Don't forget Chuck Yeager on the 27th, I will check on tickets this week.
Posted on 04/07/2002 11:07:39 AM PDT by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig
By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter
Big as the Washington Monument, as complicated as the space shuttle and as stealthy as its black silhouette suggests, the nation's Trident submarine is the ultimate doomsday machine.
But in the long thaw of the Cold War, when regional conflict is a more pressing threat than nuclear annihilation, the Navy is beginning to redefine the Trident's mission.
After Sept. 11, a jittery Congress approved a defense-spending bill that included nearly $4 billion to "transform" the nation's four oldest Trident submarines into modern street fighters. Two will sail from the Navy's base at Bangor, Kitsap County.
The Ohio-class submarines will be refitted to launch conventional tactical weapons such as Tomahawk missiles and will be capable of ferrying 66 Special Forces commandos to foreign soil. The retrofit means these submarines will become less a deterrent weapon and more a lethal force.
New gadgets, too, could be added, including unmanned undersea vehicles, or UUVs, as well as minisubmersibles to lug Navy SEALs and their gear between the Tridents and the shore.
"This is a whole new dimension and a new ballgame for us," said Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., commander of Submarine Group Nine at Bangor Submarine Base. "These subs will give us capacity, endurance and delivery power that we have never had before."
The transformation is not without critics, including detractors inside the Navy who unsuccessfully argued that the money would be better spent on the development of new weapons and new attack submarines.
For those who long have opposed the nation's military might, the made-over Tridents are no less terrifying.
"We should be getting rid of bombs, not making new ones," said Glen Milner with Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, an anti-nuclear-weapons group. He has been arrested several times during protests at Bangor.
"This thing will be able to launch 154 missiles in six minutes. It's a thing of terror and we don't need it."
Navy brass, however, point out the four Tridents also will be a better equipped spy tool. And like the remaining 14 nuclear-armed Tridents, these will be stealthy and self-sufficient, without need of battle groups or support ships.
"The stand-alone platform that the new Tridents will provide will be the Navy's bread and butter," said Lt. Cmdr. Howard Goldman, the executive officer of the USS Michigan, one of the Tridents scheduled for conversion. "In the future, when conflict arises, the president will not only ask where the closest carrier is, he'll ask about the Tridents."
Fast and flexible
Observers say the change underscores the Pentagon's belief that in today's world the military must be faster and more flexible than ever.
The Trident transformation is not unlike the rethinking the Army is undergoing. At nearby Fort Lewis, tanks are giving way to light-armored vehicles that ride on eight tires instead of treads and can hit speeds of 60 mph.
The Trident conversions are scheduled to begin next year at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va. Converting the subs will cost more than $800 million each, and will help ensure stable employment at the Bremerton shipyard, one of Kitsap County's biggest employers.
The four aging Tridents were scheduled to be taken out of service next year, part of the Navy's agreement to reduce its nuclear arsenal under the START II arms-control agreement. The conversion means the Navy can get an additional 20 years of service from the hulls.
A major change will be to adapt 22 of the 24 missile tubes so that each tube could carry and launch up to seven Tomahawks within seconds.
The two remaining tubes, according to the proposals, would be used to store gear and arsenal for Navy SEALs.
The converted submarines will patrol the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They would remain based at Bangor and King's Bay, Ga., but could be deployed from friendly ports in places such as Guam or Scotland.
Because they carry nuclear missiles, the Tridents stop over only at U.S. ports. But minus the nuclear missiles, they become more versatile and will be able to tie up in foreign ports.
"As it stands, we don't really want to park our nuclear weapons in some of these other countries and frankly, a lot of them don't want us to park there either," said Lt. Kevin Stephens, public-affairs officer at Bangor.
The Trident's clout
Up until recent years, the role of the Tridents has been "deterrence, deterrence, deterrence," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, who pushed the military-spending bill hard.
"Now, they can actually be used in one of these conflicts. This is a whole new era."
Powered by a nuclear reactor, each Trident submarine carries 192 nuclear warheads, a force more than 1,000 times more destructive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The Trident was conceived during the Cold War as an ultimate weapon of deterrence and the third, and least vulnerable, leg of a nuclear triad that includes bombers and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
In fact, nearly half of the nation's nuclear weapons are carried by the Trident fleet.
Each submarine is assigned two crews of 160 sailors and officers. The crews take turns taking the boat out to sea.
It patrols the seas and no one, save for the boat's commanders, knows the boat's exact location. The fact the fleet has never had to launch a nuclear-missile strike is considered a success by the Navy.
"We might know the area that it's in, but we don't know where it is in that grid," Stephens said. "The reason for that is simple. If the bad guys grab me and put bamboo under my nails, I'm going to sing, so they just don't tell anyone on shore where they're hiding."
Unlike the fast-attack submarines that make up the other major component of the Navy's underwater force, Trident submarines do not trail or spy on other vessels.
"We look at all ships and subs as a threat and try to stay out of range," said Clark Everett, a sonar technician first class on the Michigan. "We play chicken a lot."
In fact, the Trident's motto is sometimes said to be, "We hide with pride," Stephens said.
Capt. Howard Trost, commander of the Trident Training Facility on Bangor, explains deterrence this way: "Imagine that America is a beautiful girlfriend and you're Bill Gates, a skinny guy with glasses. Well, a big guy with muscles could come over and kick sand in your face and take your girlfriend.
"But he probably wouldn't do it if Arnold Schwarzenegger was standing behind you, would he? We're America's Arnold," Trost said.
Trident's detractors
Since 1982, the year when the first Ohio-class nuclear submarine arrived at the 7,000-acre base on the Hood Canal, Bangor has been the site of protest.
Over the years, the interest, the fear and even the number of protests have faded. The first protests drew thousands; today, those who rally outside the gates have dropped to a few dozen. Still, Jackie Hudson, a member of Ground Zero and a resident of Kitsap County, said the United States already has 137 ships and subs capable of launching Tomahawks and doesn't need four more.
"We're a nation gone mad," she said. "With the Trident's stealth and invulnerability and the missile's range of over 1,000 miles, we could have every nation on the globe targeted without anyone realizing it.
"That's not war, that's slaughter."
And still others say the amount of money spent on the military, in general, is in shocking disregard to other needs in the country.
"How many people in our own country would that $4 billion feed? How many schools would it help?" asked Niall McSharrie, a computer programmer who opposes increased military spending.
Military boosters, though, say the cost benefit of reusing the oldest Tridents — the Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Georgia — far outweighs other options.
A report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, showed that updating them was cheaper than converting a fast-attack sub to do the same job or building a new class of submarine.
"They cost $1.8 billion, they're bought and paid for and they still have 20 more years in them," said Stephens. "That's too big an investment to cut into razor blades."
Christine Clarridge can be reached at 206- 464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.
You're forgetting one thing. Anything an engineer can put on paper WILL WORK. Just ask him.
Don't forget Chuck Yeager on the 27th, I will check on tickets this week.
From another bubblehead
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