Coalition-Building at Sea: USN-ROK Interaction

By LT Chap Godbey, USN

The submarine force didn't earn its sobriquet, "Silent Service", just because of the inherent stealth of a sub; the force's culture is that of secrecy, of keeping mum about what subs do and how they do it. Submariners in today's force need to change that mindset and understand the need for successful coalition operations involving a fighting and communicating submarine. We are slowly learning that the capabilities of the platform need to be demonstrated often. In addition, the force is remembering that gains made from learning how to operate as part of a coalition team far outweigh the risks if handled properly and honestly. Between 1996 and 1998 I was lucky enough to see a remarkable interaction between the Republic of Korea Navy's submarine force and the U.S. Navy's Western Pacific submarine force. The lessons I learned may prove useful to other junior personnel who, like me, are starting out in a liaison role.

Opening Situation.At the close of the Cold War, the fast attack nuclear powered submarine (SSN) force was at a peak in size. By 1995, though, the drawdowns had severely reduced available submarine assets. Since it was much cheaper to decommission a sub than refuel it, useful SSNs were being struck at a rapid rate. At the same time, the requirements for SSNs in a multipolar world grew just as rapidly, causing more and more tasking to be required for each deployed submarine. Submarine operating tempo became critical, and several initiatives were started at Submarine Group SEVEN in Yokosuka, Japan to increase tasking and routing efficiency. These initiatives bought some time in the ships' schedules, but not nearly enough to get the job done.

USS Kamehameha, SSN-642, underway
At the same time, the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) had completed the first significant diesel-powered submarine (SS) acquisitions in its history. The ROKN purchase of a Type 209 SS and associated support from Germany started an effort in ROKN to find out how to effectively build a doctrine and operate the machines. The German training was efficient, but some ROKN officers felt that it did not provide sufficient proficiency or expertise in operations for them. There was no organizational culture built in the ROKN for the unique requirements of a hunter-killer submarine force.

USN-ROKN interaction on the operator level was (and still is, in spots) problematic. The traditional Korean way of negotiating with others can often be seen as overly aggressive to American military personnel, and a series of military intelligence collection blunders by the ROKN deepened a distrust by USN officers of ROKN questions or interoperations. This, combined with the closely held nature of American submarine operations, severely limited the interoperability between our two forces.

Why Work Together? Given this situation, it would seem implausible that the two submarine forces could manage to work together at all. However, the most likely major regional contingency (MRC) in the Seventh Fleet's Pacific-Asian theater is that of a North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea (ROK). American submarine forces are less available than they used to be, and it takes a significant amount of time for SSNs to get into theater from San Diego or Hawaii. The half- dozen Korean submarines could fill some of the SSN's jobs, if the ROKN had capable ships and competent crews. A capable ROKN ship defending its homeland was obviously more preferable to American naval forces than sending a USN SSN halfway across the world would be. It became obvious that interoperability was in the best interests of both the U.S. Navy and the USN Submarine Force.

Additionally, unlike airplanes, submerged submarines can't "see" each other very well. To minimize collisions at sea, some means of coordination was required between submarine forces in the East Sea/Sea Of Japan without antagonizing Japanese, other foreign, or Korean forces. The USN seemed in a position to become an honest broker between submarine forces, to be able to coordinate so that operations and transits between countries could be deconflicted without alerting allied rivals of each other's intentions. To this end, the operational commander of the submarines in the Western Pacific made it a key goal to pursue as much interoperability as possible, while still treating each country in his area of responsibility equally.

Even the "Silent Service" requires FAO skilld
Advocating Our Position. By the time I started working for Submarine Group SEVEN, the command had already established a strong foundation for interoperability. Periodic meetings between admirals and staffs allowed the two submarine commands to air out dirty laundry and figure out a direction until the next meeting. Crossdecking, where sailors from one boat ride the other boat for a few days, had been negotiated between heads of navies, and personnel from each country's submarine force rode another navy's ship for a few days to learn what information would be allowed and useful, and how to pass it. ROKN-USN submarine exercises had been arranged. A ROKN initiative was in place to send the first ship of the new class to Guam from Korea, a distant trip that would both serve as a blue water shakedown of safe operating practices and build ROKN confidence in their submarine force.

At this point we had a few goals:

1. Build mutual trust between organizations.

2. Build interoperability between submarine forces.

3. Improve communication between the USN deployed sub forces and ROKN forces.

4. Convince USN and ROKN forces that interoperability, and a viable ROKN SS force, was essential.

5. Support the viability of the ROKN SS force to improve flexibility of the USN SSN force.

In order to do this, we had to do some convincing among both the USN staff and ROKN staff. The ROKN staff problem was easier in this respect since working to make their boats and crews more effective in a wartime scenario was clearly in their best interest. For us, the challenge with ROKN personnel was to guide U.S. support in a way that also supported U.S. security goals. For the USN staff with which our command interacted, we had to perform as much liaison work as we did with ROKN forces.

Useful Methods and Practices. Submarine Group SEVEN settled on the following method to reach our goals: Make sure arguments are intellectually based. We were proposing change, and change involves more work and the destruction of something that already works to some extent. The change we wanted, improving interoperability and mutual trust, is emotionally based. Only by taking the emotion out of the argument can you successfully support that argument in front of someone who also has strong feelings about a policy change.

Sometimes this method can help reveal hidden strengths. It became readily apparent that USN SSNs needed to practice against quiet, effective diesel submarines in littoral waters, and the USN has no way to do this by itself without resorting to simulation. The ROKN base in Chinhae was building a new submarine base, and one of the piers could be built to accommodate SSNs for a few days, instead of the SSN staying at sea or transiting to another area for liberty. Both mutual training time and ship berthing were cost savings to the USN, but would not have happened if the ROKN submarine admiral did not agree with the intellectual argument for interoperability.

Make sure that you understand which goals are common and work towards those. Different organizations have different goals and core needs. The ROKN, for instance, is part of a country that for hundreds of years has been a buffer between two larger, more powerful countries, and, over the centuries, has fine-tuned the art of thriving as a culture without being crushed by either larger power. The ROKN submarine flotilla we worked with was keenly aware that it needed to be more proficient in submarine warfighting skills, but also understood that this was a rare opportunity to get support relatively cheaply as much as it was to learn U.S. submarine warfighting techniques. This was at the core of some of the negotiating difficulties I had. Often I would find myself in the middle of a tug-of-war between ROKN submarine personnel who very forcefully desired something to help make them better, and American staff who needed to keep from wasting money or unnecessarily releasing classified information. The resulting "vigorous discussions" provided the means to ensure that what we did to train with ROKN was mutually beneficial and supported the intellectual argument.

These common goals are really another way of saying "think win-win". There are lots of places where I or others in my command could make an effort and improve both organizations without harming either.

Communicate what you are doing and where you are going. At the proper time, communication is essential to dispel frustration between organizations and to ensure the goal inside the organization is correct and correctly implemented. Submariners don't--or at least didn't--talk much with other organizations as a general rule. Our work practices are classified, and the spaces in which we live are similarly restricted. Submariners have to be circumspect while still communicating effectively. Experience with this professional mindset actually was valuable to me because large bureaucratic organizations also don't tend to communicate well, and I knew already what communication methods I needed to focus on. My experience reinforced this belief; two different organizations a half mile apart would have no idea what the other intended to do, in both ROKN and USN staffs. By "welding a telephone to my head" and becoming a frequent and forceful communicator, I smoothed over the inevitable difficulties between staffs in support of the goal.

The reverse was also true. One time, an equipment acquisition we strongly promoted to the ROKN sub force was rejected by other USB staff who determined that the equipment could not be released. If I had understood better what was going on in advance, I could have kept both sides informed and kept our command from losing a little credibility and thereby weakening arguments for recommending that ROKN purchase other equipment.

The rule of "better comms means better ops" also worked organizationally. The Group comms shop set up improved communications between organizations, even going so far as installing a 'hot line' between ROKN Submarine Flotilla NINE and USN Submarine Group SEVEN. We kept no palace guard around it; it could be and was used by junior personnel on a regular basis to coordinate any issue that needed work. Despite our disadvantage at Group in not being able to understand the Korean language, this written comms system helped innumerable times when urgent crises erupted or unknown contacts needed identification. The written comms link also limited potential translation problems or misunderstanding as to who said what.

Be intelligent about what's releasable. Some of the information we had passed to other allies--indeed, information that was easily available in open source or on our own USN websites--was also listed in outdated publications as classified and unreleasable. In some cases that caused embarrassment when we submariners refused to talk about a subject and were called on it; in others it was a definite block to interoperability between organizations in wartime. We had to be extremely proactive to determine the exact status of different pubs or systems, and worked closely through JUSMAG and our immediate operational and administrative superiors (Seventh Fleet and Submarines Pacific Fleet) to do so. (To do otherwise could have proved disastrous!)

Build military-to-military contacts. Unlike the other services, the Navy has only a fledgling Foreign Area Officer (FAO) community. Other services conduct In- Country Training and return to their area of expertise over and over again. Submariners have such a highly technical core skill that there are no people available to send outside the force for such training. We have to go to sea to do our job. Managing the requirements of a submarine officer's career track is such a challenge that returning people to the same overseas shore billet is counterproductive to their proficiency as warfighters. Instead of placing people in country for long periods of time, we had to be more creative in creating military-to-military contacts. We arranged seminars, crossdeck opportunities, and host ships for each inport period. We designated a primary point of contact on each level of the chain of command as a liaison. Above all, we established a baseline attitude among the USN submariners that it was important to maintain engagement and to operate effectively together. A good example one commander used to teach this was the "lieutenants today will be the captains and admirals tomorrow" argument. The senior officers' decisions tomorrow will be based on the understanding and impressions of each other's countrymen that we build today.

What's Next? The critical job we now have is to maintain the momentum of improved interoperability. There are of course going to be crises and bad feelings, and personalities will change in all organizations, but once the effective working relationship is institutionalized, it will be much simpler to work through the difficulties. Trust between the two navies isn't fully established; both sides are well aware that despite the common goals and history, each party is still working towards its own national goals. Individuals on both sides still need to be less overtly aggressive about pursuing their non-mutual national goals in order to improve mutual trust. Our submariners in theater must continue to strive to delicately balance the relationships our submarine force has among all the forces we work with, be as open and clear as we can about our intentions to each country, and still keep confidences between ourselves and each force with which we work.

Despite the effort involved, my job was a fascinating challenge. The success we had in achieving harmony and building constructive change was a great morale builder for all of us. The American submarine force is still way too small for its increased tasking, but the coalition we formed with our sister submarine force makes us both stronger and more effective.

LT Chap Godbey is the Combat Systems Officer aboard USS Kamehameha (SSN-642), FPO AP 96670-2063

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