The USS Columbus out of Pearl Harbor did something on a recent deployment that a U.S. submarine hadn’t done in roughly a half-century: It made a port call at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Joint Task Force Guantanamo added extra drama to the arrival in a public-affairs news story.
"The early morning hours of June 23 were reminiscent of a scene from the popular Tom Clancy movie ‘The Hunt for Red October’ as a submarine appeared in the distance near the southern boundary, slowing cruising into Guantanamo Bay," the command wrote.
The command said it was the first time since the mid-1960s that a submarine had been to Guantanamo. The U.S. Pacific Fleet Submarine Force at Pearl Harbor also noted it was the first-ever visit by a Los Angeles-class sub.
The deployment, which saw the Columbus sail through the Panama Canal twice before its return to Pearl Harbor on Aug. 11, also was unusually short at just three months, compared with the usual six or seven months at sea.
The Pacific Fleet sub command downplayed the significance of the visit to the controversial base, which still serves as a detention facility for 116 prisoners from the U.S. war on terrorism. No prisoners were dropped off or picked up by the Columbus, said Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the Pacific sub force.
"The submarine was there at (Guantanamo) solely for a port visit during the three-month deployment," DeWalt said. The region, however, is controlled by U.S. Southern Command and is much closer for East Coast submarines.
The Caribbean duty for a Hawaii-based sub "is really more about noting the ability to operate anywhere we are needed," DeWalt said. The deployment boiled down to a "global force management issue, based on combatant command needs and force availability."
"(Southern Command) may say, ‘Hey, we need naval coverage, not necessarily a submarine, but capabilities that our submarines provide, like other (Navy) platforms may provide,’" DeWalt said. "It just happened to be us, and this (sub) and this particular time to cover and provide a presence in that area. It just so happened we had a short window where that submarine could actually fit the bill."
The Pacific Fleet sends a sub to the Caribbean every year or two, he added.
"It’s good management on our part to make sure our submarines have the ability and understanding to operate in all environments," DeWalt said.
There’s no question, though, that the port call was unusual.
Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Institute for the Study of War and a retired Navy officer, said, "Guantanamo Bay is not a good port for submarines to call at, as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. Navy has not put a submarine into port there in about 50 years."
Maintenance facilities "are somewhere between sparse and nonexistent," and the base is "completely locked down, so it’s not as if the crew gets to wander around and see some of Cuba," he said.
That said, Harmer said he doesn’t think anything unusual, missionwise, was associated with the port call.
"Submarines do more classified missions than the rest of the U.S. Navy fleet put together," he said. "The Navy regularly deploys submarines with classified itineraries and missions; if there was anything secret going on, the Navy would not have announced the port call into Guantanamo Bay."
As to potentially why the Navy put a submarine into Guantanamo Bay for the first time in some five decades, Harmer noted, "The Caribbean is not an ideal place to pull pierside, (and) there are not a lot of secure port facilities, so it may be that Guantanamo was the least bad option."
