar system, almost identical to the BQQ-5D system on earlier Los Angeles-class boats, is actually a collection of many different sonar systems, including:* The spherical sonar array, located in the bow. The large sphere (15-foot diameter) has both active (echo ranging) and passive (listening) modes, and is currently one of the most powerful active sonars (over 75,000 watts of radiated power) afloat anywhere in the world.* The conformal array is a low-frequency passive sonar array mounted around the bow.* The high-frequency array is an upgrade to the spherical array, allowing it to generate the advanced waveforms that make the active modes of the BSY-1 so effective. It also incorporates an under-ice and mine detection capability from an array in the fairwater.* The TB-16D is the basic towed array, which is fed from the tubular shroud on the starboard side of the hull. It is a passive system, designed to provide medium-range detection of low-frequency noise. It is fed from a large reel in the forward part of the boat and played out from a tube in the starboard horizontal stabilizer. It has a 2,600-foot cable that is 3.5 inches/89mm thick, with the receiving hydrophones in a 240-foot-long array at the end of the cable.* The TB-23 is the new passive "thin line" towed array associated with the BSY-1 system. Its smaller diameter (1.1 inches/28mm) means that the hydrophone array can be longer (approximately 960 feet), and it can be farther away from the noise of the towing submarine. The TB-23 is specifically designed to detect very low frequency noise at very long ranges. It is stowed on a reel in the aft and fed from a receiver in the port horizontal stabilizer.* The WLR-9 is the acoustic intercept receiver designed to alert the crew that an active sonar is being used, such as large active sonar arrays or sonar on incoming weapons.

Associated with all these systems is a series of signal processors and other equipment, which translate the sounds emitted and collected by the various sonar systems into the data displayed on the sonar consoles. The four BSY-1 sonar consoles are usually configured to have three of them looking at particular elements of the BQQ-5D sonar sensors while the fourth is used by the sonar watch supervisor. There also is a sonar spectrum analyzer available at a workstation in the forward end of the compartment. Each console has a pair of multifunction displays, which can be configured quickly by the operator for the particular sensor and mode of interest. For example, one sonar technician might be looking at the broadband noise being collected from one of the towed arrays. Another might be watching for broadband contacts on the spherical array.

What the sonar technician actually sees is a rather odd-looking display called a waterfall. It looks like a green television screen full of snow or "noise." The top of the display shows the bearing of a particular noise source or frequency being detected. The vertical scale shows that noise or frequency over time. The sonar technician is looking for something that stands out from the random pattern of background noise being displayed. Usually the sound contact appears as a solid line on the display screen. And this is where the hunt begins.

The technician reports the contact to the sonar watch supervisor and begins the process of classification and identification. The supervisor alerts the officer of the deck that a new sonar contact, called "Sierra Ten," for example (contacts are numbered progressively), has been detected and that the sonar team is working it. The conventions for naming contacts are:* Sierra-a sonar contact* Victor-a visual contact* Romeo-a radar contact* Mike-a contact combining one or more signals from different sensors

What is important now is patience and concentration. And much like my character Jonesy, these technicians pursue just as much an art as a science. As soon as the first sound line has established that a contact exists, the other technicians assist in the classification. Despite all that has been written before, there is no automatic classification mode in the boat's computers-one of the Miami sonar technicians has proudly said, "We still do it ourselves."

Sometimes a frequency line is known to be unique to a particular power plant of a particular ship or submarine class. Other times, the effort to classify the target may require the technician to listen through headphones to try and make out what the signal on a particular bearing is. They can listen to tonal signals to determine whether the source is a surface ship or submarine. Each of the different sonars in the BSY-1 suite has its optimum frequency band, and if another sensor might be better at getting data on a particular signal, the technician is fully empowered to ask the officer of the deck to alter course to bring that sensor to bear. During this time the sonar watch team are the eyes and ears of the boat, and every other man aboard knows that his safety may depend on just how good the operators in the sonar room really are. There are set procedures to help guide the sonar technicians, but in the end it comes down to the individual skills of the technicians doing what must be a mind-bending job.

The sonar supervisor reports the best estimate of what and where the source is, and whether it could be a threat or not, to the officer of the deck (OOD). The OOD stations the fire control team to begin the localization/tracking process. This is a dual process utilizing both the manual plotting table as well as one of the fire control consoles. On Miami this process is different from the older Los Angeles-class boats in that all the information is passed automatically between the sonar room and the fire control console via the BSY-1 system network. At this point the tracking team begins the process known as Target Motion Analysis (TMA). Besides identifying the contact, the TMA provides the fire control team with a usable fire control solution, target course and speed, and a reliable range.

This takes time-sometimes, a lot. While you are trying to get all the information necessary to possibly shoot at a target, you must yourself remain undetected. Much of the data for the TMA process comes from the bearing rate, which is how fast the bearing of a target is changing, and monitoring the Doppler, which reveals whether a target is coming nearer or moving away; this is called the range rate. While the BSY-1 is helping the fire control team do its job, the manual plot team, assisted by a specially programmed Hewlett Packard 9020 desktop computer, is also working on its own TMA/range analysis. This little desktop computer has a program library that helps the manual plot team with the more intensive calculations and generates what can only be called instant ranges to the target. All the while the manual and automatic tracking solutions are checked, and data is crossfed between them. During the TMA process the boat would probably maneuver in a zigzag pattern to help the sonar crew establish better range and bearing rates for the TMA plots.

Some nations have chosen to eliminate the dual TMA process and depend only on an automatic system. But this can lead to ranging errors in critical situations, so the U.S. Navy continues to use manual plots and automatic systems just to be sure. Recently Miami ran an exercise against a diesel boat belonging to one of our NATO allies. Apparently, because Miami had a small acoustic fault (called a sound short), the opposing sub thought the boat was much closer than it actually was: the automatic fire control system calculated the range to Miami at around 6,000 yards when, in fact, it was over 40,000 yards. And when the diesel boat fired at what it thought was a nearby U.S. boat, all it did was expose itself to attack by the Miami. Needless to say, Commander Jones made his "opponent" pay dearly for his error.

The TMA process is continued until the commanding officer believes the tracking party has a good enough picture of the situation at hand. Every contact has to have a reliable TMA solution and must be currently tracked. Here lies the real value of the BSY-1 system. For while the earlier Los Angeles-class boats could keep track of only a few targets at one time, the BSY-1 can handle many more. And once the system has a good track running, it has a great ability to hold and maintain the quality of the tracks.

Eventually the target track(s) will be good enough to fire on, if that is the desired intention, and the time has come to set up a weapon for firing. The fire control technician begins the process by inputting the necessary presets into the chosen weapon. If it is a Mark 48, Harpoon, or Tomahawk antiship missile (TASM), this can be accomplished entirely at the BSY-1 console. Should a Tomahawk land attack missile (TLAM) need to be programmed, this is accomplished at the adjoining Command and Control System (CCS-2) console. For now, though, we will concentrate on the weapons programmed on the BSY-1 console.

If, for example, the desire is to launch an antiship missile, the technician must have a decent estimate of target course, speed, and range. It is also critical to know whether there is any neutral shipping traffic in the area. The technician programs in the route to the target, as well as any waypoints necessary to route the missile around neutral shipping traffic that might be in the way. In addition, the technician programs a search pattern for the seeker head of the missile to lock in. This mission plan can be loaded into any number of missiles, which are then fired from the weapons control console located to the right of the fire control consoles.

The process for firing torpedoes is somewhat more dynamic than that for missiles. First the fire control technician develops a fire control solution through a process called "stacking the dots." The screen where this is accomplished displays the target bearing versus time, similar to that back in the sonar room. On this display the target bearing is shown over a period of time as a series of dots. The technician fine-tunes the solution by adjusting the estimates of the target's range, course, and speed until the display shows a straight column of dots stacked on the display. After several minutes of work and possibly a couple of maneuvers to verify the accuracy of the solution, it is now time to shoot.

Despite what some computer games would have you believe, there are no joysticks for the fire control technicians to "fly" the torpedo onto the target. Instead, the technician changes the weapon presets on a screen that looks like a shopping list of parameters such as the seeker activation point (called "enable run"), search depth, and which seeker head mode the weapon is to be fired in. Also, the BSY-1 has several different operating modes, including a "snapshot" mode for fast-moving tactical situations that require the Miami to react quickly. Let's assume that the fire control technician has been ordered to set up a pair of Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes for a shot at a submarine. He selects the desired target track and allows the BSY-1 to input the weapon presets to the list.

At any time, he can override or alter the presets to suit the tactical situation. For example, the ADCAP has modes to avoid making circular runs and attacking the firing sub accidentally, as well as the ability to preset a three-dimensional search zone for the weapons to search in, but not go outside. Once the weapons have been loaded with the required data, they can be fired by the weapons officer at the order of the captain. With the weapons now in the water, a junior officer calls up the weapons display on his console and monitors the torpedoes' status.

One of the nice features of the BSY-1/ADCAP combination is that the technician can "swim" the torpedoes out onto the target and use the seeker heads as offboard sensors to fine-tune the firing solution. This is made possible by the data link wire that the weapons trail out behind them, which is connected to the torpedo tubes of the Miami. This means that if the technician sees the target move out of the selected area, or do something tactically different from what he thought it would do, he can quickly change the necessary presets right from his weapon control menu.

When the ADCAPs finally acquire the target, the process becomes completely automatic, with the operator's help required only if a torpedo malfunctions. The logic in the guidance systems of the ADCAPs is very good, though if anything goes wrong the fire control technicians are always ready to step in on their own. Assuming that the weapons do their job, the final run to the target will be like watching a train wreck. When they hit, the sonar technician must assess the damage that has been inflicted. There may be breaking-up noises or the distinctive crunch of an imploding pressure hull. In any case, the tracking teams are now ready to start again, a never-ending task while on patrol.

One thing we haven't mentioned yet is just why the Miami has an active sonar mode when so many great things can be accomplished just by listening passively. For almost thirty years, going active with a sonar has meant giving up the tactical advantage. The simple truth is that while using an active sonar does alert a potential enemy to your presence, it does have some significant advantages. The latest nuclear boats produced by the former Soviet Union/Commonwealth of Independent States are almost as good acoustically as a Flight 1 Los Angeles. This means that finding them passively is going to be extremely difficult. And the current generation of diesel boats, when running on their batteries, are just a little worse, being very quiet targets to any passive sonar system in existence. Using an active sonar can overcome some of these problems at relatively short ranges, and has tactical benefits in some situations, especially in verifying ranges before shooting. Unfortunately, an active sonar can be heard at least five times farther than the sonar can detect a target.

The active sonar mode of the sphere sonar is incredibly powerful and can cause steam bubbles to form on the outer surfaces of the sonar dome. The spherical array does give accurate ranges and bearings, providing excellent fire control solutions in the process. In addition, it has the ability to form its sound signals into beams that are focused instead of just radiating in all directions. This means that only the target boat will know it is being "pinged," and other boats in the area will not. In the sort of close-range "knife fights" that may develop between the quieter boats inhabiting the oceans today, going active may just be a good thing to do.

This is a rough picture of how the BSY-1 system and her operators work together. Many other elements go into the process, but I hope this has given you a feel for how the operators would use BSY-1 to fight the boat. If you think it seems like a huge game of blindman's buff, you are right on target, for it is said that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the dark realm of the world's oceans, the Miami with its BSY-1 combat system is the king with the biggest eye.

When you wander down a couple of flights of stairs and move forward, you eventually wind up in the torpedo room. Here you are struck by the feeling of being in the very bowels of the Miami. Three sets of two-high racks allow for the stowage of twenty-two weapons, and four more are kept in the tubes. Usually, however, one or two of the rack spaces or tubes are left empty, to facilitate movement of the weapons and allow maintenance. Between the center and side racks are sets of loading and ramming gear. Go forward down the aisles between the racks and you will find the torpedo tubes. These have an internal diameter of 21 inches/533mm and are angled approximately 7 to 8 degrees off the boat's centerline, so that when weapons are launched, they clear the bow with its big active sonar dome. One unique design aspect is the ability to move any weapon from any position in the racks to a torpedo tube or any other position on the racks. While the geometry of such a move is somewhat complicated, the actual movement of the weapons resembles a child's puzzle in which eight pieces are moved through nine spaces to form a picture.

Loading the weapons into the boat itself is a rather involved process, though one that the Miami's designers actually thought out pretty well. Just forward of the fairwater is the weapons loading hatch; through here the weapons are brought on board. The first step in the process is to open this hatch and unstow the loading gear, which is cleverly composed of sections of the flooring structure from the second and third decks of the boat. The second-deck flooring becomes a loading rack that is hoisted up on deck to receive the weapons from the loading crane alongside. A section of the third deck serves as the transit rack, which spans the gap left by taking up the floor structure. Thus while loading is taking place, a gap like a canyon runs down the middle of the boat to the torpedo room.

The actual weapons-loading process is quite rapid once the gear is assembled. The weapon is swung over on a crane from the dock or tender and gently lowered into the loading rack. Once it is aligned, the loading rack is rotated up about 45 degrees, and the weapon is winched down on a chain-powered hoist. When the weapon has completed its nearly 50-foot journey, the transit rack is swung back to the horizontal, and the weapon is laid into the waiting skids on the torpedo room racks. At this point it is secured to the skids and moved over so that another weapon can be loaded. In all, the boat can be completely loaded, including setting up and striking the loading gear, within twelve hours, all with minimum support from a tender or dock crew. Afterwards, when the deck structures have been put back in place, you would never know this is the path the weapons take to the torpedo room.

Loading a torpedo, while straightforward, is anything but simple. The first step is to move a weapon from the storage rack onto one of the loading trays. This requires a bit of brute force (Mk 48s weigh about 3,400 lb/1,545 kg) as well as some precision; even in this day and age, human brawn is still useful. Once the weapon is loaded onto the tray, the inner door (called the breech door) to the chosen torpedo tube is opened and a quick inspection is conducted. If another weapon has just been fired, the crew may need to remove a wire dispenser and/or some guidance wire (if it is a Mark 48 torpedo), or to check for wear on the tube. This little process, known as diving the tube, is a job best handled by those with narrow shoulders and long arms.

Once this is done, the loading ram carefully moves the weapon into the tube. At this point one of the torpedoman mates (TMs) connects the data transmission link, called an "A" cable, from the back of the weapon (all U.S. submarine-launched weapons are equipped with such connections), attaches the guidance wire (if it is a Mk 48), and seals the breech door. Once the hatch is closed, the technicians check to make sure all the connections and seals are properly set, then hang on the tube a small sign: WARSHOT LOADED. One of the nice features on the 688I/BSY-1 boats is that once a tube is loaded, it automatically can tell what kind of weapon is loaded. On several control panels and status boards around the boat, the change in the tube's status to Loaded and what it is loaded with are noted and marked.

Once a decision to launch a weapon has been made (this always requires a look at the mission orders and the standing rules of engagement), then the technicians at the BSY-1 firing control panels up in the control room power on the weapon to warm it up. Then the fire control technician assigned to control the weapon loads targeting and other data into the weapon's memory system. In the case of an Mk 48, this includes speed settings and seeker head mode. For a guided missile like a Tomahawk, it involves loading a complete mission flight profile. Once this is done, the weapon is ready to be fired.

The process of firing a weapon from a torpedo tube is probably one of the most well tested procedures on the entire boat; it dates back many decades. With the weapon warm and ready to fire, the order is given, "Make the tube ready in all respects!" This is not done lightly, for this is the first of a number of actions that radiates a great deal of noise into the surrounding water. Once the tube is flooded, the outer door or cap is opened, and the tube is ready to launch the weapon. The commanding officer gives the command, "Firing point procedures," when the other necessary steps (such as sealing the breech door) have already been completed.

At this point the captain issues the firing command, "Match bearings and shoot!" When the order to fire is given, the weapons officer at the BSY-1 launch control panel presses the firing button, and the firing sequence begins. The firing command directs high-pressure air from the air banks onto a piston. The air forces the piston to move along the piston shaft, forcing water out of another tube and through a slide valve in the rear of the torpedo tube, thereby forming a water ram that ejects the weapon out into the sea at something like four to six times the force of gravity.

What happens next depends on which weapon has been fired. If it is a guided missile, then the outer door can be closed, and the tube is drained and made ready for reloading. If the weapon is a Mark 48, then the decision will probably be made to leave the outer door open. This is because the Mark 48 trails a guidance wire behind it, which allows the boat to guide the torpedo as it runs up to ten miles from the launching point. At any time, though, the wire can be cut. If the sub is traveling too fast, or makes too sharp a turn, then the water flow may break the wire. In any case, until the need for the guidance wire is gone, the tube must stay in use.

One of the weaknesses of all U.S. attack submarines since the Permit-class boats hit the water has been the shortage of space for torpedo tubes and weapons stowage. For over thirty years, U.S. attack boats have always had four 21-inch/533mm torpedo tubes to deliver their weapons, and about twenty-two stowage positions to hold them inside the boat. This was not much of a problem so long as all that the boats had to fire were heavy torpedoes and the occasional SUBROC. But beginning in the late 1970s with the introduction of the UGM-84 Harpoon antishipping missile, and the early 1980s with the UGM-109 Tomahawk missile series, this began to pose a real problem for submarine planners and skippers.

For example, say a U.S. sub skipper wants to shoot Harpoon missiles at a surface warship. Submariners traditionally prefer to keep at least one torpedo in a tube as a just-in-case weapon, much as a police officer keeps a hideout weapon in an ankle holster. This means the maximum salvo size that can be fired at the target ship is three Harpoons. This might be fine, but against a target like a Kirov-class battle cruiser with all its antimissile systems, those three missiles will be soaked up like water into a sponge; the weapons will be wasted, and the target will be alerted to the presence of the sub. What clearly is needed is a way to stow more weapons on the boat and fire more of them at one time.

The designers of the Los Angeles-class boats anticipated this, because both the designs for Harpoon and Tomahawk were known at that time. Space was left in the forward ballast tank for twelve Vertical Launch System (VLS) tubes, each capable of storing and launching a Tomahawk cruise missile. In addition, space for the associated control and hydraulic systems necessary to operate the VLS system was left in a compartment forward of the torpedo room. Thus it was possible for a Los Angeles-class boat to carry and launch twelve additional cruise missiles without affecting the weapons stowed and fired out of the boat's torpedo room. This meant an increase of 50 percent in weapons stowage and a 400 percent increase in ready firepower (when firing cruise missiles) over a non-VLS sub.

This change was not made immediately, however. Even though all the Los Angeles-class boats were capable of being fitted with the VLS system, the first boat to be so equipped was the USS Providence (SSN-719). And, because of budget constraints, it is quite unlikely that any of the earlier Flight I boats will ever be retrofitted with VLS missile tubes. Nevertheless, by the time the class is finished building, some thirty-one Flight II and 688I boats will have the system, providing room for some 372 Tomahawk missiles in the fleet. And that is a lot of firepower. By the way, it is easy to make out which boats have the VLS and which don't by whether they are level in the water (VLS equipped) or nose up (non-VLS Flight I).

The way the VLS system works is quite simple. The missile canisters are loaded vertically from a crane. Each canister contains a complete all-up Tomahawk round, ready to fire. At the top of each canister is a thin membrane of clear plastic, which keeps the missile dry and safe. This is how it stays until the time to fire. The boat comes to launch depth, usually about 60 feet, and reduces speed, say 3 to 5 knots, perhaps raising a communications mast to get additional targeting or a navigational fix from the GPS satellite constellation. Once the flight instructions have been programmed into the desired missile(s), the launch system automatically begins the firing sequence.

The system opens the missile launch tube hatch hydraulically and an explosive charge propels the missile up through the plastic membrane and into the water. After the missile travels up about 25 feet the booster rocket fires, thrusting the Tomahawk out of the water. At this point the missile tilts over, drops the burned-out booster motor, lights the turbojet engine, and heads for its preprogrammed target. Meanwhile the launch tube fills with water (helping to compensate for the lost weight of the missile), and the hydraulic hatch is closed.

The VLS system is causing a revolution in design of new weapons for submarines. It has radically increased both the firepower and stowed weapons load for the U.S. submarine force-all at no increase in the size or displacement of the basic Los Angeles design.

On the Miami's second level is the bulk of the living space aboard the boat. If you stand aft near the forward escape trunk, then you walk forward, you will find the largest open area on the boat, the enlisted mess area. This place is a combination of cafeteria, schoolroom, movie theater, game room, and almost anything else that involves gathering the boat's enlisted population together. Here are six tables with bench seats on both sides so that something like forty-eight sailors at a time, about half the Miami's population, can sit down at once. Along the starboard bulkhead are such cherished pieces of equipment as the soda machines (no longer do they serve the hated "Yogi" cola), milk dispenser, soft ice cream machine, and that most cherished of Navy wardroom icons, the bug juice dispenser. By the way, well-informed palates suggest that the red flavor is best, but stay away from the orange! Strangely, it also makes an excellent scouring powder for cleaning floors and heads (all that acid in it, they tell me). Back near the escape trunk is the ship's laundry. About the size of a phone booth, it handles the laundry for the entire boat, with a washer and dryer that would seem small in most apartments.

Adjacent to the enlisted mess area is the galley. Inside a room about the size of an apartment kitchen, the meals (four per day) are prepared for over 130 officers and men. It's amazing that so much can be done in such a small space. There are all the usual institutional kitchen fixtures (electric mixer, oven, grill, and stewing pots), as well as a pair of refrigerated spaces for food storage. Usually one of these is set up as a deep freeze, the other as a fresh food refrigerator, though for longer patrols fresh food is avoided, and only frozen and dry stores are carried. It is a matter of record that the single most limiting factor to SSN operations is the quantity of food and other consumables. Before a long deployment, virtually every spare nook and cranny is packed with stores-food, soap, paper for the copy machines, dry stores, and, of course, most vital of commodities on board a sub, coffee.

Moving forward on the port side passageway, you encounter the berthing spaces for the enlisted personnel. I should say here that if you have a touch of claustrophobia, this is where it will manifest itself. The three-tall bunks are roughly 6 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet tall: about the size of a coffin. Each bunk has a comfortable foam rubber mattress with bedding, a light for reading, a blower for fresh air, and a curtain for privacy. All your personal gear goes into lockers on the walls, or the 6-inch-deep trays under the bunks. For the enlisted personnel, this is the total extent of their privacy. This is even further limited, as about 40 percent of the enlisted population has to share, or "hot bunk," their sleeping accommodations. This is because the 688I design just did not have enough room to provide a bunk for each enlisted man. This means that groups of three enlisted men have to share two bunks, with the sleep periods (they sleep in six-hour shifts) rigidly scheduled in advance.

On the starboard side of the boat are the berthing and mess spaces for the senior enlisted personnel, generously known as the "goat locker." Here there is a small seating area about the size of a corner booth at a restaurant, which serves as eating area, office, and conference room for the chief petty officers. Heading aft from here is another aisle of three-high bunks, though these are reserved for each man.

For the officers there is a separate wardroom for eating, studying, and doing paperwork. It is a nicely appointed area with its own pantry for coffee and snacks around the clock. In the middle of the space is a single table that serves as dining table, desk, and conference table. Unlike the commander of almost any other ship in the Navy, the commanding officer does not have a separate pantry to take his meals. He sits with his officers at every meal, giving it the feeling of a family gathering. The submarine service has always been more informal than the surface forces, and this is part of the esprit that makes the "bubbleheads" different from the rest. Commander Jones runs a "loose" wardroom where kidding and friendly ribbing is always welcome. He makes no secret of his love of good seafood, and is a big fan of ice cream. In fact, he is fond of saying that other than having the only private stateroom on the boat, his only command privilege on the Miami is choosing the flavor of ice cream for the machine in the galley. He chooses a rather diplomatic French vanilla flavor.

As for the commander's cabin, it is hardly the stuff you might find on the Queen Elizabeth II. Located just forward of the enlisted mess, on the second level, it is roughly 10 feet long by 8 feet wide. It is dominated by a combination desk/closet unit in the after portion of the cabin. Against the outside bulkhead is a pair of seats with a small table between them; this unit folds down into the bunk. Commander Jones is proud of saying that it's the best bunk on the boat, and certainly it is the only one that does not have another bunk above and/or below it! On the door to his cabin are three notices. One reads KNOCK AND ENTER and another is, THINK QUIET! IT'S OUR BUSINESS… IT COULD BE OUR LIVES. The final one is a copy of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "If," not a bad philosophy to advertise if you are in charge of 132 lives and $800 million of the taxpayers' money.

The commander's desk contains a variety of different manuals, a safe for classified documents, and various communications devices to keep him in touch with the rest of the boat. One of the newest pieces of equipment to be added is known as a multifunction display, mounted adjacent to his bunk. This marvelous device, which is tied into the BSY-1 combat system, is a red gas-plasma display showing data on position, course, speed, heading, and depth, as well as modes to show the current tactical situation around the boat. The advantage to Commander Jones is that he can wake for a moment in the middle of the night, reach over and check the boat's status, then roll over and go back to sleep-all without having to ruin his night vision by turning on a light or having to pick up a phone and talk to the OOD. He figures that not having to wake up fully several times is worth several hours' more sleep. And that can be life and death for the boat in a combat situation. A total of eight of these devices are located around the boat in such places as the control room and sonar room.

If you wander aft from the enlisted mess, past the forward escape trunk and down half a deck, you find the great divide on the Miami. This is the entrance to the tunnel aft to the propulsion spaces containing the S6G nuclear reactor (built by General Electric) and the main engineering spaces. It is marked by a number of different warning signs from the DNR, ranging from information on possible radiation hazards, to security notices about just who on the boat is allowed aft of this point. It should be noted that no member of the media, including myself, has ever actually seen an actual nuclear submarine reactor compartment or her engineering spaces. Nevertheless there are a number of things that we do know about these areas, and I will try to share them with you.

The first thing to understand about the nuclear reactor on a submarine is that it has only one real purpose, to generate heat to boil water into saturated steam. Other than that, all of the other parts of a nuclear submarine propulsion system are similar to any other type of steam-powered turbine plant. Its advantage over an oil-fired steam plant is the amount of energy concentrated in the nuclear fuel in the reactor core, as well as the complete lack of any need for air. On a weight and volume basis, nuclear fuel, such as enriched uranium, has several million times the amount of stored heat of a comparable amount of fuel oil. This concentration of energy is what makes all the dangers of handling nuclear fuel worth the trouble. In addition, because of the efficiency of the nuclear "fire," it is possible to build boiler plants that are considerably smaller than comparable oil-fired plants.

The process of nuclear fission is essentially quite simple. Imagine a floor covered with mousetraps. Each mousetrap has, mounted on the striker arm, two Ping-Pong balls. If we imagine a uranium atom as a mousetrap, it is holding on to a pair of attached particles called neutrons much like the Ping-Pong balls. Now if you drop another Ping-Pong ball onto one of the traps and trip it, two balls will fly into the air. This represents what happens when a neutron enters the uranium atom and strikes the nucleus: the atom splits and releases the two neutrons, releasing energy as heat. And when those two fall onto two more traps, these will trip and each throw two more Ping-Pong balls skyward. This will continue to double and double again until all the traps fire off their balls in one final fusillade. This same principle, whereby neutrons strike more and more atoms until all of them finally split, is called an uncontrolled or supercritical fission reaction. And this is what happens when an atomic bomb detonates.

But we don't desire an explosion, we want a slower reaction like a fire in a boiler. Imagine that in our room of mousetraps and Ping-Pong balls, we hang some monkeys from the ceiling. And we train them to grab one out of every two Ping-Pong balls when a trap goes off. This would allow the series of tripping traps to go on for a much longer time. And this is exactly what happens in a nuclear reactor. Instead of monkeys, a reactor uses what are called control rods (made of a neutron-absorbing material like cadmium or hafnium) set to absorb exactly the right amount of neutrons to bring the reaction into controlled or critical fission. This reaction still generates a great deal of heat, which is used to boil water into saturated steam to power the sub's turbines. In this way the same nuclear fuel that can cause a nuclear explosion in an instant can be used to power a ship for a period of years. And because of design procedures that have been tested over a period of decades, the fuel in the reactor cannot explode or even come close to doing so. The DNR takes great pride in the safety record of the boats with U.S.-designed reactor plants, which is perfect.

Most of the heat in the reactor is collected into what is known as the primary coolant loop. This is a series of pipes passing an extremely pure water-based coolant through the core of the reactor. This heat is passed through a heat exchanger to what is called the secondary loop. This is where the water for the steam turbine is actually boiled. Now, the steam created here is not the stuff you get from the tea kettle on your stove. This steam, which is under high pressure, is heated to literally hundreds of degrees and contains a great deal of motive energy. And this is the stuff that turns the turbine blades of the main engines, which feed into the reduction gears, which turn the propeller shaft and the propeller. Quite simple, really!

There are a few small problems with this system, though, and we need to discuss them. The obvious one is the question of how to protect the men aboard from the harmful effects of the reactor's radiation. As we mentioned before, the early Soviet nuclear boats scrimped on shielding and became cancer incubators for the naval hospitals of that now-defunct nation. The answer, in a word, is shielding. The entire structure surrounding the reactor compartment is layered with a variety of different shielding materials.

Between the reactor compartment and the forward part of the boat is a huge tank of diesel fuel, which powers the big Fairbanks-Morse auxiliary engine in the machinery compartment. As it turns out, that fuel is extremely efficient at modulating or absorbing the various subatomic particles that could damage human tissues. In addition, the entire reactor is contained inside a reactor vessel that looks like an oversized cold capsule on end. Surrounding this vessel, as well as inside of it, is a system of layered shielding. While the materials actually used are classified, it is easy to deduce that lead (an excellent gamma ray absorber) and chemically treated plastics (based on fossil fuels) are probably used extensively.

In addition to its extensive shielding, the entire reactor plant has been overengineered. Since its earliest beginnings, the DNR has insisted that naval reactors be built with extremely high safety margins. While DNR will not comment, for example, upon just how much pressure all of the reactor plumbing can take, it is generally acknowledged that the entire reactor plant has been built several hundred percent more robustly than is required (400 percent to 600 percent has been mentioned). In addition, every system has at least one backup and usually an extra manual backup on top of that. The legacy of the Thresher loss is this fanatical obsession with safety.

Another area of extreme secrecy is the exact configuration and design of the reactor core itself. In fact, other than the technology used to reduce radiated noise, nothing on the Miami is as sensitive as the power plant core. This probably consists of a series of uranium fuel elements formed into plates to allow maximum heat transfer to the primary coolant loop. The fuel elements are probably mounted parallel to each other in a fuel assembly mounted atop a support structure in the base of the reactor vessel. The fuel used is highly enriched Uranium-235, probably 90 percent pure U-235 or better. For those who might wonder, the fuel used in commercial nuclear power generation plants runs about 2 percent to 5 percent pure, and the material used in nuclear weapons is about 98 percent pure. In between each fuel element is room for a control rod (also in the form of a plate and made of a neutron modulator), to control the rate of nuclear fission. Each rod is designed to drop automatically into place between two fuel elements in the event of a reactor problem, thus quenching the nuclear reaction. In addition, a procedure called scram allows the crew or the automated monitoring systems to shut down the reactor immediately, and restart it later if conditions allow.

Around the core circulates the coolant of the primary loop, which feeds the heated coolant into a steam generator. The steam generator directs its steam into a secondary cooling loop, which feeds a pair of high-pressure turbines in the machinery spaces, where the steam is condensed back into water and fed back into the steam generator. The turbines feed into a massive set of gears known as reduction gears, which turn the main propeller shaft. In addition, some of the steam is used to turn several smaller turbines that provide electrical power to the boat and its various pieces of machinery.

It may come as a surprise that other than the transit tunnel aft to the main machinery space, the reactor is not manned. The DNR limits the time a man can stay in proximity to the reactor, even how long he might stay in the transit tunnel. The actual control area for the reactor plant and the turbines, called Maneuvering, is located aft in the engine room. While it has never been shown to the press, it probably follows the convention of commercial power plants, with the controls laid out over a block diagram of the reactor/turbine system. This panel is manned at all times, even when the boat is in port and the reactor is shut down (noncritical).

The dominating feature of the machinery space is the deck, or more correctly, the mounting for all of the machinery. While it may seem solid enough, it is in fact a large platform or "raft," which is suspended on mounts on the inside of the hull. The mounts use at least one, probably two, sets of noise isolation mounts. These are like oversized shock absorbers designed to reduce the vibrations of the larger pieces of engine room machinery. The purpose of a raft is to take the noisiest things on the boat and isolate them from the hull, which radiates noise like a speaker into the water.

Mounted on the raft are the two main engines, the boat's electrical turbine generators, and the supporting pumps and equipment associated with moving the boat. Proceeding aft, you see the main propeller shaft leading back to the main packing seals in the stern. In addition there are a number of workbenches, as well as a limited machine shop capable of supporting many small-scale repairs. The size of the main gear, called a bull gear, would preclude repair, but virtually every other contingency in the space could be handled by the engineering team. These crew members, by the way, are recognizable by the different types of radiation monitoring devices they wear. Unlike the film badges worn by those who live and work forward of the reactor, these personnel wear a small dosimeter (which looks like a tiny flashlight), so that any dosage of radiation they receive can be assessed immediately.

To get the power plant started, the engineering officer of the watch orders the personnel at the reactor control panel to retract the control rods to a known position. This allows the core to heat up, causing the coolant to generate steam in the steam generator. From here the turbines are set turning, and so too the reduction gear train. There is a popular notion that the speed of the boat is increased by just retracting the control rods farther from the reactor core. This, in fact, is exactly the converse of what actually happens; the rods are simply retracted to a fixed point and held there. The engineers' main goal is to bring the reactor into equilibrium so that the basic amount of heat going into the primary coolant loop is constant. One can then control the speed of the boat by simply tapping more steam from the steam generator, thereby increasing the steam supply to the turbines. This results in cooling the primary coolant loop more, thus increasing the efficiency of the nuclear reaction, feeding more heat to the steam generator, and increasing the speed of the boat.

Conversely, stemming the flow of steam to the turbines not only slows down the spinning of the turbines, it also takes less heat from the primary coolant loop, and rapidly drops the efficiency of the nuclear reaction, "cooling" it down.

The auxiliary machinery space down on the third level aft of the torpedo room is arguably the most important compartment on Miami. Here is located all of the life support equipment, as well as the auxiliary power source. As you enter the space and head down the starboard aisle, you are given a quick introduction to "Clyde," the big auxiliary diesel engine. This is an old favorite of the chiefs onboard, because it is a direct link with the old World War II fleet boats. Built by Fairbanks-Morse, the design dates back to the 1930s and is a scaled-down version of the model used to power all of our submarines during the war. It is reliable and the crew loves it, therefore the name Clyde, as in, "… right turn, Clyde!"

While some folks might wonder why such a dinosaur would be on one of the most advanced submarines, remember that not everything always works properly, including nuclear reactors. For example, what would happen if Miami was at sea and needed to scram the reactor plant? Restarting a reactor takes a lot of power, and while there is a large bank of batteries underneath the torpedo room, it might not prove adequate to completely restart a cold S6G plant. Thus the Fairbanks-Morse engine can provide, through a generator turned by the diesel, enough continuous power to get the tea kettle running again. It has other uses, too. In the event of a reactor casualty, the diesel provides the means for getting home. In that event, the captain orders the engineers aft to lower a small electric outboard motor, which is recessed in the lower hull aft, into the water to provide motive power to get home or to get help.

The diesel engine also has a role in firefighting onboard that might surprise some folks. In the event of a fire, one of the first things the captain might do (assuming this is not in a combat situation) is to surface and start up the diesel. This is because the diesel draws its air from within the boat, and thus it would suck up any air being polluted by the fire. Opening just the fairwater hatches from the control room will completely change the air in the boat in a matter of minutes.

This space is also where the air is made or, more properly, maintained. Several different pieces of equipment in the auxiliary machinery space help to provide the clean, fresh air that can be found onboard. First are the carbon dioxide (CO) scrubbers. CO is the gas given off by humans when they breathe and is dangerous when the concentration gets too high. The Miami utilizes a chemical scrubber to remove it from the air. The chemical absorbs CO when it is cool and releases it when it is warmed. In addition, CO and H "burners" remove the carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas generated by equipment as well as by cigarette smoking, which is allowed onboard. Finally, filters and dehumidifiers clean the air and help keep it "friendly" not only for the crew but also for the many pieces of equipment-especially electronic-on the Miami. In case a fire or some other emergency contaminates the onboard air, a force-fed air supply called the Emergency Air Breathing (EAB) system has attachment points throughout the boat, allowing crewmen with breathing masks to plug in to it and continue their duties.

Other life support equipment includes a device that takes water and electrically "cracks" it into its base elements of hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is retained in tanks and released into the boat's atmosphere automatically by the environmental control system, and the hydrogen is vented off the ship from a small port in the aft edge of the fairwater. There is a fresh-water distillation plant that produces something over 10,000 gallons/38,000 liters of fresh water a day. Most of the water is used for drinking, cleaning, cooking, and personal hygiene. Very little water is usually required for the power plant (for charging the cooling loops and steam generators), but the reserve tanks are usually maintained near full "just in case." It should be said that the obsession with water conservation is mostly for contingency purposes. Most COs like to have full tanks of water before they enter a tactical situation, just in case they need to shut down the distillation plant to keep noise down. And from what I hear, some boats just choose to run the distillation plant full-time and let the crew have as much shower time as they want, particularly during runs home. On a normal day aboard Miami, the majority of the water produced would go to crew habitability.

While submarines are useful for covert actions like intelligence gathering and landing special operations forces, it is the threat of what they can do with their weapons that can cause so much fear and respect in an adversary. Ever since Sergeant Ezra Lee tried to sink HMS Eagle in Boston harbor back in 1776, just the potential threat of harm from a submarine has been enough to make an enemy stop and consider whether he should move his ships against you. Today the weapons can hit a wider variety of targets, and they have become even more deadly.

The torpedo is the traditional weapon of the submarine, and the torpedoes that equip the U.S. SSNs today are truly awesome. For some years now, the U.S. standard torpedo has been the Mark (Mk) 48. This weapon, which first appeared in 1971, has gone through a series of different upgrades, culminating in the Modification (Mod) 4 version, which appeared in 1985. This version, designed as an intermediate upgrade to the next major version, allows for the greater speeds and deeper diving depths of the newer Soviet subs that were appearing at the time. As this book is written, about half the torpedoes being loaded aboard U.S. subs are Mk 48 Mod 4s.

A recent addition is known as the Mk 48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) torpedo. Manufactured by Hughes, the ADCAP takes the basic Mk 48 package and adds the following new features:* A bigger fuel tank that provides for a 50 percent increase in range (about 50,000 yards), and a speed of 60+ knots.* A new data send/receive module, which packs 10 miles of guidance wire into the aft end of the torpedo and 10 more miles into the dispenser in the tube. This allows the submarine to clear the launch point and still guide the weapon.* A new combination seeker head/computer that uses electronically steered sonar beams to guide the weapon to the target. Earlier versions of the Mk 48 (like the Mod 4) used to have to "snake" about their course to search effectively for a target. The head allows the torpedo to see almost all the 180-degree hemisphere ahead of the weapon. The computer controlling the whole system is designed to make the ADCAP the world's "smartest" torpedo.

With ADCAP, the submarine force arguably has the finest torpedo in the world. Not only is it fast, deep diving, and maneuverable, but it has a big warhead (650 lb/295 kg of PBXN-103 explosive) with an active electromagnetic fuse that allows the weapon to be detonated precisely where it will do the most damage. And it has more "brains" than any other torpedo, with an amazing ability to outsmart countermeasures and jamming, as well as the capability to feed seeker-head data back to the BSY-1 system on Miami. This allows the fire control technicians to use the ADCAP as an offboard sensor. With such capabilities as these, it's no wonder that the crew of Miami calls the ADCAPs in her racks "wish me dead" torpedoes.

Strange as it may sound, the nuclear submarines of the U.S. Navy operated for over twenty years without a dedicated weapon for attacking surface ships. Part of the reason was the ASW focus of the SSN force during the 1960s and 1970s. Also, for much of that time their primary targets, the surface ships of the USSR, had no long-range weapons that could attack a sub while it was submerged. But with Soviet deployment of their first sea-based ASW helicopters and the ship-launched SS-N-14 Silex ASW missile, there was a clear need for a weapon that would allow a boat to stand off farther than the ten to fifteen miles a torpedo shot would allow. It had to be launched from a torpedo tube and carried as an all-up or "wooden" round, requiring no maintenance and a minimum of support.

The weapon that was produced was the McDonnell Douglas A/R/UGM-84 Harpoon. This missile, which can be launched by ships, subs, and aircraft, was originally developed to allow patrol aircraft to shoot at Russian cruise missile subs on the surface. First deployed in 1977, it is approximately 17 feet/5.2 meters long, weighs about 1,650 lb/750 kg, and carries a 488-lb/222-kg high-explosive warhead. It utilizes a radar seeker that looks for surface targets and then initiates an attack "endgame" on the target. Packaged inside a buoyant, torpedo-shaped launch capsule, it is fired from one of the normal torpedo tubes and rises to the surface. When it reaches the surface, the nose of the capsule is ejected, and the missile is launched into the air by a small rocket booster. Once airborne, the booster is dropped, an engine inlet cover is ejected, and the small turbojet engine is ignited. The missile then descends to about 100 feet above the surface, and transits to the area of the target ship at a speed of about 550 knots.

The Harpoon can be launched in a variety of modes. These include what is known as Bearing Only Launch (BOL), in which only the bearing to the target is known. There is also a series known as Range and Bearing Launch (RBL) modes, which require both range and bearing. Depending on the range to the target and the amount of neutral shipping in the area, the seeker can be set to RBL–L (Large) for open ocean situations, or RBL-S (Small) for tight, short-range situations. If necessary, several doglegs or waypoints can be programmed into the Harpoon's Midcourse Guidance Unit (MGU), which utilizes a small strapdown inertial guidance system to keep the missile on course. For submarines, there is even a self-defense option that allows the defending SSN to shoot the Harpoon "over the shoulder" into a charging surface ship.

Once the missile gets to the target area, the seeker is switched on and begins to search an area shaped much like a piece of pie. If the seeker radar locates a suitable target, the onboard computer does a quick test to make sure it is a valid target (not a wave or a whale), and begins the endgame. The missile descends to an altitude between 5 and 20 feet (depending on the height of the waves) and heads for the target. At the discretion of the Miami's fire control technicians, the missile can be programmed to run straight into the side of the target ship (just a few feet above the waterline), or an optional "pop-up" maneuver can be selected to make the missile plunge deep into the middle of the ship.

In any case, the exploding warhead will tear much of the guts out of any ship up to cruiser size. In addition, any of the jet fuel not used by the missile's turbojet will add to the destruction aboard the target vessel. It is a little-known fact that the warhead of the Exocet missile that sank HMS Sheffield in 1982 failed to detonate, but the residual rocket fuel in the missile's motor caused enough of a fire to eventually sink the ship.

The latest version of Harpoon aboard the Miami is the UGM-84D, which uses a denser fuel mixture to give it more range (reportedly around 150 NM/250 km). All in all, with some eighteen different countries using it, Harpoon is one of the most successful missile programs ever run by the U.S. Navy.

After the ADCAP, no weapon has done more to make the Miami deadly and effective than the UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile. Tomahawk is an outgrowth of a loophole that was discovered after the signing of the SALT I arms limitation treaty in 1972. While the exact origin of the cruise missile program is debated, it is generally assumed that Henry Kissinger, then the National Security Advisor, asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to look for classes of nuclear weapons that had not been considered during the SALT I negotiations. After some study, the DoD systems analysts came to the startling conclusion that air-breathing cruise missiles, basically cheap pilotless aircraft with nuclear warheads, would make an excellent weapon to circumvent the terms of the SALT I agreement. They could be launched from ground vehicles, aircraft, ships, and submarines, would be extremely accurate, and would be quite difficult to detect and intercept.

As a result of these studies, a joint project office to develop cruise missile components was started by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force. While both services wound up choosing different models of missile (the Air Force selected a model built by Boeing), most of the components such as engines, warheads, and guidance systems were of a common design. The winner of the Navy competition was the B/UGM-109 model developed by General Dynamics. McDonnell Douglas is the second-source contractor for the missile, called Tomahawk.

The basic nuclear land attack version of Tomahawk, known as B/UGM-109A (also called TLAM-N), is launched into the air by a small rocket booster. Once airborne, a miniature jet engine about the size of a basketball ignites to power the missile at about 500 knots. It flies low to the surface (whether over the open ocean or land), held there by a guidance unit (MGU) being fed by a radar altimeter. The missile is kept on course by the MGU utilizing an inexpensive strapdown inertial guidance system. Once over dry land, the MGU is updated with position data from a system known as Terrain Contour Matching (Tercom), which matches the terrain under the missile with a three-dimensional database in the memory of the MGU. By using periodic Tercom updates, a TLAM-N is normally able to place its 200-kiloton W-80 nuclear warhead between the uprights of a football goal-post after a 1,300-mile flight.

While the nuclear-armed version of Tomahawk was being developed, it occurred to a number of people that perhaps the Tomahawk could be used to carry other things, and thus was born the whole family of conventionally armed Tomahawks in service now. The first of these was the B/UGM-109B Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM), which replaced the TLAM-N MGU with a modified radar seeker and MGU from the A/R/UGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile. In addition, the W-80 nuclear warhead was replaced with a 1,000-lb/455-kg high-explosive warhead.

The idea was to provide units of the U.S. Navy with a really long-range (250 NM/410 km) antiship missile. One problem that had to be overcome was the fact that a TASM flying out to hit a target ship at maximum range would have to fly almost thirty minutes to get to the target area. During this time, a fast warship might travel as far as fifteen to twenty miles, so a special series of search patterns was added to the TASM launch and control software. These search patterns comprise a series of "expanding boxes" designed to allow the TASM to fully search the uncertainty zone or the possible target area. In addition, TASM has a passive ESM system called PI/DF (Passive Identification /Passive Direction Finding), which is designed to direct TASM onto larger enemy warships, probably through detection of their large air-search radars.

Following the TASM into service was the largest subfamily of the R/BGM-109 program, the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile-Conventional (TLAM-C) series. This particular series takes the basic guidance system of the TLAM-N, adds the high-explosive warhead of the TASM, and a new terminal guidance system called Digital Scene Matching (DSMAC). It has a range of roughly 700 NM/1,150 km, and uses the same basic Tercom system to get into the vicinity of the target. DSMAC is an electro-optical system that matches the image from a small television camera in the nose of the TLAM-C to one stored in system memory. This system can even be used at night, with a strobe light on the target during the final approach. Called the B/UGM-109C, it became the first of the Tomahawk series to be used in combat, during Operation Desert Storm.

Several derivatives of the basic TLAM-C include the B/UGM- 109D, which replaced the basic high-explosive warhead with a dispenser for 166 BLU-97/B combined effects (fragmentation and blast) submunitions. Called TLAM-D, these Tomahawks are particularly effective against vehicles, personnel, soft targets, and exposed aircraft. A further variant of the TLAM-D, which is armed with antirunway cratering submunitions, is known as the B/UGM-109F. The newest version of Tomahawk, called Block III, incorporates a number of new features such as its own Navstar GPS receiver, a new penetration warhead, an improved engine, and more fuel to bring its range to over 1,000 NM/1,640 km. It should be operational in 1994.

All the various types of Tomahawks can be loaded and fired from any 21-inch/533mm torpedo tube or VLS tube on the Miami. Besides twelve missiles in the VLS tubes, additional Tomahawk rounds, as required by a particular mission, can be stored in the torpedo room. This makes Tomahawk the most flexible strike system ever deployed by the U.S. Navy. It also opens a new dimension for the U.S. SSN force, since now they can join the surface and air forces in striking "over the beach" at significant targets.

The following might be a typical mission load-out for the Miami. When preparing to leave for a cruise to the Mediterranean, she might carry a full load of Tomahawks, which would include twelve VLS tubes full of TLAM-C/D variants, with several more in the torpedo room racks. In addition, she would carry a mixed load of Mk 48 Mod 4s and ADCAPs, as well as several Harpoon Block ID antiship missiles. There would be no TLAM-Ns, as all of these have been withdrawn from U.S. ships, aircraft, and submarines following President Bush's order in the fall of 1991. Nevertheless, though it is the policy of the U.S. Navy not to deploy nuclear weapons, and they normally refuse to discuss it, the capability does still exist. Also, there would be no TASMs aboard, as the submarine community seems to feel that the Harpoon Block ID is more than adequate to the antishipping task, and the TASMs are hard to get long-range targeting for, on a submarine.

The biggest single bottleneck to effectively utilizing the growing force of TLAM-C/D cruise missiles in the inventory is the preparation of suitable mission plans. Each mission plan has to be developed from a Tercom data base that the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) has assembled over a period of fifteen years. The data is made into mission plans at one of the Theater Mission Planning Centers (TMPC) located at various places around the world. Here the Tercom data bases are merged with terminal target photos (for the DSMAC cameras), to produce mission plans that can be stored on disk packs on the sub, or downloaded to the sub via a satellite link.

Once the Miami has a particular mission plan aboard, the basic plan can be modified on the BSY-1 Command and Control System (CCS Tac Mk 2) console in the control room. Located adjacent to the BSY-1 fire control consoles, this console can be used to plan and control missions for all the variants of Harpoon and Tomahawk. Should Miami not have a plan available in her onboard library, she can use the CCS-2 to develop her own plans. And with the coming deployment of the Block III version of TLAM-C, the requirement for access to a complete Tercom library for mission planning will be reduced.

To launch a Tomahawk or Harpoon, the boat has to slow to about 3 to 5 knots and come to periscope depth. The CCS-2 (or BSY-1 in the case of Harpoon or TASM) console operator powers up and loads a mission plan into a missile loaded in either a torpedo or VLS launch tube. This can be done for as many or as few missiles as the situation requires. Once this is done, the weapons officer inserts a launch key (a holdover from the old TLAM-N days) and presses the firing button. If the weapon is a Tomahawk, it is ejected from the tube (the version fired from torpedo tubes is carried in a tube liner), fires its booster rocket, and away it goes. If it is a Harpoon, the weapon in its buoyant capsule is ejected from the tube and heads for the surface. When it gets there, the booster rocket fires, and it heads for the designated target.

The one problem with all these missiles is that they make the firing submarine extremely vulnerable to detection by aircraft or surface ships, and the amount of noise made by a missile being fired underwater is simply amazing. So it is essential that if the Miami is ever tasked with firing a weapon, as the USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720) and USS Louisville (SSN-724) did during Desert Storm (they fired a total of fourteen TLAM-Cs and TLAM-Ds), she will have to be sure she is clear of any threat during the launch cycle.

Probably the least appreciated weapons that can be carried by a 688I are mines. These "weapons that wait" are perhaps the most cost effective weapons ever derived for naval warfare. Though most of the mining done by the United States since the end of World War II has been done by aircraft, there may be situations where the stealth and precision of a submarine may be preferred for delivery of these dangerous "eggs."

The first of these is the Mark (Mk) 57 moored mine. It is a derivative of the air-dropped Mk 56 and can be moored in several hundred feet of water. It has a variety of different sensor and triggering systems, including acoustic and magnetic influence fuses. They can be programmed for activation delay or programmed to activate only for certain types and numbers of ships.

Another type is the Mk 67 mobile mine. These are obsolete Mk 37 torpedoes that have been rebuilt into mines that lie on the bottom and wait for a target to drive over them. A submarine might fire them up into a shallow channel, to a distance of 5 to 7 miles. Like the Mk 57, this mine has a variety of different fusing options.

But the crown jewel of the U.S. mine arsenal has to be the Mk 6 °Captor mine. This is an encapsulated Mark 46 torpedo, programmed to wait for enemy submarines; when one is detected the torpedo swims clear and attacks the sub. As an added benefit they can be programmed to listen for a certain type of submarine, like a Kilo or Akula. During the Cold War, it was planned to seed Captors along all the transit routes used by the submarines of the Soviet Union. Now they can be used against any of the growing number of countries that have chosen to buy and use diesel submarines in their navies.

One of the nice things about mines is that they take up only about half as much space as the other types of weapons a sub might carry. Thus a 688I could carry as many as forty mines and still have a couple of ADCAPs for self-protection. The deployment of the mines is no different from loading and firing a torpedo (the BSY-1 has a mine launch mode), though the position of the mine has to be plotted absolutely accurately, so that it can be swept later. Fortunately the advent of GPS has made this task a bit easier, though efficient use of the SINS system is also required.

All in all, these weapons make for a very dangerous quiver of arrows for the submarine force.

Wandering aft about 25 feet from the enlisted mess puts you underneath the forward escape trunk. This is a two-man air-lock used for a variety of purposes, though primarily as the main entry point to the forward part of the boat. It is composed of a pressure vessel about 8 feet tall and 5 feet in diameter. At both the top and bottom is a hatch capable of standing as much pressure as the actual hull of the boat. Most often personnel and supplies are loaded through this trunk. There is also another trunk farther back over the aft machinery spaces.

In the event of an emergency the escape trunk comes into its own. If the boat is on the bottom and stable, the normal procedure is to wait for one of the deep-submergence rescue vehicles (DSRV) to be transported to the rescue site. The DSRV then comes down and docks to the collar over one of the escape trunks. It blows out the water from its own docking collar, now held in place by the pressure of the surrounding water. The crew of the DSRV open their own bottom hatch and enter the downed boat through the trunk. Now the crew of the downed sub can come aboard, albeit only about two dozen at a time. This means that if a Los Angeles boat were to go down intact with all her crew alive, it would take something like six trips to get them all off.

If the boat is flooding and the crew must get off immediately, the escape trunk takes on a more vital role, allowing the crew to escape from the boat under their own power. This is done using a Steinke hood, a combination life jacket and breathing apparatus that fits over the head of a sailor. Two at a time the men enter the escape trunk wearing their Steinke hoods. They close the bottom hatch and huddle under an air bubble flange installed in the trunk for such operations. The sailors then charge their Steinke hood air reservoirs from an air port in the side of the trunk, and open a flood valve to fill the trunk with water. While they sit under the air bubble flange, the upper hatch opens. If they are the first ones to escape from the sub, they will have the additional job of pushing a life raft out of the hatch; this floats to the surface and provides some shelter for the men when they get there. Then, one at a time, they duck under the flange and float up through the hatch.

At 400 feet (the maximum depth that the hood can be used), the men will have something like a minute to flood the trunk and get out. Any longer, and they risk getting "the bends" (small bubbles of nitrogen gas that form in the blood) as they rise to the surface. After they have exited, the controller in the area below the trunk closes the hatch via his control panel and begins to drain the trunk for the next pair of escapees. Meanwhile the two sailors literally rocket up to the surface. This would be extremely dangerous (the decreasing water pressure makes them vulnerable to a variety of air embolisms if they hold their breath), but with their heads in the air bubbles of their Steinke hoods, the men are able to breathe normally throughout the ascent to the surface. Once on the surface, they try to inflate the raft and stay together.

One of the other primary uses for the escape trunk, this one far less ominous, is as an airlock for divers and special operations teams. One of the little-known facts about U.S. submarines is that they have, at all times, a small team of divers (usually three to five rated divers) aboard to support the operations of the sub. The diving equipment and other gear is stored in the compartment forward of the torpedo room, near the VLS support equipment room. The divers' jobs include everything from clearing fouled propellers and running gear, to running security checks on the boat before she leaves harbor. In fact, when the Miami is in a foreign port she is not allowed to leave the harbor unless she has at least three divers aboard to assist in examining the hull before she gets underway.

The other type of diver-related operation that is conducted through the escape trunk is submerged "lock-out" of special operations teams, such as the U.S. Navy's elite SEAL teams. These kinds of operations are really not the forte of the 688I and will, until they are retired, be predominately the job of modified Sturgeon-class boats like the Parche (SSN-683). Part of the problem is that the Los Angeles-class boats are optimized for speed and are not properly equipped to conduct this kind of mission effectively. Also, the already cramped accommodations of the 688I make it necessary to set up temporary sleeping quarters for the team, perhaps on bunks down in the torpedo room.

In the unusual case of a special operations mission, the boat nears the target of the team and hovers over the seabed. The team then enter the trunk two at a time under the air bubble flange, and follow the same procedure as escaping sailors except with their diving gear. Retrieval is exactly the reverse, with the team reentering the trunk two at a time, closing the hatch, draining the trunk, and exiting through the bottom hatch back into the boat.

Silence. That is what has made American boats better than their opponents for over thirty years. It is their armor and their cloak all wrapped up into one vital quality. Nevertheless it comes at a high price and is called a fragile technology-fragile because it is based upon well-understood principles of physics, and because it can be compromised so easily. In terms of military technology, it is one of the crown jewels, in the same category as the ability to build stealth aircraft and nuclear weapons. So effective has this silencing effort been that the latest U.S. SSNs and SSBNs are so quiet, they can effectively disappear in the ocean's background noise.

To make a quiet submarine, the naval architects must take a holistic attitude to the design of the boat and every piece of equipment that goes into it. The key is mounting each piece of equipment that moves or makes noise on something that damps out the vibrations. The transmission of these vibrations-things like the spinning of a pump or the hum of a generator-sends noise out into the hull, where it is radiated into the water. In addition, the rubber decoupling tiles coating the hull help keep noise inside the hull from being transmitted out into the water.

The mounts on the main machinery raft take care of the biggest source of radiated noise. The rest of it is probably taken care of by secondary mounts underneath each piece of equipment (pumps, turbines, etc.), designed to attenuate the specific type of noise generated by that particular piece of equipment. In addition, each piece of machinery is probably designed to be as smooth running and noiseless as America's best mechanical and electrical engineers can make it. For example, the seawater circulation pumps, which are arguably the most noisy devices on the boat, transmit almost no noise in the 688I-class boats. Supporting this is a noise-monitoring system with sensors throughout the boat designed to tell if any piece of equipment or gear is loose or malfunctioning. An added benefit of this system is that it probably is capable of predicting when and how a piece of machinery is going to fail by its acoustic signature (such as the sound of bearings wearing out).

The various techniques used to decrease the radiated noise of American submarines constitute the single most classified aspect of the Miami and her sisters. The above description is only the most cursory discussion possible of this incredible technology. In fact, the only real way to describe the magnitude of the achievement is to say that the S6G reactor generates something like 35,000 shaft horsepower[10], yet with all this power the total noise radiated by the Miami is probably something less than the energy given off by a 20-watt lightbulb. It is for this reason that submariners sometimes refer to their Air Force cousins flying the F-117A stealth fighter as "the junior stealth service."

So, you ask, what is it like to live aboard a submarine like Miami? Well, imagine a combination of living in an oversized motor home and summer camp, and this is a lot of what life in the 33-foot pressure hull is like. Not much room, very little noise, very little news from home, and virtually no privacy. Against these "downs" are the esprit de corps of the submarine force, and the knowledge that being a submariner truly makes a man the best of the best in the U.S. Navy.

If you were to go out on a cruise on Miami, the very first thing you probably would notice is that you seem to be bumping into everything and everyone on the boat. This is not unusual for someone new on a sub, and after just a few hours you begin to "think small and thin" so that you can smoothly move around your fellow submariners.

The next thing that comes to your attention will probably be the rather odd working schedule, a watch program that has a crewman working six hours "on" and twelve hours "off." While he is "on," a sailor is standing watch; while "off," he is eating and sleeping, doing maintenance on equipment and systems, and studying for qualification. This creates the unusual standard of a Miami "day" being eighteen hours rather than twenty-four. Unfortunately the entire boat takes on this schedule, which tends to lead rapidly to crew members' suffering from sleep deprivation. While in theory a crew member is allowed eight hours of "off" time in a given twenty-four-hour period, this rarely works out into long periods for sleeping. Very quickly one loses all sense of time on the surface and back home, and the sleep that one does get tends to be "on the fly."

As for sleeping itself, this is a relatively comfortable thing to do on Miami. With the exception of Commander Jones's stateroom, the bunks for all the officers and men are about the same size, with similar appointments. And while a berthing space is about the same size as a big coffin, once you learn to think small, the space seems quite roomy. With fresh air blowing on your face and a nice foam mattress, falling asleep is really not much of a problem.

What is a problem is the "hot bunking" required for a large portion of the enlisted personnel on the Miami. This tends to dominate the schedules of the junior enlisted crew members, with a rigidly set schedule for many of the berthing spaces. If "special" or extra personnel have to be aboard, the crew will lay out extra bunks in the torpedo room over the weapons stowage racks. These are actually quite comfortable, with good headroom, though some folks find the idea of sleeping in a room with literally tons of explosive and fuel rather discomforting. Another problem is the lack of personal stowage space. For those with their own bunks there is a 6-inch-deep stowage pan under each mattress, as well as some locker space. For those having to "hot bunk," three men have to share the space normally allotted to two.

Dining aboard Miami is truly a pleasure, as the Navy goes all out to give the men the best chow the taxpayers' money can buy. In fact, because of the limited room for exercise, many of the men actually tend to gain weight on cruise. The food itself is simple but wholesome, with fresh fruit and vegetables becoming the most prized items after a few weeks. The Navy has done some rather clever things to extend the storage life of much of the fresh food aboard. For example, eggs are specially treated with a wax coating to extend their shelf life.

The cooks and their helpers (everyone does an occasional stint of mess duty) work hard to vary the menu and make meals interesting, using a galley about the size of an apartment kitchen. Certainly the culinary highlight of a cruise is the traditional halfway meal of "surf and turf" (steak and crab legs). Unfortunately, by the last few weeks of the cruise every man aboard will be sick of three-bean salad, and dreaming about fresh veggies almost as much as he does about his family.

Those dreams of home and family are always at the center of the submariners' thoughts, though there is very little the Navy can do to give them the kind of communications home that sailors aboard a carrier or frigate might have. The stealth of the modern SSN means that the crew of the Miami is almost never allowed to send personal messages home, and news from home is heavily limited and censored. Word from home is limited to a series (about one a week while on patrol) of forty-word messages called "Familygrams." Each Familygram is carefully crafted by a wife, parent, or loved one to give the crewman at sea an idea of what is happening at home. An example of a notional Familygram is seen below:

Once the Familygram has been placed into a drop box at the boat's home base of Groton, Connecticut, it is reviewed by personnel at the submarine group for any security problems or personal bad news. Occasionally the message will be returned for an edit or suggested change. As a general rule, no "Dear John" letters or bad news (death, illness, etc.) will be transmitted to the boat.

In addition, when the ship's office on Miami receives the Familygram, the personnel will also look over the messages and forward any that look like problems to the captain or executive officer for disposition. The Navy is quite conscious of the sacrifices of those who choose to love and live with submariners, and tries to close ranks whenever there is trouble. As it is, the majority of submariners I have met treasure the Familygrams they have received over the years on cruise. In these notes are news of babies on the way and babies born, birthdays and first words. For the men aboard Miami and all U.S. submarines, the Familygram with its "ILY" (I Love You) greeting is the only news they want to hear. It is their sole lifeline to home and "the world."

One of the ways the Navy helps the crew keep their minds off their homes and loved ones is to work them very hard. Every day the officers and men stand watches, maintain equipment, and study. This studying, known as qualifying, takes up almost all the "free" time of a submarine sailor. Since the days of World War II, when the sub force had to expand rapidly, the Navy has always pushed its submariners to gain knowledge and move up in the ranks. There is a ship's library, and video movies on the closed-circuit system, but these tend to be left alone in deference to a sailor's or officer's qualification book. In the enlisted mess, there is frequently a class running in what is known as "the school of the boat." During a visit to Miami the chiefs were running an orientation program on the boat's reactor plant-all of this while stores were being packed away and lunch being served.

Another function is the ritual of drills. One of the best ways to keep the skills of the crew honed and their minds sharp is to run daily drills simulating responses to various emergency and combat situations. These may range from fire drills (which are run every day or so) to simulated reactor restarts, to chemical spills ("Otto Fuel spill in the torpedo room" is a favorite!), and tracking drills. The drills are an excellent way to keep the crew from getting bored, and the words "Drill Period" on the boat's plan of the day are both hated and cherished by the crew for the difficult tasks this brings, and the confidence it builds.

The fire drills are quite interesting to watch. Without the facilities and equipment back home at Street Hall in Groton, the chiefs on the Miami are hard pressed to simulate the effects of such emergencies. For example, say there is a fire in one of the machinery spaces. The XO and his fire response team move to the compartment where the exercise is being conducted, with all the equipment they would use if the emergency was real. There the fire team find the drill supervision team equipped with gray tablecloths (to simulate smoke), and they must perform to the ship's accepted standards.

Other normal day-to-day functions take on some interesting bents on the Miami. Just aft of the drink machines is the ship's laundry, which hardly seems worthy of the title. At about the size of a phone booth, it has a tiny washer and dryer that would hardly be satisfactory in an apartment unit. Here it serves the needs of over 130 officers and men.

Even taking the garbage out has its exotic aspects. Just forward of the enlisted mess on the starboard side is the compartment containing the Trash Disposal Unit (TDU). The compartment contains the TDU (which looks like a small torpedo tube going through the floor), a garbage compactor, a large sheet metal roller, and the supplies necessary to dispose of the garbage produced by 132 men for several months.

How this is done is actually quite fascinating. The first step is to roll a "garbage can" out of pierced sheet metal. This can is placed in the trash compactor and filled with garbage. Usually the Miami generates two to three cans a day. When the time comes to dispose of them, each can has a couple of lead weights added to it and is sealed. Then the sonar crew does a complete check of the area to make sure nothing is around that might hear the operation. Because of the noise the cans make as they rattle down the TDU ejector tube, it is normal policy to store full cans if the boat is in a tactical situation requiring extreme stealth. In this case, the cans are stored in one of the refrigerated spaces to keep the smell down. When it's time to eject the cans, the cover to the TDU is opened, and a circular cake of ice is placed inside to protect the ball valve at the bottom. The can is placed on top of the ice, the TDU cover is closed, and the can is ejected much like a torpedo.

The daily life on board the Miami is filled with many of the kinds of things that go on anywhere that many men are packed together to do a very tough job. The boat becomes a place of quiet, with words whispered and steps taken lightly. And on those occasions when a difficult mission or operation comes along, the boat continues the same kind of routine, only more so. Anything that makes noise, even routine maintenance, is deferred to keep the noise down.

And how do we reward such devotion? By saying "Well done," and giving them more of the same to do. The life of a submariner is one of a private and personal pride, the kind that comes from being part of an elite club that you cannot buy or beg your way into, and you have to perform "above and beyond" just to stay in.

And then there is the ultimate reward of returning these men to their families and homes. It is said that when a boat is going back to base, the engineers in the machinery spaces have a special setting for "going home." If you have ever seen the incredible spectacle of a warship returning its men to the land, you know why. Every wife and girl-friend has her best on for her man, many with new babies and older children under their arms. If you ever want to know why they do it, look at the loved ones they leave behind in the knowledge that their sacrifices protect those they love most.

America can take pride in the sacrifices of these men and their loved ones over the last forty-five years of SSN operations. Pride for a job well done. Pride in what they are. And pride in what they will do in the future.

After the United States, the largest builder and operator of nuclear submarines in the western world is the United Kingdom. Currently the British operate a force of twelve SSNs and four SSBNs. In addition, they also operate a small force of four diesel attack submarines. While this may seem like a minor force compared to that operated by the United States, the British fulfill an important role in the structure of NATO. In addition, since they are located much closer to potential points of conflict in Europe and Africa, the responsiveness of their submarine force is multiplied far beyond their small numbers.

If you were to travel throughout the world and talk to submarine captains, and the captains of the surface ships who might have to oppose them, and ask them whose submarines they most fear, you might be surprised. For while everyone deeply respects the Americans with their technologically and numerically superior submarine force, they all quietly fear the British. Note that I use the word fear. Not just respect. Not just awe. But real fear at what a British submarine, with one of their superbly qualified captains at the helm, might be capable of doing.

It is somewhat ironic that the nation that may have the highest quality submarine force in the world has itself been more victimized by submarines than any other in history. It was a British ship, HMS Eagle, that was the target of the first attempted attack by a submarine, the Turtle. It was also the British who were the intended victims of Robert Fulton's Nautilus and John Holland's early submarines built for the Fenian Society. And it was the British who suffered the most during two world wars from the efforts of Germany's U-boat fleets. Certainly no other nation on earth has such understanding of the damage submarines can do.

This is not to say that the British have had an easy time developing their submarine force. The truth is that until the late 1960s, the men who had chosen to serve in the Royal Navy sub force were regarded as pariahs and not considered to be gentlemen by the other line officers of fleet. As far back as 1804, when the British admirals got their first look at Robert Fulton's Nautilus, the submarine has been considered a sneaky and "damn un-English" way to fight a war. This opinion had not changed by World War I, though the Royal Navy had begun a modest investment in such craft. Ironically, one of the first customers for John Holland's early submarines was Great Britain, which bought five for experimentation and establishment of her force. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy poured almost all of its funds into a fleet of modern battleships and escorting vessels, keeping funds for submarines scarce. With only a limited force of submarines to use in wartime, the Royal Navy made a point of putting only their most talented officers in command. This wound up paying great dividends, although they did not have the rich numbers and variety of targets that the U-boats had. The exploits of their captains, including the great Sir Max Horton, have become legend in the annals of submarine history, and gave the Royal Navy a tradition they were able to build on.

During the period between the world wars, the British experimented widely in submarine technology. They developed submarines that could carry aircraft and heavy guns, and a variety of new and different power plants. Along with the U.S. Navy, they led in developing the type of submarine that would have the greatest impact in World War II, the long-range fleet submarine. During World War II this force, particularly the "T" class, did the bulk of the damage inflicted by British submarines. In the Mediterranean the "T" boats of the 10th Submarine Flotilla based at Malta sank many supply ships destined for Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps, helping keep him from the oil fields of Arabia. Several of the "T" boats deployed to the Pacific, for which they had been designed originally, to assist in the fight against the Japanese. They even helped in the ASW campaign against the U-boats by sinking seventeen German and Italian submarines.

Another British achievement was in the area of special operations. Throughout World War II, the Royal Navy submarine had an exemplary record, ranging from the insertion of commando teams to the preinvasion surveys of landing beaches. Part of this record includes the use of miniature submarines, called X–Craft, to damage beyond repair the German battleship Tirpitz and the Japanese cruiser Takao, as well as providing navigation beacons for the British landing forces on D-Day. To this day, special operations are one of the hall-marks of the British submarine tradition.

After the war, the Royal Navy took its share of the German U-boats and technology that it had captured, and began to work on the development of its own "super" submarines. Like the other fleets of the world, the dream of the British submariners was to find a technology that would allow a submarine to travel at high speed, for long periods of time, without having to use a snorkel tube and risk detection. The RN explored the conventional steps of hydrogen peroxide engines and other air-independent systems. Unfortunately they did not invest in the nuclear reactor program that the United States had started in the 1940s, and wound up having to accept that they had bet on the wrong technologies when it became obvious that nuclear power was the future in submarine development.

Because of the special relationship that had been forged between the United States and Great Britain during the war, however, the United States was willing to sell their reactor and power train technology to the British. So in 1963, the first British SSN, HMS Dreadnought (S-98), was commissioned into the Royal Navy. She was essentially a Skipjack-class SSN from the reactor aft and a British sub from there forward. And while she made a lot of noise, just like her American half-sister, the Dreadnought provided the Royal Navy with a foothold into nuclear submarine operations, and the beginnings of a cadre of experienced nuclear sailors. Following the Dreadnought, the Royal Navy commissioned five additional SSNs of the Valiant (S-102) class. These new SSNs were contemporaries of the Permit class, and used U.K.-built reactor plants based on the U.S. design.

During this period the British government was trying to find a way of maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent force that would be under British control. The force of RAF "V" bombers were quickly losing their ability to penetrate the air defenses of the Soviet Union, and the development of an ICBM force that would reside on British soil was simply beyond the financial resources of Great Britain. So the British government made the decision to buy the Polaris A3 missile system from the United States and build a force of four SSBNs to carry them. Thus was born the "R" class of SSBNs, the first of which, HMS Resolution (S-27), was commissioned in 1967. For over a quarter century the "R" boats have provided the United Kingdom with their nuclear deterrent force, helping keep the peace.

By the late 1960s the Royal Navy was beginning to think about expanding further their force of SSNs. Part of the reason was the expanding force of Soviet SSBNs, which had started making themselves known by this time. So a new class of SSN dedicated to ASW tasks was ordered. Called the "S" class, the first unit, HMS Swiftsure (S-126), was commissioned in 1973. Contemporaries of the American Sturgeon class, five of the six units built are still in service today.

It was the "S" class boats, along with several of the "V" class SSNs, that provided the Royal Navy with its primary antiship punch during Operation Corporate in the 1982 Falklands War. Three of the boats, HMS Conqueror, HMS Splendid, and HMS Spartan, were the first Royal Navy units to arrive and set up operation in the British-declared Total Exclusion Zone (TEZ) around the islands. They helped give the TEZ credibility long before the surface task force arrived in the area, as well as helping land the first of the special operations teams that were to be so effective during the war. Later, when the Argentine Navy tried to engage the Royal Navy task force, HMS Conqueror sank the cruiser General Belgrano and scared the rest of their navy back into port, never to come out again.

The year after the Falklands War, the Royal Navy took delivery of what, up to the writing of this book, is the last class of SSNs built, the "T" class. Delivered in 1983, HMS Trafalgar (S-107) is the ultimate expression of British SSN design. Still powered by an American-designed reactor (called PWR-1), it was the lead unit of a seven-boat class. And in the area of SSBNs, the Royal Navy has begun trials of their replacement for the "R" class SSBNs, the "V" class. The lead boat of this class, HMS Vanguard, will help maintain the British nuclear deterrent force into the twenty-first century. Powered for the first time by a British-designed reactor, the PWR-2, she will carry the same Trident D5 missiles as the Ohio-class SSBNs in the U.S. Navy. A total of four "V" class SSBNs has been ordered.

History and tradition are fine, but just what makes a British SSN such a tough proposition to take on? It is, in a word, personnel. As in the United States, the Royal Navy has a submarine school at Portsmouth (called HMS Dolphin), which is equipped with a range of classrooms and trainers that would look quite familiar to any U.S. submariner. The British system for manning their submarines, while similar to the U.S. system, has some important differences. It is not all that different in the area of enlisted personnel, though there are some minor differences in the course for enlisted men (women do not serve on Royal Navy submarines as yet). The real difference is for the officers, whose career track is completely different from that of their American counterparts. Starting very early in his career, following graduation from the Royal Navy Academy at Dartmouth, the submarine officer is asked to make a choice of four separate tracks to follow for the rest of his naval career.

One track takes him into the supply branch and can lead to command of a naval depot or a program office. Another is the Marine Engineering Officer (called MEO) track, which allows him to operate a nuclear, steam, or gas turbine power plant. There also is a track for those who desire to specialize in weapons employment. Accepting this option, called the Weapons Engineering Officer (WEO) track, means that an officer can rise to head the weapons department on a submarine or ship. The greatest differences are in the track that leads to command.

For those officers who desire to command one of Her Majesty's submarines, the Seaman Officer's career track must be followed. Much like his U.S. Navy counterpart, the young seaman officer spends his first tour on a submarine qualifying for his "dolphins" and learning how things are done on a submarine. The important difference is that although he spends considerable time watchkeeping and learning the aspects of nuclear engineering that directly concern him, his training is concentrated on making him aware of all aspects of the boat's operations. From the very start of his career, the seaman officer is being groomed for command.

Another difference from his American counterpart is that the young officer spends his entire career assigned to submarines. Shore and "joint" tours are virtually unknown in the British submarine service and are seen as a sign that one may not be suitable for command. As the officer rises through the hierarchy of the wardroom, he becomes first a Navigator, then a Watch Leader or Officer of the Watch (WL/OOW). During this tour a critical decision about his future is made by his captain and the Chief of Staff, Submarines, at Northwood, England: whether or not to send him to the Perisher.

Perisher is the Royal Navy's submarine command qualification course, which every prospective submarine captain and first lieutenant (the equivalent of the U.S. executive officer) must pass before he can move up into those positions. It is a course unlike anything else in any other service. An American probably would consider it a postgraduate-level course, with an extra helping of stress built in. There is more to Perisher than stress and learning how to drive submarines. It is a test of the trainee's character, designed to tell the Royal Navy whether or not a man is qualified to command one of the most powerful conventional weapons systems in the British arsenal. Probably the closest thing that might be compared to Perisher is the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) at NAS Miramar, California, though Top Gun tests only the skill of a pilot and radar operator, not the ability of an officer to command more than a hundred men. The average Perisher student is in his late twenties or early thirties, with between eight and twelve years of experience in submarines.

About twice a year, ten officers are selected to attend the Perisher course, which is based at the Royal Navy submarine base at Portsmouth. If there are not enough RN officers to fill all ten spots, these vacancies are made available to the prospective captains of other selected navies' submarines. To date, officers from Canada, Australia, Denmark, Holland, Israel, Chile, and many others have taken the Perisher course. The only modification made for these officers is that the parts of the course specifically involving nuclear submarine operations are replaced with instruction on the diesel submarines more commonly found in those navies. Surprisingly, no American officer has ever taken the Perisher course-and it has been run since 1914! I should point out, conversely, that no British officer has ever taken and completed the American PCO course. The two countries have different focuses to their command qualification courses, and both seem satisfied with the products produced.

The faded accounting ledger that is the logbook of every Perisher course since 1922 (the earliest time that they kept records) is filled with a "who's who" of Royal Navy submarine history, including Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse; Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, who led the RN forces during the Falklands War; and the current senior Perisher "teacher," Commander D. S. H. White, OBE, RN.

Commander White and the other Perisher teachers are the keepers of the institutional memory where command of Royal Navy submarines is concerned. Just two years ago, the Perisher course underwent a significant change in its curriculum, with more emphasis being placed on nuclear submarine operations, long-range weapons employment, and tactics for war at sea. Since that time, the teachers continually try to keep the course and what it teaches as up to date as possible.

The five-month course begins by dividing the ten trainee officers (also called "Perishers") into two groups, each supervised by one of the Perisher teachers. The Perishers visit all the manufacturers of equipment that goes into the RN boats, as well as Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, Limited (VSEL), where all the British submarines are currently built. Then they head into the attack simulators to learn approaches to surface targets. After the simulator runs are completed, they head up to the RN Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane, Scotland.

Here the real test of the Perishers begins. Each group of trainees is taken aboard a Royal Navy submarine and begins to do visual approaches on a frigate charging at the submarine. Each trainee gets to do five runs a day for a period of several weeks. As the course progresses more frigates are added, until the Perisher trainee has three of them simultaneously charging at his periscope. The idea is for him to safely operate the submarine, fire off a shot, and not get run over by one or more of the frigates. All the time that a Perisher student is at the conn of the sub, the teacher is evaluating the trainee's reactions and ability to maintain his awareness of the tactical situation.

It is an emotionally brutal regime, with a very high dropout rate. On average, between 20 percent to 30 percent of the Perisher trainees don't make it, and failure rates on individual courses may be as high as 40 percent. Unfortunately, to drop out of Perisher is to never step aboard a British submarine again. When it happens, the teacher's coxswain gives the trainee a bottle of whiskey, and escorts him back to shore.

If the trainee survives the approach phase, he heads into an equally challenging operations phase in which the Perishers play the roles of actual submarine captains on missions. These may include sneaking up on a coastline in the British Isles to deliver a Special Boat Service (SBS) commando team, snap some pictures of a coastline, or practice laying mines. The final phase of the course has the trainees taking part in a war-at-sea exercise, designed to see how each trainee can handle actual command of a boat in combat. When it is all over, and the Perisher has checked off all items on the teacher's checklist to the instructor's satisfaction, he is what every seaman officer dreams of being, a Perisher graduate and qualified to command a Royal Navy submarine.

The Perisher course is a very expensive proposition for the Royal Navy. If it did not already have the assets in place to conduct the course, the cost per individual trainee would be approximately PS1.2 million. The human cost is also high. Failed Perishers usually transition into what is known as General Service if they choose to stay in the Navy. If they are lucky, they may even rise to command a frigate or destroyer. But the stigma of being failed Perishers will always follow them.

For all the costs, just what does the Perisher course produce? Arguably the world's finest quality submarine captains. Perisher is the Royal Navy's commitment to making sure that the men who command their submarines are as good as the boats themselves. With only about twenty submarines in the force, they feel they must have them commanded by the very best. This is not to say that the U.S. commanding PCO course is not a good course-it is. But by separating the engineering career paths from the service officers at an early point, the future captains can concentrate on being captains, not nuclear engineers. This does not mean that U.S. skippers are not as good as their Royal Navy counterparts, only that the Royal Navy has a procedure in place that automatically selects and qualifies the best of their submariners for their command, not engineering, skills.

Once the Perisher trainee has graduated, he will be assigned as the first lieutenant of a Royal Navy submarine. In the past, when the RN had more diesel submarines, a Perisher graduate could count on getting command of one of these boats directly after completion of the course. Now, of course, all of them do a tour as a first lieutenant. This means that every Royal Navy submarine has two men who are fully qualified to command the boat. Once he has done this tour, the officer will likely be given command of his own boat. In, fact, it is not impos-sible that a good Royal Navy submarine captain might command a diesel boat, an SSN, and an SSBN before he is finished in submarines.

The British like to get their money's worth out of the men they qualify for command, and a really good captain is not done yet. Once a captain has finished with submarines, the Royal Navy frequently sends him to drive ASW frigates such as one of the Type 22 Broadsword class or Type 23 Duke class. By this time a full captain, he is ready to move on to command a task group or naval base, and then, flag rank. This is the big difference between the American system and the British. The U.S. Navy system creates superior submarine drivers and engineers; the Royal Navy system is designed to produce pure leaders like a Nelson, Rodney, or Woodward.

HMS Triumph (S-93) is the seventh and last unit of the Trafalgar class. It is based at the Royal Naval Station at Devonport, near the town of Plymouth in southwest England. She is part of the 2nd Submarine Squadron, which includes the seven "T" boats, and the four diesel boats of the "U" or Upholder class. Ordered in 1986 and laid down at VSEL in 1987, she was launched on February 16, 1991, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on December 10, 1991. At the time this book is being written, the Flag Officer, Submarines, for the Royal Navy is Vice Admiral R. T. Frere, RN. His Chief of Staff, Submarines, is Commodore Roger Lane-Nott, RN. They command the British submarine fleet from the Royal Navy operations center at Northwood, near London.

HMS Triumph is the tenth ship (and the second submarine) of the RN to carry the name. Her predecessors carry a total of sixteen battle honors, starting with the battles against the Spanish Armada in 1588. The current Triumph is commanded by her commissioning commanding officer, Commander David Michael Vaughan, RN. His first lieutenant is Commander Michael Davis-Marks, RN. Both are Perisher graduates, and each has even commanded one of the cherished "O" class diesel boats before he came to Triumph. They are an excellent team, generally considered to be two of the best command-qualified officers in the Royal Navy submarine service. They are aggressive, confident, colorful, and seem fully capable of any tasks that might be asked of them and their boat. Her crew is made up of twelve officers and ninety-seven enlisted men. It is a trim, neat-looking boat with a definite polish to her. Let's take a look for ourselves.

Triumph is somewhat different from the Miami in that she is built not so much for speed as stealth. She is smaller than a 688I, at 4,700 tons displacement versus the 8,100 tons for the 688I, and is shorter, around 250 feet/76 meters long. In addition, her hull is more like the classic shape of the Albacore, and is somewhat more hydrodynamically stable than the 688I. Her hull is covered in rubber tiles like the 688I, but these are hard and stiff. This coating is anechoic, designed specifically to defeat active sonars that might be trying to get a "ping" off the hull. She may also have a decoupling coating on the inside of the hull to help reduce any machine noise produced internally.

Much like the 688I, her fittings are designed for a minimum of drag, and the only protrusion is the sonar dome for the Type 2019 acoustic intercept receiver forward of the conning tower. Her dive planes are recessed in the forward part of the hull, and she has a fairly conventional set of cruciform tail surfaces aft. At the tip of the vertical stabilizer, the Type 2046 towed sonar array is attached. Unlike the 688I array, this unit is clipped on, not rolled out. This means that it has to be attached and removed whenever the sub enters or leaves port. The 2046 is roughly analogous in capability to the American TB-16.

Though it is not obvious when she is sitting at dock, the most noticeable difference from the 688I is that the boat has no propeller. Instead, Triumph is equipped with a device called a pumpjet propulsor. If you could see her in drydock, you would see what looks like a lampshade attached to her stern; this is the pumpjet. This device works like a ducted fan, to push water aft and drive the boat forward. The advantage of this system is that it is somewhat quieter than a propeller, and it operates more smoothly. By the way of example, Triumph can speed up from 5 to 18 knots without its crew feeling any vibration from the shift in speed. So efficient is this system that the U.S. Navy is planning to use pumpjets on all their future SSNs, including the Seawolf class.

The conning tower of Triumph is much like that of the Miami, except that hers has somewhat more room. In fact, there are two separate positions for lookouts and officers to work topside. There is the usual array of periscopes and masts, including a huge dome for the Racal UAP ESM system. Both of the periscopes appear to be RAM coated to keep down their radar signature. Getting down the conning tower trunk into the control room is, if possible, tighter even than on Miami. In fact, almost everything on Triumph seems to be about three-fifths size compared to Miami-sort of like the difference between Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida!

If you drop down the ladder into the control room and take a U-turn to the left, you will be in the sonar room of the Triumph, where all the equipment and displays for the sonar systems are contained. I should say here that the British have nothing like the BSY-1 combat system in service right now. There is a plan for a system called the 2076 in a few years, but right now, all contact data handed off between sonar systems is done manually. The sonar suite on Triumph might be compared favorably to that on a Flight I Los Angeles-class boat. The various sonar systems include:* Type 2020, the main sonar array (both active and passive) in the bow of the boat. Unlike the dome sonar on Miami, it is composed of an array of elements around the "chin" (conformal array) of the boat. It can track several targets at once, and can pass data directly to the fire control system. One of the more interesting features is the "captain's key," which must be inserted in a slot in the 2020 control console before the active mode can be used. It is equipped with a special signal processor, Type 2027, which (if the tactical situation is right) can automatically calculate ranges to the target and feed the data to the fire control system.* Type 2072, the new flank array (passive listening only), which can only be described as huge. It is designed to detect broadband targets at long range.* Type 2046, the "clip-on" towed sonar array (passive listening only), attached to a tow point on the tip of the horizontal stabilizer. It is capable of detecting both broadband and narrowband signals.* Type 2019, the acoustic intercept receiver for detecting active sonars and torpedoes. This is a French system that is manned, as opposed to the automatic operating mode of the U.S. WLR-9.

The sonar systems on Triumph provide excellent coverage in both spectrum and azimuth. Only the lack of a fully integrated combat system and the TB-23 towed array system keeps it from being the equal technically of the BSY-1.

If you duck back around the corner where you came from originally, you may be surprised to find that the landing for the conning tower ladder has now been converted into a chair for Commander Vaughan. From this position, he can view the repeater for the sonar systems, the fire control consoles in the track alley, and the plotting area. Just aft are the two periscopes and the mast for the UAP ESM system. The scopes are first-rate, with the CK 034 search scope easily being the equal of the American Type 18. It is equipped with readouts for the ESM receiver mounted on top of the mast as well as a 35mm camera for taking photographs. The CH 084 attack scope, which has a very small head (to make it hard to detect), is also equipped with a low-light TV camera. Both are very quiet when raised, and have excellent optics. Two differences are the use of a split image rangefinder, as well as more automated controls.

The fire control alley is equipped with six positions for fire control technicians. The system is set up to track and engage several targets simultaneously. The screens are round, red- or amber-colored plasma displays; a light pen is used to designate the targets and move between the various operating modes. All the fire control solutions are generated automatically, and there is no manual TMA solution being plotted to back up the automated system. The British seem to prefer this because they believe that most engagements will probably be at relatively short range. This is like what they might encounter with a diesel boat, in which the reaction time for getting the first weapon in the water is the deciding factor. Thus the sonar/fire control fit of the Triumph, as well as the training of the crew (and especially the captain in his Perisher course), is a reflection of the current RN combat doctrine.

Traveling aft from the track alley, you come upon the two plotting tables, called SNAPS tables. These are automated and can be fed with plotting information from the fire control system and navigational aids. In addition, they can make use of standard navigational charts, the coordinates of which are stored in the computer's memory. Supporting the navigator is a Navstar GPS receiver, as well as a SINS system (the gyro compartment is down in the third level portside) to help keep Triumph on course.

Across the control room to the port side, you find the ship control area. It is laid out similarly to the one on Miami, the main difference being that the British have automated the control system so only one man controls both the bow and stern diving planes from a single position. The ballast control panel is to the right of the ship handling position, with the diving officer seated behind them. The boat dives in about the same time as the Miami, though she seems to be somewhat easier to trim. Triumph handles extremely well, able to turn at over 1 degree per second with only a moderate rudder on. She also speeds up and slows down very quickly and smoothly, with no noticeable sound or vibration as she changes speed. It is the pumpjet that makes most of the difference in noise and vibration over a propeller system like that on the Miami. Also, her hull shape is somewhat better from a maneuvering point of view.

Aft of the plotting area is the radio room. The British communications capabilities appear to be quite similar to those of the Miami, though it appears this system may not have an ELF capability. Just aft of the ship control is a door marked RADAR WARNING ROOM. This is the space where the readouts for the ESM system and communication intelligence (Comint) systems are located. Both systems are fed out of the mast antennas, especially the big ESM dome. These are really impressive systems, and are clearly a great deal more capable than a standard 688I. This is not to say the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy do not have boats specially configured for ESM/Comint purposes; they do. But if I were an American admiral planning to use a sub to monitor radio or radar activity off a hostile coast, and I did not have one of those special boats, I might just ask the British to borrow a Trafalgar-class boat for the mission.

Aft from the control room, you walk under the main access hatch to the deck, and into the access hatch for the reactor space. As with the Miami, visitors are not allowed to enter this space. The Triumph's reactor, called PWR-1 (Pressurized Water Reactor-1), is derived from the American S5W plant. Therefore the British have to abide by all of the procedures and security regulations set down in a 1958 joint RN/U.S. Navy agreement. The PWR-1 supplies about 15,000 horsepower, translating into a top speed of about 30 knots when she is at depth. As far as layout, the machinery spaces are roughly equivalent to those on Miami, with two of everything (turbines, motor generators, etc.) except for the main power train.

Coming back forward on the starboard side is the captain's cabin. The accommodations for the commander of a British SSN are positively Spartan by U.S. standards, with the cabin being only about a third the size of that on the Miami. On the forward end of the cabin is a small desk, with a single bunk along the outer bulkhead aft. Maximum use is made of the space, with a bookcase built over the end of the bunk.

Commander Vaughan likes to add a few homey touches to his cabin, like a pile of books on naval warfare (how pleasing to find a hardcover of The Hunt for Red October on top!) in the bookshelf, a small sound and video system paneled into the bulkhead, and a Thomas the Tank Engine bedspread, courtesy of his son. While it is somewhat cramped, and he does not even have a head to share with Lieutenant Commander Davis-Marks, he likes it. It is close to the control room, and he can get to his action station in just a matter of seconds.

If you proceed down the accommodation ladder to the second deck, you find the rest of the living spaces. Over on the port side are the officers' quarters and wardroom. The first lieutenant and the navigator share the single two-man cabin, with the rest of the officers sharing spaces with three-high bunks. There is a single lavatory for the officers in the passageway leading to the officers' wardroom. There are the usual amenities of a stereo and video system, as well as plenty of storage for the liquid refreshments that make the Royal Navy seem so much more civilized at times than the U.S. Navy. A small pantry serves the officers' wardroom, though all the food is cooked in a central galley serving all the men on the boat.

The rest of the crew eats and assembles in a pair of small mess areas (senior and junior ratings) on the starboard side of the second level. They are just as comfortable as the officers' wardroom; the senior rating mess has the added luxury of a bar with both Foster's Lager and John Courage on tap. Like the officers' wardroom, both are equipped with stereo and video systems.

The berthing areas are split (senior and junior ratings), with access for all of them located on the second level. Again, they are three-high bunks with stowage trays for personnel gear. As on the Miami, there are more junior enlisted personnel than bunks, so some "hot bunking" is required to fit everyone in.

Unlike the 688I-class boats, in which it is all located in one compartment, the Trafalgars have their life support equipment scattered in a series of different spaces in various parts of the boat. The CO scrubbers and the oxygen production plant are down in a compartment on the third level forward, surrounded by an acoustic enclosure. Up on the second level, just above the scrubber compartment, is the air-conditioning plant, also in an acoustic enclosure. Up on the first deck forward, in the same compartment as the forward escape trunk, are the CO/H burners that are used in the event of an emergency. The main H burners are located on the second deck. The two auxiliary diesel engines are located aft in the engine room. The reason for spreading these different pieces of equipment out around the boat is to put them in places where they can be most effectively isolated, from a noise standpoint.

Down on the third level and forward, you come to the torpedo room, which the crew calls a "bomb shop." Here are stored the various weapons that arm HMS Triumph. She is equipped with five 21-inch /533mm torpedo tubes (two per side, with one going out under the chin of the bow) and can store twenty-five weapons in the compartment. The torpedo tubes utilize a water ram system similar to the one on Miami, and use a similar loading system. The fifth tube makes it possible to fire a salvo of four weapons of one type, for instance, while still having one weapon of another type in reserve.

Currently the RN is deploying two different types of torpedoes. One is the Mk 24 Tigerfish Mod 2, which is an electrically powered wire-guided torpedo designed primarily for ASW work. It has a 200-lb /91-kg warhead, a maximum speed of 35 knots, and a range of 22,000 meters at 24 knots. It is very quiet (the British captains are fond of calling Tigerfish the stealth torpedo), though the small warhead makes it less effective for shooting at surface vessels.

Replacing the Tigerfish is the new Spearfish torpedo, which has a much larger warhead (660 1b/300 kg), comparable range (approximately 13 miles/21 km), and a maximum speed of around 60 knots. This torpedo is a monster, with many of the same kinds of guidance improvements and capabilities as the Mk 48 ADCAP.

In addition to the torpedoes, the RN deploys a version of the UGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile to give the Triumph a long-range antiship capability. Called Royal Navy Sub Harpoon (RNSH), it is equivalent to the U.S. Block 1C version of the missile.

While the Triumph does not deploy quite the variety of weapons that Miami does, one should remember that the British boats do not pursue the same role and missions as the U.S. fleet. And while the Royal Navy captains might like a weapon equivalent to the Block ID or Tomahawk cruise missiles, budget constraints will probably force them to be satisfied with what they currently have. Nevertheless, they are already capably armed and quite deadly.

Much like the Miami, the Triumph is equipped with a pair of escape trunks for emergency transfer to a DSRV, swimmer delivery, or emergency ascent escape. There is a two-man escape chamber in the forward machinery space on the first level, as well as aft in the machinery space. These chambers are designed to allow emergency escape from depths down to 600 feet/183 meters when used in conjunction with the RN Mk 8 egress/exposure suit. This suit, which uses the same kind of air reservoir breathing system as the American Steinke hood, provides the user with an insulated suit for survival on the surface. So effective is this system that test subjects have been able to survive for up to twenty-four hours in water simulating North Atlantic conditions. Although the British operate in areas where the water is, on average, shallower than that where the U.S. subs operate, they still train all their submarine personnel for deep-water egress. This is regularly practiced in a tower at their submarine school in Portsmouth.

The Trafalgar-class submarines, much like their American 688I counterparts, are designed to be extremely quiet. And while the British seem to be using many of the same quieting techniques and equipment, there do appear to be a few interesting features. Like Miami, the Triumph appears to use a large machinery raft with isolation mounts for all the large pieces of equipment (turbines, generators, etc.). Even the shaft that is connected to the pumpjet propulsor has a flexible mounting to keep down bearing noise.

As we discussed earlier, many of the noisier pieces of equipment seem to be set in their own acoustic enclosures. In addition, all the electronic equipment is set on leaf spring mounts to provide protection against the shock of a nearby explosion, as well as some sound isolation. Triumph also has a fairly extensive self-monitoring noise system, both to detect any untoward noise as well as to help locate any pending failures. Triumph is also equipped with systems to reduce the risk of detection from the boat's magnetic signature, as well as reducing the electrical field generated by the corrosion of the boat in seawater. All in all, the Triumph is probably the equal of the Miami in noise reduction.

A hallmark of the British character is their power of understatement and reserve. Yet if there is one thing that personnel on board the Triumph are fanatical about, it is damage control, particularly firefighting. The British experience with fire during the Falklands War in 1982, specifically the loss of HMS Sheffield and RFA Atlantic Conveyer to uncontrolled fires, has left a permanent impression. This shows in the design of their boats, which have the ability to isolate compartments and flood them with Halon. Virtually every electronic equipment rack has a port to inject CO gas to snuff any electrical fire. Like the 688I, Triumph has an EAB system with forced-feed air masks for every man on the crew. And then there are the firefighting tools themselves.

Their firefighting crew suits are made of chemically treated wool, which they say provides better insulation against the heat of a compartment fire, with protection as good as that of Nomex. Instead of the EAB masks or an OBA to breathe, the RN uses a compressed-air cylinder pack (called a Scott Pack) to provide breathable air to their firefighters. They are equipped with the same kind of thermal imager as the U.S. Navy has, as well as infrared fire detectors (which look like flashlights), and a full array of fire extinguishers, air test kits, and first aid kits.

The crown jewel of the Triumph's firefighting capability is their fixed AFFF (Aqueous Fire Fighting Foam) system. One of these is located on every level of the boat forward of the reactor, and I assume they are also back in the machinery spaces as well. This system, which looks like a small water heater, mixes seawater with the AFFF mixture and feeds it through a pressure hose. Crew members on Triumph indicated that they could lay down over 100 gallons/377 liters of AFFF slurry per minute with this system, which compares well with the still very effective AFFF fire extinguishers used on the Miami.

Life aboard Triumph is not all that different from on the Miami. Though the food is a little different (cheese buns for lunch and curry salad dressing are normal), the diet is healthy and hearty. The cultural difference between the two services appears in the attitude toward alcohol. Unlike the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy still allows their crews to have beer and wine aboard (the daily "tot" of Pussers Rum is unfortunately no longer served to the ratings). The attitude of the Royal Navy leadership for over six centuries has been that if a man is responsible enough to go to sea with its risks of quick death and isolation, then he should not be deprived of the basic pleasure of a drink if he should want it. In reality, most of what is carried aboard is consumed while in port; most men just don't drink at sea while they are working.

Other aspects of the Triumph lifestyle closely parallel that on Miami. Water is in short supply, and Navy showers are the rule. The crew uses many kinds of equipment, like the TDU, which any American submariner would feel quite at home with. Watches are roughly the same, with the same problems of having to "hot bunk." The daily routine includes lots of drills of all varieties, ranging from damage control to tactical drills. As for messages from home, the RN seems to follow the U.S. practice of "Familygrams," though probably not quite as often. It is a good life at sea, and the men enjoy it.

The folks in the U.S. Navy Undersea Warfare Office (N-87) call them "Roles and Missions." Whatever you call them, these are the tasks that are currently defined for nuclear submarines. Up until very recently, though, just discussing them was cause for extreme discomfort (based upon security regulations) on the part of the senior leadership of the handful of navies that operate SSNs. Now, because of the Cold War's coming to an end and the need to justify the costs of building and operating submarines, those same leaders are letting the world have a peek at just what their boats have done, and still do. In some cases, they are acknowledging for the first time missions that have been conducted for decades. Let's take a look.

What a difference a decade makes. Since the publication of the first edition of Submarine, there have been numerous changes to the submarine forces of the world's navies, especially that of the United States. Perhaps the most obvious of these are the introduction of the Seawolf-class (SSN-21) boats into service and the continuing work on a new submarine-the Virginia (SSN-774) class. There have been other dramatic changes as well, especially in the fields of engineering, sensors, and weapons. These advances have led to breathtaking improvements in the way we design and plan submarines of the future. At the same time, they will have a profound impact on the way the Navy's newest submarines will fight the potential battles of the twenty-first century.

The decade of the 1990s opened with American submarines supporting their first shooting war since 1945. Operation Desert Storm allowed the U.S. submarine force to participate in a major conflict, through the use of BGM-109 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles. The American boats also provided other valuable services during the 1990–1991 war, such as intelligence gathering, maritime surveillance, and special operations support. This trend continued throughout the decade, despite the radical drawdown in the size of the submarine forces of all nations. In fact, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its navy in the 1990s actually freed up the U.S. submarine fleet to undertake a much broader and more significant set of roles in addition to such dangerous yet essential tasks as keeping track of enemy "boomers" and their escorting attack submarines.

Submarines in the 1990s became significant strike platforms, launching Tomahawk attacks into Iraq, the Balkans, and even the retaliation strikes against the Osama bin Laden terrorist organization. So valuable was the capability of submarine-launched cruise missiles that the United Kingdom bought a supply of Tomahawks for their own boats, firing several dozen at Serbian targets during Operation Allied Force in 1999. This covert precision-strike capability has become so attractive that the Royal Navy has looked at equipping every British submarine, including strategic ballistic missile boats, with a supply of American cruise missiles. The U.S. Navy has also considered adding Tomahawks to strategic missile boats, proposing to convert the four oldest Ohio-class SSBNs into huge guided missile /special operations platforms.[11]

Another role that submarines have made their own has been in the arena of special warfare and operations. While the British have always used their fleet of boats to deliver and extract special-operations force (SOF) units like the Royal Marines and their Special Boat Squadrons, American nuclear boats spent most of the Cold War chasing Soviet subs and ships. The exception, of course, was the handful of so-called Special Projects boats, which were converted from existing SSNs.[12] However, the end of the East-West conflict and the emergence of the U.S. Special Operations Command as a result of the 1980s defense reorganization acts has changed all that. Today, SOF units from not only the Navy (the famous SEAL teams) but from the Army Special Forces (the "Green Berets") and Marines now regularly practice their trade from nuclear submarines.[13] Two older strategic ballistic missile boats have even been converted into transport submarines to support the SOF mission.[14]

Another "growth" mission for submarines in the 1990s has been intelligence gathering, though obviously with less of a focus on the former Soviet Union. The end of the USSR in 1991 freed up American and British boats to keep an eye on a number of other "hot" spots around the world and provide the intelligence services with even more tools and resources to keep an eye and ear on things. One recent example of this probably occurred following the in-flight collision of a U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries electronic surveillance aircraft and a Chinese J-8 interceptor over the South China Sea. Though there was a "gap" in the coverage for the U.S. from the air prior to the flights being resumed, rest assured that electronic and communications activity along the Chinese coast was probably being monitored by one or more U.S. submarines. Not only did this fulfill our minimum intelligence-collection requirements, but it also maintained a covert discretion that surface ships and aircraft cannot maintain.

Finally, there are the now-mundane but terribly vital jobs that nuclear boats did throughout the Cold War: watching and tracking the ships and submarines of potential enemies and hostile nations around the world. This has meant that in addition to watching the dwindling fleet of Russian ships and submarines, U.S. and British boats have been keeping an eye on those nations who were quietly developing their own fleets in the 1990s. This may sound surprising, given the worldwide drawdown of naval and submarine forces that followed the end of the Cold War. However, a number of countries began to build up their naval forces in the decade just past, and American and British submarines were out there, watching them every important step of the way.

There has been good news and bad news for the submarine forces of the United States and Great Britain. The good news is that due to the demise of the USSR, several regional economic downturns, and the general outbreak of peace, the size of the worldwide submarine force has shrunken to a fraction of its Cold War peak. Literally hundreds of submarines, from ancient diesel boats to state-of-the-art nuclear attack and missile submarines, were taken out of service. In the most radical cases, some of the units from the former Soviet fleet were just driven up onto shore and ditched like whales beaching themselves to die. It was a pitiful ending for the world's largest submarine force.

The bad news is that the submarines that remain in worldwide use are generally the pick of the litter: the best every nation still operating them can afford to maintain. This means that if a shooting war ever breaks out, the boats and captains facing U.S. and British submarine skippers will likely be very capable enemies indeed. Then there is the matter of those nations that have failed to notice the general outbreak of peace in the 1990s. Countries like China, Iran, and India have been building up their navies, and at the core of these efforts have been the expansion of their submarine forces. Many of these have been exported Russian Project 877/Kilo-class diesel/electric submarines (SSKs), armed with some of the best weapons ever offered for sale on the open market.

Similarly, the U.S. and many of our allies are producing the finest submarines, skippers, crews, and weapons that their treasuries can buy. However, these forces will be largely based on "legacy" designs like the 688Is and Trafalgars, with only limited numbers of new boats to replace the many units that were retired in the 1990s. This means that friendly forces will have to make do with what they have while the new designs mature and come into service. While there can be little doubt of the outcome of a one-on-one battle between a U.S. or British SSN and a submarine from some rogue nation, there is always the small chance that the "bad guys" will score a lucky "kill." The gods of war are a fickle lot, and the worst frequently happens when ordnance begins to fly. Given the public reaction to the loss of eighteen U.S. special operations soldiers in Somalia in 1993, one can only imagine what the national reaction might be to the loss of a billion-dollar-plus nuclear boat and over a hundred sailors. The accidental loss of the Russian Kursk (K-141) in the summer of 2000 gave everyone who operates submarines a shock, and something to think about as they headed into the new millennium.

So what does this all mean in terms of numbers of boats? Well, not as many as the leaders of the U.S. or British navies would like, of course. From a Cold War high of almost 100 and 20, respectively, the totals have dropped to around half that. Today, the Americans plan on maintaining a force of around fifty SSNs, while the British are hard-pressed to keep ten to twelve in service. This represents a very small number of platforms to accomplish a large range of missions. We are thankfully without an active naval conflict to fight, and this number will have to do.

While the United States Navy was going through its post-Cold War "shrinking pains," what was happening to the Royal Navy (RN) of our closest military ally, the United Kingdom? Well, you can rest assured that the RN submarine force was going through some equally painful experiences of its own! Like the United States, the British were in the middle of planning for the future of the Cold War when the Soviet Union threw in the towel at the end of 1991. You would have thought that when the Berlin Wall fell, it landed right on top of the Admiralty in London. As late as 1987, the British had been discussing a new class of attack boat to begin replacing the Swiftsure-class (S-126) SSNs. In 1987, Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering (VSEL), LTD, won a contract to begin designing a new "W" class, also known as SSN-20, and was to start construction in the mid-1990s. This new submarine was similar in design and concept to the American Seawolf, large and optimized for blue-water/open-ocean operations.

The 1990s were to have been one of the busiest and most aggressive decades for British submarine development. However, while design work on the Swiftsure's replacement continued at VSEL, the RN was also in the midst of replacing its Resolution-class (S-22) ballistic missile submarines with a vaunted new group of SSBNs known as the Vanguard (S-28) class. While these truly awesome boats were in production, readying for their commissioning, the Upholder-class (S- 40) SSKs were also scheduled to come into service during what would turn out to be one of the worst possible times imaginable. This class, consisting of Upholder (S-40), Unseen (S-41), Ursula (S-42), and Unicorn (S-43), were commissioned into service between 1990 and 1993, but by 1992 the decision was made to decommission all four of the brand-new SSKs as a cost-cutting measure.

The Upholder boats were eventually leased to Canada, but 1992 was a particularly dark time for the Royal submarine fleet. Also in that year, the entire SSN-20/W-class project to replace the Swiftsure was canceled with VSEL. Within months, however, a seed of hope was planted when the RN and Ministry of Defense (MoD) realized (as did their counterparts in the United States) that cost and not advanced blue-water operational capabilities was going to be the driving factor for getting a new class of SSNs ordered. Once this fact became apparent, priority switched from a new class of submarines to an improved version of the already proven Trafalgar (S-107) class SSNs.

British submarine designers were asked to submit a plan for a less expensive generation of submarines than had originally been envisioned. This new submarine was to vary only minimally from the previous Trafalgar-class SSNs. The boats, which soon took on the name Batch 2 Trafalgar class or B2TC, began to look like a reality when a request for bids was issued to both VSEL and competitor GEC-MARCONI in July of 1994. GEC ended up winning this contract, which called for construction of three boats with the option for more as deemed necessary and affordable by the MoD.

Initial progress was not exactly rapid, as complex defense consolidation issues stalled efforts to finalize the contract. The first actual orders for the B2TC boats were placed in March of 1997. The PS2 billion contract called for three new boats, HMS Astute, Ambush, and Artful. Finally, the B2TCs had a real name-the "A" or Astute class of nuclear-powered attack submarines. The current outlook for the Astute class is excellent, based on both the needs of the Royal Navy and the design expertise of the manufacturer. The keel of the Astute herself was officially laid down in January 2001. Thankfully, MoD support has continued unabated for Astute. In fact, it was announced in July 1998 that the Royal Navy would get two more Astutes, for a class total of five boats. Though these two most recent boats have yet to be named, you can bet that their futures will be full of adventure.

While the busy process of finding a suitable replacement for the Swiftsures was under way, an equally complex dance of consolidation was going on within the British defense and shipbuilding industries. In 1994, GEC-Marconi made an offer to buy VSEL, which had been working on the original W-class/Swiftsure replacement designs. The following year, British Aerospace also made an offer for VSEL, but in the end VSEL accepted the GEC-Marconi offer-though only after they had successfully raised the asking price several hundred million pounds! As you might imagine, this caused considerable consternation, as VSEL had been in direct competition against GEC-Marconi to build the new Astutes. These issues were finally resolved, however, and all was quiet on the submarine industrial front for several more years. This lasted until 1999, when it was announced that British Aerospace was merging with GEC-Marconi. This meant that British Aerospace now took over construction of the new Astutes. In doing so, and as a result of its merger with GEC-Marconi, British Aerospace officially changed its name to BAE Systems and continued with Astute's construction. Because of this, HMS Astute's prime contractor has been referred to as VSEL, GEC-Marconi, British Aerospace, and BAE Systems. The free market of the "New World Order"-what a crazy world we live in!

Now let's walk down the gangplank and take a virtual look inside this new warship. The A-class boats will be based on a design concept similar to that of the Virginia class. That is to say, the Astutes will need to maintain the capability to fight in nearly every underwater environment, from the open ocean of the Atlantic to the littoral zones off the Persian Gulf, all while keeping costs down and weapons loads and capabilities up. From protection of the British homeland to far-off TLAM attacks, the missions of Astute require that she contain only the best electronics and weapons available.

One of the biggest differences between Trafalgar and Astute is the size of the boats' hulls. Astute will displace around 7,000 tons submerged and 6,390 tons surfaced compared with 5,208 tons and 4,740 tons for the Trafalgar-class SSNs. Much of this tonnage, along with Astute's longer length (318 feet/97 meters compared with 279 feet/85 meters of the T-class boats-an increase of more than 36 feet/10 meters!), can be attributed to the newer boat's larger weapons load-out. Where the Trafalgar-class boats carried a total of twenty-five weapons, the new warships will be able to hold thirty-six (at least that's the number officially being claimed). They will be fired by six torpedo tubes versus the five in the earlier class. Some consideration was given to providing the Astute-class SSNs with a VLS system, but in light of cost constraints, the new boats' warload was deemed sufficient.

Another key update included in Astute has been her reactor plant. Astute's power plant was originally developed for the Vanguard-class SSBN. Designated PWR 2, it will be built by Rolls-Royce and is rated at 15,000 shaft horsepower. However, the Astute version is significantly more advanced than the earlier variants, and some press reports speculate that the new power plant is capable of circling the globe literally scores of times without a single refueling. Reportedly there is a lifetime reactor core design (known as an "H" core) that will give it twenty-five- to thirty-year service life. According to the Royal Navy submarine fleet's current plan, by the time refueling is needed, the first Astute will hopefully be resting her keel on the front porch of a submarine retirement community!

Last but certainly not least, Astute's propulsion systems would not be complete without the two turbines with a single shaft connected to the now standard (and very quiet) pumpjet propulsor. Of course, quieting is the most important characteristic for submarine survival in a hostile environment these days, and Astute's improved reactor will be significantly quieter than Trafalgar's. As a whole, Astute will be capable of operating not just in littoral and blue-water regions, but also in such varied climates as those that are found under the arctic ice or in the warm waters of the tropics.

In the control room of submarines everywhere, processing and computer power has also been increasing at an astounding rate for decades now. Thus any new class of boats, even improved models such as Astute, will have its share of both updated legacy systems along with new gadgets and sensors. Radar and sonar systems for the Astutes will be essentially the same units as were found in the Trafalgars, albeit with some improvements. It now appears that the Astutes will be fitted with the same Type 2076 sonar system, which has already been successfully integrated into the most recent Trafalgar-class boats. It is also all but certain that the Astute will be fitted with towed array sonar, as have her predecessors, although the specific variant and configuration have yet to be announced. Finally, current plans call for the Astute class to contain her own non-hull-penetrating "optronics" masts with all-electronic displays, minus the lenses, mirrors, and prisms of traditional periscopes. These are similar to those that will be carried on Virginia and will likely provide some brand-new capabilities and challenges for the Perisher-trained skippers of the RN.

What is a submarine without its weapons? RN attack submarines have now been fitted with Block III Tomahawk cruise missiles, and as the world learned during NATO's Operation Allied Force in 1999, Royal Navy submarines can shoot a lot of them, too! HMS Splendid launched more than two dozen against heavily defended Serbian targets, a sizable portion of the limited supply purchased from the U.S. When Astute enters service in June 2005, she will be equipped with a sizable complement of TLAMs, and the Royal Navy is also looking at development of a tube-launched version of the TACTOM missile currently under development for the U.S. Navy. Land attack missiles aside, Astute also has the requirement to engage surface ships and other submarines. For this mission, Astute's six torpedo tubes will be compatible with both the RN version of the sea-skimming UGM-84 Block 1C Harpoon missile (for attacks against surface vessels) and the fast, albeit expensive, wire-guided Spearfish torpedo (for use against both submarines and surface ships). Mines can also be carried and may have a particular use in the littoral regions.

Habitability and sustainability are always key issues on a nuclear submarine. When judging a submarine with the capability of spending extended periods of time away from port and beneath the surface, habitability must always be taken into consideration. Current plans call for a crew of twelve officers and ninety-seven enlisted sailors aboard Astute. While increased size has led to the improvement of some accommodations compared with the Trafalgars, some Astute sailors will still probably have to hot bunk with their shipmates. This practice will be required for only the most junior of her sailors, since current estimates call for the sharing of around eighteen of the crew bunks.

All of the improvements and modernizations built into the Astutes will become a reality when the first of the class is commissioned into service in 2006, followed by Ambush in 2007 and Artful in 2008. As mentioned earlier, it now appears that at least two additional A-class boats will be built, and possibly even more, though these have yet to be named or officially ordered.

What comes next for the Royal Navy's submarine force? Work has already begun on a submarine to replace the initial seven Trafalgar boats. The boats are so far unnamed, but what is known is that they will be nuclear powered and have a submerged displacement of between 5,000 and 8,000 tons. They will also be fitted with a "life of the boat" nuclear reactor, similar to those found in the Astutes and Virginias. In addition, VLS tubes may be fitted to this next class to allow for an increased load-out of Tomahawk Block III or TACTOM land attack missiles. As with the Virginias, any new attack submarine the Royal Navy builds will likely have provisions for UUVs. There is even talk that the Astutes will be the last manned submarine to enter service with the Royal Navy, something that requires more than a minor leap of faith and vision in the future of technology. In the end, though, the real strength of the RN SSN force will be what it always has been-superbly trained crews and Perisher-qualified skippers, able to outguess and outgun their enemies.

Yes, a decade really does make a difference. Ten years ago we asked what the next decade of submarine development would be like. Well, after reading this last chapter, you can see that question has clearly been answered. Fortunately, the world has also learned some lessons about the nature of naval warfare along the way. Most importantly, we've learned that if there's one thing we can't predict, it's the future! No one could have accurately predicted the end of the Cold War, and likewise no one will ever be able to accurately predict exactly what the next generation of submarine operations and missions will be like.

We do know that the past ten years of submarine operations have consisted of the unexpected. From Operation Desert Storm to our Navy's involvement in the recent NATO actions in the Balkans, the one theme that has remained the same throughout the 1990s has been doing more with less. The submarine communities of the U.S. and Royal navies, along with those of our other allies, have had their budgets cut, their submarines retired from service, and their crews downsized, all while being asked to conduct more activities and operations than at any time in recent memory. All this has been happening while highly capable submarines such as the Project 877/Kilo-class boats have been entering the navies of "rogue" nations at a far greater pace than new classes such as Seawolf, Virginia, and Astute will be entering ours.

What's the solution to this problem? In today's high-threat environment, where we don't have the benefit of looking in a specific direction to watch for flying bullets, we must be prepared for every contingency. And we are. A quick look at America's modern submarine force shows that. They're out there on patrol for the nation, in the backyards of our enemies and competitors-literally on their doorstep day in and day out-already prepared for any contingency. Whether it's a TLAM strike against a future enemy nation or a special operations rescue mission launched from the depths of a submarine dry-dock shelter, the sailors of today's submarine fleet are doing their best to stay prepared for any emergency. And for that we owe them our respect.

Getting back to our first question, what exactly does the future hold for the submarine force? The truth is, we don't know. Maybe the Virginias and the Astutes will be the last manned submarines the U.S. and Britain will ever build, eventually to be replaced by advanced unmanned submersibles. Or perhaps our fleets will become more and more sub-surface-centric as the surface ship becomes increasingly vulnerable to antiship missiles and other weapons. We just don't know yet what the future holds. However, whatever it may be, our nation's submariners (hopefully along with those of our allies) will be on patrol, ready to defend our national interest in times of trouble and threat. Can we ask for anything more?

It is something of an oddity that in a world where the numbers and sizes of military forces are decreasing, submarines continue to be built. In fact, while it is not quite a growth industry, production of diesel-electric submarines is continuing in a number of countries and yards worldwide. In addition, those countries that have the capability to build nuclear submarines are fighting desperately to maintain the industrial base to do so. While the nations of the world have been downsizing their own submarine forces, they have also been trying to market the products of their building yards to developing countries that desire an entry into the world of submarine capabilities.

It also is rather ironic that while the number of submarines in the world has decreased radically, the overall quality and age of the remaining boats has improved-rather a strange situation for those who suggest that peace has broken out around the world. Thus, anyone choosing to hunt other submarines is facing the reality that the task is probably getting tougher. In addition, nations that are generally considered as outlaws (like Iran and Algeria) are obtaining a number of new production diesel-electric boats. This proliferation means that the United States and our allies may have to hunt enemy subs in places we have never gone before. The recent deployment of the USS Topeka (SSN-754) to the Persian Gulf, at the same time the first of the Iranian Kilo-class boats was being delivered, is probably not a coincidence. Even more interesting, though, would have been to see if another U.S. boat, perhaps even another 688I, was invisibly trailing the Kilo on its delivery trip.

The section that follows is a compendium of the more modern submarines, both nuclear and conventionally powered, that might face the U.S. sub force. Some of them, like those of the United Kingdom and France, are operated by nations that are considered allies. Others, like those of the Russian Navy and the clients of the Germans and the French, might still pose a threat to the forces allied with the United States. This should not be considered a list of every single boat in the world, however. For that, I defer to A. D. Baker's incomparable biannual work, Combat Fleets of the World (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md.).

For the benefit of the reader, the following explanations of the terms used is provided:

Class name: Name of the first boat of the class or building program

Producer (country/manufacturer): Country of origin and production site

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): Surfaced and submerged in long tons (2,240 lbs per)

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: Bow to stern; Beam: Side to side; Draft: To keel

Armament: Number of tubes/launchers and weapons

Machinery: Power plant(s), number of screws, propeller blades, and shaft horsepower (SHP)

Speed (knots): Maximum

Number in class: In service + building + planned

Users: All countries currently using

Comments: Some thoughts and features of the class

While the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union may be dead, the navy built by the USSR is alive and still useful. Despite having suffered the breakup of the nation it was designed to serve, and having scrapped over half of all its warships, the Russian Navy is still one of the most powerful fighting forces afloat. They still deploy something like 240 submarines of various types, as well as a large array of surface ships. And while the Russian Navy and its CIS brother services are suffering from a shortage of almost everything, the missile boats are still making their deployments, with the attack boats still supporting them in the bastions.

The big challenge for the Russian submarine force, like everyone else, is surviving the present to move on to the future. Their first problem is, of course, how to maintain their existing force of attack, guided missile, and ballistic missile submarines. This problem has been made extremely difficult by the financial troubles of the Russian Republic, though they have managed to hold things together until now. Another problem is the fleet of aged submarines (many of them nuclear powered) that they have. The recent news photograph of an abandoned Russian submarine poking its bow through the winter pack ice in Vladivostok is a chilling statement on the inability of the Russians to deal with this problem. Clearly, just how to dispose of over 150 obsolete nuclear submarines is a problem that will require the help of the United States and her allies.

As for the future, only events will tell us that. The one thing that does seem certain is that the Russians will continue development of submarines and their related technology. While many of the design bureaus for aircraft and tanks are in desperate trouble, there are continuing reports that they are still funneling their limited military R&D funds into designs for newer and quieter submarines. The most likely projects for such research will probably be a replacement for the Delta IV SSBNs, a new SSN derived from the highly successful Akula-class boats, and possibly a new diesel-electric design to replace the Kilo and support export sales. The replacement SSBN makes sense in light of the new START arms agreements, which have the Russians placing over half their deliverable nuclear warheads on submarine-launched missiles. And just as obviously, the Akula and Kilo replacements will be needed to protect those SSBNs and maintain the credibility of the CIS nuclear deterrent.

Overall, this is a major reduction from several years ago, when the R&D effort was probably two to three times this size. Rumor had the Russians working on replacements for the Oscar-class SSGNs, the Typhoon SSBNs, the SSNs of the Sierra class, and even a Rubis-sized SSN for export to the Indian Navy. All of this though is based on what we see happening today. And as any honest watcher of Russian military trends will tell you, the crystal ball is cloudy and the tea leaves unreliable where they are concerned. In the end, it will probably come down to whether Boris Yeltsin can hold things together long enough for an actual trend to develop. So here it is as of today.

Class name: Victor III (Project 671 RTM)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Russian Admiralty; Komsomolsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 4,900/6,000

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 341.1/104 Beam: 32.8/10 Draft: 23/7

Armament: Four 650mm and two 533mm torpedo tubes with 24 weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving one tandem 8-bladed screw; 30,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 30 (submerged)

Number in class: 26

Users: Russia

Comments: While it soon will be the oldest class of SSN in the Russian inventory, the Victor III is still a dangerous and capable opponent. Well armed and relatively quiet (roughly similar to the Sturgeon class), this boat was the first Soviet SSN capable of matching Western boats. The stern pod, first found on Victor IIIs, is now a feature of every modern Russian SSN; it contains a passive towed array sonar system.

^{Akula. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.Russian Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine underway. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

Class name: Akula (Russian: Bars class) (Project 971)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk, Komsomolsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 7,500/10,000

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 370.6/113 Beam: 42.6/13 Draft: 32.8/10

Armament: Four 650mm and four 533mm torpedo tubes with 30+ weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving one 7-bladed screw; 45,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 35 (submerged)

Number in class: 7+?

Users: Russia

Comments: When western submariners have nightmares, they usually revolve around this class of SSN. Akula is the quietest SSN yet produced by Russia and represents a boat in the class of a Flight I Los Angeles. Probably utilizes a raft sound isolation system to keep noise down. Reportedly the last remaining Russian SSN class still in production. President Yeltsin has announced that the Komsomolsk shipyard, located in the far east, is going to be converted to civilian production by 1995 or '96. After that, only the Severodvinsk shipyard, located in the Kola Peninsula, will produce submarines for the Russian Navy.

^{Sierra. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.Aerial view, Russian Sierra-class nuclear-powered attack submarine underway. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

Class name: Sierra I/II (Russian: Barrakuda class) (Project 945A and 945B)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Krasnaya Sormova

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): Sierra I-6,050/7,600; Sierra II-6,350/7,900

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 351/107 or 367.4/112 Beam: 41/12.5 Draft: 24.3/7.4

Armament: Four 650mm and two 533mm torpedo tubes with an estimated 30 weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving one 7-bladed screw; 45,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 35 (submerged)

Number in class: 2/1 + 1

Users: Russia

Comments: The evolutionary descendant of the Alfa, the Sierra is a titanium-hulled follow-on to the previous classes of Soviet SSNs. Very quiet and well armed, it has been overshadowed by the highly successful steel-hulled Akula-class boats. Reportedly, once the last Sierra II is completed, Krasnaya Sormova will convert to civilian ship production.

^{Charlie II. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.Russian Charlie-class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

Class name: Charlie II (Project 670M)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Krasnaya Sormova

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 4,300/5,500

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 337.8/103 Beam: 32.8/10 Draft: 26.2/8

Armament: Eight SS-N-9s in external tubes; six 533mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one 5-bladed screw; 15,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 24 (submerged)

Number in class: 6

Users: Russia

Comments: These boats may possibly be the oldest guided missile submarines that will be retained by Russia. Relatively noisy, but they can still pack a powerful punch with their battery of SS-N-9 Siren antiship missiles.

^{Oscar. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Oscar I/II (Russian: Granite/Antey classes) (Project 949 & 949A)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): Oscar I-13,900/16,700; Oscar; II-15,000/18,000

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 478.9/146 or 505.1/154 Beam: 59/18 Draft: 32.8/10

Armament: Twenty-four SS-N-19s in external tubes; six 650mm and 533mm torpedo tubes with 24 weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving two 7-bladed screws; 90,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 33 (submerged)

Number in class: 2/7+

Users: Russia

Comments: Oscar carries the nickname of "Mango" for her size and firepower. She also is as quiet as Sierra and carries the same sonar system, including a towed array from the tube on top of the rudder, as the Sierra-class boats. With 24 SS-N-19 Shipwreck heavy antiship missiles and a full array of torpedoes, this is the largest and most heavily armed attack submarine in the world. Probably capable of taking one or more torpedo hits and still surviving.

Class name: Fourth generation SSN (Akula follow-on) (Project:?)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): [?] 10,000 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): (unknown)

Armament: Six to eight 650mm and 533mm torpedo tubes with 30+ weapons

Machinery: PWRs with steam turbines driving one 7-bladed screw;? SHP

Speed (knots): [?] 30–35 (submerged)Number in class:?

Users: Russia

Comments: If the Russians choose to continue SSN production, they will probably base the fourth-generation design on their formidable Akula class. In terms of capability, this boat will probably be the equal of a 688I in terms of quieting, and will have improvements in sonar, computers, and weapons. Should a decision be made to produce it, the first boat will probably be commissioned somewhere in the 2003–2005 time frame.

^{Typhoon. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

Class name: Typhoon (Russian: Akula class) (Project 941)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 18,500/25,000

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 560.9/171 Beam: 78.7/24 Draft: 41/12.5

Armament: Twenty SS-N-20 SLBMs; six 650mm and 533mm torpedo tubes with an estimated 24 weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving two shrouded 7-bladed screws; 90,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 25 (submerged)Number in class: 6

Users: Russian-operated but under CIS control

Comments: The world's biggest submarine, pure and simple. The Typhoon seems to have been designed as a direct counter to the Ohio-class SSBNs. She carries 20 equally huge SS-N-20 (RSM-52) Sturgeon submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Essentially two Delta IV pressure hulls slapped together, with additional spaces for torpedo tubes and storage and ship control, this monster of the deep is equipped for long-term operations, particularly in the Arctic areas. Because of its double hull and massive bulk, to sink it with just a single heavy torpedo hit would be nearly impossible. The Russians call this beast Akula.

^{Delta IV. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Delta IV (Russian: Del'fin class) (Project 667 BRDM)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 10,800/13,500

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 537.9/164 Beam: 39.4/12 Draft: 28.5/8.7

Armament: Sixteen SS-N-23 SLBMs; six 650mm and 533mm torpedo tubes with 18 weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving two 7-bladed screws; 50,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 24 (submerged)Number in class: 7

Users: Russian-operated but under CIS control

Comments: A direct descendant of the highly successful Delta III SSBNs, the Delta IV was originally seen as a "just in case" program should the Typhoons not perform as desired. Unveiled in the light of the START II world, this formidable design has been seen for what it is, a very capable and quiet SSBN able to sustain long operations, even in the Arctic regions. Delta IVs carry 16 liquid-fueled SS-N-23 (RSM-54) Skiff submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

^{Delta III. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Delta III (Russian: Kal'mar class) (Project 667 BDR)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 10,600/13,250

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 510/155.5 Beam: 39.4/12.0 Draft: 28.2/8.6

Armament: Sixteen SS-N-18 SLBMs; six 533mm torpedo tubes with 18 weapons

Machinery: Two PWRs with steam turbines driving two 5-bladed screws; 50,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 24 (submerged)

Number in class: 14

Users: Russian-operated but under CIS control

Comments: First appearing in the mid-1970s, the Delta IIIs were the first Soviet SSBNs to truly rival the American SSBNs in weapons. Specifically, her long-range SS-N-18 (RSM-50) Stingray missiles with multiple reentry vehicles gave her the ability to hit numerous targets in North America from pier side at either Petropavlovsk or Murmansk bases. Delta IIIs will probably be the oldest SSBNs retained by the Russian Navy under START II, and some will probably serve until the beginning of the twenty-first century.

^{A Russian Navy Delta III-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, shortly after completing a transit of the Arctic to join the Russian Pacific Fleet. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

Class name: Fourth-generation SSBN (Delta IV follow-on) (Project:?)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): [?] 13,000-15,000 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): (unknown)

Armament: est. sixteen SS-N-? SLBMs; six 650mm and 533mm torpedo tubes with about 20 weapons

Machinery: PWRs with steam turbines driving two 7-bladed screws;? SHP

Speed (knots): [?] 25–30 (submerged)

Number in class:?

Users: Russia

Comments: Should the Russians choose to build a fourth-generation SSBN, it will probably be based upon the highly successful Delta IV boat. Improvements will probably be limited to further quieting and some refinement to weapons (improved targeting and accuracy), as well as sensors.

^{Kilo. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Kilo (Russian: Varshavyanka class) (Project 877)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Komsomolsk, Krasnaya Sormova, United Admiralty

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 2,325/3,076

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 243.7/74.3 Beam: 32.8/10 Draft: 21.6/6.6

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 18 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 6-bladed screw; 5,900 SHP

Speed (knots): 17 (submerged)

Number in class: 20+

Users: Russia, Poland, Algeria, Romania, India, Iran

Comments: Currently the only diesel-electric submarine known to be in production in Russia. The Kilo is a medium-sized, inexpensive SSK with excellent quieting and weapons, although the lack of a towed array limits it in the area of sensors. Something of a best-seller, the Kilo has become an important source of hard currency for the struggling Russian sub builders, though newer, more advanced Western designs may intrude on sales.

^{Tango. JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Tango (Project 641B)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Krasnaya Sormova

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 3,100/3,900

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 300.1/91.5 Beam: 29.5/9 Draft: 23/7

Armament: Ten 533mm torpedo tubes with 24 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with three 5-bladed screws; 6,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)Number in class: 18

Users: Russia

Comments: One of the last big classes of diesel boat to be constructed by the Soviet Union, the Tangos were originally designed to be open ocean SSKs with the primary missions of attacking aircraft carriers and interdicting merchant ships. Extremely quiet and capable, they have excellent range and weapons. A number of the Tangos will continue to serve until the turn of the century.

Class name: Fourth-generation SS (Kilo follow-on) (Project:?)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Russia/Severodvinsk

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): [?] 2,500-3,000 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): (unknown)

Armament: six 533mm torpedo tubes with about 20 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; probable AIP system;? SHP

Speed (knots): [?] 25–30 (submerged)

Number in class:?

Users: Russia and?

Comments: If Russia chooses to keep building conventionally powered submarines, they will probably base the next design on a prototype boat known as Beluga that has been undergoing testing in the Black Sea. The new design SS may utilize a novel Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system to extend slow-speed submerged endurance, which reduces the time the submarine would have to spend snorkeling. In addition, with a hull form based on the Alfa-class SSNs the fourth-generation SS may be capable of high SSN-like speeds for short periods.

While the Russians ran headlong into the business of building nuclear submarines, the People's Republic of China (PRC) took a slow, steady pace. Their first SSN, the Han class, is a simple boat with very little of the high technology that would be considered standard on an American or British boat. From the Hans have come the Xia class, the PRC's first SSBN. It appears that both the Han and the Xia have finished their production runs. With only six first-generation units, the Chinese appear to have mixed feelings about the success of the Han and Xia. Nevertheless, it is likely that within the foreseeable future, the Chinese will begin production of the Han and Xia follow-ons.

The French are somewhat unusual because they chose to develop nuclear submarines to carry ballistic missiles (SSBNs) before they developed nuclear attack submarines (SSNs). This was due to the desire of General Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s to have a nuclear deterrent independent of NATO. Consequently, they developed a force of four SSBNs, the Le Redoubtable class, first, and only recently developed a force of SSNs. Currently they are finishing the construction of the Amethyst-class SSNs, as well as working on a new class of SSBNs, the four units of the Le Triomphant class. In addition, the French maintain a small force of diesel-electric submarines, though the number of these will surely decrease. As for the future, the French plans are not clear beyond the attempts of commercial yards to market conventional versions of the Amethyst-class boats.

Class name: Amethyst

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 2,400/2,660

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 241.4/73.6 Beam: 24.9/7.6 Draft: 21/6.4

Armament: Four 533mm torpedo tubes with 14 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with turboelectric drive; one 7-bladed screw; 9,500 SHP

Speed (knots): 28 (submerged)

Number in class: 1 + 2

Users: FranceComments: Basically an improved Rubis with a rounded bow, these boats are superior in both radiated noise and sensors. Currently there are no plans by the French Navy for a larger SSN force, and these will be the last ones built in the foreseeable future.

^{Amethyst (French). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.Rubis (French). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Rubis

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 2,385/2,670

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 236.5/72.1 Beam: 24.9/7.6 Draft: 21/6.4

Armament: Four 533mm torpedo tubes with 14 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with turboelectric drive; one 7-bladed screw; 9,500 SHP

Speed (knots): 25 (submerged)

Number in class: 4

Users: France

Comments: The first of the French SSNs, the Rubis class appeared only in the last decade or so. These compact little boats are the smallest SSNs ever built, and this is reflected in the small crew size (8 officers and 57 men) and the weapons loadout (14 weapons). The early units of the class were reported to be relatively noisy, requiring a major refit. All units are currently being brought up to the standard of the Amethyst-class boats.

Class name: Le Triomphant

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 12,640/14,120

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 452.6/138 Beam: 41/12.5 Draft:?

Armament: Sixteen M45 SLBMs; four 533mm torpedo tubes with? weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one pumpjet propulsor; 41,500 SHP

Speed (knots): 25+ (submerged)

Number in class: 1 + 3

Users: France

Comments: New generation of French SSBN. Considerable attention paid to quieting measures including main propulsion machinery raft and a pumpjet propulsor. More streamlined hull form over L'Inflexible and earlier SSBNs. Will be equipped with the latest in submarine sonar systems including a large flank array, and new combat system.

^{L'Inflexible (French). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: L'Inflexible

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 8,080/8,920

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 422.1/128.7 Beam: 34.8/10.6 Draft: 32.8/10

Armament: Sixteen M4 SLBMs; four 533mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one 7-bladed screw; 16,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 1

Users: France

Comments: Essentially a Le Redoubtable class with some improvements in quieting, hull steel, and sensors.

^{Le Redoubtable (French). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Le Redoubtable

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 8,000/9,000

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 419.8/128 Beam: 34.8/10.6 Draft: 32.8/10

Armament: Sixteen M4 SLBMs; four 533mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one 7-bladed screw; 16,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 4

Users: France

Comments: The first class of SSBNs constructed by the French Navy and, in fact, the first nuclear ship built indigenously in Europe. Le Redoubtable was decommissioned in December 1991; all others in the class undergoing modernization to L'Inflexible standard.

^{Agosta (French). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Agosta

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,490/1,740

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 221.7/67.6 Beam: 22.3/6.8 Draft: 17.7/5.4

Armament: Four 550mm torpedo tubes with 20 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 4,600 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 4

Users: France, Pakistan, Spain

Comments: The last general purpose diesel-electric subs built by the French. An excellent design, they are being upgraded to the standards of the Amethyst class.

^{Dauphne (French). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Dauphne

Producer (country/manufacturer): France/DCAN, Cherbourg

Displacement: (surfaced/submerged): 869/1,043

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 188.9/57.6 Beam: 22.2/6.8 Draft: 17.4/5.3

Armament: Twelve 550mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with two 3-bladed screws; 2,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 16 (submerged)

Number in class: 19

Users: France, Pakistan, Portugal, Spain, South Africa

Comments: Older SSK (diesel-electric submarine) design, though quite successful. Extensively upgraded, the class continues in service today.

Of all the nations that operate submarines, none holds closer institutional and engineering ties to the United States than the United Kingdom. Currently the U.K. sub force is undergoing its own downsizing after several decades of steady growth. Part of this is due to financial constraints, though the entire "V" class of SSNs is being retired rather prematurely because of hydrogen embrittlement of valves and other plumbing fixtures in their propulsion plants. As this book is being written, the British are headed for a force of twelve SSNs (Swiftsure and Trafalgar classes), four SSBNs (the Vanguard class), and four SSKs (diesel-electric submarines) (the Upholder class). Even this force may be whittled down, with the Upholders reportedly being considered for sale to export clients. As to future sub construction, the British would like to build a second batch of Trafalgars powered by the British-built PWR-2 power plant, though only the British Parliament and the Minister of Defence are able to determine whether this will happen.

^{Trafalagar (British). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Trafalgar

Producer (country/manufacturer): United Kingdom/VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 4,700/5,208

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 280.1/85.4 Beam: 32.2/9.8 Draft: 27.2/8.3

Armament: Five 533mm torpedo tubes with 25 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one pumpjet propulsor; 15,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 30 (submerged)Number in class: 7

Users: United Kingdom

Comments: Quite simply, the best SSN ever built by the British. This class is quick, quiet, and carries a substantial punch. If the Trafalgars have a weakness, it is the lack of an integrated combat system like the U.S. AN/BSY-1. A future upgrade known as Type 2076 may cure this. They handle well and are quite good boats for the money.

^{Swiftsure (British). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Swiftsure

Producer (country/manufacturer): United Kingdom/VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 4,200/4,500

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 271.9/82.9 Beam: 32.2/9.8 Draft: 27.2/8.3

Armament: Five 533mm torpedo tubes with 25 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one pumpjet propulsor; 15,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 30 (submerged)

Number in class: 5

Users: United Kingdom

Comments: The oldest SSNs in the Royal Navy, the Swiftsures are fine boats that have been upgraded in refits to almost the same standard as the Trafalgars.

Class name: Trafalgar Batch II (?)

Producer (country/manufacturer): United Kingdom/VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): [?] 5,200 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): (unknown)

Armament: Five 533mm torpedo tubes with 30 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one pumpjet propulsor; 15,000 SHP

Speed (knots): [?] 30 (submerged)

Number in class:?

Users: United Kingdom

Comments: The big "If" in the future of the Royal Navy. These boats, if they are ever built, will be powered by the British PWR-2 reactor, and may be equipped with cruise missiles.

^{Upholder (British). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.HMS Unseen, one of the new generation of diesel-electric submarines operated by the Royal Navy. U.K. MINISTRY OF DEFENCE}

Class name: Upholder

Producer (country/manufacturer): United Kingdom/VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness; Cammell Laird, Birkenhead

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 2,185/2,400

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 230.6/70.3 Beam: 24.9/7.6 Draft: 18/5.5

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 18 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 5,400 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 4

Users: United Kingdom

Comments: A really nice class of SSKs, these boats are probably the finest diesel-electric submarines in the world. Fully the equal of the Trafalgars in sensors and armament, they may be sold off to export customers.

Class name: Vanguard

Producer (country/manufacturer): United Kingdom/ VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 15,850 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 489.7/149.3 Beam: 42/12.8 Draft: 33.1/10.1

Armament: Sixteen Trident II (D-5) SLBMs; four 533mm torpedo tubes with [?] 18 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one pumpjet propulsor; 27,500 SHP

Speed (knots): 25 (submerged)

Number in class: 1 + 3

Users: United Kingdom

Comments: These are probably going to be the last class of SSBNs ever built for the Royal Navy. Representing everything ever learned by the Royal Navy in submarine design, these elegantly designed boats have something of a "big shoulders" look because of the way the bow planes are mounted.

^{Resolution (British). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Resolution

Producer (country/manufacturer): United Kingdom/VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 7,600/8,500

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 424.8/129.5 Beam: 33.1/10.1 Draft: 30/9.2

Armament: Sixteen Polaris (A-3) SLBMs; six 533mm torpedo tubes with [?] 18 weapons

Machinery: One PWR with steam turbines driving one 7-bladed screw; 27,500 SHP

Speed (knots): 25 (submerged)

Number in class: 3

Users: United Kingdom

Comments: The old warhorses of the British submarine force, the units (three remain in commission as of this writing) of the "R" class have been keeping the peace for over a quarter century now. Being retired as the new "V" class boats come on line, they are roughly equivalent to the U.S. Lafayette-class SSBNs.

Of all the nations that operate submarines, none is probably less understood and more underestimated than Sweden. The Swedes have always had an independent streak when it comes to defense issues, and this is certainly true of their submarine force. At the moment, they produce some of the most advanced conventionally powered submarines in the world. Their boats have a decidedly inshore design philosophy, consistent with the Swedish requirements of operating in the Baltic. In addition, the Swedes are leaders in non-nuclear Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) systems. Currently they are finishing development of the Gotland (A-19 class) boats, equipped with a Sterling AIP system to keep the batteries charged for longer submerged endurance. Like all other nations, the Swedes are aggressively marketing their boats for export. They have had a particular success with the sale of six boats (the Collins class) to Australia.

Class name: Gotland (A-19 class)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Sweden/Kockums, Malmo

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,300 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 172.2/52.5 Beam: 19.9/6.1 Draft: 18.4/5.6

Armament: Six 533mm and three 400mm torpedo tubes with 18 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 5-bladed screw; [?] 4,500 SHP; Sterling engine AIP system to be installed

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 0 + 3

Users: Sweden

Comments: Essentially an updated A-17 class, with improved sensors and combat systems and the incorporation of two Sterling engine-driven generators for improved slow-speed submerged endurance.

Class name: Vastergotland (A-17 class)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Sweden/Kockums, Malmo, and Karlskrona Varvet

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,070/1,140

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 159.1/48.5 Beam: 19.9/6.1 Draft: 18.4/5.6

Armament: Six 533mm and three 400mm torpedo tubes with 18 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 5-bladed screw; [?] 4,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 4

Users: Sweden

Comments: Essentially improved Nackens, these boats are quite capable for Baltic operations.

Class name: Nacken (A-14 class)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Sweden/Kockums, Malmo, and Karlskrona Varvet

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,030/1,125

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 162.4/49.5 Beam: 18.7/5.7 Draft: 13.4/4.1

Armament: Six 533mm and two 400mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 5-bladed screw; [?] 4,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 3

Users: Sweden

Comments: The oldest SSKs in the Swedish Navy. Nacken was the trial submarine for the Sterling engine AIP system, which will be incorporated in the Gotland class.

The Dutch enjoy an outstanding submarine tradition, with particular pride in the numerous enemy sinkings to their credit during World War II. In fact, during the early days of 1942 in the Pacific, the tiny Dutch force actually sank more ships than the entire U.S. sub force. Today the Dutch have an excellent fleet of SSKs and are aggressively trying to market them overseas.

Of all the nations on earth, none has a stronger submarine combat tradition than Germany. Twice in this century the German U-boat fleets have driven England to the brink of starvation and defeat. Today, though, the U-boats of the modern German Navy are a much more modest force, though they probably reflect the missions they would be required to execute better than their counterparts from the two world wars. The new generation of U-boats are tailored to the coastal waters of the Baltic, with endurance and weapons loads to match. The German boats have proven to be a great success, particularly in export sales. In fact the Type 209 has actually outsold the Russian Kilo class in exports, making it the Volkswagen of conventional submarines. Their newest boats, the Type 212s, are capable of being equipped with a liquid oxygen/hydrogen fuel cell AIP system.

Class name: Type 212

Producer (country/manufacturer): Germany/ Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, Thysseen Nordseewerke

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,200/1,800

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 167.8/51 Beam: 22.6/6.9 Draft: 21/6.4

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with [?] 18 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw;? SHP; fuel cell AIP system to be installed

Speed (knots): [?] 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 0 + 12

Users: Germany

Comments: The newest of the German U-boats. These boats will be equipped with a fuel cell AIP system, though defense cuts could severely affect construction.

Class name: Type 206/206A

Producer (country/manufacturer): Germany/Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, Rheinstahl Nordsee-werke

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 450/520

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 159.4/48.6 Beam: 15.4/4.7 Draft: 14.1/4.3

Armament: Eight 533mm torpedo tubes with 16 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 2,300 SHP

Speed (knots): 17 (submerged)

Number in class: 18

Users: Germany

Comments: Type 206As are modified with the Atlas Electronic CSU 83 integrated sonar suite and the accompanying SLW 83 integrated combat system. Propulsion plant, navigation, and accommodations have also been upgraded.

Class name: Type 205

Producer (country/manufacturer): Germany/Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 419/455

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 142.7/43.5 Beam: 15.1/4.6 Draft: 12.5/3.8Armament: Eight 533mm torpedo tubes with 8 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 2,300 SHP

Speed (knots): 17 (submerged)

Number in class: 5

Users: Germany, Denmark

Comments: An earlier version of the Type 206, these units will probably be sold or retired in the current round of German defense cuts.

Class name: Type 209 (1100, 1200, 1300, 1400 variants)

Producer (country/manufacturer): Germany, Turkey, Brazil, South Korea/various shipyards

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,207-1,586 (submerged)

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 177.4/54.1-200.7/61.2 Beam: 20.5/6.3 Draft: 18/5.5

Armament: Eight 533mm torpedo tubes with 14 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 5,000 SHP

Speed (knots): 22 (submerged)

Number in class: 34 + 15

Users: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Greece, Indonesia, South Korea, Peru, Turkey, Venezuela

Comments: The Type 209 variants differ predominantly in length and displacement, although the sensor, combat, and other electronics fits will also vary depending on when the particular unit was built. Even though the design is over twenty years old, the Type 209 is still being built for customers today, and is the most successful submarine design outside of Russia and the United States.

Japan started building its submarine force early; its navy was the first to use subs in combat, during the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s. Though Japan produced some of the most advanced boats of World War II, they never really used them to best advantage. Today they operate a large force of SSKs based on the American Barbel class of diesel submarine.

Class name: Harushio

Producer (country/manufacturer): Japan/Mitsubishi

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 2,400/2,750

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 262.4/80 Beam: 32.8/10 Draft: 25.2/7.7

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 20 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 7,220 SHP

Speed (knots): 20 (submerged)

Number in class: 2 + 8

Users: Japan

Comments: Basically enlarged Yushios, these boats are highly automated, with an excellent weapons load and sensor suite.

While the uninformed might not think of Italy as a power in the submarine world, this would be a severe underestimation. Italy has a long and proud history of submarine design, construction, and operations. In World War II, Italian subs did a lot of damage to Allied shipping, particularly in the tight waters of the Mediterranean. Following the war, Italy began to build up a substantial force of diesel-electric boats with units constructed in their own yards. Today it is an extremely capable force, which continues to be upgraded with the finest weapons and sensors produced in Italy.

Class name: Primo Longobardo

Producer (country/manufacturer): Italy/Italcantieri

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,653/1,862

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 217.6/66.4 Beam: 22.4/6.8 Draft: 19.7/6

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 4.270 SHP

Speed (knots): 19 (submerged)

Number in class: 0 + 2

Users: Italy

Comments: The Primo Longobardo class is the second modification to the Nazario Sauro class. The biggest differences are in the improved hull form and combat system.

^{Salvatore Pelosi (Italian). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Salvatore Pelosi

Producer (country/manufacturer): Italy/Fincantiere

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,476/1,662

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 211.1/64.36 Beam: 22.4/6.8 Draft: 18.6/5.7

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 4,270 SHP

Speed (knots): 19 (submerged)

Number in class: 2

Users: Italy

Comments: Slight hull modifications over the Nazario Sauro class. The Salvatore Pelosi class also has an improved combat system to allow the launch of sub-Harpoon missiles.

^{Nazario Sauro (Italian). JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.}

Class name: Nazario Sauro

Producer (country/manufacturer): Italy/C.R.D.A and Italcantiere

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 1,450/1,637

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 209.4/63.9 Beam: 22.4/6.8 Draft: 18.7/5.7

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 12 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw; 4,270 SHP

Speed (knots): 19 (submerged)

Number in class: 4

Users: Italy

Comments: Basically improved versions of the Enrico Toti boats that preceded them. Nice little boats designed for operations in the narrows of the seas surrounding Italy.

Class name: S 90

Producer (country/manufacturer): Italy/Fincantiere

Displacement (surfaced/submerged): 2,500/2,780

Dimensions (ft/m): Length: 228.6/69.7 Beam: 26.7/8.2 Draft: 20.7/6.3

Armament: Six 533mm torpedo tubes with 24 weapons

Machinery: Diesel-electric drive with one 7-bladed screw;? SHP

Speed (knots): 19 (submerged)

Number in class: 0 + 2

Users: Italy

Comments: Follow-on to the Primo Longobardo class. Design differences include greater endurance and depth capability. Design not finalized, and changes could occur.