The sinking of the Silent Service.

Navy may shrink fleet of attack subs, David Lerman, Daily Press, June 11, 2004

Despite a surge in defense spending since the Iraq war, Navy leaders have begun rethinking the rationale for subs that cost upward of $2 billion a copy.

A Navy report cited by O'Rourke - one that hasn't been released - is said to conclude the military could make do with as few as 37 attack subs if some intelligence missions were handled by other means, such as satellites and unmanned vehicles.

This has been one of the biggest underreported military stories of the last several years.

The US Navy has been retiring old subs faster than new ones are built and the case isn't being made for why they need submarines at all.

So far in the Global War on Terrorism, the sub force hasn't done much more than launch cruise missiles at "empty tents" and the naval actions against terrorists have consisted of boarding actions which submarines do poorly at and even billion dollar DDGs are overkill.

But there are other countries with naval forces and some of these aren't always on the same page as the United States.

These potentially hostile forces can track the American surface fleet fairly easily, but before they launch any naval aggression they first need to ask where the American submarines are and the Silent Service will not answer.

-HJC