According to Rear Adm. Henry Ulrich, the director of surface warfare in the office of the chief of naval operations, the United States Navy has set plans to bring anti-submarine warfare, ASW, to the forefront in "a significant way" (Tiron). Demonstrations were planned for January 2004, which would look at off-board active defense in a littoral setting, while a second in May 2004 would examine acoustics and non-acoustics together with a moving area search, and a third in September 2004 would focus on active/passive distributive systems and non-acoustics (Tiron).

According to Navy officials, unmanned undersea vehicles play a major role in anti-submarine warfare and in mine detection. Unmanned systems will "augment manned platforms in every facet of operations on the ground, sea, air, and space, including information dominance and manipulation" (Adams). Chief of naval research, Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, said "The Navy is absolutely committed to all types of unmanned vehicles. First in space, then in the air, undersea and on the surface" (Tiron). As yet, unmanned undersea vehicle programs have not yielded useful war-fighting capabilities for the Navy, however the mine and undersea warfare office has a $1.5 billion budget for the next seven years (Tiron). An expert panel of defense technology has made several recommendations on anti-submarine warfare capabilities, which include "rapidly deployable, active/passive distributed fields to cover a full range of shallow and deepwater environments without frequent reseeding, non-acoustic sensors with long-endurance that can fly at low altitudes, tactical air vehicles and rapid-attack weapons" (Tiron). Longer term suggestions focus on an autonomous anti-submarine sensor system, "large-area, non-acoustic search capability against shallow submarines, long-range standoff ASW weapons and decoys or countermeasures" (Tiron).

Commanders of 21st century submarines will have at their disposal computer workstations that will allow them to directly query and receive data concerning hostile, friendly, and neutral targets (Ehret). Understanding the information needs is essential to the design of this workstation and is the goal of Project Nemo, a project that has required a multiphase approach combining the applied tools...

The purpose of this project is to study the functional relationships between the "query and receipt of information and the various ways used by approach officers, AOs, to transform this information (Ehret). The three goals of Project Nemo are: 1) to describe and simulate the cognitive processes and memory structures used by Aos in locating enemy submarines; 2) to be able to generalize findings to a new, unknown submarine with reduced manning and new instrumentation; 3) to contribute to the study of expertise (Ehret).
The acquisition of submarines requires the construction of specialized facilities to support and maintain the boats and provide training for personnel (Saw). Although the acquisition, operational and repair costs of submarines are high, they have become a vital part of global navies (Saw).

Works Cited

Adams, Thomas K. (2001, December 22). Future Warfare and the Decline of Human

Decisionmaking. Parameters. Retrieved July 08, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Ehret, Brian D.; Gray, Wayne D.; Kirschenbaum, Susan S. (2000). Contending with Complexity: Developing and Using a Scaled World in Applied Cognitive Research. Human Factors. Volume: 42. Pp. 8. Retrieved July 08, 2006 from Questia Online Library.

The Saga of the Submarine. Chief of Naval Operations Submarine Warfare Division.

Retrieved July 08, 2006 at http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/cno/n87/history/subsaga.html

Saw, David. (2005, December 01). The world submarine situation. Armada International. Retrieved July 08, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Sevigny, C/LTJG. The History Of The Submarine. Retrieved July 08, 2006 at http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/cockpit/4745/semeste2.html

Submarines and Anti-Submarine Warfare. (2002, April 16). M2 Presswire.

Retrieved July 08, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Tiron, Roxana. (2003, October 01). Anti-submarine warfare moving to the forefront.

National Defense. Retrieved July 08, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.