Seas of Crisis

by Joe Buff

  ADCAP: Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo. A heavyweight, wire guided torpedo used by American nuclear submarines. The Improved ADCAP has even longer range and an enhanced (and extremely capable) target homing sonar and software logic package.

  AIP: Air Independent Propulsion. Refers to modern diesel submarines that have an additional power source besides the standard diesel generator and electric storage batteries. The AIP system allows quiet and long-endurance submerged cruising, without the need to snorkel for air, because oxygen and fuel are carried aboard the vessel in special tanks. For example, the German Class 212A design uses fuel cells for achieving AIP.

  Ambient sonar: A form of active sonar that uses, instead of a submarine’s pinging, the ambient noise of the surrounding ocean to catch reflections off a target. Noise sources can include surface wave-action sounds, the propulsion plants of other vessels (such as passing neutral merchant shipping), or biologics (sea life). Ambient sonar gives the advantages of actively pinging but without betraying a submarine’s own presence. Advanced signal processing algorithms and powerful onboard computers are needed to exploit ambient sonar effectively.

  Auxiliary maneuvering units: Small propulsors at the bow and stern of a nuclear submarine, used to greatly enhance the vessel’s maneuverability. First ordered for the USS Jimmy Carter, the third and last of the Seawolf-class SSNs (nuclear fast-attack submarines) to be constructed.

  Ceramic composite: A multilayered composite foam matrix made from ceramic and metallic ingredients. Alumina casing, an extremely strong submarine hull material significantly less dense than steel, was declassified by the U.S. Navy after the Cold War.

  ELF: Extremely Low Frequency. Radio capable of penetrating deep seawater, used to communicate (one-way only) from a huge shore transmitter installation to submerged submarines. A disadvantage is ELF’s very slow data rate, only a few bits per minute.

  EMCON: Emissions Control. Radio silence. Also applies to radar, sonar, or other emissions that could reveal a vessel’s presence.

  EMP: Electromagnetic pulse. A sudden, strong electrical current induced by a nuclear explosion. This will destroy unshielded electrical and electronic equipment and also temporarily ruin radio reception. There are two forms of EMP, one caused by very-high-altitude nuclear explosions (“HANEs”), the other by ones at low altitude. (Mid-altitude bursts do not create an EMP.) The area on the ground affected by an EMP is called the “pancake.” EMPs in outer space (“exoatmospheric” EMPs) will also cause damage to unhardened satellites in orbit.

  Frequency-agile: A means of avoiding enemy interception and jamming, by very rapidly varying the frequency used by a transmitter and receiver. May apply to radio, or to underwater acoustic communications (see gertrude below).

  Gertrude: Underwater telephone. Original systems simply transmitted voice directly with the aid of transducers (active sonar emitters, i.e., underwater loudspeakers), and were notorious for short range and poor intelligibility. Modern undersea acoustic communication systems translate the message into digital high-frequency active sonar pulses, which can be frequency-agile for security (see above). Data rates well over 1,000 bits per second, over ranges up to thirty nautical miles, can be achieved.

  Hole-in-ocean sonar: A form of passive (listening-only) sonar that detects a target by how it blocks ambient ocean sounds from further off. In effect, hole-in-ocean sonar uses an enemy submarine’s own quieting against it.

  Instant ranging: A capability of the new wide-aperture array sonar systems (see below). Because each wide-aperture array is mounted rigidly along one side of the submarine’s hull, sophisticated signal processing can be performed to “focus” the hydrophones at different ranges from the ship. The target needs to lie somewhere on the beam of the ship (i.e., to either side).

  Kampfschwimmer: German Navy “frogman” combat swimmers. The equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs and the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Squadron commandos. (In the German language, the word Kampfschwimmer is both singular and plural.)

  LASH: Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral. A new antisubmarine warfare search-and-detection technique, usually deployed from aircraft. LASH utilizes the back-scatter of underwater illumination from sunlight, caught via special optical sensors and processed by classified computer software, to locate anomalous color gradations and shapes, even through deep seawater that is murky or dirty.

  LIDAR: Light Direction And Ranging. Like radar, but uses laser beams instead of radio waves. Undersea LIDAR uses blue-green lasers, because that color penetrates seawater to the greatest distance.

  Multimission platform: A special extra one-hundred-foot-long, three-thousand-ton hull section added to USS Jimmy Carter, the last of the three Seawolf-class nuclear-powered fast-attack subs to be built, commissioned into the U.S. Navy in early 2005. By limiting the pressure-hull diameter within the central portion of the multimission platform to eighteen feet (the “wasp waist”), additional volume for larger weapons, off-board vehicles, and underwater fiber-optic cable tapping equipment was created between the wasp waist and the outer hull, called the “garage space.” The full-width (forty-two-foot outside diameter) sections at both ends of the multimission platform include areas for special operations command, control, and communications, and for special operations forces berthing—nominally fifty commandos, though more can be accommodated in an emergency. Reportedly, this extra hundred feet of “wetted area” of the outer hull reduces Carter’s maximum speed while submerged by less than one knot.

  Naval Submarine League (NSL): A professional association for submariners and submarine supporters. See their Web site, www.navalsubleague.com.

  Network-centric warfare: A new approach to warfighting in which all formations and commanders share a common tactical and strategic picture through real-time digital data links. Every platform or node, such as a ship, aircraft, submarine, Marine Corps or Army squad, or SEAL team, gathers and shares information on friendly and enemy locations and movements. Weapons, such as a cruise missile, might be fired by one platform, and redirected in flight toward a fleeting target of opportunity by another platform, using information relayed by yet other platforms—including unmanned reconnaissance drones. Network-centric warfare promises to revolutionize command, control, communications, and intelligence, and greatly leverage the combat power of all friendly units while minimizing collateral damage.

  Ocean rover: Any one of a number of designs, either civilian or military, of a small, semiautonomous unmanned submersible vehicle that roves through the ocean collecting data on natural and man-made phenomena. This data is periodically downloaded via radio when the ocean rover comes shallow enough to raise an antenna above the sea surface. Ocean rovers can also be controlled and downloaded via fiber-optic tether from a submerged submarine, for greater stealth. Powered by batteries or fuel cells, ocean rovers move slowly but can have endurance of days or weeks before needing to be recovered for maintenance, reprogramming, refueling, etc. One U.S. Navy ocean rover is the Seahorse series, shaped like a very long, very wide torpedo.

  Photonics mast: The modern replacement for the traditional optical periscope. One of the first was installed in USS Virginia (see below). The photonics mast uses electronic imaging sensors, sends the data via thin electrical or fiber-optic cables, and displays the output on large high-definition TV screens in the control room. The photonics mast is “non-hull-penetrating,” an important advantage over older scopes with their long, straight, thick tubes that must be able to move up and down and rotate.

  Pump-jet: A main propulsor for nuclear submarines that replaces the traditional screw propeller. A pump-jet is a system of stator and rotor turbine blades within a cowling. (The rotors are turned by the main propulsion shaft, the same way the screw propeller’s shaft would be turned.) Good pump-jet designs are quieter and more efficient than screw propellers, producing less cavitation noise and less wake turbulence.

  SERT: Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team. A modern breed of special operations forces “shado
w warrior” drawn from among U.S. Navy Seabee (mobile construction) combat battalions. SERT teams, generally of ten specially trained men each, operate at the forward edge of the battle area, sometimes attached to Marine Corps formations. They use their special expertise to assess, in a warfighting environment, civil engineering requirements for tasks such as road-laying, bridge repair, and restoration of damaged or sabotaged structures and heavy machinery including power plants and waterworks. Their reconnaissance reports are relayed in real time to higher headquarters via digital network-centric warfare techniques (see above), for optimal rapid exploitation by follow-on mainline battle formations, aid relief workers, and democracy-building planners. Commissioned officers in Seabee units are members of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps.

  Sonobuoy: A small active (“pinging”) or passive (listening-only) sonar detector, usually dropped in patterns (clusters) from an aircraft or a helicopter. The sonobuoys transmit their data to the aircraft by a radio link. The aircraft might have onboard equipment to analyze this data, or it might relay the data to a surface warship for detailed analysis. (The aircraft will also carry torpedoes or depth charges, to be able to attack any enemy submarines that its sonobuoys detect.) Some types of sonobuoy are able to operate down to a depth of 16,000 feet.

  SSBN and SSGN: An SSGN is a type of nuclear submarine designed or adapted for the primary purpose of launching cruise missiles, which tend to follow a level flight path through the air to their target. An SSGN is distinct from an SSBN “boomer,” which launches strategic (hydrogen bomb) ballistic missiles, following a very high lobbing trajectory that leaves and then reenters earth’s atmosphere. Because cruise missiles tend to be smaller than ballistic missiles, an SSGN is able to carry a larger number of separate missiles than an SSBN of the same overall size. Note, however, that since ballistic missiles are typically “MIRVed,” i.e., equipped with multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, the total number of warheads on an SSBN and SSGN may be comparable; also, an SSBN’s ballistic missiles can be equipped with high-explosive warheads instead of nuclear warheads. (A fast-attack submarine, or SSN, can be thought of as serving as a part-time SSGN, to the extent that some SSN classes have vertical launching systems for cruise missiles, and/or are able to fire cruise missiles through their torpedo tubes.)

  Virginia-class: The latest class of nuclear-propelled fast-attack submarines (SSNs) being constructed for the U.S. Navy, to follow the Seawolf-class. The first, USS Virginia, was commissioned in 2004. (Post–Cold War, some SSNs have been named for states, since construction of Ohio-class Trident missile “boomers” has been halted.)

  Wide-aperture array: A sonar system introduced, in the U.S. Navy, with USS Seawolf in the mid-1990s, and also built into the Virginia class. Distinct from and in addition to the bow sphere, towed arrays, and forward hull array of Cold War–era Los Angeles–class SSNs. Each submarine so equipped actually has two wide-aperture arrays, one along each side of the hull. Each array consists of three separate rectangular hydrophone complexes. Powerful signal processing algorithms allow sophisticated analysis of incoming passive sonar data. This includes instant ranging (see above). Some Los Angeles–class vessels have been updated with retrofitted wide-aperture arrays.

  Acknowledgments

  To begin, I want to thank my formal manuscript readers: Captain Melville Lyman, U.S. Navy (retired), commanding officer of several SSBN strategic missile submarines, until recently Director for Special Weapons Safety and Surety at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and now doing similar work at a major private contractor; Commander Jonathan Powis, Royal Navy, who was Navigator on the fast-attack submarine HMS Conqueror during the Falklands Crisis, and who subsequently commanded three different British submarines; retired senior chief Bill Begin, veteran of many “boomer” deterrent patrols; and Peter Petersen, who served in the German Navy’s U-518 in World War II. Thanks also go to two Navy SEALs, Warrant Officer Bill Pozzi and Commander Jim Ostach, and to Lieutenant Commander Jules Steinhauer, USNR (Ret.), diesel boat veteran and naval aviation submarine liaison in the early Cold War, for their feedback and support. In that latter category I must also include the many new friends and acquaintances I’ve made since joining the United States Submarine Veterans, Inc. (USSVI) as a sponsored Life Associate Member, and the Navy Seabee Veterans of America (NSVA) as an Honorary Life Associate Member, during 2004.

  A number of other Navy people gave valuable guidance: George Graveson, Jim Hay, and Ray Woolrich, all retired U.S. Navy captains, former submarine skippers, and active in the Naval Submarine League; Ralph Slane, vice president of the New York Council of the Navy League of the United States, and docent of the Intrepid Museum; Ann Hassinger, research librarian at the U.S. Naval Institute; Bill Kreher, operations director of the Naval Submarine League; Chris Michel, founder and president of Military Advantage, Inc.; and retired reserve U.S. Navy Seabee Chief “Stormin’ Normand” Dupuis.

  Additional submariners and military contractors deserve acknowledgment. They are too many to name here, but continuing to stand out vividly in my mind are pivotal conversations with Commander (now Captain) Mike Connor, at the time CO of USS Seawolf, and with the late Captain Ned Beach, USN (Ret.), brilliant writer and great submariner. I also want to thank, for the guided tours of their fine submarines, the officers and men of USS Alexandria, Connecticut, Dallas, Hartford, Memphis, Salt Lake City, Seawolf, Springfield, Topeka, and Virginia, and the modern German diesel submarine U-15. I owe “deep” appreciation to everyone aboard USS Miami for four wonderful days on and under the sea.

  Similar thanks go to the instructors and students of the New London Submarine School, and the Coronado BUD/SEAL training facilities, and to all the people who demonstrated their weapons, equipment, attack vessels, and aircraft, at the Amphibious Warfare bases in Coronado and Norfolk. Appreciation also goes to the men and women of the aircraft carrier USS Constellation, the Aegis guided missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf, the fleet replenishment oiler USNS Pecos, and so many other Navy folks.

  The Current Strategy Forums and publications of the Naval War College were invaluable. Flying out to the amphibious warfare helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima during New York City’s Fleet Week 2002, and joining with her sailors and marines in rendering honors as the ship passed September 11th’s Ground Zero, was one of the most powerfully emotional experiences of my life.

  First among the publishing people deserving acknowledgment is my wife, Sheila Buff, a bestselling nonfiction author and co-author of books on health, wellness, and related topics. Then comes my agent, John Talbot, “spirit guide” for seven years now on all aspects of the writing profession. Equally crucial is my William Morrow editor, Mike Shohl, always full of keen insights on improving my outlines and manuscript drafts.

  About the Author

  JOE BUFF is a life member of the U.s. naval Institute, the naval submarine league, the navy league of the United states, the cec/seabees historical Foundation, and the Fellows of the naval War college. respected for his technical knowledge, he is considered an expert in submarines and national defense. two of his nonfiction articles about future submarine technology have won annual literary awards from the naval submarine league. he is the author of four previous highly regarded novels of submarine warfare—Tidal Rip, Crush Depth, Thunder in the Deep, and Deep Sound Channel— and lives with his wife in dutchess county, new York. You can visit his website at www.joebuff.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Books by Joe Buff

  SEAS OF CRISIS

  STRAITS OF POWER

  TIDAL RIP

  CRUSH DEPTH

  THUNDER IN THE DEEP

  DEEP SOUND CHANNEL

  Praise for the novels of

  Joe Buff

  “[Buff] delivers fascinating technical detail [and] white-knuckle undersea action.”

  Patrick Robinson

  “The combined effect of unrelenting action, clev
er plotting and sheer firepower . . . successfully torpedoes any notion that this long-running submarine series has begun to tire . . . Meticulously described battle scenes both on land and at sea.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Joe Buff takes the reader through a labyrinth of action and high adventure.”

  Clive Cussler

  “Buff makes for sleepless nights. This man knows his stuff.”

  David E. Meadows, Capt., USN, author of the Joint Task

  Force and Dark Pacific series

  “The author out-Clancys Tom Clancy . . . Buff gives us terrific battle maneuvers . . . Talk about fun.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “A superb high-water mark in naval fiction.”

  Michael DiMercurio, author of Vertical Dive

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Joe Buff

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-059471-8

  ISBN-10: 0-06-059471-3