They are fast and armed with torpedoes, Tomahawk cruise missiles and mines. Although their mission has changed since the end of the Cold War, the Navy says subs like this are still vital to national security. Instead of keeping track of the Soviet navy and its ballistic missile subs, American submariners now engage primarily in intelligence-gathering missions. Crews have gone from shadowing a single, well-understood adversary to tracking the activities of scores of nations, many of them with rapidly shifting political leaderships and murky military objectives. Although their exact missions or whereabouts are never disclosed, even to family members of the crew, submarines routinely prowl sea lanes and coastlines completely undetected.
Crews easily eavesdrop on radio communications and monitor ship movements.
Navy sub admirals say these intelligence missions have doubled since the end of the Cold War. He told a group of influential Texas industrialists recently that the shrinking of his fleet size has created an unprecedented workload for submariners, one that is increasing at the expense of routine maintenance and port visits. And national security is at stake, he said. He had no attack submarine operating close enough to the Korean peninsula to respond in the event of trouble with North Korea. The debate over the number of submarines began soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union, whose navy once fielded a fleet of more than 200 attack submarines.