The Navy should move quickly to determine its requirements for a future long strike weapon to replace the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) as the venerable system may not meet the service’s needs a decade or so from now, Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, the director of Submarine Warfare (N87), said recently.
“The TLAM is a phenomenal missile and its perfect for today–and no real criticisms of that,” Bruner said at the Naval Submarine League Symposium. “But I have a hard time believing that is the missile we’re going to want and need in 2025.”
“We have to jump on it and jump on it now,” he added during an overview of undersea programs and future needs at the first of the two-day symposium.
Bruner said his top priorities for the undersea fleet as the Pentagon faces budget cuts is to protect the replacement program for the 14 Ohio-class SSBNs, the Virginia-class (SSN-774) attack sub and its payload modules.
It was too early to determine if the late 2020s timeframe for the next generation of ballistic missile submarines and current plans to build 12 of them will stay in place, but there is strong support for the Ohio-class replacement program, Bruner said.
“There’s no question that Ohio replacement is going to happen,” he said.
Bruner said he has begun looking at the possibility of stretching the hull for the Virginia-class to add four additional tubes. The concept would effectively merge the SSN-SSGN mission and would offset the expected retirement in the mid-2020s of the four Ohio-class subs (SSGNs) that were converted over the last decade from ballistic missile subs to attack vessels. The SSGNs can carry up to 154 TLAMS–more conventional fire power than any other platform.
The value of that firepower was demonstrated for the first time in combat in March, when the USS Florida (SSGN-728) was deployed off the Libyan coast and accounted for about half of the Tomahawks fired during the initial stages of Operation Odyssey Dawn, Bruner said.
“We need the capacity for whatever those weapons are and that’s the Virginia payload module,” he said.
Additional tubes on the Virginia ships could also carry UUVs, he said.
Bruner called for restarting production of the Advanced Capabilities torpedo (ADCAP). “We need ADCAPs, more ADCAPs,” he said.
Bruner also said he envisions developing a modular torpedo, an ADCAP that would allow warfighters to swap fuel tanks or warheads depending on the mission, or even install a system for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) instead of a weapon.
“This is where we need to go,” he said. “And right now this has my full attention because we actually can get into this pretty quickly–but it costs money.”