Navy To Refurbish Old Ballistic Missile Sub

Since 01-07-02

VIRGINIAN PILOT 20 DEC 02

Navy To Refurbish Old Ballistic Missile Sub

By MATTHEW DOLAN, The Virginian-Pilot

NORFOLK --The stealthy submarine once stalked the seas with enough nuclear warheads to wage an all -out war with the Soviet Union. But when the former ballistic missile sub pulled into its new home Thursday at Norfolk Naval Station, the Florida arrived without its nukes. Instead, the stripped -down sub carried the radical promise of a somewhat-conventional mission.

 The Navy will rearm the 560-foot submarine with as many as 154 cruise missiles and carve out enough space to transport dozens of special operations forces. The mammoth sub, commissioned almost 20 years ago, will also have its core reactor refueled, extending its life another 20 to 25 years.

 The Florida will be the first Ohio-class sub to undergo this conversion, starting in August. The refurbishment, which will take almost three years and cost $800 million, will be done at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. When finished in 2007, the Florida's transformation could serve the military's increasing reliance on Special Forces such as the SEALs. It will carry a mini-sub, called an Advanced SEAL Delivery System, and could pop out SEAL teams carrying rubber inflatable boats through its massive missile tubes. It would also enable the Navy to fire

Tomahawks from underwater with little chance of detection -- a capability that officials acknowledge is only new for ballistic missile submarines. Attack subs launched more than one-third of all Tomahawks used in Afghanistan.

 “For a lot less than the cost of a new submarine, you're getting a whole lot of new capabilities,” Cmdr. David M. Duryea, the Florida's captain, said at a briefing Thursday. Until last year, the Florida's 18,000 -ton hull was heading from its home in Bangor, Wash., toward the scrap heap of Cold War history. A review of the nation's nuclear arms determined that the Navy needed only 14 -- rather than 18 -- ballistic missile subs. The Florida, in other words, was no longer needed.

But last year, with the election of President Bush, that decision was essentially overturned. The Navy argued that scrapping four of the subs, which cost $2 billion each to build and outfit, would be a waste. The new administration secured funding from Congress to convert four nuclear -weapon submarines.

 When redesigned, the Florida will be able to carry half the number of Tomahawks shot during all of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Some have criticized the high-cost program as a last-ditch effort to save out-of-date submarines, essentially replicating the firepower already offered by fast-attack submarines. But Capt. William J. Toti, the assistant chief of staff for warfare requirements at Naval Submarine Forces headquarters, argued that it would have been a “really silly idea to throw it away.”

 The U-turn in the Florida's fate happened so quickly that a true test of its abilities won't happen until next month. Navy officials will take the sub to sea to test -fire two Tomahawk cruise missiles. Toti said that demonstration is part of Operation Giant Shadow, a weeklong exercise in the Caribbean in January to find out whether the Florida could also launch unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.

 Those advancements are not included in the current plans for the Florida's conversion and do not have funding, he said. But lingering uncertainties are not a sign that the Navy lacks confidence in the Florida's transformation, its captain said Thursday. In fact, Duryea's baseball cap for his uniform already reads “SSGN,” the Navy's new acronym for a guided-missile sub.