The Virginia-class attack submarine USS New Mexico (SSN 779) transits the Thames River to her new homeport at Naval Submarine Base New London. New Mexico joins Submarine Squadron (SUBRON) 4. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Patrick Evans/Released)
America’s Undersea Advantage is Eroding -- James R. Holmes, The Diplomat
With the U.S. Navy’s diminishing submarines and outdated armaments, the undersea balance in Asia is changing.
The Naval Submarine League held its annual confab last month outside Washington. Silent-service leaders warned – rightly – that senior commanders’ demand for subs far outstrips the supply. And the mismatch is getting worse. The sub force’s plight recalls the old Differential Equations problem in which the bathtub drain is open and the spigot’s open as well … but not wide enough to keep the water level steady. The water slowly empties out. The question is, how fast?
Numbers of attack submarines are the most immediate problem. (Replacing the fleet of ballistic-missile subs threatens to suck the entire U.S. Navy shipbuilding budget dry in the coming decades, but that’s a story for another day.) The navy, that is, is constructing two Virginia-class attack boats per year, but it’s retiring Cold War-vintage Los Angeles-class SSNs even faster. The upshot: a slow drain on the SSN inventory.
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My Comment: America's submarine fleet is like the rest of the US Navy .... with budget cuts one must do more with less.
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