Gertrude Check

Welcome aboard 6 new members: Fred Green (James Madison), Ken Northfield, (Whale, John Marshall), William Mead (Baton Rouge, Indianapolis, Helena, Kamehameha, Henry M Jackson, Nevada) John Gee (Henry M. Jackson), Grant Romaine (Tautog, Hawkbill), George Kreppien (James Monroe, John C Calhoun, Georgia). Also welcome back Mike Madden (Queenfish. Baya, Truda, Tirante, Cutlass) from MAL Status.

Tommy Robinson & Sam Swenson performed recruiting duty in the TTF Lobby on Wed, Mar 5th. They recruited 1 new member and collected bases dues from other members

Those members who may have not renewed membership for 2008, please do so. We are getting close to being the second largest base (309 members) in the USSVI, next to Groton Base. Please renew! Losing you will set us back!.

Details of the 2008 Enlisted Submarine Birthday Ball have been announced. It will be held on Friday, April 25th at the Seattle Sheridan Hotel. As you are well aware this is an annual event organized by active duty personnel. This year the Sub Ball committee has been kind to allot 20 slots for USSVI members. In co-operation with Seattle & South Sound Bases, we have given WWII vets the first opportunity at the tickets. By next week it should be clear how many tickets are remaining. For details: click on http://gertrude-check.up-scope.org/subball.pdf. Call me (Don, 360-479-1642) for Sub Ball tickets before making hotel reservations.

Date: 3/19/2008
To: Distribution List

FLASH-01: Last Call for the National Officer and Region Director Elections for 2008.

=========================================================
FLASH-01: Last Call for the National Officer and Region Director Elections for 2008.
Submitted by: For John Peters on 3/1/2008
---------------------------------------------------------
Yo, Shipmates!

Want to make a difference in how USSVI operates? Whether you are dissatisfied with the current crew, or just want to build on what they have achieved, USSVI needs YOU!

USSVI is only as good and as effective as the good men who step forward to do the necessary work of the organization.

SubVets needs you to help us make this a 'real' election by tossing your hat in the ring.

Are you an Accountant? Run for Natl Treasurer! Are you good at organization and recordkeeping? Run for Natl Secretary! Do you have experience as a District or Base Commander and want to move up to Region Director? Get that hat 'in the air' and help us all build a better USSVI!

We want to hear from you. You can nominate yourself or you may be nominated by a shipmate.

As a nominees you simply need to send a letter/email stating the position you wish to run for and your willingness to serve if elected.

The Nominations Committee is chaired by John Peters, Immed. Past Natl Commander.

You can Review Article VII of the Constitution and Articles V of the USSVI Bylaws for specific details. (The C&B can be found at www.ussvi.org, click DOCUMENTS, then ORG)

Direct these letters or emails to John Peters at petersj007@hawaii.rr.com (98-1547 Akaaka St, Aiea HI 96701-3051)

Submarinemuseums.org is the place to go to see details of 20 submarine museums nation wide. Take a look.

Many older vets may have known Commander Joe McGrievy, who recently passed away in San Diego. Please go to this site and view a TV clip of a memorial ceremony for Joe. http://video.nbcsandiego.com/player/?id=228480

Please review the 2008 Convention Web site at this site: http://ussvi2008.com/. It will be held in the Dallas/Ft Worth area of Texas.

FLASH-01: Spread the word! What if USSVI earned a penny every time you searched
the Internet?

=========================================================
FLASH-01: Spread the word! What if USSVI earned a penny every time you searched
the Internet?
Submitted by: Pat Householder on 2/27/2008
---------------------------------------------------------
What if USSVI earned a penny every time you searched the Internet?

Or, how about if a percentage of every purchase you made online went to support
our cause? Well, now it can!

GoodSearch.com is a new Yahoo-powered search engine that donates half its
advertising revenue, about a penny per search, to the charities its users
designate.

Starting NOW, use it just as you would any search engine, get quality search
results from Yahoo, and watch the donations add up!

GoodShop.com is a new online shopping mall which donates up to 37 percent of
each purchase to your favorite cause! Hundreds of great stores including Amazon, Target, Gap, Best Buy, ebay, Macy's and Barnes & Noble have teamed
up with GoodShop and every time you place an order, you’ll be supporting your
favorite cause.

Just go to www.goodsearch.com and be sure to enter USSVI as the charity you want
to support.

GoodSearch also has a toolbar you can download from the homepage so that you can
search right from the top of your browser. Click the link at the bottom for the
options.

You can keep track of USSVI's estimated earnings by clicking on “amount raised”
once you designate USSVI as your organization of choice.

The more people who use the site, the more money we’ll earn so please help
spread the word and forward this email to as many people as possible.

We hope you’ll forward this email to your family, friends and co-workers and ask
them to change their search engine to GoodSearch.com.

And, be sure to spread the word!

Thanks, Shipmates...

http://www.goodsearch.com/toolbars.aspx

Take a look at the lower end of the right column for WRD4 Base newsletter links

The Submarine Association of Canada (SAOC West) is putting on an International Gathering of Submariners in Victoria BC from 2-5 May 2008. They are celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the commissioning of the HMC submarines Okanagan and Rainbow . We are invited. Please look at this web page for details and a registration form. http://members.shaw.ca/saocwest/2008.htm.

The registration fee covers a Friday meet and greet event, the Saturday evening Banquet and Dance and the Sunday brunch plus a tour or two.

Some of our members have registered, including myself. I suggest others consider this opportunity reunite or meet with our Canadian hosts. Several supported us on our cruise convention and you will find them very delightful and friendly.

UPDATE

Ahoy All,
Arrangements are progressing nicely for our 2008 Submariners Gathering, May 2-3-4, in Victoria, BC.
Ray Hunt, commanding officer of both Rainbow & Okanagan, has confirmed as our Guest of Honour and recent registrants include Keith Nesbit & Brian Fisher ... this is shaping up to be quite the party !!! ... all look forward to visiting Victoria and catching up with their Grilse / Rainbow shipmates.
A reminder that registrations received prior to February 29th are eligible for our Early Bird Draw for refund of one person's registration fee ... on-line details & a downloadable Registration Form are available at http://members.shaw.ca/saocwest/2008.htm
Yours Aye & We look forward to seeing you this coming May.
2008 Gathering Committee,
Submariners Association of Canada West

2008 Lt William "Willie" Spoon Memorial Scholarship Program Update

In mid-January of this year the 2008 Lt. William "Willie" Spoon Memorial scholarship raffle tickets were mailed out to the Bremerton Base membership and, to date,133 members have responded with donations which represents 45% of the membership base. Other members have also responded with generous donations in lieu of raffle tickets.

There are still ~800 raffle tickets at the National Office if anyone wants to sell them to friends and neighbors. Bud Berg has personally sold well over110 tickets.

V/R
Bob Webster - 2008 Scholarship Chairman

Raffle Prizes (gift certificates) are solicited from local restaurants that we visit 2 or 3 times a year each. Listed to the right are the ones that made contributions in 2007. Also individual members are encouraged to solicit prizes or cash contributions from businesses that you trade with. It is suggested that you go back to the ones you solicited last year for a donation. Here is a pdf file that appeared in last July/August's Puget Soundings that could be used to show what we did. Also this letter (word file) could be used to solicit prizes.

GO GET EM!

As many know, Base Storekeeper Tommy Robinson has really revved up of the Bremerton Base Ships Store. His sense of business has really made the store a profitable venture for the base. His enthusiasm and constant updating of products available for you to purchase is remarkable. He has even started up a webpage for the store and is taking vest orders via an order form. Please take a look here. The page is just a starter and I am sure he will have more info on it later on. His reputation has Subvets around the country ordering from him. Great job Tommy!

The Lone Sailor Statue Project Bremerton Base has forwarded a check to the Lone Sailor Statue Project for $1000 and received a thank you npte. According to Co-chairman, Tim Thomson, the base will get permanent recognition. Hopefully you will consider contributing to this project's success. See Donor list here and recently updated.

NEW SKED You can still make your submarine experience count! Trident Training Center (TTF) Command Master Chief Scott Fusco and USSVI Bremerton Base Past Commander John Gardner have a program that lets you share your submarine experience and lessons learned with young sailors graduating from the TTF ET course. Each one of the classes has been named after one of the "Forty One for Freedom". On graduation day Master Chief Fusco invites a team of two Bremerton Base members (preferably that has served on that class's name sake boat) in, to give a short talk on their experiences, etc. We have been involved in two or three of these graduations to date.

Coming up on the following dates are graduating classes with the boat names with members names that served on those boats. TEAM UP! Then/or e-mail John (jgardner@donobi.net) or call him at

360-692-8994.

NAVET Change Radioman
USS Sam Houston - 15 APR 08 @ 1100 USS Mario G Vallejo 21 Mar @ 0900

USS John Marshall - 17 JUN 08 @ 1100                   USS Thomas Jefferson - 02 SEP 08 @ 1100
USS Alexander Hamilton - 19 AUG 08 @1100         USS Lafayette - 10 DEC 08 @ 1100
USS Andrew Jackson - 15 OCT 08 @ 1100

Subject: USSVI POC Broadcast : #200-009 <Direct Link

Date: 3/11/2008
To: Distribution List

NEWS-01: Quick Bytes
NEWS-02: Some people just can't stay busy enough
NEWS-03: Talking about USS Cavalla (SSK-244)
NEWS-04: SubVet Computer School: Keyboard can help
NEWS-05: Just because...
NEWS-06: You're invited to say farewell...
NEWS-07: A Stain on our Honor...
NEWS-08: NTINS
NEWS-09: Honoring Nautilus
NEWS-10: Yee Haw!!!
NEWS-11: Not Starwars, SPARWARS!
NEWS-12: A Salute to Henry...
VET-01: New VA Vet Centers opening or soon to oen
VET-02: 2008 Federal Benefits Book available on Web
CHARITABLE-??: no Charitable news this time .....
Don "Red" Bassler

Commander

USSVI Bremerton Base

360-479-1642

down-scope@comcast.net

Navy's Shipbuilding Wish List Sails Into Troubled Waters
By Dale Eisman, PilotOnline.com, Hampton Roads, VA, March 16, 2008

Compared with warships being built by the rest of the world, the U.S. Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) comes out a solid and cost-effective winner.

That's the conclusion reached by AMI International, a naval analyses group in Bremerton, Wash., in a study now being briefed to Navy leaders.

"LCS is a fabulous solution," said Guy Stitt, (USSVI Bremerton Base Life Member) president of AMI.

"We demonstrated that the LCS is 26 percent cheaper than its European competitors," Stitt said. "It confirms to me that we in the U.S. are competent and effective shipbuilders." AMI's study showed that ship¬builders are responsible for only about 12 percent to 18 percent of a ship's cost.

"The real cost drivers of com¬plex surface combatants are systems, not ship construction costs," Stitt said. "Items such as command-and-control systems, advanced radars and propulsion plants." AMI claims this is the first comprehensive study of the cost of the LCS compared with foreign designs.

"No ship exists that has these capabilities," Stitt said. "Nobody did a comparative analysis of what something like this costs." No ship exists that is designed to handle the mission modules that are the core of the LCS concept, so AMI had to "normalize" the design in order to properly compare it with foreign ships. AMI used the Lockheed Martin design rather than the aluminum trimaran of competitor General Dynamics, Stitt said, because the Lockheed monohull is more sim¬ilar to foreign designs.

"We had to take out the modules and install permanent radars, a vertical launch system with Standard and Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles," Stitt said. "We used a standard frigate¬like outfit and came up with a total cost of $500 million." That price figure formed the basis for comparisons with six current or recently proposed for¬eign designs. The competitors chosen were:

• From Spain, a design by Izar (now Navantia) for the Chilean Proyecto Fragata program.
• From Italy, the Fregata Euro¬pea Multi-Missione (FREMM).
• From the Netherlands, the Luchtverdedigings en Commando FregatbyDamen- Schelde.
• From France, the Frégate multi-mission (FREMM).
• From Germany, Blohm+Voss' MEKO 200 design.
• From the United Kingdom, a combination of the BAE/Yarrow's Nakhoda Ragam-class and Lekiu¬class corvettes.

The LCS was about 20 percent cheaper than the next least expensive ship, the Spanish Proyecto Fragata design, and half the cost of the BAE/Yarrow corvettes built for Brunei and Malaysia.

"Competition is all relative," Stitt said. "You judge your greatness by how you compare to others - that's the significance of this comparison. The Spanish over the last four years have been the world's leading naval ship exporters. The LCS comparison shows we're 26 percent cheaper than them." Too much attention has been focused in the United States on ship builders as a source for high construction costs, Stitt said.

"When we talk about efficiencies in shipbuilding, and especially complex surface combatants such as the DDG 1000 destroyer or LCS, the major cost drivers aren't in the efficiencies of the shipyard, they're in the systems installed on the ship." A better understanding of sys¬tems costs is needed, Stitt said. "One way to get our cost down is to have some appetite suppressant in requirements."

Ship Characteristics Board

A good vehicle for getting a grip on requirements needs and chances, Stitt said, is a Ship Characteristics Board, an entity that Adm. Mike Mullen, previous chief of naval operations, called for in 2005. "This board worked well in the past," Stitt said, recalling the time from the 1950s to 1990s when the board was in charge of determin¬ing what kinds of ships the Navy needed.

"It's time we re-engaged that. Let's get some fleet guys to sit on that review board, arm them with good cost data, and drive requirements for all our future combatants," Stitt added.

At Mullen's direction, a Naval Capabilities Board was established in 2006, but its activities have not been publicized. The board, whose voting members are one- or two-star, flag officers or senior civilians, is charged with making decisions on Navy requirement and resource issues.

Criticism of the shipyards is misguided, Stitt declared.

"The criticism should go to who is in charge of choosing the requirements that go on our ships." The bottom line, he said, is that U.S. shipbuilders are performing credibly and at cost.

"We're a nation that's building the most complex ships in the world, and we're also comparatively very competitive. So get off the shipbuilders and focus attention on controlling requirements, controlling the costs of the systems," he said.

A Good First Effort

One analyst who agrees is Bob Work, a senior naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "Instinctively, I would say AMI is right," Work said.

While the LCS program has received a steady barrage of criticism over the past year for cost growth and delays, Work noted that other programs experienced similar problems. Of the past 10 new ship designs, he pointed out, half of the first-of-class ships more than doubled their original cost targets.

"Even with all the risks the Navy took, and even with the extraordinarily ambitious schedule, in comparison to other ships, the first LCS ship of class wasn't that bad," Work said.

One problem with evaluating the LCS is the unrealistic original cost projection of $220 million per hull. The Navy revised that figure in early 2006 to properly in¬clude other costs, reaching a new figure of $297 million for the first ships. That price has recently jumped to $471 million, and a true comparison, Work said, should use a figure of $630 mil¬lion to take into account costs for the mission modules.

The extent of the cost growth depends on which of the early numbers is used for comparison.

"If you compare the $630 mil¬lion against the $220 million tar¬get, you're at about 186 percent, which is the worst of the runovers," Work said. "But against $297 million, it's only about 108 percent, which makes it the best of the five overruns." If the LCS concept pans out, Work said, the Navy should get a capable warship for about the cost of the ships it replaces.

"It looks like a pretty darn good deal regardless of its well-publi¬cized troubles."

Queenfish: A Cold War Tale Slide show http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/14/science/031808Arctic_14.html

More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/europe/19arctic.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

By William J. Broad, New York Times, March 18, 2008ditor’s Note: The Queenfish mentioned in this article is USS Queenfish (SSN 651).

Atop the globe, the icy surface of the Arctic Ocean has remained relatively peaceful. But its depths have boiled with intrigue, no more so than in the cold war.

Although the superpowers planned to turn those depths into an inferno of exploding torpedoes and rising missiles, the brotherhood of submariners – the silent service, both Russian and American – has worked hard over the decades to keep the particulars of those plans hush-hush.

Now, a few secrets are spilling through a crack in the wall of silence, revealing some of the science and spying that went into the doomsday preparations.

A new book, “Unknown Waters,” recounts the 1970 voyage of a submarine, the Queenfish, on a pioneering dive beneath the ice pack to map the Siberian continental shelf. The United States did so as part of a clandestine effort to prepare for Arctic submarine operations and to win any military showdown with the Soviet Union.
In great secrecy, moving as quietly as possible below treacherous ice, the Queenfish, under the command of Captain Alfred S. McLaren, mapped thousands of miles of previously uncharted seabed in search of safe submarine routes. It often had to maneuver between shallow bottoms and ice keels extending down from the surface more than 100 feet, threatening the sub and the crew of 117 men with ruin.
Another danger was that the sub might simply be frozen in place with no way out and no way to call for help as food and other supplies dwindled.

The Queenfish at one point became stuck in a dead end. The rescue took an hour and tense backtracking out of what had threatened to become an icy tomb.

“I still dream about it every other week,” Dr. McLaren, 75, the book’s author, recalled in an interview. “It was hairy.” The University of Alabama Press is publishing his recollections of the secret voyage.

Sylvia A. Earle, an oceanographer and the former chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said such feats in perilous waters made Dr. McLaren a genuine hero. “The sub could have disappeared, and nobody would have known anything about it,” she said. “But they came through. That’s exploration at its most exquisite.”

After Dr. McLaren’s mission, the Arctic became a theater of military operations in which the Soviets tried to hide their missile-carrying subs under the fringes of the ice pack while American attack subs tried relentlessly to track them. The goal was to destroy the Soviet subs if the cold war turned hot, doing so quickly enough to keep them from launching their missiles and nuclear warheads at the United States.
Norman Polmar, an author and analyst on Navy operations, called the polar environment “very very difficult” for subs. He said ice dangling from the surface in endless shapes and sizes made the sub’s main eyes — sonar beams that bounce sound off the bottom and surrounding objects – work poorly.

Mr. Polmar added that the submarine community nonetheless considered the Arctic “a big deal,” because it had a near monopoly on operations there.

Dr. McLaren commanded one of the Navy’s most advanced warships, a jet-black monster the length of a football field.
It was the first of a large class of submarines specially designed for year-round operations in polar regions. As such, it boasted an array of special acoustic gear meant to help it visualize the complex world beneath the pack ice.

For instance, the sub had a special sensor to detect icebergs jutting downward with threatening spikes. From bow to stern, it had a total of seven acoustic sensors pointing upward to help the crew judge the thickness of ice overhead.

As Dr. McLaren recounts in “Unknown Waters,” the Queenfish, in preparation for its Arctic voyage, was stripped of all identifying marks and picked up a full load of torpedoes.

It arrived at the North Pole on Aug. 5, 1970, rising through open water. On the ice, an impromptu Santa Claus in a red suit frolicked with crew members.

The submarine then sailed for the Siberian continental shelf, where it began its mission of secret reconnaissance.

Moscow claimed seas extending 230 miles from its shores, including most of the shelf, whose waters averaged a few hundred feet deep. But Washington recognized just a 12-mile territorial limit, and Dr. McLaren was instructed to play by those rules.
As the book recounts, the sub repeatedly ventured within periscope range of Soviet land. In the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, its crew examined the October Revolution and Bolshevik Islands.

The Queenfish also spotted a convoy. “I was able to see and identify all six ships as Soviet,” Dr. McLaren writes. “They consisted of an icebreaker leading a tanker and four cargo ships on an easterly course that slowly weaved back and forth through the chaotic ice pack.”
The main mission was to map the seabed and collect oceanographic data in anticipation of the Arctic’s becoming a major theater of military operations. The sub did so by finding and following depth contours, for instance, by locating the areas of the Arctic Basin where the seabed was 600 feet below the surface. A result was a navigation chart that bore the kind of squiggly lines found on topographic maps.

The goal of mapping the bottom contour also sent the Queenfish into the dead end. The crew was watching a favorite Western movie, “Shane,” when a messenger touched Dr. McLaren on the shoulder and whispered that the sub had ground to a standstill.
“Heart in my mouth, I ran up to the after-port side of the control room,” he writes. “Saturating the iceberg detector scope was bright sea-ice-return in all directions.”

Dr. McLaren ordered all crew movement to cease as he and other watch standers worked the propeller, rudder and stern planes to move the Queenfish slowly backward. Finally, he writes, the boat entered deeper water, and the crew “gave out a huge collective sigh of relief.”

The two-month voyage ended in Nome, Alaska, where the sub and crew encountered a chilly reception. The mayor and other people on the town dock had mistaken the sinister-looking sub without markings as Soviet.

In 1972, Dr. McLaren won the Distinguished Service Medal, the military’s highest peacetime award.
Historians say cold war maneuvering in the Arctic picked up after his mission, with the two sides deploying more submarines beneath the ice. The United States built a total of 36 sister subs to the Queenfish, known as the Sturgeon class.

Little is known publicly of the polar exploits. But every so often the icy world erupted in a foretaste of war. In 1984, an American satellite observed a Soviet sub breaking through the ice of the Siberian sea to test fire missiles.
Military and legal experts said Dr. McLaren’s book, while providing a glimpse into a hidden world of cold war planning, might also make political waves today.

That is because of the sub’s repeated penetrations of what Moscow considered its territorial waters, defying boundaries that Washington refused to recognize. The disclosure of that boldness could bolster the case in international forums for American navigational rights, legal experts said in interviews.

Bernard H. Oxman, a specialist in maritime law at the University of Miami School of Law, called the 1970 voyage “an indication of state practice and a refusal to acquiesce in Russian claims over navigation.” Although Moscow has in recent years relaxed such claims, he added, the legal precedent remains.

So too, Dr. McLaren sees his spy mission as a milestone for freedom of navigation, whether in Russian waters or elsewhere in the contested wilds atop the globe.

Today the issue is hot, because melting polar ice is opening up new shipping lanes and exposing potentially vast deposits of natural resources, including oil. A modern gold rush is getting under way.

“It’s important to maintain freedom of the seas,” Dr. McLaren said in an interview. “That’s something our country has fought for literally from its inception.”

Global warming and the shrinking polar ice pack are creating new opportunities and responsibilities, he said, adding, “We’ve got to stand our ground.”

Team Submarine does not vouch for the accuracy of the above articles. They are compiled from on line, open source publications and distributed to provide situational awareness regarding what is being said about the submarine force and related topics. Further reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions.

Diesel-Electric Submarines, The U.S. Navy’s Latest Annoyance

By Grace Jean, National Defense Magazine, April 08

The Navy in recent months has had to contend with several provoking episodes at sea – Iranian small boats speeding at its cruisers, destroyers and frigates; Russian bombers flying over its carriers; and Chinese subs shadowing its warships.

Hard-to-detect submarines – such as quiet, diesel-electric boats – are particularly vexing, Navy officials say. They contend that an undersea arms race already has begun in the western Pacific.

Nations there in recent years have begun to acquire stealthy diesel-electric submarines. Some of those nations, say Navy officials, could one day threaten U.S. access to strategic coastal areas of the world or interrupt the flow of commerce around the globe.

Although the Navy has the world’s most technologically advanced fleet – including state-of-the-art nuclear attack submarines – officials acknowledge that these comparatively low-tech diesel-electric boats could give an enemy an asymmetric advantage.

“The beauty about a diesel submarine is that it has the potential to be far quieter than a nuclear submarine,” says Guy Stitt, president of AMI International, a Bremerton, Wash.-based company specializing in naval market analysis. Diesel boats are propelled by batteries when submerged and move through the water by diesel engines when on the surface.

Once they have powered up their batteries, the submarines can sail to the bottom of coastal waters and remain undetected for days. Though they can’t travel long distances or sail very quickly, advancements in technologies, such as air-independent propulsion and fuel cells, have allowed diesel submarines to extend their operational ranges underwater.

But perhaps their best selling point is their relatively inexpensive price tags. The Russians have sold diesel submarines for as little as $200 million and the French have exported their Scorpene submarines for $300 million.

“It is within the scope of many, many countries to be able to afford them. They don’t need a lot of them. They don’t need to sail them very far, and they don’t have to be particularly proficient with them,” says Vice Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of the Navy’s Third Fleet, which prepares strike groups to deploy to the Pacific and the Middle East.

More than 39 nations possess diesel submarines. One of the latest tallies indicates a total of 377 ships in the world, says Richard Dorn, an analyst at AMI International. And there could be an uptick in the next few years.

With China continuing to increase the size of its navy, a number of neighboring nations also have begun to develop their undersea capabilities.

“There’s a push on in Asia that really seems to be driven by China,” says Stitt. Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia all have closed deals on diesel submarines, and now Thailand is following suit.

Driving the market in part is Russia, which during the past 18 months has been aggressively selling ships, including its Kilo-class diesels.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of sales that they’re booking for Kilos, primarily motivated by the need for funds to strengthen their second tier shipbuilding groups,” says Stitt.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has lost many of its secondary shipyard suppliers – the engine, pump and valve manufacturers, piping companies and the like. But Russia is attempting to revitalize those small companies.

“They’re going out and making all these deals to sell submarines and ships and using those funds to reinvigorate the industry, which in turn will also benefit them in building up the Russian fleet,” says Stitt.

Russia has exported 30 Kilos around the globe and 26 are still in active service. It will deliver two more submarines to Algeria by 2010, five to Venezuela by 2020, and six to Indonesia by 2018. China received its 12th and final Kilo last year.

The number of Kilos that are being sold is particularly concerning because many of the submarines are equipped with Klub anti-ship cruise missiles.

Some nations have a desire for regional hegemony and want to strengthen their influence in an area. That’s most definitely the reason for President Hugo Chavez buying subs for Venezuela, says Stitt.

But for other nations, the reasons are less clear.

“There’s a wide array of military assets you can buy, so why would you buy a diesel-electric submarine? As far as I know, it’s not to protect your own port,” says Locklear in an interview at Third Fleet headquarters perched atop Point Loma in San Diego.

That China’s submarines are surfacing boldly near U.S. warships is a telltale sign of newer advanced technologies, such as acoustic tiles and cavitation-reducing propellers, that are being employed on the submarines, says Stitt.

China’s new Song-class diesel submarines have tracked U.S. Navy ships operating in the seas near Japan and Taiwan. Last November, after China denied the USS Kitty Hawk’s port call in Hong Kong at the last minute, a Chinese submarine shadowed the carrier as it entered the Taiwan Straits on its return voyage to Yokosuka, Japan. In the late fall of 2006, a Song-class submarine surfaced within torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk off the coast of Okinawa, Japan.

Despite the tensions, those episodes and the topic of submarines did not come up directly in conversations with Chinese officials in January, when the commander of Pacific Command, Adm. Timothy Keating, visited the nation.

“We watch them carefully. It’s an area of warfare at which they’re stretching a little bit,” he told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C. “Their numbers of submarines are increasing. The capabilities resident in those submarines are not unimpressive. They’re pretty good – we’re better.”

China’s fleet of nuclear and diesel submarines includes 10 Song class, 12 Kilo class, one Yuan class and 32 Romeo class.

“We know that they are continually expanding their reach in what they view as their own areas of interest, and that their submarine force is vital to expanding that reach,” says Locklear.

The proliferation of diesel submarines in the Pacific is one of the major factors behind the Navy’s decision to move six submarines from the Atlantic Fleet to the Pacific Fleet, says Rear Adm. Joseph Walsh, commander of the Pacific Submarine Force. Because more than 140 diesel subs are within reach of critical “choke points” in the area, anti-submarine warfare is Pacific Fleet’s top war-fighting priority, he adds.

The Navy saw its anti-submarine warfare skills diminish after the end of the Cold War. In those days, enemy Soviet nuclear submarines were noisy, and could be detected with passive sonar.

But modern-day diesel submarines are not as easily heard, particularly in regions of the seas where biological life and merchant shipping can camouflage their acoustic signatures. It is there, in the noisy waters of the littorals, where detecting submarines can be a cat-and-mouse game, Navy officials say.

Rear Adm. John Waickwicz, who was the head of the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command until he retired in January, says the Navy is looking at anti-submarine warfare in new ways.

“When you talk about countries that have 30, 40, or 50 submarines, you can’t wait until they’re around you, because they’re going to overwhelm you,” he says.

Potential enemies have figured that to defeat the U.S. Navy, they must “go out and buy submarines, and buy mines,” he says.

The mine and anti-submarine warfare command is calling for the deployment of a network of sonobuoys over a wide expanse of ocean to detect enemy submarines. But the project has been marred by technological and funding problems. The most significant hitch is that the data collected by the sensors takes too long to analyze, says Waickwicz. “You need to do it in real time to take action on it.”

False alarm rates on many of the fleet’s current detection technologies are too high, Waickwicz adds. That forces commanders to waste resources on non-existent threats.

Officials insist that the Navy’s anti-submarine warfare capabilities are the best in the business, but they acknowledge that it will take some time to hone the skills to combat stealthy diesel submarines. Waickwicz says that training has improved in recent years, but some individual units are not adequately prepared for at-sea operations.

For example, some units have demonstrated sonar operator proficiency on simulations that are not sophisticated enough to replicate the real environment, which puts the sailors at a disadvantage when they conduct operations at sea, says Rear Adm. Frank Drennan, the new commander of the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command.

“The requirements are still the same – they just have to work on them in a challenging environment so that operators are truly proficient when they go to sea,” he says.

Hunting for quiet diesel submarines in the shallow waters of the littorals is akin to trying to identify the sound of a single car engine in the din of a major city, he says.

There are variations in the underwater topography, with sand bars, coral reefs and channels. Different depths of water and changing salinity and temperatures alter how sounds propagate. Marine life and merchant shipping also complicate the search by generating ambient noise.

The only technology that the Navy considers suitable for detecting and tracking diesel submarines is active sonar. It disperses signals out into the water where they bounce off of objects. Those echoes are captured by hydrophones and interpreted by sonar technicians.

Contrary to popular belief, sonar is not like radar, which gives complete visibility of “hits” in the air. What sonar technicians see is a screen that is filled with vertical lines representing echoes from objects in the water. Discerning which line is a submarine and which one is a coral reef is a difficult and complex task, sailors say.

The Navy spent 40 years building a training range on the coast of Southern California – one of the most extensive in the world, officials say. Underwater sensors track ships’ locations and record operations during exercises.

Because the water and ocean bottom conditions are representative of many areas around the world, the range is an ideal location for training strike groups in anti-submarine warfare, says Locklear.

But the Navy’s training there has been curtailed by ongoing litigation over the harmful effects of active sonar on marine mammals.

Under a federal judge’s ruling, ships were forbidden from using active sonar within 12 nautical miles of shore and had to steer clear of waters between the Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands during a joint training exercise in January for the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. Sightings of marine mammals at certain distances also prompted ships to take protective measures, such as powering down sonar or shutting the sensors off completely.

“We’re not able to employ the sonar, given those restrictions, in a realistic manner, and it just makes it real tough to assess whether the fleet is proficient at using the technology,” says Capt. Pete Tomczak, deputy director for training at Third Fleet.

The use of sonar by the Navy has been linked to mass marine mammal strandings on beaches in the Bahamas and the Canary Islands. Pending necropsy results, the death of a northern right whale dolphin that washed up Jan. 29 on the Navy’s San Nicolas Island could be connected to sonar use.

Locklear says the Navy tries to balance its responsibility to protect the environment with its job to prepare sailors for war. He expresses concern that the judge’s ruling, if extrapolated beyond Southern California, could hamper Navy training around the world.

“If this becomes precedence setting, I think it will be very difficult for the United States Navy,” he says. “If there was a new technology on the horizon that made this irrelevant, we would be all over it. We just haven’t found it yet.”

With prospects of at-sea training diminishing, not only because of the litigation, but also as a result of rising fuel costs and other budget constraints, the Navy is searching for alternative ways to prepare its sailors for anti-submarine warfare.

One option is to rely on simulators, says Waickwicz. But he points out that current simulations in the Navy do not replicate sonar accurately.

“It’s like playing ‘Pong’ in today’s game world,” he says. While the submarine forces have higher fidelity trainers, much of the rest of the fleet – especially surface ships – have sub-par simulations.

“Computer simulations can only go so far. There is still no substitute for at-sea practice against a real submarine,” says Pacific Fleet’s Walsh.

Because the U.S. Navy no longer operates diesel-electric submarines, it invites allied countries that own these boats to participate in exercises at Navy ranges on the east and west coasts.

The Swedish Navy’s HMS Gotland collaborated most recently with various Navy commands in San Diego.

“It was very advantageous to have a diesel submarine crew for two years, to see how they thought, how they approached the issues to go against the ships,” says Waickwicz. “It really opened our eyes to diesel submarines and how active sonar is what you have to have in the strike group.”

The experience led to recent changes in the Navy’s anti-submarine warfare doctrine and tactics.

2008 Soup Down Sked

11:45 Start Time

1-4	Sunset Grill, 4926 Point Fosdick Dr NW, Gig Harbor
11	Keeper's Cove Restaurant,7989 Salish Lane NE, Kingston
18	Pats Restaurant, East Bremerton
25	Aztecca, Silverdale
2-1	Harbor Rock Cafe, 6565 Kimball Dr , Gig Harbor
8	Boat Shed, Bremerton, under the Manette Bridge
15	Azteca, 19045 Highway 305, Poulsbo
22	Tony's, 4908 Kitsap Way, Bremerton
29	Clear Water Casino, Suquamish
3-7	Silver City Brewery, 2799 NW Myhre Rd, Silverdale
14	JJ's Fish House, 18881 Front St NE, Poulsbo