Seawolf class

   The boats of the Seawolf class are the most advanced but also the most expensive hunter-killer submarines in the world. The first completely new American submarine design for some 30 years, the USS Seawolf was laid down in 1989 as the lead boat in a class of 12. The cost of the Seawolf class in 1991 was estimated at $33.6 billion (25 per cent of the naval construction budget), making it the most expensive naval building programme every. At that time the US Navy planned an additional 17 boats. Then the peace dividend resulting from the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War caused US politicians to question the need for more ultra-quiet boats, and the class was capped at three units and the replacement for the 51 current Los Angeles class boats became a much cheaper design of the Virginia class.

   The Seawolf class was intended to restore the technological edge which the US Navy had enjoyed over the Soviets from 1945 until the mid-1980s, when espionage and the cynical trading practices of some US allies somewhat eroded it. The new boats were designed to operate at greater depths than existing US submarines and to operate under the polar ice cap. New welding materials have been used to join the hull subsections and the Seawolf class are the first attack submarines to use HY-100 steel rather than the HY-80 used for previous boats. (HY-100 was used in experimental deep-diving submarines during the 1960s). The most important advantage of the Seawolf class design is its exceptional quietness even at high tactical speeds. Whereas most submarines need to keep their speed down to as little as 5 kts to avoid detection by passive sonar arrays, the Seawolf class are credited with being able to cruise at 20 kts and still be impossible to locate.

   The US Navy describes the Seawolf as 10 times as quiet as an improved Los Angeles and 70 times as quiet as the original Los Angeles boat: a Seawolf at 25 kts makes less noise than a Los Angeles tied up alongside the pier! However, during their construction and subsequent trials, several problems were experienced on the Seawolf after acoustic panels kept falling off the boat.

   With eight torpedo tubes in a double-decked torpedo room, the Seawolf class are capable of dealing with multiple targets simultaneously. Now that the originally intended targets are rusting at anchor in Murmansk and Vladivostok, it is the Seawolf's ability to make a stealthy approach to enemy coasts that makes it so valuable. The third ant last unit, the USS Jimmy Carter, which was commissioned in December 2001, incorporates a dry deck shelter, for which its hull was lengthened by 30.5 m (100 ft). The dry deck hangar is an air transportable device than can be fitted piggy-back style to carry swimmer delivery vehicles and combat swimmers. There is a combat swimmer silo too, an internal lock-out chamber that can fit up to eight swimmers and their equipment. The irony of such a submarine being named after the president who bungled the Iran hostage rescue mission is not lost on older US Navy personnel!

   The class is completed by its second unit, the USS Connecticut, and all three of the boats can carry Tomahawk TLAM cruise missiles. The boats also have eight 26-in (660-mm) torpedo tubes. A total complement of 50 torpedoes and missiles can be carried by the boats of the Seawolf class, but an alternative is up to 100 marine mines in place of either the torpedoes or the cruise missiles. It is thought that is the future the vessels may also be fitted for the carriage, deployment and recovery of Uninhabited Underwater Vehicles (UUVs). The state of the art electronic system on the boats features a BSY-2 sonar suite with an active or passive sonar array and a wide-aperture passive flank array; TB-16 and TB-29 surveillance and tactical towed arrays are also fitted. The class features a BPS-16 navigation radar and a Raytheon Mk 2 weapons control system. A countermeasures suite includes the Wly-1 advanced torpedo decoy system.

   The boats have great maneuverability, and additional space was built into the class for improvements in weapons development. Despite their potent weapons load, their ultra-quietness, and their robust electronics fit, the Seawolf class are yet to be deployed in combat.