THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080487
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
A panel of independent military analysts assailed the Navy's submarine development plans Thursday, asserting that the next generation of attack subs won't take full advantage of advances in technology.
As a result, the analysts warned a congressional subcommittee, the subs may be unable to protect aircraft carriers and other U.S. ships against rapidly improving Russian craft..
The charges, disputed by the Navy, signaled continuing conflict among Congressional Republicans over the future of the $50-billion new attack submarine program.
House and Senate negotiators began meeting privately later in the day to resolve those differences; the outcome could determine the future of thousands of jobs at Newport News Shipbuilding and a competing shipyard in Connecticut.
A Senate plan crafted principally by Virginia Republican John W. Warner would keep both yards in the sub business until at least early in the next decade. After that, the yards would compete for work in what could become a winner-take-all contest.
But the House wants to terminate the Navy's current sub class, the Seawolf, after just two boats, a strategy critics say would endanger Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., the Seawolf's builder.
The House would pour more than $1.5 billion in savings from the Seawolf into research on potential technological advances in successor subs. The analysts testifying Thursday endorsed that approach, which would lead to the construction of at least two experimental subs to test a variety of new technologies.
The Newport News shipyard christened its last submarine earlier this year. While the House plan could bring additional work, its lack of guarantees was understood to leave executives of the Virginia yard unsettled as well.
After months of squabbling early in the year, both yards backed the Senate plan earlier this summer. And when House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed completion of a third Seawolf, a key part of the Senate plan, its approval seemed almost certain.
Sources said Gingrich reaffirmed his support for Seawolf on Wednesday during a private meeting with senior Navy leaders. But Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who convened Thursday's hearing and is the House proposal's chief advocate, appears prepared to continue fighting for it.
The Senate plan, Hunter asserted Thursday, may ``produce a platform which may not be a true next-generation submarine capable of preserving - or regaining - U.S. undersea superiority.''
Encouraged by Hunter, the analysts depicted the Navy's bureaucracy as unwilling or unable to invest in new technologies that could dramatically improve the capabilities of U.S. subs.
Indeed, charged Anthony R. Battista, a former senior advisor to the House National Security Committee, the Navy seems more concerned with securing work for the yards.
``Through years of doing business the same old way, the submarine industry has not capitalized on advances in commercial technology,'' Battista asserted. ``Consequently, we are paying too damn much for today's submarines.''
Another analyst, Ronald O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service, said that for about $8 billion in additional spending, the Navy could accelerate the development of new sub technologies and incorporate them into its design for the new attack submarine.
But Navy leaders suggested that's $8 billion they don't have.
Rear Adm. Robert E. Frick, executive officer for the Navy's program, said the service's proposed design can easily be modified to incorporate improvements in acoustics - a sub's ability to hear potential adversaries - and quieting - the suppression of noise the sub makes itself - as they become available.
Frick asserted that ``there are now no new technologies on the horizon that warrant delay in the new attack submarine program.'' And he discounted the analysts' worries about Russian sub improvements, suggesting that quieting technologies are approaching ``the limits of the laws of physics.'' by CNB