Coupled with the weapons, a new sonar/fire control system was to be provided, the SUBACS (Submarine Advanced Combat System). When initiated in 1980, SUBACS was planned for backfit into the later Los Angeles submarines as well as installation in the SSN 21. SUBACS would integrate the bow-mounted passive and active sonars, wide-aperture passive array panels fitted on the sides of the SSN 21, and advanced towed-array sonars. SUBACS was considered a major factor in providing U.S. superiority over new Soviet submarines.
From the start SUBACS encountered development, cost, and management problems. The planned optical data bus—using fiber-optic technology to transmit data—encountered difficulties, causing a redesign to employ more-conventional electronic technology. Next there were problems in producing the multilayer computer circuit boards. And there were management problems on the part of the prime contractor (the IBM Corporation) and the Navy. These contributed to unprecedented cost increases—in a single year SUBACS costs increased $1 billion over budget.
Several redesigns as well as changes in management were made, with key managers replaced in the Navy and at IBM, and SUBACS was renamed AN/BSY-1. It would go in later Los Angeles submarines and the more advanced and complex AN/BSY-2 in the SSN 21. Cost “caps” were placed on the BSY systems, and were continually exceeded. At the request of Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO) monitored the BSY-series development.
A series of GAO reports addressed BSY-series shortfalls. In 1985: “Under the latest Navy plan... SUBACS will provide less performance than originally intended, require additional funds, and may delay the delivery of the first two SUBACS-equipped SSN 688 submarines.” In 1987: “the time required for software development and integration was underestimated.” In 1991: “Most of the risks identified by IDA [Institute for Defense Analyses]... still exist. According to IDA, if left unresolved, those risks could significantly impair system development through increased costs, schedule delays, and degraded system performance. IDA recommended specific actions to mitigate these risks. However, the Navy did not implement 5 of 6 IDA recommendations,” Also in 1991: “The risks that the Navy has allowed in the development of its BSY-2 combat system are serious....” And, “the Navy is not following some sound management principals and practices.... the Navy could find itself with combat systems that fall short of their promised capability and could cost millions to enhance.” In 1992—as the BSY-1 was being evaluated in the USS San Juan (SSN 751)—the GAO reported:
Two AN/BSY-1 critical operational issues (reliability and maintainability) were unsatisfactory. System failures decreased AN/BSY-1 reliability. The failures were not corrected in the required time. Changes are being made that are expected to correct these deficiencies.
Limitations resulted in incomplete demonstration of two critical operational issues (weapons employment and navigation) and unrealistic operational testing.
Certainly the BSY-series problems could be corrected in time, but only at tremendous cost, and cost would become an increasing concern in the post–Cold War era. Problems continued with the BSY-series, serving as a lightning rod for the increasing criticism of the Seawolf/SSN 21 program. As early as 1984, a classified study undertaken for the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy), Dr. Fred Iklé, criticized the Seawolf, mainly on the basis of cost and the Navy’s modeling of the submarine’s effectiveness being based on a narrow set of ASW engagements. The Navy planned to build three Seawolf SSNs per year; the analysis predicted that for the same funds the Navy could procure seven of the Los Angeles-class submarines. And following Secretary Lehman’s expected departure, in 1986–1987 Navy funding was severely reduced, making it impossible to construct three Seawolfs per year to reach the force objective of 100 SSNs.
While a Seawolf SSN would individually be superior to a Los Angeles submarine in virtually all characteristics, obviously the 3:7 ratio meant that more submarines could be at sea and forward deployed if the less-expensive submarine was procured. Further, three Seawolfs would carry 150 weapons compared to 259 in seven Los Angeles-class SSNs. Still, the arduous mission of ASW operations in Soviet regional waters could require a submarine more capable than the Los Angeles,especially in view of the reduced noise levels of the Soviet Akula-class SSNs.
The Battle Is Joined
Admiral Watkins quickly attacked the study as well as the integrity of the analyst. But the battle over the Seawolf was already joined in Congress, the Reagan administration, and the press. When the program was initiated the Navy planned to ask for funding for one SSN 21 in fiscal year 1989 (beginning 1 October 1988), two in fiscal 1991, and then three per year thereafter with a program goal of 29 SSN 21s.
The Seawolf was duly authorized in fiscal 1989. But within a year the technical and management problems with the project as well as increasing costs led the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee to delete all construction funds for Seawolf submarines in fiscal 1991, instead substituting two more submarines of the Los Angeles class; the House Armed Services Committee approved funding for one Seawolf after an urgent appeal by the Navy’s senior civilians and admirals. The public hearing into Seawolf problems by that House committee on 24 July 1990 led a journalist to write that the one Seawolf was approved “Probably out of pity.” Thus the second Seawolf was funded.
President Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, halved future construction rates for the Seawolf. Following an intensive review of defense programs, on 13 August 1990, Cheney announced that only 1½ submarines would be bought per year instead of the three wanted by the Navy. With an anticipated 30-year service life, this eventually would provide a submarine force of only 45 SSNs, fewer than half the 100 SSNs approved by the Department of Defense.
By 1991—with the Soviet Union undergoing political upheaval—the Trident strategic missile submarine program had been curtailed at 18 SSBNs. With the reduction in the SSN building rate, there was concern that only a single shipyard would be retained to construct nuclear submarines. At the start of the Seawolf program, the Electric Boat (EB) yard in Connecticut was constructing both Los Angeles and Trident submarines; Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia was building Los Angeles-class submarines, but also nuclear aircraft carriers and commercial cargo ships, while seeking other surface ship work. With more control over the EB yard because of its single-product work, the head of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion directorate, Admiral Bruce DeMars, sought to give the construction contract for the entire Seawolf program to the EB yard.
Newport News brought a lawsuit against the Navy for awarding the contract to build the Seawolf at Electric Boat. Newport News costs were less, but the Navy prevailed in the courts, and after some delays, EB began building the SSN 21. It meant that in a few years Newport News would be out of submarine work; the Navy would have gone from seven yards constructing nuclear submarines in the 1960s to only one.
Troubles continued to plague the Seawolf’s BSY-2 system, and on 1 August 1991, the Navy revealed that massive weld failures had been discovered in the Seawolf’s hull. The problem—first identified in June 1991—resulted from a procedure that allowed the welds to cool at an unacceptably fast rate for the high carbon weld wire being used. This resulted in the welds being too brittle. Reportedly, all welds had to be replaced. At the time the submarine was 17 percent complete. As a result, the Seawolf’s cost increased and she was further delayed.
Another factor in the rising costs was the low production rate of attack submarines. Also, EB had begun the last Trident SSBN in 1991, and the yard’s last SSN 688 would be started in 1993; the end of those programs would increase the overhead costs being carried by the Seawolf program, which would be the yard’s only construction effort.
In January 1992—with the Cold War over—Secretary Cheney announced that the entire Seawolf program would be canceled; only the SSN 21 would be completed. The funds previously voted by Congress for the SSN 22 and SSN 23 were to be rescinded. No additional submarines would be constructed until the fiscal 1997 program, when a new, “lower-cost” attack submarine would be initiated. The Clinton administration, entering office in January 1993, affirmed the one-ship Seawolf program.
But pressure from the congressional delegations of Connecticut and neighboring states, promoted by Admiral DeMars, forced the construction of the SSN 22, which had been funded in fiscal 1991. Similarly, the SSN 23, which had been partially funded in fiscal 1992, was forced onto the administration by Congress. Admiral DeMars claimed that $1.5 billion had already been committed for building the third submarine, hence it could be completed for only an additional $1.5 billion. Although many of these commitments of money still could have been stopped, Congress approved the third unit—at an estimated cost of $3 billion, or more than one-half the cost of a 100,000-ton, nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier.
In the style of Admiral Rickover, Admiral DeMars sought to squelch all dissent against the Seawolf program, both within and outside of the Navy. At DeMars’s direction, the Naval Investigative Service investigated analysts who opposed the Seawolf. He attacked the editor of The Submarine Review, the journal of the Naval Submarine League, a private, professional organization that supports submarine programs. The DeMars letter caused the firing of the editor of The Submarine Review, a distinguished author, submarine officer, and combat veteran, who had founded the journal in 1983. A subsequent investigation of this situation by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense determined that the DeMars letter “had a chilling effect on public debate of unclassified submarine issues.”
...
In the mid-1980s the official cost estimate for a 29-ship Seawolf program was $38 billion (then-year dollars). In 1999 a submarine officer, with full access to Navy and shipyard sources, estimated the cost of the three-ship Seawolf program—including direct research and development costs—at almost $16 billion. At the time of that estimate, none of the submarines was fully operational. On an adjusted cost basis, the three Seawolf-class submarines are probably the most expensive warships yet constructed except for nuclear-propelled aircraft carriers.
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