I fielded yesterday from a colleague—who avowedly is not a sailor—this question (slightly rephrased) about the US Navy’s submarine fleet:
why has the US Navy avoided buying any non-nuclear-powered submarines? I would think that diesel-electric or air-independent propulsion (AIP) attack subs would be a good idea. I don’t know much about subs, but good things seem to have been said about AIP.
The longstanding assumption, I told him, holds that the Navy is afraid to order a non-nuclear boat simply because it would be so less expensive than a nuclear one with a similar suite of sensors and weapons. Yes, I wrote that. Think about it a moment. The concept has important implications for how military procurement may change in the future, but first, I should explain a bit more about what I mean.
No such diesel-electric or AIP submarine would have the legs of a nuke, but it certainly would cost a whole lot less. An S9G reactor alone costs about $550 million, which is a lot more than one would pay for diesels, batteries, and sterling engines. An diesel-electric-AIP boat would also be a lot smaller: on a Los Angeles-class submarine, for example, the whole back half of the boat is propulsion, and all the guys who work back there need racks up forward. This is why American submarines carry crews of about 100, but Swedish and German ones carry crews of about 30. Less internal volume means a smaller pressure hull, which in turn means lower costs. For some comparison, the coproduction of the Type 214s in Turkey was signed with HDW for about $550 million per boat (as I note, that’s about the cost of just the S9G on a Virginia-class boat). From news reports, HDW seems to have been offering similar boats built in Germany or Sweden (where there’s considerably more history in how to do it) for something closer to $400 million, and sometimes less.
Now, if the American admiralty tried to present a bill to the federal congress for a co-produced Type 214 (say, $550 million) alongside that for a Virginia (something north of $2.1 billion), some politically enterprising congressman might ask why they couldn’t just buy the former, and wind down production of the latter. If, on the other hand, the admirals continue to insist that only nuclear submarines are useful for the US Navy, given the distances at which the fleet must operate, then they can maintain the case for spending so much money on what is, ultimately, just one ship.
To be fair, the British and French defense ministries have come to a similar conclusion: that they only want nuclear-powered submarines. Indeed, the end of the Cold War prompted the Royal Navy to pull its four, just-completed Upholder-class diesel-electric submarines from service, and to store them until the Canadian government offered to buy them for a knocked-down price years later. The upgrade program has admittedly been a mess (one officer even died in a shipboard fire during the transit across the Atlantic), but that’s another story. What’s really odd is not why the Brits wouldn’t want diesel-powered submarines (the RN really does go a long way from the UK), but why the Canadian government would want any submarines at all. Canada doesn’t face the same geopolitical issues that Australia does (with its six Collins-class AIP boats), and the federal government is scrambling for money to fund the frigate fleet. One could argue that a single landing ship would be far more more politically useful to Ottawa.
Part of the explanation is that submarines have an aspect of machismo to them, and on the margin, may be more symbolic than practical for many countries’ foreign policies today. The Danes came to that conclusion a few years ago: they dumped their four submarines, and built two Absalon-class command-and-support ships. The latter represent a clever idea: 5,000 tons, frigate in front (Evolved Sea Sparrows and a 127 mm gun), small landing platform dock in back (carrying about 200 troops plus vehicles). Their huge payload makes them useful for anything from sea control to remote mine-hunting to small-scale amphibious operations. Still, a few folks in Denmark lamented the passing of the submarine fleet, which had been around for 95 years, even if it hadn’t really engaged in combat since a few neutrality violations in 1914. It certainly wasn’t going to give much assistance to Danish troops fighting admirably in Afghanistan.
After sending all these thoughts, I got this reply (slightly condensed):
Given what appears to be some fantastic performance by the sterling cycle boats, I don't get why the US wouldn't want that capability also for at least a portion of their sub fleet. Yes, the introducing lower cost competitors into the inventory isn't a winning idea in the acquisition system in some cases—those arguments are peripheral to the actual combat capability argument, which is part of why I've concluded that DoD's center of gravity is aft, in the business administration-tail end of defense.
Well, as Newt says in Aliens, “mostly.” But consider how the US Army’s plan for replacing its RC-12N Guardrail signals intelligence aircraft with high-flying jets faltered, died—and then got totally subsumed by the USAF’s quick work in buying MC-12W Liberty signals intelligence aircraft. It could be Beechcraft King Air week at the Pentagon, as the MC-12Ws flew their thousandth combat mission recently, but it’s so much more than that. The Liberty project may foreshadow a Grodzinsian or Gladwellian tipping point in military procurement—the moment at which a shift to more numerous, more distributed, more economical, or more flexible platforms and systems become preferred to the asset legacies of the Cold War. Why? It’s simple. As a Liberty pilot in Iraq put it in that linked USAF press release, “I project we'll go over to (Afghanistan) too and do the same stuff over there. We would continue helping to gather intelligence and protecting the troops.” But for China, what else would be the point of most of the United States’ military spending? And even with the potential threat of Chinese adventurism along the western rim of the Pacific, just how much force is needed to stand on guard?
To be sure, not every system refined in the latter half of the 20th century is inflexible or unaffordable—as with the Abasalons, there’s an amazing range of things that one can do with an aircraft carrier—including helping to crush a communist invasion of Taiwan. Today, though, money is short, as the current and immediately preceding occupants of the Oval Office (with the congressional accomplices) have been spending money like sailors on shore leave. At some point, that will come crashing to a halt. As I have been counseling clients for some time, I expect that to happen more quickly than many forecast. Not only is Washington really, really out of money this time, but the Cold War is also really, really over. In 1993, when spending last started turning down sharply, people were still talking about what to do if the Russians moved against Poland. The Russians reluctantly moved against Georgia, and that's about it. Today, those old threat slides look really, really tired. It’s hard to image how the US Army's structure of 45 line brigades makes sense if no one wants to do another Iraq or Afghan campaign.
Of course, if the 2010 elections turn out like the 1994 elections, spending may slide slower as the parties try to outdo one another in looking tough. All the same, if Bob Gates stays in his job, the GOP will have a harder time painting this administration as soft on defense. Thus, the relevant questions are how fast that will happen, and which areas of military spending the US will benefit at the expense of which others. That is, as budget constraints shift inward, there is both an income effect and a substitution effect. Military forces have less money to spend on all kit (the income effect), but they may shift from kit they institutionally prefer (normal goods) to those they do rather less (inferior goods). The tools of counterinsurgency, even of full-spectrum operations, may be inferior goods for a lot of American flag officers, but they'll get comfortable with buying Liberties and MRAPs if that's the best they can do. And as the past few years have indicated, it’s already happening. It hasn’t hit the submarine fleet yet, but even that is not inconceivable.
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