Home : Heath Elliot Johnmeyer, United States Navy :

Unspoken And Unheralded

It is the World War II images of subs shooting torpedoes, of men trapped sweating within cramped steel cylinders as Japanese sonar pings rang through their hulls and depth charges fell around them, that remain most vivid. But there was something else going on in those days as well, the beginning of a tentative courtship between submariners and spies. A few times, subs put up simple antennas to intercept Japanese radio messages and about a dozen submarines were sent to conduct periscope beach-reconnaissance to prepare for troop landings. These experiments piqued the interest of intelligence officials and showed that submarines could have a new mission once the cold war began. Diesel subs were the first to give it a try. Then came the creation of submarines with nearly endless power and unlimited stealth-boats powered by nuclear reactors that could remain submerged for months at a time. With these, U.S. submariners would grasp the definitive edge in the cold war under the seas.

The details of all of this have been closely held by top admirals and captains within, the Navy, who typically disclosed these operations only to the president, his top military and intelligence advisers, and a few congressmen who only rarely pressed for details. But ultimately, control of any mission rested in the hands of young submarine captains, who were usually about thirty-five years old and under orders to maintain complete radio silence. These men were encouraged to take risks, and some slipped right into Soviet harbors or into the middle of Soviet naval exercises to bring home the best information. Still, their prime directive remained: avoid detection and keep the Soviets unaware of just how closely they were being watched. That necessity, more than anything, was also what impelled the staunch secrecy surrounding these missions. So to other Americans, they were simply the anonymous men of the Silent Service.

Still, every now and then, even a few insiders fretted. Were these missions too provocative, too dangerous? Could one failed mission or one terrible accident coax the two superpowers to the brink? Could these spy missions inadvertently spark the very war they were designed to prevent? As long as these submarine operations remained secret, the Navy was rarely faced with these questions.

The new Seawolf class fast attack subs (also known as SSNs), are much quieter, faster and carry twice the weapons of their predecessors, the Los Angeles–class SSNs. The three Seawolf–class subs are U.S.S. Seawolf, U.S.S. Connecticut, and U.S.S. Jimmy Carter.

When The Cold War Started To Wane ...

... the Navy kept watching the Russians, albeit at a greatly reduced pace and the reconnaissance was done more cautiously and judiciously. The submarine force was able to keep alive the Seawolf $2.5 billion attack sub program and build another new class of attack submarines, one smaller and cheaper than the Seawolf. Quieter and much more versatile than the Los Angeles subs, this new class, known first as "the New Attack Submarine," or NSSN, and now the Virginia class is designed for the array of new missions in shallow, regional waters. The Navy will need new subs after the turn of the century to replace some of the aging Los Angeles vessels. Although there's been a dramatic downsizing of the force, from a high of ninety-eight in the late 1980s, the number of attack subs fell to the low sixties in 1999 and will dwindle to fifty early in the next century and even further as the Los Angeles subs are retired. The fleet of nuclear missile subs, which are still circling quietly in the oceans, will dwindle to ten to fourteen boats from a onetime high of forty-one.

The Navy will be capable of operating not only near Third World countries but also up against Russian shores. The Seawolf is said to be as much as thirty times quieter than the early Los Angeles-class subs that came out in the 1970s, and ten times quieter than even the newest LA-class subs. Both Seawolf and the Virginia Class will be especially useful for the new missions closer in to shores and for assisting in conflicts on land. They will carry Tomahawk missiles, be equipped with sonar designed to be especially useful in the shallows, and they will be configured to carry detachments of Navy SEALS and other special forces. The Navy also has been pouring money into creating underwater drones - and even small pilotless aircraft - that could be controlled by these submarines and swim out ahead to look for mines or fly out to do surveillance. The subs in use now are also being upgraded with new micro processing technologies to enable them to better communicate a variety of intelligence to commanders of task force battle groups, including e-mail and photographs - even video - taken through their periscopes. This same technology is also likely to help subs with some .of the other new missions the Navy has taken on since the end of the cold war Subs have occasionally tipped the Coast Guard to suspicious trawlers in the Caribbean that have turned out to be carrying shipments of illegal drugs. And subs have been alerting surface ships to freighters suspected of trying to make illicit shipments of arms and other cargo in violation of U.S. embargoes. In the war over Kosovo in early 1999, when the NATO allies needed to make precision strikes against sensitive Serbian targets, U.S. and British attack subs repeatedly fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Adriatic Sea. Subs also kept an eye out for Russian ships streaming into the region.

Still the U.S. sub force remains most concerned with countering the threat from other submarines, including new models of both diesel and nuclear boats. Russia has been supplying advanced Kilo subs to Iran and China. Even some Western nations, such as Germany, have been exporting advanced diesel subs to Third World countries. In addition, the Russians continue to view the submarine as the most important vessel in their Navy, and they have kept improving the Akulas, their quietest and most sophisticated nuclear attack subs. (There are still significant flaws in Russian technology. According to Naval Intelligence officials, the latest Akulas are very quiet below 10 knots, but they develop audible knocks at speeds above that and become easy to detect.) The Russians also have started to build an even more advanced replacement, known as the Severodvinsk class, which some U.S. officials fear could be quieter than the improved Los Angeles subs. When and if a proposed START II treaty is finally ratified by the Russian Duma, the bulk of Russian nuclear might will shift to the sea. As long as Russia still has the world's second most powerful sub force - as long as "The Bear Still Swims," as Navy briefers like to say - it needs to be watched, though now it has little money to send its subs to sea.

So limited surveillance operations off of Russia continue, with a few lonely sentinels lurking off Vladivostok and Murmansk, at least at times when the Navy has reason to believe the Russians might be engaging in an exercise or testing new equipment. The special projects spy program has continued, although its focus has shifted away from Russia.

The targets are easy to guess at and no doubt reflect the Navy's broader intelligence concerns. Iran took possession of its third Kilo in 1997. The cover of one recent issue of Worldwide Submarine Challenges, a Naval Intelligence annual, pictures a Chinese submarine and crew. Inside is a running litany of nations that present a potential threat, including two Asian nations, China and North Korea. China not only used one of its Kilos in highly threatening exercises off Taiwan but also fired land missiles as warning shots. The Chinese are also using Russian technology to develop their own fleet of modern nuclear missile subs, and theyo have been testing land-based ballistic missiles with ranges long enough to reach U.S. shores. Chinese test missiles fired into the oceans would be invaluable to the United States if they were retrieved. Finally, concerns about North Korea have escalated greatly. The country repeatedly has used diesel subs to try to infiltrate commandos into South Korea.

The program that began with the first chill of the cold war continues.

The stress caused by long months at sea and the staunch secrecy that submariners were sworn to maintain tore many married couples apart. No final analysis of the submarine war can ignore ...

Close quarters and long periods at sea build camaraderie like no other. Submariners also tend to be very tolerant of challenges and surprises, perhaps an aftereffect of the ribbing often found aboard.

The Human Costs

These men traded months, years, and more to become what was for decades the country's best defense against nuclear attack from the sea. Submariners tracked Soviet missile submarines as well as anyone could, development by development and mile by mile. Only another sub could follow a Soviet boomer hear just what clanked, see just how its crew operated, and learn just where it would be going should the order ever come to fire. This was all intelligence that grew over time, a few facts from each mission, some of it redundant, much of it cumulative. It was intelligence that had to be collected all over again each time the Soviets put out a new class of subs, each time they came up with a new tactic.

At their best, submarines did something more: they enabled the United States to get a glimpse inside the minds of Soviet military leaders. A U.S. captain in the midst of a trail could see himself in the decisions of a Soviet commander just as he could see how the other man was so very different.

The special fleet of submarines equipped to tap cables made it possible to listen as Soviet naval headquarters detailed day-to-day frustrations, critiqued missions, and reacted to fears of an American nuclear strike. At a point in time when both superpowers could start nuclear war with a push of a button, this was a rare and crucial look at who the adversary really was.

The men who serviced those cables at the bottom of the Barents and Okhotsk knew they faced immense risk. The self-destruct charges they carried onboard were a grim reminder.

Subs and men were lost to technological failures and in a rush to the sea. But once nuclear missiles were put on subs, there had to be a way to track them, to threaten them, to ensure that no one felt safe enough to use them. For the Russians, that meant trying to keep the U.S. from knowing just how many failures their subs were suffering. For the United States, it meant trying to keep the Soviets from knowing just how truly vulnerable their subs were.

The end of the cold war ushered in a different phase of submarine espionage, but it didn't lower the stakes any. With the exceptions of the subs active roles: launching tomahawks against inland targets in regional conflicts, guarding cargo ships, riding shotgun for our carriers, SEAL deployment and hostage rescue; the submariner still remains, as before, unspoken and unheralded.

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage No espionage missions -- from the Cold War through the Clinton administration -- have been kept more secret than those involving American submarines. Only the President and a select few have known of their existence, and they accomplished some of the most astonishing intelligence coups of the century. For five years, with the Navy aggressively trying to block them, New York Times investigative reporter Christopher Drew and veteran journalist Sherry Sontag have chased this exciting, epic story of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and patriotism beneath the sea -- and of missions gone awry and long covered up by the military and the U.S. government. In this book they introduce us to the submariners and scientists who silently spent their careers hunting for enemy subs, undersea cables to tap, weapons lost on the ocean floor, and other subs that had gone down, their doomed crews aboard. They tell of medals awarded in secret and deaths disguised with disinformation. And they offer important new information and perspective to anyone interested in American naval history, the Cold War, or post-Cold War espionage. An important work of history that reads like a novel, Blind Man's Bluff is a tale with all the excitement of a Tom Clancy novel and all the tragedy of Das Boot.

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