On March 20, 2003, the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom brought with it one of the most consequential weapons in the Navy's arsenal: the Tomahawk cruise missile, launched from submarine tubes in the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea, flying hundreds of miles to strike leadership targets, communications nodes, and military infrastructure in Iraq. USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720) was among the submarines that contributed to this opening salvo — a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine operating in one of the most demanding environments in submarine warfare, firing weapons that would help shape the course of a war. It was exactly the mission the Los Angeles class had been designed and built for, adapted to a conflict that its designers had not foreseen.
The Ship
USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720) is a Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, commissioned on November 23, 1985, and named for the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Los Angeles class — 62 boats built between 1976 and 1996 — was the backbone of the Cold War submarine fleet, designed to hunt Soviet ballistic missile submarines and attack submarines in the North Atlantic and to sink Soviet surface ships. The class was also equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles, either in vertical launch system tubes forward of the sail or in the standard torpedo tubes, giving it a land-attack capability that became increasingly important after the Cold War ended and the emphasis shifted from anti-submarine warfare to power projection.
Pittsburgh was homeported at Groton, Connecticut. By 2003, she had been in service for nearly eighteen years and had accumulated the operational experience of a mature submarine crew.
The 2003 Deployment
Pittsburgh deployed in early 2003 as the invasion of Iraq became increasingly certain. Los Angeles-class submarines operating in the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea were among the platforms selected for the opening Tomahawk strikes of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Submarine-launched Tomahawks offered specific advantages in the opening of a campaign: they could be positioned without the diplomatic complications of basing land-based aircraft, they were virtually impossible to detect before launch, and their strikes could be coordinated with air-launched weapons to arrive simultaneously over target areas.
The Tomahawk strikes of March 20, 2003 and the days that followed targeted Iraqi command and control infrastructure, communications systems, and military facilities throughout the country. Submarines like Pittsburgh fired as part of a coordinated strike package that also included surface ships and carrier-based aircraft. The submarines provided a component of that package that was invisible until the moment it fired — a quality that has value in both tactical and strategic terms.
Submarine Life
Submarine service is qualitatively different from surface Navy life in ways that are both obvious and subtle. The obvious difference: you are submerged, in a pressure hull, with no natural light and no horizon. The air is recycled. The navigation is inertial. The world outside the hull is known only through sonar returns and electronic signals. The subtle difference: the crew of a submarine is smaller than any surface ship — about 130 on a Los Angeles-class boat — and the interdependence of that crew is total. Every person on a submarine knows every evolution that matters. There is no margin for people who don't perform. The culture of submarine service, with its emphasis on qualification and knowledge and individual mastery of the boat's systems, exists because the ocean is unforgiving and the boats are complex and the margin for error is zero.
The crew of Pittsburgh, operating in the confined waters of the eastern Mediterranean or the Red Sea, maintaining the silence and discipline that submarine operations require, would not have known exactly when or whether they would fire. They knew they were positioned to fire. They maintained the readiness required. When the order came, they executed. That is what submarine crews do.
If you served aboard USS Pittsburgh or want to honor a submariner, browse The Ship's Store — cruise shirts, license plate frames, and more.
Legacy
USS Pittsburgh was decommissioned on September 29, 2016, after thirty-one years of service. Her 2003 deployment and participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom is one of the defining moments of her service history — a submarine that spent most of its career preparing for a Cold War that never became hot, and that found its moment of consequence in a different war in a different ocean, firing the weapons that were always in her tubes but that the Cold War never required her to use. The Los Angeles class built during the 1980s did its most consequential work in the twenty-first century. Pittsburgh was part of that.