Just an awesome article about my favorite Submarine Class... The Seawolf!
Submarines are a lot like Batman, they are covered in rubber and are great fighters, but they are gadget toting stealth detectives at their core. Of the Navy’s sub force, there is no boat more capable at sleuthing under the high seas than the heavily modified
Seawolf Class submarine, the USS
Jimmy Carter SSN-23.
The 12,150 ton displacement USS
Jimmy Carter, whose namesake qualified in Submarines during his pre-Presidential naval career, is one of only three
Seawolf Class submarines ever built. The
Seawolfs are relics of the final stages of the Cold War and are the most lethal
ever created. The F-22 Raptors of the sea, they could dive incredibly deep, could haul along at speeds approaching 40 knots, and they were quieter than any other nuclear submarine on the planet. They were also armed with a cache of 50 weapons and wide 660mm torpedo tubes.
Seeing as the first boat was launched during the “peace dividend” years of the 1990s, its $3B price tag was thought to be too high and its ‘blue water’ sub hunting mission was becoming a secondary priority for the US Navy as the majority of Russia’s submarine fleet was rotting next to a pier. Instead, future subs would need to be more multi-role minded
and be more at home in shallow, littoral environments close to shore. As a result, the
Seawolf class was replaced by the smaller, cheaper, and somewhat more flexible
Virginia Class that remains in serial production today.
Regardless of the type’s cancellation, the Navy did receive three
Seawolf Class boats, the
Seawolf,
Connecticut and the
Jimmy Carter. With the Jimmy Carter, the Navy took advantage of the
Seawolf Class’sdeep-diving and ultra-quiet capabilities and created a one-off subclass that would become part of a small but very proud lineage of shadowy American submarines that were highly modified for clandestine surveillance and espionage operations.
The
Jimmy Carter, which was commissioned in 2005
, differs from the standard Seawolf Class submarine via a slew of modifications made during her initial construction. A massive 100 foot long hull extension gives the Jimmy Carter a length only second to the
Ohio Class Submarines (SSBN/SSGN) in US inventory. This extension, called the Multi-Mission Platform, is described as a ‘moon bay’ with an hourglass shaped passage running down the center of it.
This rounded underwater hangar of sorts can hold outsized deep-diving vehicles, unmanned vehicles, custom-built heavy machinery, spools of cable, special forces supplies and craft, deployable sensors and weapons, along with just about anything else you can imagine. Through a lockout chamber system built within the MMP hold, divers, commandos and remotely operated vehicles can be deployed and recovered.
Other modifications to the
Jimmy Carter include a set of precision thrusters, both fore and aft, that allow the sub to hold its position perfectly within space while conducting sensitive mechanical operations or when quietly trawling shallow waters. The
Carter also has a large reconfigurable cargo bay, just off the MMP’s lockout chamber/ocean interface, for servicing vehicles and preparing for clandestine missions.
A modular command center can also be tailored to the specific mission at hand, with different configurations available for special operations, deep sea espionage, mine warfare, specialized sensor or
deployment and just about any other mission you can think of.
The
Jimmy Carter’s mast can be easily adapted to sport unique, purpose-built electronic surveillance and communications sensors. There is also said to be a remotely operated vehicle handling system that may feature the ability to recover autonomous vehicles and even aerial drones with limited human direction.
Finally, SSN-23 can accommodate an extra 50 commandos or mission personnel above the standard crew size of about 130. Instead of sleeping in the torpedo room or other improvised areas as is common for special operations soldiers aboard submarines, this berthing was built into the original ship’s design, making long endurance deployments more palatable.
Because the hull was lengthened 100 feet to accommodate many of the
Jimmy Carter’s additional capabilities, the boat did not have to give up the baseline
Seawolf Class
and strike abilities. This means the vessel can protect itself in hostile waters or be tasked for traditional fast attack submarine duties, although it seems like this may be a fairly rare occurrence.
So what does the
Jimmy Carter do with all its modifications? Like its USS
Halibut, USS
Seawolf, USS
Richard Russell and USS
Parche, which were modified ‘special mission’ subs that came before it, the
Jimmy Carter conducts espionage, and could even conduct sabotage, in a variety of manners.
Its ability to hold perfectly on station at great depths, all while deploying custom built ROVs and other elaborate hardware, allows it to tap communications and data cables running along the sea floor. In the past, this was done by splicing in tailor made recording devices, leaving them for a period of time, and recovering them at a later date for exploitation. Today, in an age of fiber optics, more exotic forms of real-time seabed-based communication eavesdropping could theoretically be facilitated by the
Jimmy Carter, with the NSA rumored to one of the boat’s biggest ‘customers.’
Tapping the world’s massive underwater arteries of data is one thing, but the
Carter could also be able to sabotage communications nodes via simply cutting through the wire with large claws or torches, or by setting up mechanisms that could do similar tasks on command sometime in the future, should the need arise. Much of this technology has been pioneered in the deep sea oil drilling field (think
), which can be adapted and used ‘off label’ for military purposes. Such an ability could partially blind the enemy and limit their global situational awareness and command and control capabilities during a time of war without actually ‘kinetically’
in a traditional sense.
The Carter can also use its underwater manipulation abilities and sensors to find things that foreign governments have lost. Not only can it examine those things up close on the sea floor, but if they are within the dimensions of the sub’s MMP bays, it can recover them and transport them to a safe place for further examination.
The
Jimmy Carter can also perform passive signals and communications intelligence missions via moving in close to a country’s shoreline and utilizing its easily customizable
. This can be as focused as searching for a single cellular phone transmission in a city, to soaking up an enemy’s electronic order of battle, including air and sea defense radar emissions and command and control communications and data exchanges.
Although all fast attack and guided missile submarines have these capabilities to varying degrees, the
Carter’s modular mission center and adaptable systems allow for the installation of new, experimental sensors and command and control interfaces without heavily interrupting the boat’s normal operations or demanding long in-port modification timelines.
Not enough space for whole article go check the rest of it out.
I wish that I would have never known this. Some things I wish it was kept secret. Except it doesn't tell the enemy much. But let's them know it's there. And also hope it makes them worried about the shit that they don't tell us about.
