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Crew lauds Georgia’s $1B conversion

ABOARD THE CRUISE-MISSILE SUBMARINE GEORGIA — The crew of this 25-year-old submarine still has some work left in the $1 billion job of converting it from a Cold War deliverer of apocalypse to a weapon in the post-9/11 world. The ship still needs its new combat system, new displays in the control room and — perhaps just as critically, crew members say — its new identity.

In the U.S. sub force, there have long been fast-attack and ballistic-missile subs — and nothing else. Now, with the Georgia’s return to service March 28, the Navy has completed its “new” class of four submarines, their Trident missile tubes excised and replaced with cruise missiles and special-warfare gear. They are first new variety of American submarine in decades.

“We’ve got the fast-attack mission with the Cadillac ride,” said the Georgia’s blue-crew chief of the boat, Command Master Chief (SS) Brett Prince, a veteran of five Ohio-class missile boats. They’re also known as “boomers” or “BNs,” from their Navy designation “SSBN.”

Forget about “mutually assured destruction,” say the Georgia’s sailors. Instead of a blunt instrument for hitting Moscow with 30 megatons, the new Georgia is a 560-foot, 18,700-ton scalpel, designed to send a satellite-guided missile 500 miles inland to kill a single individual, if necessary, and give SEAL operators a smooth ride to work.

The Georgia is in the last year of a three-year overhaul that began in 2005, when the ship entered the yard in Norfolk, Va., to refuel its reactor, get rid of its Tridents and modernize its combat systems. The ship took aboard a small group of reporters March 16 to ride along as the crew conducted final at-sea tests before its ceremony to re-enter the fleet at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga.

This summer, the Georgia will re-enter the shipyard for sonar, combat systems and other upgrades. If all goes as scheduled, the ship will sail for its first deployment in July 2009.

‘The next pages of history’

Crew members fore and aft talked excitedly about the capabilities of their reborn submarine.

Chief Electronics Technician (SS) Mark Nicholas, a veteran of four submarines, said he canceled his retirement when he had the chance to go on his fifth, the Georgia, in its new life as a cruise-missile sub.

“These platforms are the next pages of history,” Nicholas said of the revitalized Ohios, known as SSGNs, or just “GNs,” among the crew.

“The old boomers, the Trident boats? Their era is gone. This is the next generation of the submarine force.”

Nicholas said the biggest change for the typical sailor would be the ability to accomplish missions and see the results — even though most people in the outside world wouldn’t — the same way attack-boat sailors can. The ship will conduct surveillance, send SEALs into the fight and probably launch Tomahawk strikes. That’s a heavy dose of instant gratification compared with the boat’s old mission, when crew members trained to launch nuclear missiles that the world hoped they would never fire.

These new missions will make the crew more cohesive, Nicholas said, with a job satisfaction known today only among attack-boat crews.

“That’s what makes the fast boats better than the Tridents,” he said. “So the GNs will get to have that — the same sense of internal accomplishment.”

And sailors will get that job satisfaction in style, said the Georgia’s skipper, Capt. Brian McIlvaine. Unlike the Navy’s comparatively cramped attack submarines, the Georgia and its sister ships have relatively lush accommodations, including plenty of extra racks and the latest in high-tech toys. Also, the SSGNs won’t have communications blackouts, as on a boomer, when sailors can go a month or more without getting “sailor-mail” messages from home.

“It’s the best you’re going to get in the submarine force,” McIlvaine said.

1 boat, 2 crews, many missions

Life on a GN is a hybrid of the sub service’s two worlds. Unlike an attack boat, wholly owned by a single team of sailors, the Georgia will have blue and gold crews, as it did during the Trident years. Unlike a boomer, built to dive deep and disappear, the Georgia’s crew will have to creep close to shore, loiter in shallow water and play nicer with special-warfare commandos than any of their predecessors.

“It’s definitely a different mind-set,” said the ship’s diving officer, Lt. j.g. Kyle McVay. “Before, we spent all our time hiding, avoiding other ships. Now we’re going towards contacts. Lots of it we’re making up as we go along.”

One potential hurdle is that the Georgia and its sisters weren’t built for delicate handling, and the ships retain the long, flat missile deck that can be harder to manage in shallow waters than the rounded hull of an attack boat.

McIlvaine acknowledged that his ship wasn’t as nimble in the shallows as, for example, a Sturgeon-class attack boat — the cramped-yet-beloved “637s” of yesteryear — but Ohio-class boats can handle themselves well, he said.

The Georgia has a custom ballast and trim control system left over from the days of Trident launches, when the ship needed to be stable when shooting nuclear missiles. That should keep the boat steady even in shallow waters, McIlvaine said.

Another possible obstacle: The ship is to be forward-deployed at the tiny island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, and during operational periods, blue and gold crews will fly on and off the island for their turns sailing it. Perfecting the hand-off when new sailors will make up as much as a third of each oncoming crew will be a challenge, Prince acknowledged. So will keeping qualifications current for the ship’s sailors and its affiliated special operators if the Georgia is to spend 70 percent of its operational periods at sea, as commanders hope.

Making the ship run with two crews is where the Georgia will pull from its boomer heritage, Prince said. He and his gold-crew counterpart will have to give sailors from both crews a sense of ownership over the submarine.

“The job won’t change,” Prince said, “Our job is still making sailors sailors.”

Despite the uncertainties, the Georgia’s crew members seemed more excited than worried. Senior Chief Culinary Specialist Jimmy Nolen said he couldn’t wait to help take the ship on its first mission.

“The submarine force is the only place a grown man can never grow up,” he said, as he helped clean up the crew’s mess the morning after sailors gathered there to watch “Transformers” on DVD.

Lt. Spencer Nordgran, the ship’s weapons officer, said he thought the recycled hulls of the GNs give taxpayers a better value, and the Georgia will offer commanders a highly capable new tool.

“The Navy does not understand yet the capability of this platform. They really don’t. You really have no idea what she can do.”