AP,
GROTON (AP) – In only its second deployment, the Groton-based USS Connecticut submarine will make history as it sails to the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf.
The Connecticut will be the first submarine from the Atlantic fleet used in a new Naval strategy that focuses on an increased number of battle groups with fewer ships. But the groups will have more capabilities than the traditional deployments.
The sub, which will leave within the next several days, will join the USS Wasp Expeditionary Strike Group, or ESG, for amphibious operations as needed in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf.
The new concept is a departure from the current strategy of building large battle groups around aircraft carriers or amphibious group that could deploy larger numbers of troops with limited strike capabilities.
For the first time, submarines, destroyers and cruisers will be included in amphibious groups. Carrier battle groups will be trimmed from 12 or more major ships to perhaps half that many.
Naval officials want smaller, more nimble strike groups than those that operated during the Cold War. But they still want the groups to rival the forces of small countries.
“A smaller group is probably more typical of what we do these days,” Capt. David Eyler, commodore of Submarine Squadron 4 at Naval Submarine Base New London, told The Day of New London. The squadron includes the Connecticut.
“Most of what we're dealing with are not high-intensity conflicts,” Eyler said. “They're really more mid- to low-level, and these guys will be able to deal with them.”
Capt. Steve Joachim, commodore of the ESG, said the new strategy is a major break from tradition.
He said the Navy realized after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that the old Cold War concept of large battle groups designed to go out to battle another major force in deep water is outdated.
With the demise of the former Soviet Union, there are no big forces left to challenge the United States on the open ocean, and the battlefield has shifted to near-shore hotspots.
“Old habits die hard, and military people can be pretty fixed in the way we think,” Joachim said. “It took a kick to change us, and that's what 9-11 did. It caused the military to really look at how it does business.”
The Connecticut's skipper, Cmdr. Philip McLaughlin, said the new strategy will create a new use for some of the sub's skills. For instance, submarines have long done surveillance and reconnaissance for aircraft carrier battle groups and on independent operations. Now, the Connecticut will be doing reconnaissance for more than 2,000 Marines in the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.
The Wasp ESG will include the Wasp and Connecticut, as well as a tank and truck transport, a troop transport, two cruisers and a destroyer. By using smaller groupings of ships the Navy will be able to field almost twice as many operational groups.
The Navy plans 12 carrier strike groups, 12 ESGs and as many as 14 surface strike groups, which will be sized to any particular threat and consist mainly of cruisers, destroyers, frigates and support ships.
The first ESG to deploy was in the Pacific last August. It centered around the helicopter landing ship USS Peleliu, which included the Pearl Harbor-based submarine USS Greenville.
