By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior
(Washington DC) The US Navy continues to operate with an attack submarine deficit, despite vigorous service and industry efforts to accelerate production of new Virginia-class attack submarines. The issue is critical for several key reasons, as the US Navy repeatedly emphasizes its need to sustain undersea superiority.
With the progressive retirement of the Los Angeles-class submarines, and the pace at which new Virginia-class boats are arriving, there has for years been what the US Navy refers to as a submarine “deficit.” This is critical for undersea technological superiority as well as pure “mass,” particularly as it pertains to the Pacific theater and a potential Chinese threat. Any potential Chinese attack on Taiwan would not only generate a need for submarines but also create the necessity to “mass” tactically significant numbers of submarines. A possible PLA amphibious attack on Taiwan would likely require a large US Navy undersea warfare capability
Los Angeles Boats
The US Navy and its industry partners have built as many as 62 Los Angeles-class submarines, yet only 20 remain as much of the fleet continues to reach the end of its service life. While they are now being replaced by a new-generation of high-tech Virginia-class boats, the Los Angeles class submarines formed the backbone of the US Navy’s undersea fleet for decades. They are still critical to maintaining the fleet. .
The submarines are heavily armed for undersea warfare and surface attack, as they are built with 25 torpedo-tube-launched weapons as well as Mark 60 CAPTOR mines. Added to this, the most recent two variants of the submarine are armed with 12 vertical launch tubes for Tomahawk III missiles. The latest variant of the class, the 688i, can launch the Mk67 Submarine Launched Mobile Mines, according to an interesting essay by the US Naval Institute.
Los Angeles upgrades
The Los Angeles boats have been in service for nearly four decades, so it’s not surprising they would have been massively upgraded over the course of many years. Interestingly, the latest variants of the ships command and control system integrated an advanced suite of computing, weapons interface technologies and digital fire control. The latest variant of the combat system is referred to as the Mark 1 Combat Control System/All Digital Attack Center.
This system builds upon an earlier variant, called the Mk 117 FCS which was the first “all digital” fire-control system replacing legacy analog technology. The newest Mark 1 MCC, put in place in recent decades, is networked with the submarine’s sonar systems and Mk 48 torpedo and Towed Array Motion Analysis operability. This seems to indicate that signals detected from sonar could more quickly be integrated with weapons systems and fire control to enable a faster response in the event of enemy attack.
The Mk 1 MCC operates with an internal tracking, according to an essay from the Federal of American Scientists.
“The CSS internal tracker model provides processing for both towed array and spherical array trackers. Trackers are signal followers which generate bearing, arrival angle and frequency reports based on information received by an acoustic sensor. The CSS tracker model augments the sonar detection processing with corrections to detected SNRs due to the beam pattern shapes and effects. A tracker follows the strongest signal being received by an acoustic sensor. In addition to the effects caused by the array beam pattern, filters are applied to incoming signals to narrow the focus of a tracker,” the FAS paper explains.
This filtering of incoming sensor or acoustic data likely massively improved targeting efficiency and identification, shortening the sensor-to-shooter loop so critical to prevailing in any undersea warfare engagement. This kind of discernment, if even in a conceptual sense, is likely to have influenced the development of modern computing and advanced algorithms capable of quickly organizing and streamlining incoming sensor data for the purpose of truncating the sensor-to-shooter curve.
Los Angeles Influence Virginia?
Therefore, the upgrades to the Los Angeles class seem quite significant in terms of internal networking and sensor data analysis, so it would stand to reason that the 688i variants of the Los Angeles likely informed the development of the US Navy’s Virginia-class boats. There appear to be several key areas where this would seem the most plausible, as the Virginia-class Block III submarines are not only built with advanced, high-speed computer processing but also driven by an automated “fly-by-wire” joystick controlled navigational system. With this “fly-by-wire” technology, a human operator can perform command and control functions while a computerized navigational system automates and sustains key functions such as speed and depth.
The Virginia Block III submarines also operate with a new generation of networking, such as a fiber-optic cable data transport system which enables commanders to see “periscope” like views from anywhere in the boat.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
