U.S., Japanese sub hunters
team up at Annual Exercise 2001
By Mark Oliva, Okinawa
bureau
Mark Oliva / Stars and Stripes
Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Theresa Donahue, foreground, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Matt
Peters survey readings from sonar buoys to detect submarines during Annual Exercise 2001.
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KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa — “It’s old. It ain’t
sexy, but it’s got teeth,” said Navy Lt. j.g. Ken Rittersbusch, a P-3 Orion
pilot on deployment here. “This is an asset the Navy has to have all the time.”
Rittersbusch was talking about his P-3 Orion — an airborne
submarine hunter from Navy Patrol Squadron Forty-Six, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air
Station, Wash.
Rittersbusch was flying an anti-submarine mission Wednesday in
support of Annual Exercise 2001, a weeklong training exercise between the U.S. Navy and
Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces.
U.S. Navy P-3 crews were working with their Japanese counterparts to
screen the seas near Okinawa for submarines in support of surface warships.
The day’s mission found crewmembers preparing the aircraft
before 6 a.m. for an eight-hour flight over seemingly empty seas, searching for
submarines. The missions — long, monotonous and tiring — are a necessity in
keeping the Navy’s fleet ships safe.
“Surface ship and aircraft surveillance is now probably our
biggest mission,” Rittersbusch said. “But we have a long history of
anti-submarine missions.”
This isn’t the first time the U.S. sailors worked with Japanese
P-3 crews. The air crews commonly work toward what Annual Exercise is designed to enhance
— operability between the two nations’ navies.
“We flew out here today and couldn’t get a hold of the
Japanese crew right away,” said Navy Cmdr. Kevin Keilty, squadron commander. “We
stayed at our assigned altitude and sure enough, there was the Japanese crew, flying at
their assigned altitude. … That’s what these exercises do for us. They give us
confidence that we’ll all do the assigned missions they way we plan them.”
Keilty said the same Japanese crews that fly alongside the U.S. P-3s
often are flying together in other exercises even when the squadron is working out of its
home base.
He said both his crews expect to see some of the same Japanese P-3s
flying during RIMPAC exercises scheduled for next year.
The crew arrived “on station” less than an hour after
takeoff and began their cat-and-mouse game of hunting submarines.
The mission’s kickoff was punctuated by thuds coming from the
plane’s belly as the crew deployed a series of sonar buoys equipped with aquatic
microphones preset to frequencies likely to match those emitted by submarines.
“This right here is kind of the heart of our mission,” said
Petty Officer 2nd Class Matt Peters, sitting at a monitoring station in the center of the
aircraft. “We’ll send out the buoys to pick up the noise generated by the sub
and they feed it back to the aircraft. Right here, we analyze what we see. We’ve got
to figure out from all the sounds those buoys pick up, which ones might be the sub. Once
we do, we start tracking it and wait for further tasking from the battle group.”
That tasking, in a real-world scenario, could involve hunting and
killing the submarine. The P-3, originally designed in the 1950s, carries some of the most
accurate and high-tech weapons in the Navy’s inventory.
The P-3 is similar to the EP-3 Aries II reconnaissance aircraft that
was downed by a Chinese fighter earlier this year. They’re both based on
Lockheed’s Electra passenger plane, refitted to meet the needs of the U.S. military.
The P-3 is outfitted with “hard points” along the underside
of the wing where Maverick, Harpoon and Standoff Land Attack Missiles can be attached. It
also can carry MK-48 and MK-50 torpedoes in the plane’s belly.
“Those are the big ones,” Rittersbusch said. “We
don’t fly fast, but we’re carrying fairly sophisticated stuff. We can acquire a
target, get out of the range of a ship’s defense systems and launch attacks hundreds
of miles away.”
Once the buoys were in the water, the real work began. Like the
flights, listening for telltale signs of a submarine is tedious work. The plane even is
outfitted with two bunks for crews to rest between shifts and a small kitchenette with a
coffeemaker always on.
“It is tiring,” Peters said. “But it’s all a team
effort. After about the first four hours … of flying low over the water, yanking and
banking and staring at the green screens of the monitors, it starts to wear you down. But
that’s what we’re here for — long-range maritime patrol. We’re the
forward eyes and ears of the fleet.”
Buoys last up to four hours in the sea, constantly sending radio
signals to the crew.
For this mission, the buoys were deployed in a lateral line across
the sea, a frequency dragnet. The four-hour life span of the buoys keeps them from falling
into enemy hands, but means crews have to “reseed the pattern” two or three
times on a mission.
Eight hours after leaving the runway, the U.S. crew got word the
Japanese P-3 was taking over the mission. Identifications were passed over the radios and
the U.S. crew requested permission from controllers aboard the USS Cowpens below for the
Japanese crew to assume duties.
In eight hours, no submarines were spotted, but it’s not
uncommon. Given the increasing technology to keep submarines quiet, the mission for P-3
crews is more difficult than ever, Keilty said.
“Either they weren’t playing the game or they were very
good at playing the game,” he said. “But we were able to talk clearly with
Japanese P-3, pass along our information, and they were able to pick up right where we
left off.
“They’re good at what they do,” Keilty added of the
Japanese P-3 crews. “They’re very professional and they execute their missions
with precision. That’s why we practice this, so we know it gets done right every
time.”
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