A Sailor's lament: something "cooked up" in Washington - perhaps a new "technology initiative" that has caught Congress' fancy and been "bestowed" on the Submarine Force, with little recognition or understanding of how it will ultimately affect the way America's submariners do their jobs and carry out their missions... or a required new procedure that will increase the maintenance workload. Sometimes, rather than improving operational effectiveness or lowering operating costs, such "initiatives" have had just the opposite effect. 

Well, maybe that's the way it was in the past, but those days of "business as usual" are over, and "Washington" is paying very close attention to what our submariners are saying. A key factor in this new approach is "Team Submarine." During the past several years, the Submarine Force's headquarters, program offices, and other activities inside the Washington Beltway have quietly reorganized themselves into an innovative organizational structure - Team Submarine - which has a primary focus on satisfying the operational needs of the fleet, today and in the decades to come, in an effective and affordable way. 

Team Submarine's Concept of Operations 

The Team Submarine concept unifies diverse submarine-related commands and activities into a single "submarine-centric" organization, with the goal of eliminating the traditional "stovepipe" structures and processes that created impediments and inefficiencies in the submarine research, development, and acquisition communities for decades - and in other military organizations for even longer. Team Submarine is already providing improved communications among the various offices that contribute to the design, acquisition, maintenance, and support of the world's finest submarine force. It is fostering better decisions by bringing to bear more and higher-quality information on the often-difficult issues that arise in translating decisions by the Washington bureaucracy into fleet implementation. 

At its most fundamental, the Team Submarine organization focuses on the "cradle-to-grave" needs of the Submarine Force - research and development, acquisition, and lifecycle support. At the heart of the team are the Program Executive Office for Submarines (PEO SUB), the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Submarine Directorate (SEA 92), and the NAVSEA Undersea Technology Directorate (SEA 93). Other important organizations with fundamental submarine equities, such as Naval Nuclear Propulsion (SEA 08), OPNAV's Submarine Directorate (N87), the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) and the two type commanders (SUBLANT and SUBPAC) also provide critical inputs. Outside the core, other submarine community entities, including shipyards and university laboratories who are equally committed to the success and sustainment of the Submarine Force, form the "outer layer" of Team Submarine. 

"We are listening closely to what our deckplate sailors are saying," commented PEO SUB RADM Phil Davis, "and we are taking to heart the need to revitalize the way we solve the problems they face today, as well as looking to the far-future of the Submarine Force." The Team Submarine approach is rooted in the concept of Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) teams now being used in industry and in other parts of the government. One of the first U.S. government IPPD successes was the management structures and processes put in place for the design, engineering and acquisition of the USS Virginia (SSN-774)-class "new attack" submarine. The Virginia-class program has been a showcase for the type of cost-saving measures required to save precious modernization dollars and is providing the Navy with an undersea platform of unprecedented capabilities, designed to meet the full spectrum of threats emerging in the 21st century. 

Under the IPPD concept, a framework is developed to incorporate the relevant views of all key stakeholders - from the deckplates to the "ivory towers" of laboratories and universities - into a coherent decision-making structure. The process recognizes that each element of the team must be intimately and completely involved early in the decision-making process to ensure that its full weight of knowledge and experience will be applied. The Virginia-class IPPDs brought shipbuilders, equipment vendors, designers, engineers and operators together, recognizing that their combined experience would guarantee a much more comprehensive and sophisticated submarine design. For example, early involvement of the shipbuilders on these teams helped to ensure that the ship's design was readily compatible with construction processes and facilities at the shipyards. One early and critically-important benefit of the IPPD approach is that it has already begun to facilitate a smoother transition between the ship's design and building phases. This will reduce the number of engineering changes norm-ally required during construction of a lead ship, at least in comparison to earlier submarine programs, no matter how successful. 

Similarly, Team Submarine will adapt the IPPD approach to other aspects of the submarine life cycle. Engineers, designers, logisticians, operators, administrators and maintenance personnel will work together throughout each stage of the design, maintenance, upgrade and acquisition of submarines. Importantly, "operator" members of the various teams will include both enlisted personnel and officers to make certain that all of the Fleet's concerns are being addressed. By working together from the start of each project, the full weight of these professionals' knowledge and experience is brought to bear, facilitating informed and more effective decision- making. Moreover, the team approach ensures not only that decisions are made with the best information available, but generally achieved through broad consensus. While consensus decision-making may take slightly longer, cost a little more and not please everyone, the resulting conclusions are certain to be based on literally thousands of years of submarine design, engineering, operating and sustaining experience. The decision will almost always be better for having been shaped by numerous constituent groups, stakeholders and partners - all with unique perspectives and ideas. Since all participants are aware of the need for continuing fiscal austerity, cost savings will be an important outcome over the long run. "Today's submarines will be with us for a relatively long time," RADM Charles Young (SEA-93) pointed out. "About 70% of the submarine fleet of 2015, for example, is at sea today." This is a compelling factor in shaping Team Submarine's biggest challenge - the development of new technologies and their integration into the force. In particular, many of the combat and supporting systems designed for Seawolf- and Virginia-class submarines will be backfitted onto Los Angeles and Ohio-class submarines as well. For example, Team Submarine has been working to install new-technology sonar systems designed for the Virginia class into Los Angeles-class submarines under the Acoustic COTS Insertion (ARCI) program. Although this effort presents difficult challenges of coordination among the many organizations involved - from the suppliers of the new equipment to the shipyards where installations will be made - the ARCI program was awarded the Vice President's Hammer Award in 1999, presented to outstanding federal organizations for streamlining and simplifying government processes.

Reaching Out to Everyone! 

Under a "business-as-usual" approach, it has proven all too easy to garble communications among development activities, even within the submarine community. Confronting this unfortunate fact of life, Team Submarine has stepped in to ensure that interactions among all submarine "players" are as open and thorough as humanly possible. Team meetings - both virtual and real - occur sometimes daily when a difficult engineering problem has to be solved. However, while Team Submarine has worked to keep its offices contiguous and well-linked at NAVSEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, on-site representatives are often exchanged among organizations where far-flung locations make such frequent meetings impossible. "We also expect daily - if not more frequent - contact by telephone and video-conferencing, if that's what it takes to resolve some problem," RADM Davis emphasized. 

One good result of this frequent contact has been that all elements of the participating organizations gain extensive insight into each other's operations, daily execution, and costs and budgets. Indeed, a primary focus of Team Submarine's efforts has been to emphasize building personal relationships among people - close-knit partnerships that produce synergies, pro-mote increased coordination and integrate work strategies. Breaking down platform, system and technology stove-pipes and replacing them with a force-wide perspective has created what RADM Davis describes as a "leveraging of knowledge" across the submarine community. "We have all but eliminated duplication in tasking and work assignments, and we have put in place an overarching strategy for approaching the acquisition, maintenance, and support of submarines," he said. His view is echoed by RADM Young, "Team Submarine aims to have people think of themselves as being part of a larger organization and for that mentality to be reflected in the way they approach their work." 

Team Submarine actively involves fleet operators, using them as a direct extension of the Team Submarine structure. For example, Captain James Dullea, head of the Strategic and Attack Submarines Program Office (PMS 392), noted that "We operate a 1-800 number - 1-800-602-SUBS - that can be accessed anytime, anywhere by a submariner needing engineering or technical assistance." Also, Team Submarine representatives meet twice yearly at Submarine Force hull, mechanical and electrical (HM&E) conferences where First and Second Class Petty Officers can raise HM&E issues that impact their commands. The Team Submarine engineers are there to answer questions and take good advantage of the real-world feedback they receive. 

In the same way, Team Submarine officials meet with mid-to upper-level officers at the semi-annual Submarine Force Top Management Attention/Top Management Issues (TMA/TMI) conference to discuss current problems in the Fleet. The informal structure and open communication of these conferences allow issues presented by the several Fleet commands - many of which are common - to be addressed immediately by cognizant organizations.

Positioned for Success 

There is little doubt that America's nuclear-powered submarines are going to play critically important roles and missions in the decades to come. "We are in a task-rich environment," Admiral Davis concluded, "and we are asking our people to do a lot more with a lot less than we had just a few years ago." While Submarine Force structure increases may result from next year's Quadrennial Defense Review, it will be a difficult challenge to raise our numbers from the 56 submarines active today to the 68, or more, that several recent analyses have recommended. This requirement - to remain as effective as possible within severe fiscal constraints - is generating numerous innovations and ideas. Indeed, the Navy is currently evaluating several options to increase the attack submarine force structure. These include refueling Los Angeles-class submarines that had been scheduled for retirement, increasing the building rate of the Virginias, and converting excess Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines to a land-attack missile-capable "SSGN" configuration armed with long-range, highly accurate and lethal Tomahawk cruise missiles. There are also initiatives to increase the capabilities of existing and future submarines, including the ARCI program mentioned above, as well as other COTS technology insertions and "refreshments," modifications to the Submarine-Launched Mobile Mine (SLMM), and the development of underwater unmanned vehicles (UUVs) as force multipliers. 

Regardless of how we pursue these needed capabilities, however, there's one recurring theme: Success in all of these ventures will require dedication and comprehensive teamwork across the entire submarine community. Team Submarine was established to provide the fulcrum for that effort - and to ensure that today's and tomorrow's submariners find few reasons in the future to lament about things "cooked up" in Washington.