Today's U.S. Navy fleet includes 54 attack submarines (SSNs). In 1999, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff released a study concluding that the Navy would need 68 SSNs by 2015 and 76 by 2025 to carry out critical peacetime missions. In public statements and testimony to the Congress, Navy officials have endorsed those numbers. However, reaching those force goals by building more submarines would require a substantial investment, which would compete with many other demands for defense dollars. Are there alternative ways to operate the currently planned force of 55 SSNs and four SSGNs (converted Trident ballistic missile submarines) that would meet those goals without increasing the number of attack submarines. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study, prepared at the request of the Subcommittee on Seapower of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, examines that question. It looks at the missions and modernization plans of the SSN fleet and analyzes the budgetary implications both of maintaining that fleet at 55 and of achieving the force goals in the 1999 study by building additional submarines. The analysis also evaluates three options to increase the mission capability of the attack submarine force through changes in such things as operating concepts and basing locations. Those options would enable a force of 55 SSNs to provide the same number of mission days by 2015 and 2025 that 68 or 76 attack submarines, respectively, would provide under current policies--at substantially lower cost than building more submarines.
Increasing the Mission Capability of the Attack Submarine Force
2002
54 pages
Report
No indication
English
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