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South Korea Focuses on Underwater Protection
By Jung Sung-Ki 2:45 p.m. EDT April 12, 2015
SEOUL — The South Korean Navy is focusing on modernization efforts to guard against North Korean coastal threats while building a deep sea operational capability.
The service launched an independent submarine command Feb. 1, highlighting its emphasis on undersea operations to counter North Korea and other regional threats. The command, the sixth of its kind in the world, brings operations, logistics, training and maintenance under one roof, according to Navy officials.
"The command's main mission is to better protect the country from North Korean naval provocations, as the North is increasingly building up its underwater capabilities," Cmdr. Lim Myung-soo, at the Navy's public affairs office, said.
The command, located in the southern port city of Jinhae, operates 13 diesel-electric submarines — nine 1,200-ton 209-class, and four 1,800-ton 214-class subs — with five more 214 subs being commissioned by 2020.
The Navy's buildup, however, is likely to be hindered by a string of corruption scandals involving top Navy officers.
Former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Hwang Ki-chul has been indicted for irregularities regarding the procurement of a naval salvage ship, named Tongyeong.
Hwang, who stepped down last month, is suspected of having helped a foreign sonar supplier win a contract in the construction of the 3,500-ton Tongyeong by manipulating documents related to the evaluation of the ship's performances when he worked as director of the naval ship procurement bureau at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) in 2009.
Due to defects in the sonar system, the salvage ship failed to participate in rescue operations during last year's ferry tragedy that killed more than 300 people.
Former CNO Chung Ok-geun, who led the Navy from 2008-2010, was also arrested in January on charges of taking bribes from a local arms agency after helping it win a deal to acquire telecommunications and electronic intelligence-collecting devices for spy ships.
"A series of arms procurement corruption scandals has eroded public confidence seriously in the Navy's arms buildup efforts," said Yang Wook, a researching member of the Korea Defense & Security Forum (KODEF). "That means any naval buildup programs in the future will be censored thoroughly and questioned every time, which could delay the timing of weapons deployment and harm the security posture."
In other plans, the Navy also will deploy nine 3,000-ton heavy attack submarines, code named KSS-III, equipped with multiple vertical launch tubes to fire 1,500-kilometer cruise missiles that could hit key targets in North Korea. The development of the KSS-III lead ship started last November at the dockyard of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering.
The North is believed to have about 70 submarines, including 20 of the 1,800-ton Romeo class. In particular, the communist state is thought to be developing an upgraded version of the Soviet-designed Romeo that can fire a ballistic missile.
"Though North Korean submarines are presumed to be inferior to South Korean subs in terms of modernization and capabilities, they pose grave threats to the security of South Koreans," said Shin In-kyun, president of the Korea Defense Network, a Seoul-based defense-related civic group. "The submarine command is to serve as the groundwork for the South's deterrence underwater."
To beef up anti-submarine operations, the Navy plans to procure 12 more helicopters; in 2013, the service bought eight AW-159 Lynx Wildcat helicopters for about $540 million.
"A final decision to procure more naval helicopters is to be made by the year's end after a preliminary study on the required operational capability," Cmdr. Park Sung-soo, vice spokesman for DAPA, said.
The AW-159 is considered a strong candidate for the new contract, while the Sikorsky MH-60 Seahawk and a modified variant of the Surion utility helicopter built by Korea Aerospace Industries are competing, according to sources.
Frigate acquisition plans also are on track. Under the FFX batch I program, five 2,300-ton Incheon-class frigates have been commissioned, with one more hull planned to be set afloat this year.
The warship will take charge of operations, such as coastal patrol and anti-submarine warfare. It has a maximum speed of 50 knots and is armed with Raytheon's Mk 49 RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) and a Phalanx Block 1B close-in weapon system.
The ship has a hull-mounted sonar and six torpedo tubes carrying indigenously developed "Blue Shar" 324mm torpedoes.
Under the second batch program, up to 12 more frigates are projected to enter service by 2020. These ships are expected to be slightly larger and feature a vertical launch system for locally designed medium-range air defense missiles in place of the batch I's short-range RAM.
The fleet of new frigates is expected to help counter threats posed by North Korea's ship destroyers, according to Kim Dae-young, a researching member of KODEF.
"New radars and sensors of the new frigates will help thwart the threats of North Korean stealth destroyers recently unveiled," Kim said.
In February, the North released an image of its new "stealth" ship-destroyer, threatening that it can strike South Korean and US vessels without warning at any time.
Pyongyang's state media said the high-speed ship was the result of a 10-year project, claiming it would be extremely difficult for other vessels to detect the destroyer before it launched sea-skimming missiles.
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Asia-Pacific Leads Sub Market
By Wendell Minnick 2:43 p.m. EDT April 12, 2015
TAIPIEI — Submarine investment remains popular globally, with the Asia-Pacific region taking the lion's share of builds and programs, according to Tony Beitinger, vice president of market intelligence for AMI International Naval Analysts & Advisors.
Worldwide naval investments in submarines continue to outpace all other naval procurements, he said, with 34 countries procuring or planning to acquire submarines over the next 20 years.
There are 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region investing in submarines: Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. The Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh have publicly voiced the desire to acquire new or used submarines.
Submarines are a leading indicator of the larger pattern of naval spending in the Asia-Pacific region, said Bob Nugent, an independent naval analyst. Spending on submarines in the region, as with naval spending overall, is going up as a result of stronger economies for some countries and an increased sense of sea-based vulnerabilities and threats in the region for others.
"Submarines are the most expensive [ton for ton] naval platforms to acquire and arguably the most expensive to sustain in readiness from a broad perspective of resources needed to recruit, train, operate, maintain and modernize a capable submarine force," Nugent said. This raises the question of the fiscal constraints to growing and modernizing regional submarine fleets.
"This issue of affordability and tradeoffs of a submarine force is especially public in Australia right now, but likely also being heard in defense circles in South Korea, Japan and elsewhere in the region."
Despite high costs, technological improvements have made submarines more lethal and quieter, especially with air independent propulsion, and this has driven wealthy and poor nations alike to procure them.
"These types of submarines are becoming more capable and are beginning to carry more lethal weapons like submerged-launched anti-ship and land attack missiles, as well as reconnaissance systems such as unmanned underwater vehicles used to collect intelligence or deploy special operations forces," Beitinger said.
China's growing military force has pushed Taiwan's Navy into a corner. The service is in the midst of a major new submarine build program expected to produce four to eight submarines within the next 20 years. Taiwan naval officials said industrial interest has been expressed in Europe and the United States.
"Submarines are the key offset strategy platform for a strategic planner looking to counter the greater spending and greater numbers of naval platforms and systems fielded by future rivals," Nugent said. With China's naval spending outpacing that of Japan, Australia, South Korea and others in southeast Asia combined, submarines are likely to remain priorities for continued investment in the region, he said.
Nugent said he saw accelerating investment in some submarine-related force multiplier technologies, including unmanned vehicles, advanced energy and propulsion systems that reduce fuel use and improve range, stealth and weapons performance, and advanced undersea sensors for intelligence and surveillance.
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Bow Wave of Subs Rolling Through Yards
By Christopher P. Cavas 2:54 p.m. EDT April 12, 2015
Submarine Production Is Booming Now and Well Into The Future at Electric Boat
GROTON, Connecticut — A surge of work is rippling through the building yards of General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB) the likes of which has not been seen since the end of the Cold War.
At the manufacturing facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and the assembly and design facilities in Groton and New London, Connecticut, thousands of employees have been added, with more hires to come. Quonset Point is expanding and erecting new buildings and the Groton waterfront is getting a major refurbishment. The ramp ups are expected to continue for at least another decade, into the mid-2020s and beyond.
All this is in reaction to a heightened tempo of submarine attack boat construction, increased conversion and overhaul work, and the beginnings of the program to build the biggest undersea craft the US Navy has ever fielded — a new class of ballistic missile subs known as the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP), designated SSBN(X) by the Navy.
The pace of construction for Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines has doubled since 2011, when the US Navy upped the construction rate to two subs per year. Construction is split between EB and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia — each yard builds specific parts of the submarines — and the shipbuilders alternated in assembling and completing the subs.
But two per year means that, beginning this year and next, each yard will start to deliver one Virginia-class submarine per year, and both shipbuilders have been steadily increasing their workforces to deal with the surge. The wave of increased production already has swept through the manufacturing facilities at Quonset Point, and when the Illinois is delivered in December, the surge will be increasingly felt in Groton.
EB is hard at work on four major projects: Virginia-class Block III and Block IV submarines are under construction, and work on the first of two moored training ship conversions is under way. In development are Block V Virginias, incorporating an added 85-foot midsection called the Virginia Payload Module, and work to prepare for and design the ORP has already begun, long in advance of 2021, when the first ship is expected to be fully funded.
"We have got 2,700 people or thereabouts, designers and engineers and other pre-production personnel, working on the ORP right now," Jeff Geiger, president of Electric Boat, said April 1. "That is doing the work now. That is not prepping. That is actually producing the systems engineering and the early functional design and basic arrangements for the submarine."
The workload numbers are impressive: A total of 17 Block III and Block IV subs are expected to be built, along with up to 20 or more Block Vs. The Navy plans to build 12 ORPs in a program that stretches well into the 2030s.
Parts of at least nine submarines are being worked on in Quonset Point and Groton. The Illinois, with all hull sections fully assembled, is expected to be launched next month at Groton, and parts of the Washington, Colorado, Indiana, South Dakota, Delaware, Vermont, Oregon, the yet-to-be-named SSN 794, and the Hyman G. Rickover can be found in various stages all through the yards.
In other words, EB is full up with Virginia-class construction.
"We're at capacity now in certain areas, and one of them is hull construction," said Sean Davies, general manager of the Quonset Point plant.
To handle the increased ORP workload, GD in December 2013 leased an additional 42 acres from the state of Rhode Island specifically to support ORP construction. The length of the 25-year leases are, Davies said, "unprecedented for GD."
The new acreage is adjacent and in addition to the existing 133-acre Electric Boat plant, of which GD owns just 33 acres.
Construction already has begun on the newly leased land on a new Automated Frame and Cylinder building (AFC), which will handle construction of the ORP's pressure hull and other structures.
After completion, the first work in the new AFC building will support the common missile compartment, a cooperative arrangement to design and build the missile compartments for the ORP and the United Kingdom's Successor ballistic-missile submarine. Work to build the first four-tube missile assemblies for the British subs will begin in 2017, before the ORP units.
Already in use at Quonset Point is an annex added to an existing building to assemble components for the Moored Training Ship (MTS), a project to convert the Los Angeles-class attack boats La Jolla and San Francisco into static training assets.
"We were already at capacity," explained Walter Tift, manager of operations for the MTS project. "We needed this space." Around him were new hull sections for the La Jolla, which entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard in February to begin the conversion. Up to 420 EB employees are working on the MTS program.
The MTS facility has been set up in just over a year.
"We went from a building that did not have a certificate of occupancy a little over a year ago to having 400 to 500 people cranking out modules," said Geiger. "It has been a very compressed and schedule-critical effort, but it has gone very well."
Quonset employment is shooting up from less than 2,000 employees in 2010, to 3,400 today, and will continue to grow to 3,750 by this July, Davies said. The Rhode Island facility expects to add about 2,200 employees over the next decade, reaching a peak of nearly 6,000 in 2025.
The previous peak was 5,900 in 1984, when Ohio-class and Los Angeles-class submarine construction was at its highest point. As production wound down, employment at Quonset dropped to about 1,000 employees in 1996.
At Groton, the plant isn't expanding as it is in Quonset Point, but rather a number of facility replacements and upgrades are underway or planned. Among the improvements, said Tom Plante, director of strategic planning at EB, are a new pontoon barge for the dry dock, a new built-for-the-purpose barge to shuttle submarine sections between locations, waterfront improvements to support the big ORPs in the post-launch fitting-out period, and possibly a new pier to handle the increased activity.
EB is also working to get back on the step to deliver its submarines ahead of schedule, and to increase that rate with each successive hull. That pace suffered a setback last year when the goal of delivering the North Dakota four months ahead of schedule couldn't be met, primarily because of challenges stemming from the ship's altered configuration as the first Block III submarine. The ship ended up being delivered just two days prior to the contract date.
But construction of the Illinois is back on the fast track, said Ken Blomstedt, EB's Virginia program manager, with a goal of a 58-month building time — which would be a new class record.
"It is aggressive," Blomstedt acknowledged, "but we're very confident we can get under 60 months."
With its expanding workforce, EB has increased the number of submarine overhauls, or availabilities, done at Groton. The Minnesota, commissioned in 2013, is in the yard now undergoing its post-shakedown availability — all Virginia-class submarines undergo their PSA, the first overhaul performed on a new submarine, at Groton — but the yard has contracts to take in the Los Angeles-class submarines Columbia and Montpelier this year, and it performed four similar overhauls in 2014.
EB's ability to handle overhauls is getting better, as the time it takes a Virginia-class sub to undergo its PSA is being cut nearly in half; the Minnesota is the last to schedule a year-long overhaul, and subsequent PSAs will be closer to six months.
While Congress and the Navy in Washington wrangle over how to pay for the ORPs, there does not appear to be any major dispute that the ships will be built. Not surprisingly, Geiger is optimistic about his shipyard's future.
"We are a pretty popular entity" in New England, he said. "Not just because of what Electric Boat offers but because of what that does throughout the supply base and how it ripples both in the communities locally and nationally. To have the US Navy and the congressional support for the submarine programs in the midst of the very tight fiscal environment for defense and otherwise, it is a great place to be."
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