After being sidelined for more than four and a half years following a very serious collision with an undersea mount in the South China Sea in October 2021, the United States Navy’s Seawolf-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN-22) is finally set to return to service. Repairs to the submarine could exceed $80 million, which may seem like a good deal considering that the original price tag for the boat was nearly $3.1 billion.
However, the U.S. Navy confirmed this spring that the second of just three Seawolf-class submarines will be inactivated in 2031, meaning that she could remain in the active fleet for just five more years, or roughly the same amount of time it took to repair the boat, and that’s only if the repairs are completed on time.
SSN-22 was named for the Constitution State and also built by General Dynamics Electric Boat at their shipyard in Groton, Connecticut. Her keel was laid down in September 1992, and she was launched just five years later on September 1, 1997. She was commissioned on December 11, 1998.
USS Connecticut is undergoing final repairs at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Bremerton, Wash. For much of the past four years, the boat was in Dry Dock 5 for an “Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability” to repair the severe bow and sonar dome damage sustained in the 2021 collision.
Seawolf Program Cut Short
During the tail end of the Cold War, the United States Navy had originally planned to build 29 Seawolf-class fast attack submarines to address the threat of Soviet ballistic missile submarines of the era, and to replace its aging Los Angeles-class attack subs.
The Seawolf-class was considered a major leap forward in submarine technology, offering a solid combination of speed, stealth and combat power. Yet, the end of the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union put into question whether the very expensive boats were what the U.S. needed at the time, and the program was cut short to just three.
At approximately $3 billion to $3.5 billion per vessel, the boats were simply too expensive, especially in the wake of changing global geopolitics. Instead, the United States Navy opted for the smaller and more cost-effective Virginia-class submarine program.
Still, the three Seawolf-class boats were built to maintain the two active submarine construction shipyards, CT Insider explained.
“When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev really scaled back the size of the Soviet navy and military force, the cuts to the submarine program happened instantaneously,” U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) told CT Insider. “You look at the size of the shipyard workforce, it went from about 30,000 to less than 10,000 in a really short period of time.”
The General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard continues to build nuclear-powered submarines for the U.S. Navy, including the Virginia-class and it will also construct the future Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines that are being developed to replace the aging Ohio-class.
The 2021 Collision – A Submarine Hit A Mountain
While operating in the South China Sea in October 2021, SSN-22 was then five months into a “surge deployment” and was reportedly traveling at a high speed in “poorly charted” waters. USS Connecticut hit a then-unidentified object, resulting in moderate to minor injuries to 11 crewmembers.
Following an investigation, the boat’s commanding officer, Commander Cameron Aljilani, executive officer Lt. Commander Patrick Cashin, and the chief of the boat Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers were all relieved of duty.
“No single action or inaction caused this mishap, but it was preventable. It resulted from an accumulation of errors and omissions in navigation planning, watch team execution, and risk management,” wrote the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Maritime Headquarters Rear Admiral Christopher Cavanaugh, who oversaw the command investigation. “Prudent decision-making and adherence to standards in any one of these three areas could have prevented the grounding.”
A submarine striking a mountain might seem like a bad joke, but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are more than 100,000 seamounts that rise more than 1,000 meters (about 3,300 feet) from the seafloor.
“New estimates suggest that, taken together, seamounts encompass about 28.8 million square kilometers of the Earth’s surface,” NOAA explained. “That’s larger than deserts, tundra, or any other single land-based global habitat on the planet.”
The issue was further complicated by the fact that less than one-tenth of one percent of the world’s seamounts has been explored with any significant detail, even as they are found in every world ocean basin. That makes navigating a submarine while attempting to remain undetected extremely difficult.
USS Connecticut was operating in largely unfamiliar waters while actively attempting to avoid Chinese warships in the process.
“You don’t have any windows, you can’t see outside,” Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Hudson Institute who also spent 25 years as a U.S. Navy submariner, told The Navy Times in November 2021. “You’re driving around in the dark without having a really good picture of what’s going on in front of you.”
Clark added at the time that SSN-22 likely was relying on its “passive sonar,” which allowed the crew to “listen for ships, marine life or other obstacles,” although it would have meant the crew gave up much of its “environmental awareness.”
The South China Sea is also noted for being poorly surveyed and has only a few passable sea lanes, as its waters aren’t particularly deep, which further limits where submarines can safely operate.
SSN-22 Limped Home
Following the collision, the crew faced several technical problems as the submarine attempted to service. However, the USS Connecticut was able to limp back to Guam, and then to the West Coast. When arriving in Bremerton, investigators found the damage to be quite serious, including the missing bow dome.
The second of three Seawolf-class fast attack submarines has been at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard since December 2021.
Repair efforts have required a newly manufactured bow dome, which required more than three years to complete. Additional structural repairs were carried out on USS Connecticut.
Now, with the work nearing completion, the question could be asked whether it was worthwhile, especially if SSN-22 could be retired in just another five years.
