The US Navy Is Preparing to Take On an Old Foe: Stealthy Enemy Submarines

Dave Majumdar

Security, Europe, Asia

Think Russia and China. 

While a resurgent Russian and growing Chinese submarine fleet poses a challenge for the United States Navy, the service’s carriers and naval aviation forces are well prepared to meet the threat.

Though the service has retired the Lockheed Martin S-3 Viking carrier-based submarine hunter, the combination of MH-60R Seahawk anti-submarine helicopters, land-based Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrollers and Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton unmanned surveillance aircraft affords the Navy a very significant anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability.

“The capabilities in the MH-60 Romeo are pretty impressive in the ASW arena,” Rear Adm. (Upper Half) DeWolfe Miller, the Navy’s director of air warfare told The National Interest during an interview at the Pentagon on August 23. “The other thing I’ll tell you is that we’ve gone from P-3s to P-8s and we have added a persistent nature to it with Triton that’ll IOC [initial operational capability] in ’18.”

The Navy’s aircrews will have to learn how to use all of their new hardware, but the capability afforded by the new platforms should greatly enhance the service’s ASW capabilities. Moreover, unlike during previous eras, individual ASW platforms would not be working by themselves. The real boost in capability comes from when aircraft such as the MH-60R, P-8A and Triton work in concert to hunt enemy submarines.

“I think as far as improvements go, MH-60R working with a Triton and combined with the capabilities of a P-8—and then I don’t want to speak for the undersea capabilities of our own submarines—but ASW is certainly one of our primary mission areas,” Miller said. “We take it quite seriously.”