Word: seawolfs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Gejdenson warned that if the subs are cut from the budget--which would mean that for the first time since 1953 the United States was not ordering attack submarines--it could trigger layoffs and slow production of the new SSN-21 Seawolf submarines...
...Stealth is just one of an array of new and expensive weapons -- along with the Navy's $3 billion Seawolf submarine and the Army's $60 billion Forward Area Air Defense System -- that the Pentagon plans to purchase despite the urgent need for the incoming Bush Administration to bring down the $145 billion federal budget deficit. Defense specialist William Kaufmann of Harvard estimates that the military programs already in the acquisition pipeline could cost more than $900 billion -- three times the entire amount the Pentagon will spend this fiscal year. "The B-2 embodies the defense conundrum," says Gordon Adams...
...discomfort of conservative hard-liners, budget compromise appears inevitable. The Pentagon will need $475 billion in added spending over the next five years merely to finish projects started under Reagan, and that doesn't include various expensive weapons -- the Stealth bomber, Seawolf submarine, D5 Trident missile -- soon to be out of development and ready for production. Bailing out faltering savings and loan companies and updating antiquated nuclear-production plans may require $70 billion more in new funding. Bush himself, by James Baker's count, has proposed $40 billion in additional spending for new domestic initiatives, including more than $6 billion...
...Seawolf's high-tensile steel hull will withstand pressures of 100,000 lbs. per sq. in., permitting the sub to dive to depths between layers of water at different temperatures where it can hide from enemy sonar. When it comes time to surface, not even the polar ice cap will be able to keep the Seawolf down. The low, streamlined sail -- conning tower to landlubbers -- will be hardened to absorb the shock of breaking through the ice. Retractable bow planes will permit the Seawolf to navigate under the Arctic, the huge (5.4 million sq. mi.) new battleground of underwater...
...this hoped-for capability, many top defense experts wonder if the Seawolf truly is the right sub at the right cost at the right time. In the past, the Navy has relied on vastly superior technology to nullify the Soviets' 3-to-1 numerical advantage in submarines. But rather suddenly, the U.S. lead in submarine technology has seriously eroded. Says Admiral Carlisle Trost, Chief of Naval Operations: "The Soviets are where we thought they'd be in the mid-1990s...