Ensuring Undersea Superiority and Access

The Groundbreaking Virginia-Class SSN Program

By PAUL E. SULLIVAN and MORGAN A. HEAVENER

Rear Adm. (Sel.) Paul E. Sullivan is program manager, New Attack Submarines Program Office; Morgan A. Heavener is an analyst at Anteon Corporation's Center for Security Strategies and Operations in Arlington, Va.

At a time when virtually all U.S. defense programs are coming under intense scrutiny by the new administration and by Congress, the Virginia-class submarine program has become a major success story for the Navy and the nation. The program has broken new ground with its innovative design and construction of the baseline submarine, and with its new systems-testing techniques and the approaches developed for upgrading both in-service and future warships.

As if anticipating President George W. Bush's desire to "skip a generation" of military technology, the forward-looking development of the Virginia-class submarine program is producing a ship that equals or surpasses the best submarines of the world's navies in virtually every operational capability--stealth, special warfare, mine warfare, surveillance capabilities, battle group operations, and multimission effectiveness--with significant reductions in procurement and total operating costs. Moreover, work now in progress for the future development of the Virginia class will ensure that these revolutionary new submarines continue to meet the evolving challenges of the 21st-century security environment.

Multimission Flexibility

Although fully capable of traditional open-ocean antisubmarine and antisurface warfare (ASW) missions, the Virginia-class SSN (nuclear-powered attack submarine) has been specifically designed and engineered for multimission operations beyond the "post-Cold War" era and into the littoral warfare environment of the 21st century. The broad mix of capabilities of the Virginia-class submarines will facilitate diverse missions ranging from covert intelligence-gathering to the conduct of highly accurate land-attack strikes from maritime areas denied to other, less stealthy, U.S. forces.

As the Navy increasingly focuses on littoral operations and on assuring access to regions of the world critical to U.S. interests--e.g., the Western Pacific and Persian Gulf--the advances in anti-access and area-denial capabilities will become more challenging.

What this means is that submarines will become increasingly valuable to military commanders, since they ensure the availability of a forward-presence combat-capable force, in any potential area of crisis, possessing the unique ability, while remaining undetected, to detect, identify, and neutralize enemy threats. The Virginia-class attack submarines--indeed, submarines in general--are virtually invulnerable to area-denial capabilities--and to such asymmetric threats as satellite surveillance and advanced cruise and antiship missiles, thereby assuring U.S. military commanders access in times of potential international crisis.

The enhancements to the Virginia-class SSNs build on the success of the Seawolf (SSN 21) program and include unprecedented stealth--both acoustic and nonacoustic--and a re-configurable torpedo room that can be optimized for a variety of missions, including ASW, strike, and/or the delivery of special operations forces (SOF). Virginia-class SSNs also will have a reduced electromagnetic signature for mine avoidance and will be fitted with an advanced mine detection system and a nine-man SOF lockout trunk; they will have the ability to carry both the Dry Deck Shelter for existing SEAL mini-subs and the Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) now entering service. Among their sophisticated surveillance systems will be a digital electro-optical photonic mast for improved periscope imagery and several improved acoustic sensors--including towed arrays, a high-frequency chin array, and hull-mounted Lightweight Wide-Aperture arrays.

Modular Design and Construction

Multimission flexibility and task agility were built into the design and engineering of the Virginia-class SSNs from the outset. The Virginia-class ship's design/build process--which brought together and leveraged the expertise of shipbuilders, vendors, designers, engineers, and ship operators in design-build teams to guarantee that their combined experience would provide a highly capable and sophisticated submarine design--was almost complete as of late spring 2001.

The submarine's open-system architecture and the use of CAD (computer-aided-design) techniques and modeling, along with the early involvement of shipbuilding trades people on the design teams, helped to ensure that the ship's design could easily be incorporated into the construction process and facilities of the program's two shipbuilders--General Dynamics Electric Boat Company--(the lead yard) and Newport New Shipbuilding. This significantly reduced the number of engineering changes normally encountered during construction of a lead ship. The $1.45 billion design effort also focused on completion of 50 percent of the design products before construction of the lead ship started, ensuring that there would be little or no impact on the construction schedule because of late design changes.

In designing the first major combatant ship for the post-Cold War era, the Navy/Shipbuilder Team knew that reducing total ownership costs (TOC) was a critical design requirement. To meet that requirement, the Virginia-class design reflects the disciplined application of commercial specifications and components, which translates into fewer restrictive military specifications, fewer components, and fewer construction drawings. Because it is the first U.S. warship to be designed within a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics environment, non-propulsion electronics systems (NPESs) of the Virginia-class SSNS are being acquired at substantial savings compared to the electronic costs of previous submarine classes. The Virginia-class design uses current commercial technology to replace a submarine-unique design that allows a 25 percent savings in purchase costs, as well as a decrease in the length of the AMR (auxiliary machinery room) space. This change alone avoided an increase in overall hull length and has enhanced the team's ability to leverage the commercial logistics support structure.

The first four ships of the Virginia class are being built under an innovative teaming arrangement between Electric Boat (EB) and Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS). EB will build: (a) the pressure hull shell sections for both yards; (b) the complete engine-room modules; and (c) the command-and-control system operating spaces. NNS will build the bow, stern, sail, and various forward sections for each submarine. EB will assemble, test, and deliver the first and third ships; NNS the second and fourth. Cooperation between the two shipyards is going very well, program officials say, and there has been significant sharing of the construction lessons learned.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

To keep abreast of the technology-threat-mission-requirements curve, the Virginia's modular design and open-system architecture will facilitate the insertion of advanced new technologies into the class, either for new-construction ships or for backfit into existing ships. The ship's open-architecture command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) system, for example, promises the expanded use of widely available nondevelopmental items and of COTS technologies, components, and systems. The ship's platform-wide fiber-optic cable plant is similarly designed for the easy integration of "plug and play" equipment and has been sized for future growth.

By facilitating the insertion of new technologies and systems as they emerge, each new submarine of the Virginia class will have greater operational capability than previous ships of the class. The Navy's submarine technology (SUBTECH) program office is responsible for the continuous ship-to-ship improvements and for ensuring greater cost effectiveness throughout the program.

The ship's NPES system will be able to accommodate rapid advances in computer-processing capabilities. This is significant because the "refreshing" of system computers and software has become critical to the Navy's efforts to maintain cutting-edge technological capabilities in its warships. The 23 major subsystems and two stand-alone systems of the Virginia class's nonpropulsion electronics systems will be monitored to ensure that planned and programmed refreshments keep up with the pace and direction of developing technologies and the assessments of future threats. Mission software also will be consistently updated to conform to mainstream commercial capabilities.

Technology "Bundling"

Looking over the horizon, the Navy in 1999 established the Joint Navy/DARPA Submarine Payloads and Sensors program to evaluate the long-term technology-management strategy needed for warfighting improvements to the submarine of 2020. A current Navy effort is focused on creating "bundles" of technology for insertion into future Virginia-class submarines. This effort--not currently funded but being seriously evaluated--would concentrate on inserting several complementary, synergistic advanced technologies into future ships to significantly upgrade their operational capabilities.

The first "bundle"--notionally targeted for the fiscal year 2006 shipbuilding program--would include technologies that incorporate modularity features, including an advanced sail, that would be adaptable to new payloads and would support future crew living and working enhancements. The second "bundle"--notionally targeted for the fiscal year 2010 submarine--would enable the Virginia-class ships to evolve into fully modular "all-electric" submarines.

Integrated Power Systems and electric drive likely would be included in the second bundle, further enhancing an already-impressive level of stealth and enabling the use of all-electric auxiliary equipment and weapons systems while facilitating complete modularity for all ships of the class. Implementation of the modular payload concept would allow the Navy to switch some modules simply by "hooking and unhooking" cables. Ultimately, mission-specific, self-contained hull modules could be designed, engineered, and inserted into future submarines--both during construction and in mid-life--to expand the submarine force's collective warfighting capabilities in numerous mission areas.

The bundling strategy, if approved and implemented, would take advantage of the class's open-system ship-design and combat-systems architecture to facilitate what has come to be called "adaptability through modularity." It also would allow the Navy to implement cost-effective changes through competition and innovation from industry while retaining the disciplined design-integration process and interplay of the design/build teams established during the lead-ship design and construction phase of the program. Sources for bundle technologies will include DARPA sensors and payloads teams, shipbuilder design-improvement proposals, Navy science and technology transitions, SBIR (small business innovative research) transitions, and the adaptation of other Defense Department and commercial advanced technologies.

Navy and industry officials recognized the need, in the early stages of the program, to tap into hotbeds of commercial innovation and research. One way of doing this is to designate targeted "regions" of the ship as "Enterprise Zones" and invite private industry to propose warfighting improvements such as increased payload capabilities, improved sensor performance, and enhancements in the quality of life and work for the crew. The Enterprise-Zone approach will provide ample opportunities for both civilian and defense-related firms to take the initiative in proposing their own new technologies for the ships. The Navy will help by providing access to ship-design information so that industries will be able to propose, evaluate, and fine-tune their own innovations to be more readily integrated with the ship.

SitRep: Spring 2001

Construction of Virginia (SSN 774) was 46 percent complete in early April of this year, with delivery expected to be on schedule (in June 2004). The next two ships of the class, Texas (SSN 775) and Hawaii (SSN 776), were 36 percent and 7 percent complete, respectively. Construction of North Carolina (SSN 777) will begin in October of 2001. These ships are scheduled to be delivered successively in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

The CCSM (Command and Control Systems Module) Off-Hull Assembly and Test Site (COATS) facility at Electric Boat, currently being used to test the Virginia's combat systems, represents a new capability in advanced shipbuilding. The COATS facility allows complete testing of nonpropulsion electronics systems to be conducted prior to the CCSM being end-loaded into the hull; this is a radical departure from the previous process in which equipment was first tested at a land-based facility, then disconnected, packed, shipped, and reassembled into the hull­­often with great difficulty.

By allowing electronic systems to be integrated and tested up to a full two years prior to being installed, COATS minimizes the potential for slippage in the ship delivery schedule and allows fixes or refinements to be made well before the hull is wet. In addition, with the equipment already installed on the submarine, extraordinary opportunities are created for inserting and refreshing technologies during the years prior to a submarine's sea trials.

The Virginia CCSM was delivered to the COATS facility in December 2000. A complete system-integration test--including the testing of a full-up sonar sphere--is being carried out on the module's Non-Propulsion Electronics System (NPES). The module delivered to COATS was approximately 90 percent outfitted and included NPES, the staterooms for the commanding officer and executive officer, 16-man bunk areas, and all electrical, power, and cooling systems. Ultimately, 75 percent of each of the Virginia class's CCSM submarine systems and capabilities will be tested at the COATS facility.

On Course for Success

The Virginia-class program already has set a new standard in the way Navy ships are designed, built, tested, and upgraded--while remaining on schedule. The first U.S. warship designed to meet the evolving threats and mission needs of the 21st century, the Virginia has been designed and built to take advantage of the revolutionary new developments in recent years in naval systems architecture, computer processing, and off-hull testing.

The Virginia class will continue to be a work in progress. When the Navy celebrates the delivery of the lead ship of the class in 2004, the service will simultaneously be developing new concepts for future ships of the class--and by so doing will ensure that U.S. undersea superiority and multimission capabilities will be sustained to protect vital national interests far into the future.