Navy mulls SSGN payload on VA-class subs
Richardson: Navy Examining How Attack Sub Shortfall Will Affect Force
Inside the Pentagon - 09/01/2011
The Navy must factor in the looming attack submarine shortfall in the 2020s as well as strategic needs when planning deployments and positioning the undersea force in the future, Vice Adm. John Richardson, commander of submarine forces, told reporters last week.
At the current rate, the Navy will dip to a low of 39 attack subs at some point in the 2020s as aging Los Angeles-class subs retire, well below the requirement of 48 subs. Richardson's predecessor, Vice Adm. Jay Donnelly, said the Navy could implement mitigation measures such as changing deployment cycles and altering surge capability. Richardson told reporters at the Pentagon Aug. 25 that the service is looking at some of those adjustments now.
"All of that is kind of part of the discussion," he said. "Right now, we have the six-month deployment model. That's what we use as our baseline. When emergent combatant commander requests come in, we can stretch that some, and we have. And then in terms of . . . responding to a crisis, we want to make sure that we've done what we can to increase the pool of ready forces so that they're ready to go if called."
He said the "trough" in the 2020s is a "function of the shipbuilding plan and what the budget can sustain." He said his job was to inform Navy leadership what kind of options the service has.
"I see it as our role to make sure that we've got sort of an array of options that will provide them some trade space, both in the positive direction if they wanted to invest more, or if we had to take cuts, how we might do that most gracefully," he said. "They'll come up with the best decision that they can make. Then it kind of comes [to], 'OK, how do we optimally deploy that force that's been decided on?'"
Richardson recently unveiled a "Design for Undersea Warfare" document that seeks to "streamline" and better define the role of undersea forces in today's world where concerns such as anti-access and area-denial are preeminent.
"It was not our goal to come up with something revolutionary," he said. "We really just wanted to kind of sharpen our thinking and focus.
"What is our unique role, our unique capabilities, our unique responsibilities that emerge in this environment where we've got these emerging technologies?" he continued. "The long-range precision weapons pose a challenge for those sorts of forces that are not concealed, so that opens up, I think, some new potential roles and possibilities for concealed forces like submarines -- undersea forces -- that can go forward and provide the warfighter with some options."
Meanwhile, the Navy is mulling placing a guided-missile payload module aboard a Virginia-class hull as a way to replace the four modified Ohio-class SSGN subs when they go out of service, Richardson said.
While the Navy would not be able to put an entire SSGN payload on the smaller Virginia-class hull, "a smaller version of that would be this payload module, and then you recover the volume by stretching the number of Virginias or something like that," the three-star admiral said.
He cautioned that such a payload is not a program of record, and no formal decision had been made yet. The Navy will need to figure out what to do about the SSGNs in the next five to 10 years, however, he said.
"The payload volume is something we'd like to have," he said. "How we get that, there's a number of different options right now."
Donnelly told Inside the Navy in late 2009 that the Navy was considering modifying a Virginia-class sub to replace the SSGNs, as the guided-missile subs had proved their worth in the fleet and the Navy was interested in keeping the capability.
"In a budget-constrained environment, it may be difficult to find the money to modify the SSBNs and SSGNs," he said at the time, cautioning that it was one of many options under consideration. "It was $1 billion a copy when we did it last time, but that's certainly an option."
Richardson last week cited the payload module option as an alternative, "rather than trying to build a dedicated SSGN." -- Dan Taylor