As it plans, Navy looks across Pacific - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

As it plans, Navy looks across Pacific

NAVAL BASE POINT LOMA, Calif. — Adm. Gary Roughead joined other top Navy officials and military leaders this month in commissioning the ballistic submarine Hawaii into the fleet, an event close to the heart of the seasoned naval officer.

Submarine warfare remains a top war-fighting priority for Roughead, who during his tenure as the Pacific Fleet commander has expanded and shifted naval forces in the vast region. The threats to U.S. forces weigh heavily on his mind, he said, as he’s seen a troubling trend in the proliferation of quiet modern submarines, whether obtained by terrorist groups or established navies such as those of China and Iran.

“Countries in the region are acquiring submarines,” said Roughead, interviewed May 3 at 3rd Fleet headquarters at Point Loma. “They’re very capable, and they’re quiet, and they’re small. They are able to stay underwater for longer periods of time.

“You no longer have to be able to build them in your own country. You can go out and purchase very high-end diesel powered submarines that are quiet and very difficult to detect,” he said. “Submarines are a very effective weapon. They are, in my opinion, the most disruptive weapon to use with regard to trade and commerce because of the uncertainties that they pose, so my priority has been on constantly training and seeking new ways to become more effective and more dominant in antisubmarine warfare.”

Key to countering that threat is the Hawaii, the Navy’s newest Virginia-class submarine, one that’s “ideally suited to not only the traditional submarine missions ... but also its ability to operate effectively across a range of regions and operations,” he said. “It’s going to be a significant part of our fleet well into the future.”

Roughead’s return to his office in Hawaii is a short one: On May 8, he was to turn over Pacific Fleet to Adm. Robert F. Willard and move to Norfolk, Va., where he will assume command of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

“Antisubmarine warfare remains something that I have focused on very heavily, and when I move to Fleet Forces Command, that priority is not going to change,” he said.

The Pacific Fleet recently wrapped up a two-year experiment training with the Swedish submarine Gotland, a diesel-electric boat with ultra-quiet air independent propulsion, designed to train and challenge the fleet, find vulnerabilities and develop new tactics and capabilities to counter the modern diesel threat.

“Our focus now is to work closely with our friends in the region and to work cooperatively with them and their diesel submarines,” Roughead said. The Gotland “has been tremendously beneficial.”

The fleet will train more closely with regional partners in South American navies as well as Japan, Korea, Australia and other naval forces in the Western Pacific, with a focus on the small diesel submarine, he said.

Small diesel boats could easily threaten not just the U.S. fleet and allies but disrupt global economies that rely on secure sea lanes in the Pacific region, such as the Straits of Malacca near Indonesia. The busy narrows bears a large and growing U.S.-Asia trade traffic and all of the petroleum flowing from the Middle East to Asian nations. “That’s what is feeding Asia’s economies,” he noted. “If there’s a disruption of that, our way of life changes dramatically and our prosperity and our economy is affected dramatically.”

Pacific power

With continuing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and maritime operations in the Persian Gulf region, naval power remains strong in the Pacific, where more ships and other naval forces have operated in the last two years than at any other time since the Vietnam War.

“We were called upon, and we were ready, when the North Koreans fired the ballistic missile,” Roughead said. “We had the ballistic missile capability there ready to support that.”

Pacific Fleet will have more interaction and exercises with allied navies, including Japan and Korea, he said. The Vigilant Shield exercise, which included three aircraft carriers in the Pacific, will be repeated this year with a larger exercise near Guam. Last year’s recent humanitarian deployment of the hospital ship Mercy to Southeast Asia will be followed this year by a similar deployment by the amphibious assault ship Peleliu, based in San Diego.

Navy officials are in the process of realigning the fleet and beefing up the combat power and reach — by air and by sea — across the Pacific.

“Equally important,” Roughead noted, is how the Navy’s Fleet Response Plan of maintaining operational readiness and surge capabilities “has allowed us to have more combat power ready on shorter notice than we ever had done before.”

A recent example is the surge deployment of the carrier Ronald Reagan to Japan earlier this year, so the carrier John C. Stennis could surge to the Persian Gulf. “Six years ago, we could not have done that,” he said. “We weren’t trained, we weren’t outfitted, and we weren’t operationally structured” to surge a carrier to support a requirement.

Reagan “came over, didn’t miss a beat,” he added. “We showed that even though we moved one of our carriers into the Middle East, we backfilled it quickly.”

Next year, the nuclear carrier George Washington will leave its East Coast home for a new permanent berth in Japan, replacing the Yokosuka-based Kitty Hawk, the Navy’s last conventional aircraft carrier in service. The Japan-based carrier air wing will shift from Atsugi to Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station. The carrier Carl Vinson will move to San Diego. “We now have the majority of our carriers in the Pacific,” Roughead said.

Roughead said officials are working on the placement of forces in the Pacific, but Hawaii and Guam will maintain critical naval presence. Hawaii has a key Navy shipyard and remains a critical node and forward base for ships, submarines and maritime patrol aircraft. The Navy is putting more submarines in Guam, which will also absorb 8,000 Marines who will relocate from Japan.

Guam “is going to figure into the Pacific Navy heavily,” he said. With the Marines’ moves, “we are looking at Apra Harbor,” the Navy’s main port and shore support in the Marianas. He envisions that Guam will support swapping of Littoral Combat Ship crews and mission modules; amphibious ships carrying Marines; and training in Guam and nearby islands.

“I see Guam as a place where the Navy and Marine Corps can move rapidly throughout the western Pacific,” he said, adding, “It’s going to become very important to us strategically.”

What’s ahead

Roughead, sitting in a conference room with a view overlooking the vast Pacific, also discussed several other subjects:

* The future fleet: The Navy’s shipbuilding plan “focuses on the capabilities that we need,” Roughead said. And that includes the LCS, an adaptable platform that’s suffered from bloated costs but which will bolster the fleet. “We need those ships. We need the LCS,” Roughead said, “but we need them in numbers that, if we could not control the cost, we would not be able to get.”

LCS “is going to be key to our operations. It has speed. It has very flexible capability,” he said. He sees it as a future “workhorse” in antisubmarine and mine warfare.

* Mine influences: Mines remain serious threats to the fleet, Roughead said, noting that “You don’t even have to put them in the water” to create fear that a waterway is mined. With the ongoing realignment of Mine Warfare and Antisubmarine Warfare commands in San Diego, “we continue to work the mine problem,” he said.

* Training and the environment: Roughead said the Navy can train the fleet, including at planned expanded sea ranges for antisubmarine warfare, without harming the environment and marine mammals, despite the criticisms from environmental and conservation groups. “I am very confident that when we go out, we are not doing harm and are still able to train our people in what is becoming an increasingly difficult area of warfare,” he said.