Seawolf: Why They Call This Nuclear Attack 'Boat' the F-22 of Submarines
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The result: deterrence. And to maintain the edge in deterrence each superpower upped the ante in submarine investment. The culmination of the escalating investment, on the American side, was the Seawolf-class submarine.
But once the Soviet Union collapsed, the impetus for much of America’s defense spending collapsed, too. Taxpayers and their duly elected representatives withdrew their support. Funding dried up. Defense programs were cancelled – some still in their infancy, like the Seawolf, of which only three had been made. Yet, the three Seawolfs still serve today, patrolling the world’s oceans as a reminder of what the US fleet might have looked like had the Cold War persisted another decade or two.
A world-class submarine
The Seawolf is a nuclear-powered, fast-attack sub with a $5 billion per unit price tag (in 2018 dollars).
The vessel is not cheap. But the massive price tag yielded an impressive submarine: bigger, faster, quieter, and more heavily armed than the preceding (and widespread) Los Angeles-class.
“The U.S. Navy had builders cram all kinds of goodies into the Seawolf submarine,” National Interest contributor Brent Eastwood wrote for National Interest months back. The “goodies” start with the hull, which was built entirely from HY-100 steel – an upgrade over the weaker HY-80 steel used to build preceding submarines. With the enhanced steel hull, the Seawolf could dive to depths of 490 meters. The Seawolf could also cruise; with the submarine’s S6W pressurized water reactor, the Seawolf had a max speed of 35 knots – not a world-record, but very impressive all the same. More importantly, the Seawolf is very quiet, with a “propeller-less pump-jet propulsion system” that “allowed it to maintain acoustic stealth even when cruising a brisk 20 knots, whereas most submarines are forced to crawl at 5-12 knots to remain discrete,” Eastwood explained.
And, true to the objectives of the Cold War, the Seawolf was built to handle up to 50 UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles – putting the Soviet Union on notice.
Alas, the Navy cancelled production of the Seawolf. Originally, 29 Seawolf submarines were to be built. Three were completed – the Seawolf, Connecticut, and Jimmy Carter – before the program was canned.
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