COLUMN ONE : Hunting Beyond Red October

Michael Harrington, a weapons officer aboard a fast-attack submarine, has a simple description of how the end of the Cold War has changed the U.S. Navy’s submarine service.

“We used to hunt for Ivan,” said Harrington, a lieutenant commander. “Now we hunt for Ivan and everybody else.”

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union have greatly eased military tensions between the two superpowers, but they also have triggered a submarine arms race among Third World nations.

Some of the countries considered the most politically unstable and potentially hostile to the U.S. and its global allies and interests are buying, building and arming submarines seemingly as fast as their treasuries will allow. And their leaders are quick to boast about the military prestige and power the subs bestow.

One reason is that nations that once depended upon the Soviet Union to flaunt sea power on their behalf are now on their own.

China, Iran, North Korea and other nations of volatile temperament and uncertain intentions are buying quiet, modern and lethal submarines from shipyards in the old Soviet Union.

For a Third World nation looking for instant status as a player on the regional--if not global--stage, a Russian-made sub is a bargain.

“Countries are finding that if they want to show their people that they are ready to stand up to the ‘western imperialists,’ one thing they can do is to buy submarines,” said Ronald Bee, senior analyst at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego.

Only the wealthiest of nations can afford an aircraft carrier and the accompanying planes and surface ships, but submarines--called by some experts the most stealthy, deadly and intimidating of offensive weapons--are relatively cheap.

“You can, in a fairly short period of time, become a very capable submarine force,” said Rear Adm. Jerry Ellis, commander of the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet Pacific, based in Hawaii. “When you buy a Russian sub, you get maintenance, spare parts, training and weapons, a full package.”

Other nations buying or already owning submarines include India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Syria.

Only the U.S. has worldwide assets and experience to deter any reckless use of this growing number of undersea killing machines, military analysts say.

Although it is true that U.S. planes and surface ships are equipped to detect and destroy subs, the best anti-submarine weapon remains another submarine.

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The result of this buying binge is that the U.S. submarine service, although shrinking because of defense cutbacks, is growing in military and diplomatic significance in the post-Cold War world, naval strategists say.

In a recent unclassified report, the Pentagon’s Office of Naval Intelligence concluded that: “The worldwide submarine challenges that the United States and its allies face today are more diverse and more complex than at any time during the Cold War. They run the gamut from the highly sophisticated and predictable to the unsophisticated and irrational.”

The diesel-electric submarines being bought and sold in the open market are not equipped to threaten the U.S. mainland or even to engage in a mid-ocean slugfest with America’s fast-moving, deep-diving, nuclear-powered subs.

Diesel-electric submarines are relatively slow, easily spotted during a long voyage and must surface regularly. They have only short-range torpedoes and missiles, not the kind of ballistic nuclear weapons the Russians, even today, are prepared to launch at America’s heartland from their subs.

But in a coastal or shallow water engagement--in the Persian Gulf or the shipping lanes of the South China Sea or off the Korean Peninsula, these diesel-powered subs can sink vessels or send missiles inland several hundred miles.

Twenty nations have contracted to buy more than 60 submarines worth $15 billion in the next seven years from shipbuilding firms in the former Soviet Union as well as Sweden, Germany, France, Australia and Italy, said a report prepared by a Northern California marketing firm on behalf of the state’s high-tech industry.

Bee said the Russians, who are crushed by “staggering debts,” are finding that military arms are one of their few big-ticket exports, and thus are willing to sell what they were reluctant to sell during the Cold War.

Annual sales of anti-submarine warfare gear soon will top $1.4 billion, making it one of the last growth industries in the defense business.

“Growth is expected in all segments of sensors, command systems and torpedoes,” the report said.

A submarine can be purchased for about $650 million. An aircraft carrier can cost $4 billion or more to build, not counting the billions of dollars for aircraft or support ships to make it a viable threat.

Pat Drinan, professor of political science and chairman of the division of arts and science at the University of San Diego, said Third World countries are finding subs offer the boost of chemical or biological weapons as ways to threaten potential adversaries.

Eleven nations from Asia and the Pacific Rim, six from the Middle East, eight in South America, seven from the non-NATO portion of Europe and 11 American allies in NATO own a total of more than 400 submarines.

For four decades after the end of World War II, the mission of the U.S. submarine fleet was to stalk Soviet submarines wherever they roamed, lest they remain undetected and able to menace the U.S. surface fleet.

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Part of the U.S. mission was to be prepared, and in position, to destroy Soviet submarines, particularly ones with nuclear missiles aimed at U.S. cities. It was an arduous and dangerous job, cloaked in such secrecy that American submariners were not allowed to tell their families the details of their work.

“In those days you really didn’t know if you were going to war the next day,” said Ellis. “You didn’t know when that Russian sub you were tracking would turn around and shoot you.”

Sixty percent of Russian submarines are rusting at pier-side, not fit to sail. Still, Russia continues to build new and improved submarines for themselves and for sale.

And Russian subs continue to venture to the West Coast to snoop on the movements of the U.S. Navy.

The Chinese, as part of a rapid overall buildup of their People’s Liberation Army Navy, are buying submarines and building their own and are using them to menace Taiwan, whose security the United States is pledged to protect.

“The development of nuclear-powered submarines is the chief objective of this century,” Chinese Adm. Zhang Lianzhoung has said. Those nuclear-powered subs also will carry nuclear ballistic missiles, able to strike 4,000 miles away.

Last year, when China sought to intimidate Taiwan, it conducted live-fire exercises from shore and sent submarines into the Taiwan Strait to show how easily it could blockade that island nation. China backed down only after President Clinton ordered two battle groups, including subs, into the region.

The North Koreans are adding subs, both full-sized and so-called midgets, raising fears that they are planning a blockade or invasion of South Korea. A North Korean submarine became stuck on the rugged South Korean coast a year ago while trying to recover a reconnaissance team put ashore several days earlier.

Iran’s navy has purchased three ultramodern Russian submarines, with the goal of dominating the Strait of Hormuz, through which tankers carrying much of the world’s oil supply must pass.

“Submarines will allow the consolidation of Iranian naval superiority in the entire Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” Iranian Adm. Shamkani has vowed.

Earlier this month, when Secretary of Defense William Cohen ordered a carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf as a warning to Iran and Iraq, two Hawaii-based attack submarines were included.

Just how the U.S. military should respond to the emergence of new submarine threats--and the continuing, although reduced, threat from the former Soviet Union--is a topic of debate in the Pentagon and Congress.

Add the competing concerns of rival shipbuilding firms in the United States and the debate can be rancorous.

While other nations are acquiring submarines, the U.S. is decreasing its stock--while building improved submarines on the theory that the fleet of the future will be leaner but meaner.

At the height of the military buildup during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the Navy had 100 fast-attack subs armed with conventional weapons. The attack subs are based at San Diego, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Norfolk, Va., and New London, Conn.

The Navy deploys 67 fast-attack submarines. Plans are to winnow down to 50 by 2003, although that number and date are subject to the ebb and flow of politics.

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The Navy also has 18 Trident submarines based at Bangor, Wash., and Kings Bay, Ga., built to carry the nation’s ultimate long-range weapons, nuclear missiles for targets up to 4,000 miles. If the Russians ratify the START II strategic arms treaty, the Navy plans to reduce its Tridents , also known as boomers, to 14.

With fewer attack submarines to deploy, the Navy must decide which missions take priority: training with carrier battle groups; making intelligence-gathering patrols in the near-shore waters of Asia, the Persian Gulf and elsewhere; training with SEALs, or making sorties behind the Kamchatka Peninsula to check on the Russian boomers.

A common theme of recent seagoing fiction is that a rogue nation will use a borrowed, stolen, purchased or leased Russian submarine to strike a bold blow at a U.S. ship with hopes that the psychic shock wave will provoke the public to demand a withdrawal of American forces overseas.

In a recent page-turner by British journalist Patrick Robinson, “Nimitz Class,” a Middle Eastern rogue state uses a Russian submarine to sink an American aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, prompting Navy SEALs to destroy Iran’s subs in retaliation.

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The buzz in U.S. Navy circles is that the latest model diesel-powered Russian submarine may be the quietest submarine ever built.

Whether it is so quiet that U.S. submariners will no longer be able to detect it until it begins sinking ships or destroying cities--known archly as “providing flaming data”--is an imponderable of the post-Cold War world.

Any doubt of the power of modern submarines ended during the 1982 Falklands War. A British sub, whose presence was undetected, easily sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, forcing other Argentine ships to remain in port lest they, too, be sunk.

For U.S. submariners, the future may not hold the same high drama on a daily basis as when they engaged in hide-and-seek chases with the Soviets like those described in Tom Clancy novels. But still there is a job to be done, quietly, efficiently, and with the prospect of little forewarning when a mission could take a deadly earnest turn.

Or as Chief Petty Officer David Cowan, an electrician’s mate on the San Diego-based Salt Lake City, puts it:

“Maybe Ivan isn’t what he used to be, but there are a lot of other guys out there these days we’ve got to watch. We’re the only guys who can do it.”

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Where the Subs Are

Submarines are proliferating around the globe. Here is a list of nations owning diesel-electric submarines and nuclear-powered submarines:

ASIA-PACIFIC: 228

Australia: 8

China: 58

India: 18

Indonesia: 2

Japan: 18

North Korea: 90

South Korea: 20

Pakistan: 8

Singapore: 1

South Africa: 3

Taiwan: 2

MIDDLE EAST / PERSIAN GULF: 35

Algeria: 2

Egypt: 4

Iran: 12

Israel: 6

Libya: 10

Syria: 1

SOUTH AMERICA: 34

Argentina: 4

Brazil: 7

Chile: 4

Colombia: 4

Cuba: 3

Ecuador: 2

Peru: 8

Venezuela: 2

NON-NATO EUROPEAN: 77

Albania: 1

Bulgaria: 2

Croatia: 1 (midget)

Poland: 3

Romania: 1

Former Soviet Union: 59

Sweden: 10

NATO: 91

Canada: 3

Denmark: 5

France: 4

Germany: 19

Greece: 8

Italy: 8

Netherlands: 4

Norway: 12

Portugal: 3

Spain: 8

Turkey: 17

NUCLEAR SUBMARINES: 196

China: 5

France: 10

United Kingdom: 15

Former Soviet Union: 81

United States: 85

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Sources: Jane’s Information Group Limited, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Jane’s All the World’s Fighting Ships