The General Dynamics Corporation's SEA WOLF submarine will make its first combat patrol late this June 201 with `major performance shortfalls' in its propeller and its system 'major processing sonar data, according to the Pentagon's testing office.

The $2.8 billion nuclear submarine is also 11 months late in demonstrating it can accurately launch Tomahawk missiles, the office said. A successful test is necessary before firing Tomahawks in combat, the Navy acknowledged. The SEA WOLF can't take this test until late July at the earliest.

The SEA WOLF's 19-year history has been rocky; congressional pressure to terminate the program, cost concerns and equipment & design problems that delayed testing and deployment for several years. Construction took eight years. The nuclear submarine entered testing in 1997. The tester's report:

`.....tells me this is still one of the worst programs in American shipbuilding' said Norman Polmar, a Washington based naval analyst and author of the U.S. Naval Institutes 'Guide to Ships and Aircraft of the U. S. Fleet'.

`There's something definitely wrong with the system when it takes eight years to build the submarine, four years before she deploys and even then she is not ready in all respects to go to sea.' Polmar said, citing a captain's traditional statement of a new vessel that she's `Ready for sea in all respects'.

The Navy is under pressure to deploy the 'YEA WOLF because the program is behind schedule, he said. The first patrol will take the submarine under the North Pole. The date is classified.

Fixing the problem - `Polmar makes a fair point but the problems don't appear insurmountable,' said Ronald O'Rourke, sea power analyst for the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. `It's not necessarily that large of a concern for this deployment in terms of the Navy being able to show they can get over these problems so that subsequent deployments of the SEAWOLF and its sister ships will not be affected and will be able to do everything they were built to do.'

The program includes three submarines -- the SEAWOLF, USS CONNECTICUT and USS JIMMY CARTER. The total cost is $13 billion and most of the money has already been spent, according to Navy documents.

COLD WAR SURVIVOR

The program was conceived during the Cold War to attack the Soviet Union's next generation of submarines. Its rationale and cost were repeatedly questioned by lawmakers, including Republican Senator John McCain, after the Soviet Union collapsed but the program survived.

The SEAWOLF's role is now advertised as not just hunting enemy submarines but launching Tomahawk missiles at lap,: targets, providing a mother ship for Navy commandos conducting raids, and conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to compliment U. S. intelligence satellites.

Billed as the quietest submarine ever, especially at high speeds, the SEAWOLF was designed jointly by Newport News Shipbuilding. Inc. and General Dynamics Electric Boat unit in Groton, CT Electric Boat builds the vessels; Lockheed Martin Corp. makes the BSY-2 sonar and electronic combat systems.

Major shortfalls

The Pentagon's Office of Operational Test and Evaluation warned officials in April that `major performance shortfalls exist' with the SEAWOLF's propeller, or `propulsor', and its system for processing underwater signals received by its sonar system into useable information.

"The sonar and propulsor currently do not meet some very specific demanding and ambitious performance specifications," acting Pentagon Test Director Lee Frame wrote in a statement in the Bloomberg News. The test office won't elaborate on the propulsion and sonar issues. "Details are classified,' according to the testing office's assessment that's circulating on Capital Hill.

"Maybe it's noisy. The eyes and ears of a submarine are its sonar, and here we're saying there's a problem processing data." Polmar said. "The sonar system-fire control system is the most expensive military electronics system ever developed"

Of the propulsor's shortfalls, Polmar said, "Maybe it's making noise. If it's making noise, there goes the highly publicized stealthiness of the submarine for which we paid so much. "

The Navy doesn't dispute that the SEA WOLF's propulsor and sonar processing capability have shortfalls but it says they can be fixed, said spokeswoman Lt. Jensin Sommer in a statement. Navy testers 'found at sea during test and evaluation that there were improvements that could be made to the sonar processing technology. They are currently reviewing sonar-propulsion performance in a very specific area to assess whether they will satisfactorily meet the Navy's needs over the anticipated service life of the SEAWOLF CIass " she said.

Extensive tests have indicated the system meets most of their combat requirements, the Navy said. As for the Tomahawk problems, a key test firing was to have been in July 2000. It was delayed because of a software problem that prevented the transfer of inertial navigation data into the SEA WOLF's combat system for processing before insertion in the Tomahawk's guidance system Frame's office said the Navy appears to have found a solution to the software problem and `there is no apparent design flaw.'