Word: fleetly
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...class of warship is more than a maritime mirage: this week President Clinton will unveil a defense budget for next year that includes a cool $1 billion for the vessels, as well as a recommendation to speed up their production. The fleet is ultimately expected to cost $63.7 billion and serve as the leading edge of a 50-attack-sub armada that the Navy wants for the 21st century. (A separate class of 18 strategic submarines, which serve as platforms for intercontinental ballistic missiles, will be downsized to 14.) But there is a growing sense that these new subs, designed...
...Navy cites the prowess and power of the Russian submarine fleet as its key challenge. Moscow, despite its economic woes, is building three new classes of submarines that will challenge the U.S.'s best, say Navy intelligence reports. Other accounts from Russia, though, paint a far bleaker picture. Senator Richard Lugar recently visited Sevmash, Russia's premier submarine yard, and found workers destroying--not building--submarines. "There isn't the money to modernize," says the Indiana Republican, an expert on the Russian military. "There isn't the money for an armed force...
Boosters insist that much of the U.S. sub fleet's new post-cold war mission isn't about blowing things up. It is about protecting American power around the world without firing a shot, by visiting foreign ports along with other warships, implicitly flexing martial muscle. "The United States," says the Navy's official sub statement, "maintains a capabilities-based, multimission submarine force that is sized to satisfy peacetime requirements and is not sized to counter any country's threat...
...murky mission for today's sub fleet has affected morale on board the nation's fleet of 65 attack subs, which is slated to be reduced to 50 in 2003. Young officers who dreamed of chasing Soviet subs around the globe can't figure out what they are supposed to do. "A concise submarine-force mission statement would help junior officers understand why they are at sea," a Navy lieutenant writes in Proceedings. "Without a mission statement, there is no sense of direction for the submarine force." And the Navy is having difficulty manning (no women serve aboard U.S. submarines...
Given the dearth of threats, some experts see no need for a 50-sub fleet. Ivan Eland of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank, argues that a force of 25 is more than adequate. If the Navy kept its current submarines steaming for their planned 30-year lives and bought no new ones, the U.S. sub fleet would still not fall to 25 until 2017. That's not how they see things at the Pentagon, however. Its Defense Science Board recently urged the Navy to begin planning the next-next-generation attack submarine--one that will be better...