REMARKS TO THE NSL ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

June 5, 1997

I am very pleased to be here at this year’s Annual Symposium to speak to you about the current state of the Atlantic Submarine Force and the U.S. Submarine Force. If you look at a snapshot of the Atlantic Submarine Force today it will show you that we have approximately 16,000 personnel, 48 attack submarines, have dramatically reduced our submarine tender inventory to two, and our budget continues to decrease in parallel with the rest of the Navy’s. It’s a disturbing thought to think that the 48 SSNs in the Atlantic will be, in the not too distant future, close to the total number of SSNs in our entire inventory. That is difficult for me to imagine. Also, I expect that we will soon be a Navy with only two submarine tenders overall-one forward deployed in the Mediterranean and one forward deployed to Guam. This will be another significant change in the way we do business.

We have some really positive highlights to talk about from the last year. Our attack submarine program has been a great success story. Since the beginning of nuclear power with NAUTILUS 43 years ago, we have commissioned 189 nuclear powered submarines. The commissioning of USS CHEYENNE last fall completed one of the largest and one of the most successful attack submarine construction programs in our history. She is our 62nd and final Los Angeles class submarine. This is our largest class of submarines, but frankly, as most of you are aware, our 688s aren’t really a single class of ship. CHEYENNE is a far more capable submarine than our first 688 and we now have 23 of these quieter, Arctic CHEYENNE is capable, improved 688 class submarines. currently in post shakedown availability and will head to the Pacific upon completion.

USS SEAWOLF completed her sea trials and I expect her to deliver later this month. We have had a few problems in the development and testing of the ship, including the foundations for the wide aperture array. However, the number of problems have been minimal considering the revolutionary nature of the technology we put on board. By far this is the fastest, quietest, and if you discount the Trident submarines, the most heavily armed submarine in the world. This is a great platform. We got what we paid for, and it will serve well as our bridge to the next generation of submarines.

Our future is in the New Attack Submarine. It incorporates a lot of the Seawolf technology and addresses the affordability issue while providing us with a formidable submarine. The real advance is the architecture that allows us to freely integrate commercial-off- the-shelf (COTS) equipment which will truly enable us to keep pace with industry and the rapid change of technology that our existing systems don’t allow us to do.

Similarly, our strategic submarine program has been another great success story.

USS WYOMING, our 17th Trident, was commissioned and has now completed all its post new construction preparations and will soon be added to our strategic force.

USS LOUISIANA, the last of our Trident class, is scheduled to commission later this year and will leave us with 18 Tridents to serve as the cornerstone of our nation’s strategic deterrent. These ships will take us through some lean budget years and our studies have indicated that we can extend the life of the ship, if necessary.

The sad part of the last year is that we decommissioned seven SSNs and two submarine tenders. The wakes are outnumbering the births and this will continue for some time. There are many familiar names on this list-GROTON, SUNFISH, TAUTOG, BIRMINGHAM, GRAYLING, HOLLAND-and one of the most difficult aspects of my job is to attend these inactivation ceremonies.

I’d now like to touch on some of our operational highlights over the last year. Battle group operations continue to be the centerpiece of much of our attack submarine operations. We routinely deploy two SSNs with each battle group and I see battle group operations continuing to evolve, resulting in more effective and varied use of the SSNs. We have had some integration and interoperability problems and you have probably heard some anecdotes about the difficulties of submarine employment in the battle groups but I think we are making great progress now. One of the enablers has been improved connectivity which has greatly enhanced our ability to communicate with the battle group and facilitates giving the battle group commander tactical command. Also, assigning submariners to the battle group staff has further supported this initiative by allowing them more direct control of submarine water space, allowing greater integration into CVBG planning and execution. We are seeing some positive results from this as recent deployments have indicated a noticeable rise in productive SSN employment by the battle group.

I’d like to talk about C41 for a minute. As I have said C41 is the enabler for our interoperability with the other services and our coalition partners, and we continue to be the not so Silent Service in a connectivity sense. As the gap widens between the need for our forces and the resources to support them, we must look for force multipliers, and information technology is one of them. Information and data flow will allow us to achieve a force capability that is greater than the sum of the individual pieces, and an effective C4I system is the critical element. As an example, C41 is the glue that will effectively bring together all the pieces of our ASW team. I will get back to this later.

We have made some great initiatives and innovations in this area. Two submarine lieutenants assigned to USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT invented a system now called BGIXS II. BGIXS II consists of a laptop computer which uses our SSIXS capability to directly link our submarine with the battle group and has made the exercise of tactical command by the battle group commander a matter of routine. This capability is now used routinely providing a significant enhancement to our battle group connectivity and has been so successful that the battle group commanders are now also using it on their battle group surface ships. Additionally, BGIXS II also provides us with some imagery transfer capability and is also giving our submarines an internet e-mail capability.

The Joint Deployable Intelligence Support System (JDISS) is also being used on some of our SSNs and gives the submarine improved imagery/video transmission capability. USS MONTPELIER participated in an exercise in the MED/CENTCOM AOR and using sub-JDISS she was able to pass data at 64 kbps successfully demonstrating the capability to pass real time imagery to the local and shore commanders.

Most of our ships are becoming JMCIS (Joint Maritime Communications Information System) capable. This is the wave of the future as JMCIS will fully integrate Navy C41 into the Global Command and Control System (GCCS).

Next month, two submarines, ATLANTA and SCRANTON, will participate in the Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID-97) which will test a wide variety of information technologies in the attempt to establish a seamless, interoperable communications environment.

Finally, EHF is rapidly becoming the circuit of choice for battle group strike coordination and we have given high priority to outfit at least one of the two SSNs assigned to the battle group with EHF.

Overall, we are making great strides in the C41 area and I am very pleased with the results.

We are also expanding our operations in the Special Warfare area. We have three submarines in the Atlantic specially configured for dry deck shelter operations (DDS), USS JAMES K. POLK, which can carry two dry deck shelters, and USS ARCHER-FISH and USS L. MENDEL RIVERS, which can carry a single dry deck shelter. These ships generate a lot of interest, a lot of capability, not just with our special forces, but also with our Mediterranean allies because this type of warfare addresses many of their needs. We routinely have one of these submarines on station in the Mediterranean at all times. During infrequent gaps in this presence, we assign another SSN that is specially outfitted with special warfare equipment, designated as a seal submarine (SEASUB). Our real capability lies with our dual DDS ships and we are looking at extending the life of these two ships, POLK and KAMEHAMEHA to take them beyond their nominal 30 year life. The long term vision is that the NSSN will be able to carry the Advanced Seal Delivry System (ASDS) and some of our 688s will be backfitted with this capability. Unlike the dry deck shelters, the ASDS is a true submersible; it is a mini submarine with a significant combat radius. It will be carried by the mother submarine into the theater and then detach to go and conduct its mission. The ASDS will be piloted by 1120 submarine officers-just like our DSRVs are today.

We are also making some great gains in precision strike. We are never going to be the predominant strike platform. I think we recognize that and had never intended to be. But we provide covert, precision strike when covertness and surprise are necessary. Submarines are able to bring the Tomahawk weapon into places that we can’t bring other Tomahawk shooters. And we have worked hard to improve the Tomahawk weapons system reliability. Frankly, the wooden round concept where you bring the weapon on board and never do any maintenance on it, never train on it, never use it, is foreign to us and our submarine maintenance culture. Even for our strategic systems we routinely run end-to-end testing of the systems supporting the weapon to ensure they will work when called upon. Tomahawk doesn’t allow us to do that with the wooden round concept, so we have worked with NAVSEA and NUWC to develop some innovative ways to provide simulators which now provide us more end-to-end testing capabilities and these initiatives have dramatically increased our confidence in the reliability of the entire system. And as an indication of our improved system reliability, three exercise missile launches were conducted last year in the Jacksonville operating areas-all of which were successful.

Peacetime intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance continues to be one of our key missions. We support national, multi-national and NATO objectives. We conduct surveillance both in the open ocean and the littoral areas; in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Caribbean. We are involved in a number of operations and just finished three years of continuous surveillance operations in the Adriatic in support of the embargo of the former Yugoslavia.

Our SSBN force is still the pre-eminent leg of the strategic triad and the reliability and credibility of that system continues to be one of our greatest success stories.

The D-5 missile is still the most reliable and accurate weapon in our inventory and we just completed our 74th consecutive successful D-5 missile launch.

As a result of the Nuclear Posture Review a consolidation of the Navy’s nuclear weapons infrastructure has been completed. The Submarine Force will remain the only community in the Navy with a nuclear weapons mission. We have now assumed overall responsibility for the safety, security, inspection, maintenance and oversight of the navy’s nuclear weapons program. This realignment has reduced billets, saved money, better supports the customer and aligns the Navy nuclear weapons program for the next century.

Last fall we participated in Global Guardian 97, a major strategic exercise that STRA TCOM runs on an annual basis in which we test the survivability, viability and reliability of our strategic capability. The exercise was highly successful and for the first time included testing our ability, on short notice, to regenerate the tactical nuclear capability of one of our SSNs. The submarine, USS BOSTON, successfully completed a nuclear Tomahawk regeneration and firing of a test missile.

Let’s talk a little about submarine forward presence. Our submarines are everywhere and yet, they are nowhere. What I mean is that our presence is observed around the world as we come in and out of ports. Our allies and our potential adversaries know we are in their theaters. Despite all the restrictions on nuclear power, we go into more ports around the world than any other submarine force in the world demonstrating that we are forward engaged. On any given day about half of our operational submarines are at sea, and on any given day about one quarter of our operational submarines are forward deployed.

We talk a lot about the NSSN, rapid COTS insertion, the R&D process, and in general, just a lot about hardware. But I want to reemphasize that the underpinning of our success both today and surely for the future is our people.

We continue to attract the best and the brightest officers and enlisted personnel. We train them well and they are promoted, screened and advanced at encouraging rates. The Submarine Service still offers a bright future for this nation’s young people.

Our accession quality continues to be very high and this is supported by the class standings and academic performance of the individuals we are bringing in. We recruited 106 percent of our goals in the enlisted technical ratings and initial projections for 1997 look even more promising. A couple of indicators of the quality of our young enlisted is that 24 percent of the young sailors recently selected for Seaman to Admiral Program and 13 percent selected for the Enlisted Commissioning Program are submariners. And that’s from a community which represents only seven percent of the Navy.

Our career first and second term retention is on the upswing and we are at or above the Navy’s goals. Officer retention is on the rebound and we are presently at 32 percent. Our goal is to reach 38 percent officer retention by the year 2000 in order to meet our manning needs for the future. We also increased the nuclear bonus last year to the maximum allowed by law, $12,000, to keep pace with inflation.

In reflection of the quality of the training that our Nuclear Power School graduates receive, we have two new initiatives that will offer them college credits just for completing the Nuclear Power School curriculum. Both Old Dominion University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute offer course credits that add up to about one-third of the required courses for a fully accredited Engineering degree. Thus far, the program has been so successful that ODU is looking at expanding the offerings outside of the Norfolk area.

In the officer community, we all know that joint education continues to be crucial for upward mobility. We have taken the initiative to increase the opportunities for our young officers to obtain joint professional military education (JPME) by bringing it to them. We recently began a pilot program in Kings Bay by working a special arrangement with the Naval War College to send civilian professors to Kings Bay in the hope that all the officers can receive JPME phase I education within three off-crew periods. If Kings Bay is successful, a JPME program in Bangor will be next. Another initiative we are taking concerning JPME education is, on a voluntary basis, to provide some of the modules of the correspondence course (four of twelve total modules) to the officers attending department head school in New London. Without going into any more details, the bottom line is we are taking the joint education of our officers seriously, and have devoted resources to enhance their chances of completing it early in their careers.

If you look at the upward mobility of our sailors and officers, most of the indices-advancement, CO and XO screening opportunity and promotion rates-are moving in the right direction. We, as a community, enjoy numbers that are equal to or better than the other communities and I feel good about our overall health in this area.

We continue to be the not so Silent Service in many ways. We have had a robust and dynamic effort aimed at getting the word out about submarines. We have continued to make great progress at familiarizing the general public with submarine operations. We hosted over 80,000 visitors aboard our submarines last year which included 22 Congressional embarks, an invaluable contribution to our efforts to ensure the Submarine Force and its inherent capabilities are clearly understood.

This week we will be distributing a new Submarine Force brochure, aimed at educating the reader as to what the submarine brings to our nation’s security.

We have even joined the internet and activated a SUBLANT home page on the world wide web (http://www.norfolk.navy.mil/sublant), further providing the public with information on what we do for a living. Our home page is linked to N87, SUBPAC, our squadrons and our ships, and you can also download the Submarine Force quarterly community newsletter.

We have taken an in-depth look at our submarine staff organization are making some changes to improve our effectiveness and efficiency.

Effective this month we will reactivate Squadron Four in New London and Squadron Sixteen in Kings Bay, and we have already canceled plans to inactivate Squadron Six in Norfolk. The goal is to do this without any increase in billets. Our intentions are to improve the operational readiness of each squadron by reducing the number of operational submarines assigned to approximately six per squadron and by removing many of the collateral duties the squadrons used to have, thus improving the ability of the squadron commander to focus on the operational readiness of the submarine wardrooms and crews.

Admiral Smith asked a good question earlier, .. Who does ASW?” I agree and share many of the concerns he voiced. I have recently assumed the responsibility for all Atlantic area ASW as CTF 84 and I am working hard at reinvigorating our efforts and addressing many of our ongoing problems. CTF 84 previously consisted of 12 separate task groups organized along geographic boundaries. Control of assigned forces was convoluted and resulted in many situations where assets were inefficiently utilized. Accordingly, we reorganized the task force and the headquarters staff to make them more functional and efficient. This change along with the other initiatives provides us the opportunity to develop a synergy between all of the ASW communities and will provide a mechanism to interface with CNO N84 to influence resource sponsor decisions which affect ASW. As I have said many times before, ASW is a team event-submariners cannot do it alone-and the Submarine Force will take a lead role in forging that team.

I’d like to talk about the one topic that takes up much of mine and Rear Admiral Ellis’ time, and that is the programmed Submarine Force structure reduction.

We continue to be in a period of great transition. The rightsizing of the Submarine Force is near the steepest part of the curve and it is really starting to significantly affect us. As a total Submarine Force, right now we number 72 SSNs, 67 of which are operational, and that number will decrease rapidly over the next couple of years.

One of my principal concerns is managing this very rapid decline in force structure. If you look at the drawdown curves, it isn’t so much the end point that concerns me, but the glide path-the slope we are one. It is a steep slope and that means in a very short period of time some significant and rapid transitions in the way we do business will take place. The challenge is to keep in balance all the different and complex factors that are affected-our people, training, resources, logistics and operational schedules.

To keep these things in balance is more difficult when you are on a steep glide path than on a more gradual one. This transition requires a significant amount of management attention to keep all these factors in sync. We’ve made a number of efficiencies to try and address the issue of how we can continue to do better rather than more with less and I will speak more on that later.

Obviously, a crucial aspect of the force structure reduction is meeting our operational commitments, and that will become increasingly difficult over the next few years. Rear Admiral Ellis’ and my staff, as well as our predecessors, looked very hard at what level of SSNs were necessary to meet existing and anticipated CINC operational commitments and we felt very strongly that we needed 72 SSNs. We need 72 but obviously we cannot afford that many. The JCS Study of 1993 specified 51-67 SSNs would be required and, of course, the Bottom Up Review specified 45-55 SSNs. Now the QDR is saying that 50 SSNs are necessary. Whatever the final Force structure is, there are two key elements to our future. First, the New Attack Submarine build rate is crucial. Even at a build rate of two NSSNs per year, in the out years our SSN inventory will drop below 50 and reach 39 SSNsBut there is good news. Despite the drawdown we have not taken it out on the backs of our people. As our Force structure declines, it becomes more of a challenge to control our OPTEMPO, and we expend significant effort to do so. We have managed to maintain a reasonably steady OPTEMPO and we are projecting that we are not going to change it significantly. Our plan is to continue to operate our submarines at about a mid to low 40 percent OPTEMPO range. in 2026. Secondly, no matter what the build rate is, the 688 class submarines will be the bulk of the Force well into the next century. Therefore, 688 modernization cannot be ignored and is of paramount importance to the future health of the Force.

But there is good news. Despite the drawdown we have not taken it out on the backs of our people. As our Force structure declines, it becomes more of a challenge to control our OPTEMPO, and we expend significant effort to do so. We have managed to maintain a reasonably steady OPTEMPO and we are projecting that we are not going to change it significantly. Our plan is to continue to operate our submarines at about a mid to low 40 percent OPTEMPO range.

As I mentioned earlier, we have taken some actions to mitigate the impact of the drawdown. To deal with how to do better with less, we have looked hard at reducing our deployment overhead. We are moving towards elimination of short deployments and making all of them six months in length; in other words, we will deploy longer but less frequently to attain operational savings due to fewer workups and fewer ocean transits. The end result will be that our submarines will spend more time in a deployment status and this will allow us to continue to meet many of our commitments with fewer submarines.

Additionally, a great success story has been the operating cycle extension of our 688s. We have dramatically reduced the amount of time over the life of a ship that they spend in a shipyard environment. From 1974 through 1995 we have reduced the time in a depot period by over 50 percent. The costs have also been significantly reduced since refueling overhauls have also been eliminated. The culmination of this initiative is greater operational availability of our SSNs and lower life cycle costs.

A couple of weeks ago at the Submarine Technology Symposium, Rear Admiral Jerry Ellis and I talked about how important it was for the acquisition, technical and fleet communities to work closely together to ensure we maintain our undersea superiority into the future. I want to reemphasize that philosophy, and particularly how important it is for the fleet to be fully integrated into the mechanism for setting requirements. The NB organizations on our staffs are now set up to interface more closely with N87 to address fleet concerns and to ensure the fleet has a voice in the budget process.

The combined effects of rapidly changing technology and diminishing resources mandates a close working relationship, a partnership if you will, to ensure we set appropriate requirements and spend our resources wisely. It is crucial that smart decisions are made in this area and that the fleet view is integrated into the process. The overall goal of the improvements to the requirements process is to more wisely spend our limited resources and ensure that appropriate priority is given to the fleet’s needs.

I’d like to change directions for a minute and talk briefly about the future of the Trident force. The Submarine Force has programmed for 14 Tridents early in the next century. A recent issue has been that with the reduced warhead requirements of START II and START III that we should be able to reduce our Trident force to one base. I want to stress that it is absolutely crucial to the survivability of our SSBN deterrent that we maintain two homeports and a two ocean presence. The issue is not the number of warheads but the viability of our Force to remain survivable under all postulated scenarios. Keeping two homeports and a two ocean presence assures our survivability and is a cheap insurance policy in deterring the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The debate continues as to the role of naval forces and submarines in the future security environment. Secretary of Defense William Cohen gave a speech in May 1997 in which he asked a fundamental question, u Are we a continental based power with global interests? Or a maritime operating power with global reach?” He later stated in his speech that “our military forces (must be) able to respond to the full spectrum of threats and contingencies. That means having forces that can get to a crisis area quickly and be able to dominate the battlefield … We also want those forces to be flexible-flexible enough to carry out missions besides full- scale warfare … ” Fundamentally, I believe his second statement answers his first question. I interpret his remarks to mean that we are a maritime power with global reach. I further believe our Submarine Force is well positioned to meet this challenge.

As we look to the future and try to craft a Submarine Force vision of where we are headed, we have to face some enduring national realities that serve as our stars to steer by. These realities are:

Global interests
Maritime nation
Reduced overseas bases
Dangerous, uncertain world
Need for flexibility
Tight budgets; zero sum game
Need to leverage high technology
High threshold for mission success and survivability

These realities serve as the backdrop for our future decisions regarding the roles and missions of submarines and what the corresponding force structure should be. When you talk about what submarines bring to the table, the answer becomes clear when you consider the submarine’s enduring attributes :

Stealth – unlocatable credible, non-provocative presence, surprise
Endurance – protracted on-station dwell time with minimal logistics tail; self-sustaining
Agility – global reach; to respond rapidly without the need for air superiority; sustained high speed capability
Lethality – a high ratio of offensive to defensive weapons because stealth brings its own defense; a high payload of not only precision weapons but heavyweight weapons
Survivability – self-defense inherent in stealth; virtually invulnerable from attack; supports the national threshold not to put our people at risk
Versatility – multi-mission; variable payloads; growth potential for alternative roles and ability to tailor the submarine for the mission
Reliability – high operational readiness
Responsiveness – robust connectivity; readily reconstitute

All of these attributes play quite well into the new Joint Vision 2010 operational concepts of dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full dimensional protection and focused logistics as articulated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

To further this debate I’d like to dispel some common submarine myths. Just as the Navy is moving toward widely dispersed forces as the fleet shrinks, so is the Submarine Force. We are returning to our historic roots-a multi-mission focus for our submarines. We have come full circle-we have moved away from the almost exclusive blue water ASW focus that the Cold War necessitated to multi-mission operations in both blue water and the littorals. The bottom line is that submarines don’t only exist to fight other submarines. In fact, submarines have utility across the full spectrum of operations, from peacetime engagement operations other than war, through crisis response and deterrence, to warfighting operations in support of a joint commander.

Many argue that the SSN is expensive. I want to shift the debate away from initial acquisition costs, which I think is like comparing apples and oranges, and focus more on life cycle costs. Submarines have one time fuel costs as refuelings are no longer required. We have a small crew which make for large savings over the life of the ship. Our maintenance costs have been greatly reduced as I talked about earlier, and we don’t require other ships for support or defense. These savings play out very well when comparing the life cycle costs of submarines to other major weapon systems.

Finally, I don’t think I need to say much on the myth that submarines only operate independently. Rear Admiral Ellis and my predecessors have worked hard to integrate our submarines with our joint and combined forces, and we continue towards the goal of full integration into joint task forces.

The good news is that there have been numerous independent studies and reviews validating the utility of submarines for the future national security environment. For example, I recently noticed that the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis published a detailed report exploring the role of the submarine platform in future U.S. Naval and Joint Force planning. And the JCS Study in 1993 and the Bottom Up Review further validated the role of submarines. There are also several other studies ongoing; a Defense Science Board summer study, the National Defense Panel review, an OSD Net Assessment of Undersea Warfare, and an SAIC study analyzing Submarine Force structure options. I am confident that each of these efforts will present submarine utility in a favorable light.

My bottom line when you look at the macro view of the Submarine Force and consider life cycle costs is that it should be quite clear that we are a lean and mean organization and the taxpayer gets a pretty good bargain from the Submarine Force. In the conventional deterrence mission, our attack Submarine Force provides approximately 30 percent of the Navy’s combatant ships utilizing only 11 percent of the budget and seven percent of its people. For the strategic deterrence mission, the numbers are just as dramatic-for only 19 percent of the strategic budget and 35 percent of the strategic personnel, we provide 54 percent of the warheads and nearly 100 percent of the survivable warheads.

Finally, to conclude, I am very pleased with the health of the Force, and I am very pleased in the vision for the Force and where we are headed. I think it is robust and vibrant and we are supporting the CNO’s objectives. We are ever ready, capable, forward deployed and forward engaged.

Thank you.