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Navy plans over the next two years call for an increase in the number of submarines based at Pearl Harbor or coming for shipyard work, with up to five more subs being added to Hawaii’s 19-boat fleet, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye’s office said.
Among the additions planned are two more Virginia-class attack submarines — one in fiscal year 2013 and another in 2014, Inouye’s office said.
Over the next two years, Pearl Harbor’s surface fleet total will dip to nine from 11 ships, but the additional submarine presence would make up for it, with 30 ships and subs combined, growing to 31 next year and 33 the year after, the Hawaii Democrat’s office said.
The Navy gave assurances that there will be no negative effects on the shipyard workload over the next 10 years, Inouye’s staff said.
Each ship and submarine home-port change means millions of dollars to the local economy in salaries, spending and repair work.
Robert Lillis, president of the International Association of Machinists Local 1998, which represents mechanics in Hawaii’s private ship repair industry, said, "Submarine work is good work. It’s the kind of jobs you want — well-paid, highly technical jobs."
But he’s also concerned about a projected reduction in the number of surface ships at Pearl Harbor.
About 90 percent of the work done at the shipyard here is on submarines. The Navy yard is the largest industrial employer in the state, with a combined civilian and military workforce of more than 4,900 and an economic impact of $907 million a year.
Private contractor BAE Systems Hawaii Shipyards performs surface ship jobs for the Navy at Drydock 4 using a workforce here of about 650.
The ship-basing plan discussed by Inouye’s office "is good for the Navy yard, but it’s not good for the private sector because they don’t do submarine work," Lillis said.
Two more 377-foot Virginia-class submarines, at a cost of more than $2 billion apiece, would be added to the three already here: the USS Hawaii, USS Texas and USS North Carolina.
The additions would further build up in Hawaii what is already the greatest concentration of Navy submarines in the Pacific. The Navy said no submarine retirements are planned out of Pearl Harbor over the next two fiscal years.
"What the submarines (provide) is a forward-deployed presence that’s not visible, and it’s part of our air-sea battle strategy, which is about having an invisible force that’s capable of moving forward close to targets in the theater and not being necessarily susceptible to (military threats from) China," said Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu.
The submarines make port calls, which makes their presence known. However, Glosserman said allies in Asia and the Pacific would prefer an even more visible U.S. military presence as a sign of commitment to the region.
The Virginia-class submarines, the Navy’s first major combat ship designed for a post-Cold War environment, have six side-mounted sonar arrays, plus arrays in the bow and sail, improving the ability to operate in the littorals, or coastal waters.
Sub commanders say the big question used to be how fast and deep a submarine could go, but what’s most important now is how slow and shallow they can go in the littorals, where foreign diesel electric subs operate.
Inouye’s office said it was not sure which two new Virginia-class subs would be added at Pearl Harbor.
The Navy plan for Hawaii calls for the retirement of the cruiser Port Royal and an unidentified frigate in 2013, and the addition of one Virginia-class submarine and two other subs — one from Groton, Conn., and the other from Guam, the senator’s office said.
Groton has 16 submarines that are a combination of older Los Angeles-class and newer Virginia-class attack submarines, while Guam will soon have three attack subs.
Fiscal year 2014 would bring a new destroyer, the Michael Murphy, named after a Pearl Harbor-based SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005; the retirement of the cruiser Chosin; and arrival of two subs: one Virginia-class and one unidentified from Groton, according to Inouye’s office.
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COURTESY U.S. NAVY