EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of two articles examining the U.S. Navy's 10-year effort to create a new rescue system for submariners trapped beneath the ocean. A second article on the role played by the Navy Experimental Diving Unit in Panama City Beach will appear in the paper on Monday.

It was a submariner's worst nightmare - trapped on the ocean floor in a disabled submarine with no safe way out. The air was going bad and the battery-powered emergency lights were beginning to fade.

Nearly 15 hours after the collision that had sent them plunging 140 feet down to the bottom came word that a U.S. Navy rescue attempt - with high-tech gear capable of reaching them and bringing them safely back to the surface - had been canceled. This was no Hollywood movie. The sinking of the Peruvian diesel submarine BAP Pacocha on Aug. 26, 1988, and the deeply flawed rescue attempt that followed became a case study carefully reviewed by U.S. Navy officials in the years that followed.

About 20 years later - after 10 years and nearly $100 million in research and engineering costs - the U.S. Navy is preparing to unveil a dramatically improved submarine rescue system that can reach a stranded submerged submarine at any point in the world within 72 hours after the alert goes out.

The enhanced rescue capabilities in this new system derive from "lessons learned" from a handful of actual submarine emergencies, including that of the Pacocha, officials said.

The Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System, or SRDRS, has been under development by the Naval Sea Systems Command and a group of private contractors since the mid-1990s, aimed at replacing obsolescent rescue systems that have been in service for nearly 40 years, officials said. The system is scheduled to become provisionally operational in late 2006 with full operational capability in 2007.

"The new submarine rescue system is in its final end-state" of development, said Capt. Thomas Eccles, program manager for the Navy's Advanced Undersea Systems Office, in a recent telephone interview. "Our system will bring a new capability to the U.S. Navy."

Two organizations at Naval Support Activity-Panama City played primary supporting roles in developing the SRDRS. The Navy Experimental Diving Unit conducted engineering and medical research support for the project, including extended manned diving experiments at its massive Ocean Simulation Facility chamber.

In addition, the Naval Surface Warfare Center (then known as the Coastal Systems Station) helped with designing several SRDRS components and carried out important materials tests.

Prime contractor for the SRDRS is Phoenix International Inc., with a team of subcontractors including Ocean-Works International Inc., Perot Systems-Government Services Inc. and Resource Consultants Inc.

The Navy and its contracting team followed a congressional mandate to improve the service's submarine rescue capability, said Cmdr. Gary W. Latson, senior medical officer at the Navy Experimental Diving Unit. "They (Congress) said you will have a capability to rescue sunken submariners and perform submarine rescues."

Researchers and engineers designed the SRDRS around a worst-case scenario that mirrors the Pacocha incident, officials said: A submarine has suffered an accident or malfunction and is stranded on the ocean floor at a depth that exceeds the point where its crew can escape using freeswimming breathing devices to reach the surface; however, the submarine hull itself is sufficiently intact that some or all of the crew remain alive.

The Pacocha was on the surface and returning to its home port in Callao, Peru, when it was rammed by a Japanese fishing trawler. Water poured in through several open hatches and the sub sank in 140 feet of water in less than five minutes, according to an analysis of the incident by U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jay C. Sourbeer, a medical officer assigned to Submarine Development Squadron 5, which operates the service's deep submergence and submarine rescue systems.

While 23 of the sub's 49-man crew were able to escape before the sub went down, four sailors drowned and another 22 were trapped in the forward compartment, which did not flood. Over the next 12 hours, Peruvian navy divers reached the sub and established communications to those trapped inside, but their service did not possess diving chambers or other means to extricate survivors. Ultimately, the crewmen were forced to exit the sub through the escape trunk and free-swim to the surface using flotation vests with hoods or scuba gear left behind by the divers.

A fundamental assumption driving the new rescue system design is that surviving crewmen inside the stranded sub will be experiencing significantly elevated atmospheric pressure, Latson said. This new factor was added based on several real-world incidents involving submarines, including the Pacocha.

"If a submarine goes down, we think that it will become internally pressurized," Latson explained. "From partial flooding, which will compress the internal air mass, or if the sub's crew uses its emergency breathing apparatus, which draws air from a pressurized air bank but then releases it into the submarine."

In that situation, the submariners - like Navy divers - are vulnerable to decompression sickness because of the excess nitrogen gas that has absorbed into their body tissues from the higher air pressure, Latson said.

Of the 22 Pacocha survivors, 20 sustained severe decompression illness as a result of having to swim for the surface, Sourbeer wrote. One suffered permanent brain damage and another later died.

"The key to this (safe recovery) is to prevent decompression sickness by allowing transfer under pressure," Latson explained. "That allows for proper decompression."

As planned, SRDRS will consist of three major components:

The Assessment Underwater Work System, or AUWS, a self-contained atmospheric diving suit that can be lowered by a cable as far as 2,000 feet where its "pilot" can perform initial surveillance and rescue tasks. The tasks can range from ensuring the sub's escape hatch is undamaged to driving a hollow-bolt device through the hull that can enable the diver to measure the internal air situation without causing more flooding.

The Navy already has acquired one of four hard suits, called HS2000, it plans to purchase from the contractor, OceanWorks International Corporation of Vancouver, British Columbia.

A pair of transportable Surface Decompression System chambers that can be quickly flown to a port of embarkation and mounted on the deck of a Navy warship or commercial vessel. The chambers, which can hold up to 62 people at once, enable the rescued submariners to avoid potentially fatal decompression sickness by purging nitrogen gas from their body tissues once rescued.

A manned, tethered remote-operated Pressurized Rescue Module, or PRM, launched from a rescue ship will be able to latch onto a stranded submarine as far as 2,000 feet down and retrieve as many as 16 crewmen at a time using a mating hatch that connects with the submarine's access hatch. A separate flexible, pressurized tunnel is being developed to allow rescuees to pass directly from the PRM to decompression chambers while still "under pressure" once they are brought up to the rescue ship.

The system has been designed and engineered to overcome a number of limitations in the Navy's outgoing rescue system. For the past 35 years, the Navy has relied on two deep submergence rescue vehicles, or DSRVs, and cablehoisted submarine rescue chambers to pick up rescuees and deliver them either to "mother" submarines or surface rescue ships. Unlike the deep submergence rescue vehicles, which could mate to only six of the Navy's 55 attack submarines or two specialized submarine rescue ships, the new system can operate from the deck of any commercial ship.

The SRDRS is designed to be air-transportable from the Navy's Deep Submergence Unit headquarters in San Diego to any airport in the world that can handle either a C-5 or C-17 military transport aircraft, Eccles said.

"The real interesting thing is that we are designing this to fit on a family of ... civilian ships," Eccles said. The Navy has been surveying the current fleet of deep-ocean cargo ships "so we can put our hands on a vessel that we already understand" with minimum delay in response, he added.

Moreover, the deep-diving PRM is designed with a rotatable collar that will enable it to attach to a steeply-tilted submarine hull. The current DSRV design cannot mate to a hatch that is at an angle greater than 5 degrees, he said.

The Navy is also conferring closely with its allies and other navies to ensure the system will work on other subs, Eccles said.

"We are working very hard to determine what systems we can put in place for cooperation at a greater level than we ever did before," he said.

Latson conceded that a lot of time and money has been invested into a rescue system for a type of naval mishap that rarely occurs.

"Even though it is an enormous amount of money for an unlikely scenario and relatively few lives," Latson said, "I believe that we do have the moral obligation to have at least a reasonable capability to rescue our young men in event of a submarine disaster."

Back to Top

Congress Backs DD(X), Littoral Ship

By Christopher Castelli, INSIDE DEFENSE.COM 27 DEC 05

Although Congress threatened big cuts to the Navy's DD(X) destroyer earlier this year, the program emerged from budget talks relatively unscathed last week. In another victory for the sea service, appropriators and authorizers added $440 million for two more Littoral Combat Ships.

Lawmakers finalized conference agreements on two related pieces of Legislation -- the fiscal year 2006 defense appropriations and authorization bills -- that will shape the Pentagon's budget.

House and Senate appropriators agreed to fully fund the DD(X) program, including $716 million in advance procurement and $1.1 billion in research and development. That decision, which ensures the program will continue, caps year during which DD(X) faced intense scrutiny. But lately things have been looking up for the program.

Congress' decision to support the program was foreshadowed by the Defense Department's declaration, shortly before Thanksgiving, that DOD would approve the start of the next phase of the destroyer's development.

Though House and Senate authorizers formally agreed last week to impose a $2.3 billion cost cap on the fifth ship in the DD(X) class, this is not as harsh as the cost limit House authorizers proposed earlier this year.

Authorizers prohibited the Navy from pursuing a winner-take-all acquisition strategy that would lead to only one yard building the entire class, but this is no surprise given Congress' previous statements on the issue. House and Senate authorizers added $50 million for advance procurement of the second DD(X) vessel at a second shipyard, but that extra funding was not appropriated.

The Navy will be required to assemble a report on the efficiency of the naval shipbuilding industry, according to a provision in the defense authorization conference agreement. For this study, the Navy secretary will assess the U.S. shipbuilding industry to determine how worldwide shipbuilding best practices for innovation, processes and infrastructure may be adopted to improve efficiency in program design, engineering and production engineering, organization and operating systems, steelwork production and ship construction and outfitting.

In addition, the appropriations conference report directs the Navy to submit a plan to address shipbuilding cost growth. “The conferees are concerned over the unanticipated cost growth on existing Navy shipbuilding contracts, and agree that the plan directed by the House on this subject is to include details on the cost growth for all existing shipbuilding and conversion efforts,” the report states. This plan, which is due to Congress by Feb. 1, 2006, is

supposed to make recommendations on the mechanisms to resolve the cost growth, including the option of converting the remaining work to fixed-price contracts.

Senate appropriators in the conference process did not agree to go along with a House proposal to urge the Navy to reconsider spreading the funding for the LHA(R) amphibious assault ship over two years rather than one (a tactic called split funding). But the conferees agreed to consider either split funding or full funding for the ship, whichever is proposed by the administration.

Appropriations conferees also agreed to require the Navy to submit a report on LCS mission modules; the document is supposed to include cost estimates for these modules by fiscal year.

The DD(X) destroyer is not the only shipbuilding program facing cost limits imposed by Congress. Authorizers imposed caps for the Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarine. Their conference agreement establishes cost caps on the subs at the current contract ceilings for several vessels: SSN-779, $2.33 billion; SSN-780, $2.47 billion; SSN-781, $2.55 billion; SSN-782, $2.67 billion; and SSN-783, $2.72 billion.

Significantly, authorizers agreed to require the Navy to begin a program to design and develop a next-generation submarine that would be a successor to the Virginia-class boats. The goal is to develop a sub with capabilities

meeting or exceeding those of the Virginia class, but at a lower cost.

Further, authorizers capped the cost of the fifth and sixth LCS vessels (without mission packages) at $220 million.

Authorizers gave the Navy the nod to pursue advance procurement, detail design and construction of the LHA(R) amphibious assault ship to be funded in FY-06 through FY-08, but they are withholding 30 percent of the FY-06 funding until a detailed operational requirements document has been approved by DOD and the Navy certifies the design for LHA(R) is stable. Authorizers also added $50 million for this program.

Back to Top

Navy Extends Time To Comment About Undersea Range

By Gregory Piatt

The Navy is extending the comment period by about a month so the public can write in about the environmental impact of the proposed undersea warfare training range it wants to construct at one of three possible sites on the

East Coast.

The Navy received several requests for extending the comment period about the range's draft environmental impact study during public hearings at the three sites, including one in Jacksonville in November.

Further requests to extend the period, which ended Wednesday, were made in written comments, the Navy said. By extending the comment period to Monday, Jan. 30, the Navy has provided a 90-day window to provide comments about the range, which would be used by the Atlantic Fleet's anti-submarine warfare forces.

"We appreciate the public's continuing interest in the environmental analyses for the proposed training range," the Navy's Fleet Forces Command said. "The total 3-month comment period is a substantial increase over the 45 days required under the National Environmental Policy Act process."

The Navy is looking at sites about 50 miles off the coasts of North Carolina, Virginia or Jacksonville to place the range, which would train sailors in sonar techniques. The North Carolina site is the Navy's preferred site, with

Jacksonville and Virginia as alternates. The Navy needs to train sailors in sonar to detect ultra-quiet diesel submarines being used by nations like China.

Environmental groups are opposed to the Navy's construction of the Atlantic range because they say a powerful active sonar used during training could potentially injure or kill North Atlantic right whales and dolphins.

In October, the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, filed a lawsuit against the Navy alleging that the use of active sonar harms marine mammals.

Carol Cromwell-Ierna, a First Coast animal rights activist for the past 15 years, called the comment period extension "lip-service." She said the Navy needs a panel of marine mammal experts to consult with, instead of extending the

comment period.

Public officials from the First Coast and Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were not at the Jacksonville public hearing to express any concern over the range, Cromwell-Ierna said.

"We need more voices to be heard," she said. "While the Navy might have good intentions of extending the comments, it is just a safety net so they can say 'we gave a lot of time to comment,' but they will eventually do what

they want to do."

Back to Top

Missing view port muddies long-held theory of Hunley's disappearance

By JOHN C. DRAKE, Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Scientists chipping away the hard layer of mud that covers the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley have discovered that a view port on the front of the vessel is missing.

If no pieces of the view port are found in the ship, then it is possible the tower was knocked off when the sub sank. That would conflict with the prevailing theory that the tower was blown in by an enemy warship, causing the Hunley to fill with water.

As scientists break away the concretion covering the Hunley, they are finding clues that they hope will explain why the historic vessel disappeared right after it became the first submarine ever to sink an enemy warship in 1864.

"Any damage to those viewports could have been fatal to the Hunley," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston and chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission. "What is significant therefore about the find is that we don't find a damaged viewport, we find one completely missing."

Other evidence uncovered in the restoration process indicates that the crew of the Union's Housatonic may have spotted the Hunley because the glow of lights likely seeped through the view port on the front conning tower.

Unlike other deadlights running along the top of the submarine, the lights on the conning tower did not have covers to block the glow of candles.

Records indicate that the Hunley was spotted and fired on moments before its crew shot a torpedo at the Housatonic.

The new clues are heightening interest in what is hidden behind a century of packed mud in other parts of the ship.

"It makes now more important than ever to examine the front tower and hatch and determine if the hatch was in fact completely fastened or was injured by potentially the damage from the front eyepiece," McConnell said.

He said with the removal of the concretion, the Hunley Commission could begin to see "a discovery a month."

The slow process of removing the material is just about 5 percent complete, he said. Given the pace, he said scientists are probably 10 to 12 months away from uncovering the mystery of why the Hunley failed to return after its mission.

Archaeologists hope to finish the restoration by 2009.

The sub was discovered off the South Carolina coast a decade ago and raised in 2000. The remains of the Hunley's eight-man crew were buried last year in a Charleston ceremony.

Back to Top

Not standing on guard in the North

Toronto Star, Dec. 29, 2005. 01:00 AM

The desire of other nations to stake claims on the melting Arctic threatens Canada's sovereignty, and we don't have the luxury of time to fend off the threat, not with the unpredictability of global warming.

We don't know what mineral riches exist in our Far North. Frigid conditions and long months of darkness have kept secret much of what's buried under permafrost and icy water. But we know there are diamonds under Nunavut and oil under Alaska. The Northwest Passage between Canadian islands has been an adventure for daredevils and icebreakers, but a warmer planet could turn those channels into a 21st-century Panama Canal, shaving days off an Asia-to-Europe voyage.

If Canada is to benefit, it must demonstrate that the Far North is, in fact, Canadian. Just now, we aren't doing that.

Last week the Americans told the world that one of their submarines, the USS Charlotte, recently passed under the Arctic ice cap and surfaced at the North Pole.

It's theoretically possible the Charlotte didn't float through Canadian waters without permission, but improbable. Canadian authorities have not rushed to declare that the Charlotte's skipper radioed in to ask whether he could pass through our territory.

If he didn't, and we didn't even know he had passed through until the U.S. told us, our claim to control our North is weakened. Control is nine-tenths of international law.

The Charlotte could pass under the ice cap because it's a nuclear-powered submarine that almost never needs to surface. Even Canada's newest submarines, the troubled diesel-electric models we bought from Britain, have only the most limited under-ice capability.

Our navy's surface ships have hulls so thin they can only risk Arctic waters in summer (unlike Danish ships, which that country can use to visit contested Hans Island any time of year). Our land forces in the Far North are normally limited to local "rangers" who get 10 days of training.

To deal with the Soviets, we relied on the promise of a ferocious U.S. response to any kind of attack over the pole. Since the Soviet Union broke up, we've relied on the proposition that nobody else particularly wanted any of Canada's northern territory.

That's changing now, and it's our formerly close allies who are our biggest problem. They'll challenge us in tiny, apparently meaningless ways - as the Danes do on Hans Island, and the Americans have with the Charlotte's uncertain route - until one day we'll find a foreign convoy, carrying oil-exploration gear, tracing a warm line past Victoria Island, and all we'll be able to do is stamp our snowshoes.

As politicians chart possible courses for Canada's future, the North must be added to each itinerary: Canada's territorial integrity is at stake.

This is an edited version of an editorial that appeared in the Vancouver Sun.

Back to Top

Russian space agency learned from failed launches

[December 28, 2005]

(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MOSCOW. Dec 27 (Interfax) - Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov told the press on Tuesday that his agency has learned its lessons from the failures in 2005.

"We have admitted that some of the launches had not been properly prepared," he said.

Perminov attributed the European Cryosat satellite loss in a bungled launch from Plesetsk cosmodrome with a Kosmos-3M launch vehicle to human error.

"The flight trajectory had been erroneously calculated by the Khrunichev space center and the Kharkiv-based Khatron plant. The failure had nothing to do with the hardware, the equipment performed properly," Perminov said.

Perminov accounted the failure in the launch of Solnechny Parus (Sun Sail) satellite from a Northern Fleet submarine on the fact that the submarine-launched ballistic missile had been kept too long in storage.

"I find it inexpedient to use such systems for launching satellites," he said.

Perminov said the United States never uses strategic missiles for space launches. "Probably that's right," he said.

Perminov blamed the use of ballistic missiles on an attempt to save funds at the stage of testing.

Perminov said the reasons for the failed launch of the Kosmos-3K military satellite were technical.

Perminov said the military have drawn the right conclusions from that and will be more careful in checking the equipment.

Back to Top

China's New 'Peace Offensive'

EDITORIAL – China has launched a public-relations offensive. The publication of a white paper on the country's "peaceful development" is designed to quiet concerns about China's growing affluence and how

Beijing intends to use the influence that it wields. It is a difficult assignment. China may be assured of its own good intentions; its neighbors are not. Chinese behavior raises questions that Beijing must address.

Engagement with neighbors, partners, friends and even potential adversaries is the only real solution to the unease surrounding China's intentions.

Last week, Foreign Minister Taro Aso noted that China "possesses nuclear arms, its military budget has seen double-digit growth for the past 17 years and its content is not transparent." A growing missile force, the pursuit of a blue-water navy, the modernization of its submarines and an increasingly belligerent stance over territorial conflicts with Japan all add to his concern. Mr. Aso is not sure why China is taking these steps given the seeming lack of direct threats to it and concluded that China "is starting to become a considerable threat." Those thoughts were echoed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, and even Mr. Seiji Maehara, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, has admitted that he is troubled by China's growing military capabilities.

Japan is not the only country worried about China's defense modernization efforts. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld raised similar questions last summer in a speech in Singapore. A Pentagon report on the Chinese military amplified them when it was published shortly thereafter. Security planners throughout the region have kept a close eye on China's military, calling on Beijing to provide more information about its military spending, its plans and its views of the world.

China has not been deaf to those pleas. The Chinese leadership understands that rising powers have historically disrupted international relations. In response, they have provided assurances of China's good intentions. At every opportunity, Chinese leaders and scholars acknowledge that China has learned the lessons of the past, assert that China's rise must be peaceful, and deny any intention of dominating the region or pressing its advantage in regional councils. They continually repeat the five principles they say have constituted Beijing's foreign policy since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, including peaceful coexistence, mutual respect for territorial

sovereignty, and mutual noninterference in internal affairs. They stress that these principles will prevent any hegemonic designs by Beijing.

"China's Peaceful Development Road," a new white paper published by the State Council, is the latest effort to make that case. It claims that "China's road of peaceful development is the inevitable way for China to achieve modernization, and a serious choice and solemn promise made by the Chinese government and the Chinese people." It argues, quite rightly, that China cannot afford to be a disruptive force: China needs a peaceful and stable international environment so that it can pursue the economic development that is the springboard for its emergence as a great power -- and the basis of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy.

The white paper astutely notes that the rest of the world has enjoyed considerable benefits from China's growth. From December 2001 to September 2005, China imported $500 billion worth of commodities annually, which created 10 million jobs for the countries and regions concerned. By 2010, the total is expected to top $1 trillion. The white paper also highlights China's behavior. China has joined more than 130 international organizations, is committed to 267 international multilateral treaties and cooperates internationally in fields ranging from arms control to wildlife protection. It has settled boundary disputes with virtually all its neighbors; Japan is a notable exception.

The logic of the Chinese position is unassailable: China needs a peaceful international environment if it is to develop. But two questions still hang over its long-term plans. First, how will Beijing use its power and influence when it has two more decades of growth under its belt? Second, and more troubling in the short-term, what about Taiwan? There is no mention in the white paper of the island that Beijing considers a "renegade province," and China has insisted that it will use force to prevent Taipei from declaring independence. Since Taiwan is the most likely cause of conflict, the silence undermines Chinese assurances.

Ultimately, words alone will not provide the confidence building that is required. Dismissing concerns out of hand or merely repeating "the inevitability of the country's peaceful development" does not help China's cause. China must better engage concerned countries in strategic dialogue and embrace transparency to inspire more confidence in its intentions.

Back to Top