The Navy is expected to issue a planning memo later this summer that could specify how big a fleet it wants; a reduction is not expected to have a severe impact on the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 7, 2004

BY JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Congress and the Pentagon have outlined defense spending plans for next year that once more raise the question of where to hold the line on a submarine fleet that has dwindled to half the size of its Cold War peak of 100 boats.

The plight of the submarine reflects the broader dilemma of a military that is hitting budget limits at the very time it has shouldered two huge and costly commitments -- an open-ended war in Iraq and a cycle of rebuilding to reverse the "peace dividend" cuts of the 1990s.

Some in the submarine fraternity -- including lawmakers in New England and Virginia, where subs are important to the local economy -- fear that their weapon system will be particularly vulnerable in the budget battles of the next few years.

With several studies pending on its long-term shipbuilding needs, the Navy says no decisions have been made about the submarine program. But there are signs, according to naval analyst and author Norman Polmar, that the Pentagon will choose to let the submarine fleet keep shrinking "for the foreseeable future."

The Navy is expected to issue a planning memo later this summer that could specify how big a fleet it wants for the future and what kind of ships are to be built. That document will be reflected in the 2006 defense budget request that the president will make early next year as the basis for congressional spending deliberations.

The prospect of a smaller submarine fleet poses no immediate threat to Electric Boat's health, because the Navy is reducing the number of submarines by letting old attack subs retire, not by cutting the shipbuilder's production rate.

But stepped up decommissioning of submarines could endanger the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the chief business of which is refueling nuclear attack subs to extend their lives. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, the Connecticut Republican whose district includes the Groton submarine base, said if the fleet shrinks enough, then sub bases may be eyed for closure or curtailment.

"It's a Catch-22 situation" for submarines, said Myra McKitrick, the author of a recent study that warns against reducing the submarine fleet. Other factions in the armed services can make more urgent claims on limited Pentagon dollars, coloring their argument with war stories from Afghanistan and Iraq, she said. Since the submarine's role was smaller and "less obvious" by comparison, say, to those of Marines borne to the fight by amphibious ships or Navy warplanes based on carriers, McKitrick said the submarine comes to the budget bargaining in a weaker position than rival programs.

"Over the next 10 or 15 years, that situation is likely to change, and we will have a critical need for submarines" to counter such growing threats as an expanding Chinese Navy. "But we will not have the submarines we need for that critical long-term mission in 10 or 15 years if we do not invest in them right now," said McKitrick.

"You cannot 'surge' submarines," she said, using Pentagon jargon for speeding the manufacture of weapons. McKitrick is a onetime strategic planner for General Dynamics and now an independent defense consultant who works for the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank.

Since an attack sub is a complex warship that takes about eight years and $2 billion to build, today's lost budget skirmishes could lock the program into a weak negotiating position in the future.

On the surface, the submarine construction plans look healthy and stable. Later this summer the Navy will take delivery on the Virginia, the first attack sub in a new generation built jointly by Groton-based Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding of Virginia.

Congress agreed last fall to a 5-year deal between the Navy and the two shipyards that guarantees the purchase of one Virginia-class sub a year, concluding in 2008. The deal is meant to save money through bulk purchases of materials and components of the sub. The House and Senate have passed defense bills and set aside $1.58 billion toward next year's Virginia-class sub.

The cause of all the uncertainty about shipbuilding is the lack of a long-term Navy plan for the number and kind of ships its wants as it modernizes the fleet. For several budget cycles, for example, the Navy has opted not to specify the year when it will raise attack sub production from one to two subs per year. Submarine proponents want the increase to occur in fiscal year 2009.

Later this year, however, the Navy plans to produce a memorandum to guide budget planners. That is when the long-term competition for shipbuilding dollars will begin to shake out. Meanwhile, submarine boosters worry about one of the interim studies, by the budget wing of the Navy, that contemplates a range of options, from building a fleet of more than 60 subs -- not considered likely in today's spending climate -- to letting the number of subs fall below 40.

Analyst Polmar said his reading of current Defense Department attitudes is that the submarine program faces a confluence of liabilities in the looming budget contest. One is that subs played a useful but subordinate role in Afghanistan, including the launching of cruise missiles, which many surface ships carry in larger numbers.

Another is that submarines, while very capable of stealthy electronic spying, do not provide as much of the day-to-day flow of intelligence as satellites and other sources. Third, submarines are not among the programs that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his chief of naval operations, Adm. Vern Clark, have identified as top spending priorities. Higher on the wish list, for example, is the development of the new "littoral combat ship," a small, fast, relatively cheap vessel that can fight near shore.

Finally, Polmar said, the Virginia class is a tempting target for deferred spending because of its expense and the fact that the Navy would be able to delay accelerated production for some years without disabling the EB-Newport News submarine-building partnership.

Sen. Jack Reed and Rep. Jim Langevin, members, respectively, of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, acknowledged that these are the arguments they face as they push for increased submarine production.

Such critiques "are legitimate anytime you have budget problems, which we have now," Reed said. But Reed and Langevin said that the sub program has powerful friends in Congress and in the regional military commanders around the world. "They are always asking for additional submarine assets" to conduct reconnaissance and intelligence missions, Reed said.

Langevin also stressed that skimping on the sub fleet can be self-perpetuating. For example, he said, the flow of intelligence from submarines would be larger if there were more subs.