Portland Press Herald August 26, 2005
Yard's future relies on Navy's use of subs
By Jen Fish
The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is safe for now, but some military analysts warn that the future of the Navy's submarine fleet is far from secure.
"It's a temporary reprieve," said John Pike, a military analyst with globalsecurity.org, speaking of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission's decision to spare the shipyard.
The Navy's submarine fleet is at 54, but some Navy shipbuilding projections predict the fleet will shrink to as few as 33 submarines.
So, while people in Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut celebrated the commission's votes to save Portsmouth and the New London Submarine Base in Groton, there are some who worry there may not be enough work to keep the two yards off a future base closure list.
The key, some legislators believe, is to convince the Pentagon to step up its submarine building. The Navy's current production is one new submarine a year.
"What do we need to do? We've got to convince people of the importance of building two a year," said U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
But analysts like Pike say that will be a hard argument to make to the Pentagon. After all, the Cold War is over.
"The Soviet navy was a submarine navy," Pike said. "They had a few surface ships, odds and ends, but when the Soviets thought about sea power, they thought about submarines. And so we had to have a big submarine fleet."
Pike conceded that a new adversary could enter the world arena, saying that "it's hard to say what's going to happen down the road."
"One cannot exclude the possibility that five years from now that the communist Chinese are going to be a threat," Pike said. But, he added, "technologically, the Chinese are very far behind us" and North Korea is even farther behind the United States in terms of submarine technology.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard advocates agree that the future of submarine warfare may not ever again reach the heights of the Cold War, but they believe there is still work to be done.
"There's no guarantee," said Paul O'Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council at the shipyard. "All I know is we're going to continue to perform the way we've been performing."
O'Connor and other shipyard advocates said that while everyone has heard the talk of a smaller fleet, there is no sure way to predict what the nation's military needs will be in the coming years.
"There's talk, but the current force structure is 54 submarines," O'Connor said. "That's plenty of work for all of us for quite some time."
Capt. William McDonough, an advocate for the yard and former shipyard commander, said he doubts another base-closure round will be initiated by Congress for years.
"Yes, we don't expect to go back to 100 submarines unless there's a radical change, but already we have knowledge and it's been demonstrated that (commanders) are not able to get the services they request now because we don't have enough submarines," he said.
The question of the Navy's future needs may be partially answered when the Pentagon releases its Quadrennial Defense Review, its four-year review of the nation's military strategy.
"I believe it will show there is an ongoing, probably increasing need for the services a submarine can provide," McDonough said.
- The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2005, Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
