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Trident force reaches milestone

ABOARD THE BALLISTIC-MISSILE SUBMARINE MARYLAND — This may be the deadliest machine ever created, but thanks to this submarine’s schedule, the sailors inside it make some of the Navy’s best family men.

The regularity of the duty means there are no surge deployments or too many extended cruises for ballistic-missile submarine sailors. They and their families know when they will leave and come home.

Unlike a carrier crew that deploys for six months at a time, Trident submarine crews rotate between three months at sea and three months ashore. For this, they give up exotic ports of call, regular e-mails and phone calls — even sunlight and fresh air.

Navy Times spent three days on the submarine Maryland off the East Coast in late February as part of the Trident force’s celebration of 1,000 deterrent patrols. The visit provided a rare glimpse into the secretive and select community of men under the waves.

Ask the Trident submariners what they talk about the most — what’s most important to them — and they repeatedly come back to the same group of people, both ashore and at sea.

“Family,” said Master Chief Electronics Technician (SS) Michael McLauchlan, chief of the boat for the Maryland Gold Crew.

“It seems like a family,” said Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Ryan Bravo, a new member of the Rhode Island Blue Crew. “There are different divisions, but in the end it’s one ship.”

Submariners consider themselves a brotherhood, and the newest members feel it.

“I grew up with my grandparents, so any place that feels like family is great,” said Sonar Technician 3rd Class (SS) Robert Mendez.

Still, life as a ballistic-missile submariner is nothing like the surface Navy experience. It’s even different from the attack submarine community, which has minimum six-month deployments and regular port visits. Without access to the outside world for weeks at a time, things like tacos, which tell you it’s Tuesday, become points of reference.

“It’s like a time machine. After awhile you get so used to the routine. You write home, but there’s not much to write about because everything is so routine,” said Electronics Technician 1st Class (SS) Jeremy Wrentz, a Maryland Gold Crew sailor. “When you get mail from home, you want to know what’s going on, because we don’t get the news every day.”

For the crew, daily life on a patrol means a three-section watch, or in rare cases, port and starboard watches. Once on station, the submarine must remain undetected, so it runs slowly and quietly.

The average age on the Maryland is 23, and more than half are on their first enlistment. Its normal manning calls for 15 officers, 18 chiefs, 121 enlisted and an independent-duty corpsman. The submarines almost always go to sea with riders, often inspectors or sailors from other crews working on qualifications.

The crews are highly trained and well-paid, with retention bonuses for some nuclear-qualified sailors reaching six figures.

Compared to those on a fast-attack submarine, living quarters on a Trident sub are luxurious, with nine-man enlisted berthing areas and no need for hot-racking. They go on patrol with up to 90 days’ worth of frozen and dry food. The fresh food is usually gone within a week. The Maryland has a popular gym with two treadmills, two stationary bikes, a rowing machine, a weight machine, a punching bag and free weights.

The Ohio-class subs also represent more than half of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, after the air-launched weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles operated by the Air Force. Boomers end up spending 70 percent of their expected 40-year life spans at sea.

“It’s probably the most complex machine we have next to the space shuttle,” said Master Chief Machinist’s Mate (SS) Korey Ketola, command master chief of the Trident Training Facility at Kings Bay, Ga., and current active-duty holder of the Neptune Award for the most deterrent patrols — in his case, 35 since 1983. “It proves its worth time and time again.”

While life submerged cuts crew members off from the rest of the world, some larger issues do penetrate the hull. Today, only men can serve on submarines, but if the force is ever directed to accept female sailors like most of the rest of the fleet, the 14 ballistic-missile submarines and four guided-missile submarines would be logical test beds because they have the space to potentially rearrange berthing and heads for a mixed crew.

Wrentz, the leading petty officer in navigation, has been onboard with female riders before, and he said it wouldn’t be so hard to adjust.

“It wasn’t any different,” he said. “For lack of a better word, this is a boys’ club, so we’d have to watch ourselves at times.”

And though some submariners think the tight bonds forged undersea would fray with a mixed crew, others look at female sailors in the fleet and know they would excel.

“We can’t hold out forever,” said Chief Missile Technician (SS) Joe Wittmer, of the Maryland’s Gold Crew. “A female can do the same job I do. I have no problem with that.”

The deterrent mission means being at sea and undetected to prevent a nuclear attack, but the actual mission of a Trident submarine is almost too horrible to think about.

“They do their job every day,” said Capt. Daniel Mack, commander of submarine squadrons 16 and 20, “so they don’t have to do their jobs.”

The stealth and survivability of a Trident submarine may be a double-edged sword in the event of all-out war. The ship and crew would survive, while those ashore do not. Most accept the fact that their homeport in Kings Bay — and their families — would be erased in a nuclear conflict. Officers say they discuss it with their crews.

“Because they see the process and procedures of what we do, they trust that when that decision is made, it’s the right decision no matter how devastating this platform can be,” said Cmdr. Jeff Grimes, the Maryland’s Gold Crew commanding officer. “What happens after that is the great unknown.”

With the Cold War over, a single identifiable enemy has been replaced by a wide array of potential unpredictable and unseen foes, making the world more, not less, dangerous, some would argue.

“There are nuclear weapons in the world today. Many nations have them. Proliferation is possible in the growing technological societies we have,” Grimes said. “The power of the deterrent is the knowledge that the capability exists in the hands of controlled people. So on a global scale, deterrence is showing how it’s working every day. We haven’t had a global, a world war, in a long time.”